Research Counts

Volunteers & members of the National Guard assembled at New Dorp High School to pass our aid to people recovering from Hurricane Sandy in 2012. Source: A. Katz / Shutterstock.com

By Nnenia Campbell and Hans Louis-Charles

For nearly 75 years, emergency management in the United States has been tethered to a state security framework. Rooted in Cold War civil defense and strongly reinforced by the post-9/11 integration of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) into the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), this approach prioritizes government continuity and the protection of critical infrastructure. However, as disaster losses rise and social vulnerabilities deepen, the security-first paradigm is increasingly ill-equipped to handle the complexities of modern disasters. To evolve, the profession must pivot toward a humanitarian ethos that prioritizes human welfare and disaster risk reduction.

Stuck on Security 

The state security framework views the nation-state—and its physical assets—as the primary object of protection. In practice, this often means that territorial sovereignty and law enforcement take precedence over disaster risk reduction and alleviation of human suffering. A striking example of this occurred in 2025 when vital FEMA resources meant for hurricane season preparation were rerouted to immigration enforcement and border security.

This conflation of emergency management with law enforcement and national security does more than just divert funds and resources; it fundamentally damages trust. When emergency management is perceived as an arm of homeland security, at-risk communities with a history of being targeted by state agencies—minoritized people, people with limited English proficiency, or people with undocumented or mixed residency status—may become understandably reluctant to seek public shelter or otherwise engage with the government. This undermines the ability of emergency managers to relay lifesaving information and provide aid to the very people who may need it most.

An Imbalance of Priorities 

Current federal policies such as the National Preparedness Goal further illustrate this hyper-focus on state security. This policy emphasizes five mission areas: prevention, preparedness, mitigation, response, and recovery. However, significant resources flow toward prevention, which is defined as stopping acts and threats of terrorism, and response, such as immediate first-responder capabilities. 

Meanwhile, mitigation and recovery—the phases that actually reduce long-term risk and restore community stability—deserve far more attention and investment than they currently receive. Studies show that every dollar spent on mitigation can save a community between $4 and $13 in future losses. Yet programs focused on household and community-level resilience, like school tornado shelters or enforcement of disaster resistant building codes, remain consistently underutilized. Instead, narratives of personal responsibility set the expectation that individuals should manage their own risk, which is often impossible for those living in poverty or residing in high-risk areas.

Three Steps Toward a Humanitarian Future

To evolve beyond the security roadblock and toward a more humane and humanitarian future, we recommend three critical shifts in policy and practice:

Decouple Emergency Management from Homeland Security

First, FEMA must be decoupled from the security apparatus of DHS and restored as an independent agency. An independent FEMA could draw lessons from international counterparts like the United Nations Refugee Agency, adopting the core humanitarian principles of humanity, impartiality, neutrality, and independence. Changes at the federal level could serve as a model for state and local level too, encouraging the repositioning of emergency management as a field that is distinct from law enforcement and other services. This is a necessary step to restore public trust and ensure that disaster funds are not diverted to non-disaster security missions.

Reimagine the All-Hazards Approach

Second, the all-hazards approach needs to be re-envisioned to encompass the compound, cascading, and complex hazards that communities now regularly confront. The guiding principle of the field has long been the all-hazards approach, which assumes that the preparedness activities used for a terrorist attack can apply to a hurricane or that a train derailment response is similar to that for a tornado. While well-intentioned and operationally efficient for acute impacts, this model is too rigid for slow-onset disasters like extreme heat, drought, or sea-level rise. Because the Stafford Act—the legal trigger for federal aid—requires a discrete incident period, it is ill-suited for crises that lack a single, acute moment of impact. FEMA and the federal disaster relief and assistance laws outlined in the Stafford Act are limited in their authority to address such issues. Beyond environmental shifts, emergency managers have increasingly been tapped to address complex social crises, ranging from mass shootings and the opioid epidemic to water contamination events and chronic homelessness. Yet they are often forced to intervene without the leadership, training, statutory authority, or dedicated resources required for such disparate challenges.

Furthermore, the all-hazards approach treats disasters as isolated events rather than as manifestations of systemic risk factors like poverty, forced migration, racial inequality, and health disparities. A humanitarian approach could redefine mitigation as capacity-building and community development. Investing mitigation dollars in workforce development, affordable housing, and other measures to support holistic community well-being and economic stability could improve baseline conditions to help communities fare better during disasters.

Invest in Domestic Humanitarianism 

Third, federal resources should be systematically invested in community-based groups and other non-governmental organizations that embody the kind of human-centered approach that is essential for the evolution of emergency management. Many of these groups are embedded in the communities they serve and confront systemic issues on a day-to-day basis. They complement the work of emergency managers and play an outsized role in disaster recovery, which is often the longest and most complex part of the disaster lifecycle. Following a disaster event, the most vulnerable community members often rely on the coordination of dozens of volunteer groups operating at various scales, including those that are part of coordinated networks of Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster (VOADs). These groups don’t just fill gaps; they navigate the systemic barriers that traditional agencies often overlook.

The 2023 floods on Chicago’s West Side illustrate this point. Grassroots group Light Up Lawndale utilized its deep neighborhood roots to provide disaster case management for nearly 900 flood survivors after the devastation left residents dwelling in mold-infested homes for months. Light Up Lawndale focused on interconnected crises of housing, health, and affordability rather than approaching recovery as a narrow technical issue. This expansive understanding of people and place enabled the group to keep seniors and other vulnerable community members from slipping into spiraling losses.

To truly advance toward a domestic humanitarian model, the emergency management sector must move beyond viewing these kinds of entities as mere auxiliaries. Instead, government agencies must prioritize investing in, coordinating with, and learning from the voluntary sector. Coordination with the voluntary sector also deserves to be a robust component of emergency management curriculum, rather than relegated to a single module or week of instruction, as is current practice in typical homeland security -emergency management programs.

The Path Forward

Developing emergency management into a mature, distinct profession requires moving beyond the security framework. The profession can, and must, build a more compassionate and effective approach that treats the alleviation of human suffering, rather than the maintenance of state order, as its primary objective. Without this change, the field risks being seen as just another branch of law enforcement, focused on control rather than care.