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Introduction
Oversight of emergency management functions frequently resides with senior public safety leaders, regardless of their formal organizational title or statutory authority. This pattern is not merely anecdotal; it is substantiated at a national scale by findings from the Emergency Management Organizational Structures, Staffing, and Capacity Study (Argonne National Laboratory, 2025). Conducted by Argonne National Laboratory with funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and released in 2025, the study is the most comprehensive national assessment of emergency management capacity ever undertaken. Developed in partnership with the International Association of Emergency Managers (IAEM), the National Emergency Management Association (NEMA), and Big City Emergency Managers (BCEM) and informed directly by practitioner input, the study surveyed local, state, tribal, and territorial agencies nationwide, documenting substantial variation in organizational models, staffing levels, and program scope across jurisdictions of similar size and risk profiles.
The study’s origins trace to November 2022, when a group of Center for Homeland Defense and Security (CHDS) alumni, Justin Kates, Emily Martuscello, and Emily Pelliccia, identified a critical gap in research on emergency management capacity at the Municipal Caucus meeting held at the IAEM Annual Conference. Prior studies had examined specific tiers of government, but no comprehensive cross-jurisdictional assessment existed. Their commitment to a practitioner-driven approach ultimately merged with Argonne National Laboratory’s interest in the same question, producing an effort that went far beyond what any one practitioner group could accomplish independently.
The study’s findings capture the state of emergency management as of summer 2024. Since that data was collected, the landscape has shifted considerably, grant funding has become more constrained, workforce pressures have intensified, and new questions about the role of artificial intelligence in government work have emerged (The White House, 2025). The timing of these findings is significant: they serve both as a baseline and as a call to action. The question the profession must now confront is not simply how to document capacity gaps, but how to use that knowledge as a catalyst for adaptation. This article presents four strategic recommendations designed to support practitioner adaptation in response to these findings.
Key Findings: Structure, Staffing, and Scope
The Argonne study identifies three core constraints on emergency management capacity: structure, staffing, and scope (Argonne National Laboratory, 2025). Each dimension warrants attention, because together they paint a picture of a profession that is often structurally disadvantaged, chronically understaffed, and increasingly burdened by work that falls outside its core mission.
On structure, the data reveals that jurisdictions with independent or freestanding emergency management agencies are more likely to report being able to meet community needs than those housed within fire departments, law enforcement agencies, or executive offices (Argonne National Laboratory, 2025). While situating emergency management within public safety departments may reflect the political and institutional realities of many jurisdictions, it frequently results in the emergency manager serving a collateral rather than primary role.
On staffing, more than half of local emergency management agencies operate with one or fewer full-time employees, and nearly a quarter report zero (Argonne National Laboratory, 2025). Many are staffed by individuals who are part-time, dual-hatted, or formally assigned elsewhere. This is not simply a resource challenge; it is an organizational design challenge. Programs built around a single generalist employee, or no dedicated employee at all, are structurally constrained in their ability to deliver across core emergency management functions such as program strategy, capability sustainment, stakeholder coordination, and incident response.
On scope, a significant share of directors report professional responsibilities outside of core emergency management functions (Argonne National Laboratory, 2025). The Argonne study confirms that assignment of tasks outside of emergency management’s primary mission is consistently cited as a top challenge, particularly in mid-size and large jurisdictions. These off-mission tasks range from managing places to stay for unhoused populations and overseeing flood mitigation construction projects to serving as de facto grant writers for other departments and maintaining physical equipment such as generators and traffic control devices (Garibay, 2026).
These three constraints of structure, staffing, and scope interact in ways that compound their individual effects. An understaffed agency housed within another department and responsible for a sprawling list of tangential responsibilities has little organizational space to do what emergency management does best: provide strategic, risk-informed coordination across a network of stakeholders before, during, and after disasters. The four recommendations that follow are designed to help practitioners address these challenges within the reality of their existing environments.
Recommendation 1: Align on Value
In 2007, FEMA’s Higher Education Program and the nation’s major emergency management professional associations collaborated in what remains the last known semi-official effort to define the field. Their definition, that emergency management is “the managerial function charged with creating the framework within which communities reduce vulnerability to hazards and cope with disasters” positions emergency management as a strategic organizational function, not a tactical response unit (FEMA Emergency Management Higher Education Project, 2007).
In practice, however, many stakeholders and decision-makers do not perceive emergency management this way. Instead, they often view emergency managers as a slack organizational resource, available between disasters to absorb whatever work other departments cannot handle (Cyert & March, 1963). This misperception has a predictable consequence: emergency managers become a catch-all for unexpected community challenges, from homelessness response to permitting oversight for special events (Office of Mayor Karen Bass, 2022). Many practitioners have embraced these additional responsibilities as a way to demonstrate organizational relevance, particularly when doing so unlocks grant funding for the jurisdiction. The problem is that relevance built on task accumulation rather than strategic alignment is fragile and, as the Argonne study confirms, it has contributed to a scope creep problem that undermines the profession’s ability to perform its core functions.
The solution begins with a clearly articulated value proposition. The term “value proposition,” popularized by Alexander Osterwalder’s Business Model Canvas, refers to the distinct combination of products and services an organization offers to meet the specific needs of its customers (Osterwalder & Pigneur, 2010). The Business Model Canvas was designed to help new ventures bring products to market, but its logic applies equally to public-sector programs: before determining what activities to perform and what resources to acquire, an organization must first understand who its customers are and what they actually need.
Figure 1
Note. From The Business Model Canvas, by A. Osterwalder and Y. Pigneur, 2010, John Wiley & Sons. Copyright 2010 by Strategyzer AG.
Too often, emergency management programs are built around a different logic, what might be called institutional isomorphism, a concept introduced by DiMaggio and Powell (1983) to describe the tendency of organizations to adopt the structures and practices of their peers in order to gain legitimacy. In the emergency management context, this looks like acquiring a mobile command post because neighboring jurisdictions have one, or offering citizen preparedness training because other jurisdictions conduct it as an element of their program, without asking whether these activities serve the specific needs of the jurisdiction’s stakeholders. Focusing a program on resources and activities rather than an aligned value proposition often leads to the accumulation of unnecessary assets and engagement in work that is more naturally aligned with another agency.
A more productive approach begins with understanding the jurisdiction’s customers, like elected officials, stakeholder agencies, and constituents, and identifying their specific desired outcomes. This includes understanding what challenges they face in achieving those outcomes (what Osterwalder terms “pains”) and what would make those outcomes easier to achieve (“gains”) (Osterwalder et al., 2014). Equipped with that understanding, an emergency management program can design services that genuinely address those needs, incorporating capabilities that are not found elsewhere in the jurisdiction.
This process also requires honest prioritization. In resource-constrained environments, some emergency management functions are non-negotiable. Ensuring that populations receive timely and intuitive warnings, and that stakeholders can effectively share information and resources during a crisis, are among the functions that are both fundamental to the emergency management mission and difficult to replicate within another agency. A strong value proposition must protect these capabilities while being honest about where the program’s comparative advantage ends.
When the value proposition aligns with what customers actually need, the result is what product designers call product-market fit: a condition in which the service being offered genuinely meets a demand. Much like fit predicts product success in competitive markets, establishing fit between emergency management’s value proposition and its stakeholders’ desired outcomes creates a more durable foundation for the program, one that is defensible even when budgets are cut and organizational priorities shift.
Recommendation 2: Do the Right Things
Once an emergency management program has aligned its value proposition with its stakeholders’ desired outcomes, it can assess which activities and resources are necessary to deliver on that proposition, and which are not. This is the work of Recommendation 2: doing the right things.
The Start, Stop, Change, and Continue (S2C2) framework, developed by Deloitte’s Center for Government Insights, provides a structured methodology for this assessment (Eggers et al., 2019). Adapted from the familiar Start-Stop-Continue format used in performance reviews, the S2C2 framework asks organizations to categorize their activities across four domains (“SKS Process,” 2024). In the Continue category, programs identify activities that are required by law or regulation, or where the agency provides unique expertise that is not available elsewhere, such as operating the emergency operations center or testing the alert and warning system.
In the Start category, programs identify new activities that must begin in order to meet customer-prioritized outcomes. One area with significant untapped potential in the Start category is continuity of operations. Despite the critical role that service continuity plays in community resilience, ensuring that trash is collected, 9-1-1 calls are answered, and wastewater systems remain functional during crises, continuity planning is often treated as a lower-ranked collateral duty of emergency management (Cedergren & Hassel, 2025). Programs that devote more deliberate attention to improving the day-to-day reliability of jurisdictional services during disruptions can substantially increase their demonstrated value to both stakeholders and constituents.
The Change category is becoming increasingly significant in the current environment. The Argonne study documents that administrative and compliance tasks consume a considerable portion of emergency management staff time at all levels of government, tasks that are largely driven by the grant-dominated nature of the field (Argonne National Laboratory, 2025). There is a meaningful opportunity to redesign this work through automation and emerging artificial intelligence tools, reducing administrative burden and freeing practitioners to focus on the strategic, relationship-driven work that remains distinctly human (Susskind, 2025).
The Stop category is, as one might expect, the most difficult. Research by Adams et al. (2021) at the University of Virginia found that when people try to improve a system, they consistently fail to consider subtraction as a strategy unless explicitly prompted to do so. Emergency management is no exception. Identifying activities to divest, particularly to other agencies with more natural alignment, requires confronting an organizational culture that has often equated program value with program breadth.
To support these decisions, Sull and Eisenhardt’s (2015) “simple rules” approach offers a practical complement to the S2C2 framework. Derived from research on how high-performing organizations make rapid, high-quality decisions during periods of uncertainty, simple rules are a small set of guidelines tailored to the user and the task, designed to balance concrete guidance with the freedom to exercise judgment. Three boundary rules in particular can help emergency managers determine when an activity no longer belongs in their portfolio.
First, emergency management should not perform activities that do not support its defined value proposition. If a task does not contribute to what stakeholders are asking for, it should not be on the emergency management agenda, regardless of history, familiarity, or the relative ease with which the task can be accommodated.
Second, emergency management should avoid activities that are similar to those already performed by another department or jurisdiction. This principle most often applies to enabling functions such as equipment maintenance, construction project management, and grant administration. Emergency management provides the most value when it advises entities performing these specialized functions every day, fleet departments, engineering offices, finance teams, rather than executing those functions itself. For instance, when a jurisdiction needs better financial management of post-disaster expenditures, the answer is to hire another accountant, not to ask the emergency manager to become one.
Third, emergency management should avoid long-term coordination of chronic community stressors. Emergency managers provide genuine value in coordinating the response to acute shocks: short-duration, rapid-onset events that disrupt normal community functions (Argonne National Laboratory, n.d.). They can also add value in the early stages of addressing chronic stressors: the persistent, slow-onset conditions that weaken community resilience over time. Emergency managers can leverage their networks and ad hoc coordination capabilities to help stabilize these situations. However, if emergency management’s involvement in a stressor extends beyond its stabilization, that work has become a dedicated function that belongs with the agency or office most naturally aligned with it. Where no appropriate home exists, the jurisdiction’s chief executive should appoint a dedicated administrative “czar” (Shoop, 2023). Emergency management’s comparative advantage lies in its ability to coordinate across complex systems during periods of disruption, not in serving as the jurisdiction’s indefinite manager of last resort.
Recommendation 3: Measure Your Impact
Emergency management programs have long struggled with performance measurement. Those that track performance at all often focus on inputs, the number of training courses offered, the hours invested in plan development or outputs, the number of residents registered for an emergency notification system, the volume of grants applied for regardless of award. This pattern is partly reinforced by the structure of FEMA’s Stakeholder Preparedness Review, which focuses predominantly on these types of input and output metrics (Federal Emergency Management Agency [FEMA], 2018).
The limitation of input and output measurement is well documented in the emergency management literature. Numerous CHDS theses have examined the challenge of measuring effectiveness and return on investment in emergency management, with many identifying the shortcomings of existing frameworks. The core problem is that inputs and outputs imply value without demonstrating it. The number of residents subscribed to an alert system does not tell us whether those residents received timely warnings and took appropriate protective action. The number of grant applications submitted does not tell us whether the funded activities improved community resilience.
A more meaningful approach focuses on outcomes, the actual changes in condition or behavior that emergency management activities contribute to producing. Rather than counting alert system subscribers, practitioners can assess compliance rates for protective action directives. Rather than counting planning documents produced, programs can evaluate whether stakeholders were able to effectively share resources during a real event or exercise.
Figure 2
Comparison of Inputs, Outputs, and Outcomes
Note. Adapted from “Output vs. outcome with OKRs,” by What Matters, n.d., (https://www.whatmatters.com/faqs/outputs-vs-outcome-okr).
One promising approach, drawn from the software reliability engineering discipline, is the use of service level availability metrics, commonly referred to as “uptime” (Jones et al., 2016). Jurisdictions can work with their leadership, stakeholders, and constituents to define appropriate availability targets for key community services. A library, for example, might be expected to maintain 95% availability over a given month, while a wastewater treatment facility might require a 99.99% uptime standard. While emergency management does not control all the factors that determine service availability, it can directly support these metrics through the planning, training, and exercising that prevent and mitigate disruptions. This framing connects emergency management’s core competencies to outcomes that stakeholders understand and value.
It is important to acknowledge that outcome measurement is genuinely difficult. Outcomes in emergency management are often shaped by many variables beyond any program’s direct control, and the research base for outcome-oriented measurement frameworks in this field remains underdeveloped (Owen et al., 2016). This recommendation is offered not as a solved problem but as a strategic direction, with the explicit invitation for practitioners and academics to collaborate on developing measurement approaches that work across different jurisdictional contexts and draw on lessons from other disciplines.
Recommendation 4: Tell the Right Story
According to the Argonne study, 39% of local emergency management agencies report that stakeholder confusion about the role of emergency management is among their most significant challenges (Argonne National Laboratory, 2025). Some of this confusion may be inherent to a function that operates across all hazards and all departments of government. But some of it may be self-inflicted, a product of inconsistent and sometimes counterproductive messaging about what emergency management is and does.
The profession’s public image is frequently shaped by activities that, while visible, may not accurately represent its strategic function. Social media posts depicting emergency managers operating forklifts or distributing Narcan at community fairs, however well-intentioned, reinforce the perception of emergency management as a generalist resource rather than a strategic coordination function. A Google Images search for “emergency management” surfaces primarily photographs of urban search and rescue specialists and their K9 partners searching through disaster debris, a compelling visual narrative that bears little resemblance to the day-to-day work of most emergency managers.
The fourth recommendation is to frequently and clearly communicate the unique value that emergency management contributes to stakeholders’ desired outcomes. This communication should be strategic and audience-specific. The highest priority audience is the individual to whom the emergency manager reports and who controls the program’s budget. Secondary audiences include stakeholder agencies that serve as advocates within the jurisdiction and benefit from the strategic coordination provided by emergency management (e.g., fire, police, public health), and finally, the jurisdiction’s constituents. After a large four-alarm gas explosion in Nashua, New Hampshire, the Office of Emergency Management used the opportunity to highlight the value they provided to the response through a piece on the local news, demonstrating how proactive, audience-specific communication can shape stakeholder understanding of emergency management’s strategic impact (WMUR-TV, 2025).
When programs face budget cuts or staffing reductions, the profession has historically relied on broad, difficult-to-substantiate claims, warnings that “lives will be lost” without a defined value proposition or data to support the assertion. Decision-makers who have not been consistently informed about emergency management’s contributions to specific outcomes are unlikely to be persuaded by hyperbolic appeals. A program with a clear value proposition, documented outcomes, and trusted stakeholder relationships is in a far stronger position to make a compelling case for its continued investment.
This challenge will only intensify as artificial intelligence tools become increasingly capable of automating tasks that have traditionally been performed by professional emergency managers: plan writing, after-action report drafting, situation report generation, and administrative compliance tasks, among others (Appiah, 2025). If a program’s value is articulated primarily in terms of the volume of documents it produces or the breadth of tasks it performs, that value will be increasingly difficult to defend as automation erodes those activities. Programs that are positioned around their irreplaceable human functions, strategic judgment, network coordination, stakeholder trust, and adaptive decision-making during uncertainty, will be better equipped to demonstrate their relevance in this emerging environment.
Practitioner Applications
The four recommendations described above are grounded in established frameworks, but their value is ultimately demonstrated through application. The following examples, drawn from the authors own careers, illustrate how these strategies have been operationalized across different jurisdictional contexts.
Justin Kates, who developed emergency management programs in Nashua, New Hampshire (2011) and Somerville, Massachusetts (2021), notes that the difference in his approach between these two experiences was substantial. In Nashua, his program development reflected what he describes as a “chasing shiny objects” approach, acquiring assets and launching activities based on a generalized sense of what emergency management programs should look like. By the time he developed Somerville’s inaugural emergency management program, he had learned about the Business Model Canvas through his recently completed graduate studies at CHDS and incorporated it as an organizing framework. When he discovered that Somerville already had a dedicated Office of Sustainability and Environment conducting climate adaptation planning, he deliberately avoided duplicating that function, recognizing that hazard mitigation planning more naturally aligned with and integrated into that office’s work (Kates, 2023). This decision both reduced duplication and strengthened an interagency partnership. Kates also brings a private-sector perspective on performance measurement from his current role in business continuity, advocating for the application of service level availability metrics to jurisdictional services as a framework for connecting emergency management activities to outcomes that are meaningful to elected officials and constituents.
Emily Martuscello has applied the “do the right things” principle in Nashua by leveraging artificial intelligence to redesign administrative workflows, reducing the time her team spends on compliance-oriented tasks and creating capacity for the strategic work that humans are most effective at performing. She has also demonstrated the value of outcome-oriented storytelling through her work on the city’s bond rating process: by engaging with the City’s Chief Financial Officer to understand the criteria used by Standard & Poor’s evaluators, she was able to demonstrate that the city’s Continuity of Operations Plan contributed measurable points toward Nashua’s bond rating (S&P Global Ratings, 2026). This example illustrates how emergency management’s core products, plans that ensure the continuity of essential services, can be translated into financial outcomes that decision makers understand and value.
Emily Pelliccia has navigated the challenging transition of moving an emergency management program from a collateral duty embedded within a fire department to an independent function reporting to the jurisdiction’s executive in two different localities. Drawing on the Argonne study’s findings, she has used national data to inform conversations with leadership about program structure, staffing needs, and scope boundaries, helping to prevent the capacity constraints and role confusion that have affected emergency management agencies operating under similar circumstances.
Future Research
The Argonne study also highlights the need for a sustained research agenda to assess the effectiveness of different emergency management organizational models. However, the study is descriptive rather than prescriptive, so it falls short in helping a practitioner design the scope, structure, and staffing of their program. There is still much to learn about which combinations of structure, staffing, and scope produce the best outcomes for jurisdictions of varying size, risk profiles, and institutional contexts. Future research, including work by the broader pracademic community, can help address these gaps and translate findings into operational guidance for practitioners. Additionally, repeating this study in the future would provide a valuable longitudinal assessment of emergency management capacity over time.
Conclusion
Emergency management is facing its most consequential test yet: demonstrating that it deserves sustained organizational investment when resources are scarce, expectations are high, and the boundaries of the profession are actively contested. The Argonne study provides an unprecedented empirical foundation for understanding the current state of the field. The four recommendations presented here: aligning on value, doing the right things, measuring impact, and telling the right story offer a strategic pathway forward that is grounded in evidence and accessible to practitioners operating across a wide range of jurisdictional contexts.
These recommendations do not presuppose additional resources. They ask emergency managers to make more deliberate choices about where to invest the resources they already have, to articulate more clearly what value they create, and to engage their stakeholders with greater strategic intentionality. None of that requires new funding, but all of it requires a shift in perspective.
References
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Additional references and resources, including additional “simple rules” to help emergency managers transfer responsibility of a chronic stressor to another agency, are available at bit.ly/ValueInEM.
