For years, the Stakeholder Preparedness Review (SPR) has been seen by many jurisdictions as a time-consuming, inconsistent compliance exercise that often feels disconnected from the realities of local risks and vulnerabilities. Beyond the reporting requirements lies enormous potential: the ability to capture actionable, defensible data that can truly empower states, urban areas, Tribal Nations, and local communities to identify capability gaps, direct resources where they matter most, and strengthen resilience.
The SPR modernization effort represents a turning point in transforming the process from a burden into a breakthrough. By streamlining reporting, enhancing transparency, and providing real-time insights through survey and dashboard tools, this initiative ensures communities are not just meeting federal requirements, but gaining a deeper insight into the data they need to lead their own preparedness efforts and demonstrate accountability.
The Problem: Compliance Without Capability
Despite its foundational role in the national preparedness system, the THIRA and SPR have long struggled to deliver meaningful outcomes. Many jurisdictions, especially those with limited staffing or technical capacity, have found the process overly complex and lacking any value. The result is a fragmented national data set, low local engagement, and missed opportunities to align investments with actual risk.
This challenge is not partisan; it is structural. The current SPR framework, while well intentioned, often fails to produce usable insights for planning, organization, equipment, training, and exercises. As a result, jurisdictions often struggle to translate assessment data into compelling grant justifications, limiting their ability to secure funding for critical preparedness needs. Smaller communities and Tribal Nations are disproportionately affected, which widens the resilience gap and prioritizes investment in larger communities. This undermines the goal of whole community preparedness.
The Breakthrough: A Locally Led Solution
Responding to this challenge, a team of emergency management professionals from Washington State’s Seattle Urban Area Security Initiative (UASI), including Michelle Gillies, Eric Smith, Darvan Cosby, and Debbie Hunt, developed and piloted a new approach to SPR data collection and analysis. Working in partnership with G&H International, they built a customized Esri Survey 1-2-3 tool and dynamic dashboard system designed to simplify the process, increase participation, and produce actionable results.
In its first year, the pilot yielded dramatic improvements: stakeholder engagement increased by 280%, the number of unique capability gaps identified rose by 281%, and jurisdictions reported significant reductions in reporting time alongside improved data quality. By the end of the second year, engagement had increased by 394%, further validating the model’s scalability and impact. These results demonstrate that modernization is not only possible, but also practical, scalable, and already working.
“Our goal from the beginning was to transform the SPR from a compliance task into a strategic asset,” said Michelle Gillies, who was the Seattle UASI Critical Infrastructure Subcommittee Co-Chair and Homeland Security Program Manager for Snohomish County. “We wanted communities to see their data not as a reporting requirement, but as a roadmap; one that could guide planning, justify investments, and drive resilience in ways that matter. For local communities, this means shifting from simply identifying gaps to engaging in strategic working sessions which developed tactics to close them. A closed gap is the difference between having trained personnel, functioning equipment, and coordinated plans in place before a crisis hits.”
Operational Impact: Turning Data into Decisions
The new SPR system does more than collect data, it operationalizes it. Jurisdictions can now use SPR results to inform:
- Integrated Preparedness Plans (IPPs)
- Comprehensive Emergency Management Plans (CEMPs)
- Hazard Mitigation Plans (HMPs)
- Grant investment justifications/stronger submissions for competition
- Training and exercise planning
- Real-time incident response and mutual aid coordination
- Strategic Plans
In 2025, compressed timelines for the Homeland Security Grant Program gave jurisdictions only a few days instead of several months to prepare competitive applications. The SPR dashboard’s ability to instantly identify a community’s lowest-performing core capabilities, aligned with national priority area guidance, enables emergency managers to prioritize projects within minutes. This transforms what was once an all-hands scramble into a strategic, data-driven process.
The dashboard provides visualizations of capability gaps by jurisdiction, sector, and POETE (Planning, Organization, Equipment, Training, Exercises) domain. It supports benchmarking, performance tracking, and strategic alignment with national preparedness goals; all while dramatically reducing administrative burden and tracking return on grant investments.
SPR data should serve as a cornerstone for year-round community engagement, planning, and capability development as its applications continue to expand beyond its original scope. “The SPR dashboard has become an essential tool for special event planning,” said Eric Smith, who was the Homeland Security Program Analyst for Snohomish County and Co-Chair of the Seattle UASI Emergency Management Subcommittee. “For events like the FIFA World Cup, we’ll have hundreds of thousands of fans traveling the I-5 corridor between Seattle, WA and Vancouver, British Columbia, SPR data helps us understand our capabilities and vulnerabilities across jurisdictional boundaries. We can import core capability ArcGIS layers directly into a dynamic dashboard in the EOC, giving decision-makers a real-time view of strengths and weaknesses. It’s not just about planning; it’s about executing with confidence.”
SPR data not only supports high-profile events and operational coordination, but it also strengthens everyday planning and collaboration at the community level. “Hosting community workshops has been one of the most effective ways to turn SPR data into action,” said Darvan Cosby, Emergency Management Program Coordinator for Pierce County. “We can return a list of identified gaps to agencies and their stakeholders, sorted by discipline or jurisdiction and use it like a living improvement plan. It helps track progress throughout the year, update previously identified gaps, and even identify shared challenges across jurisdictions that can be addressed collaboratively.”
SPR insights are equally valuable in shaping targeted training and exercise strategies that strengthen operational readiness. “The SPR dashboard has completely changed how we approach training and exercises,” said Debbie Hunt, Emergency Management Program Coordinator for King County. “We can now isolate gaps in capability with precision and use that data to inform our Integrated Preparedness Plans. Instead of relying on assumptions, we are able to focus our efforts on the areas that need the most attention, making our preparedness activities more targeted, strategic, and effective.”
Strategic Alignment
This modernization effort aligns directly with strategic priorities in an evolving homeland security environment. It improves data fidelity and interoperability, while offering standardized metrics that remain flexible enough to reflect local context.
By enabling evidence-based investment planning and enhancing transparency, the system supports more accountable decision-making. Crucially, it also elevates underserved and under-resourced communities by simplifying participation and tailoring benchmarks to their realities.
By contextualizing capability targets established in the THIRA into locally relevant and achievable measures, the model respects federal standards and state benchmarks while empowering local jurisdictions to understand and lead their own preparedness efforts. By reporting gap and capability data in a standardized, easily sortable and filterable format, the SPR modernization system streamlines submissions into FEMA’s Uniform Reporting Tool (URT). This reduces reliance on limited staff capacity by optimizing legacy processes and enabling smarter, more efficient operations.
Lessons Learned: Closing the Gap Between Risk and Resources
The stakes are high. Recent estimates suggest that over $21 billion in federal mitigation funding (HMGP) remains unspent; often due to bureaucratic hurdles, limited local capacity, and misaligned priorities.1 The SPR modernization initiative directly addresses these challenges by helping jurisdictions translate realistic risk reduction into fundable projects, strengthen planning capabilities, and align local needs within federal frameworks. It also promotes equity by simplifying participation and tailoring data collection to reflect community realities.
Most importantly, SPR modernization fundamentally redefines the role of the assessment itself. What was once a “check-the-box” compliance task is now a dynamic, operational tool that drives and informs all core functions of emergency management from planning and training to investment justification, incident response, and performance tracking. When communities can clearly see their vulnerabilities, they act faster and smarter. When data is accessible and actionable, it becomes a foundation for resilience not just reporting.
Conclusion: From Risk to Readiness
America’s preparedness depends not just on funding, planning, or policies, but on what we can measure before disaster strikes. The SPR modernization initiative reframes risk assessment as a shared operational asset, grounded in stakeholder feedback and powered by scalable technology. It demonstrates how jurisdictions can fully leverage the 6-to-1 return on investment that mitigation spending offers compared to response2, driving resilience exponentially and ensuring that every dollar spent delivers lasting impact.
By investing in these tools, we are turning risk into readiness. We are strengthening our nation, one data point, one decision, and one connected community at a time.
References
1 Heather Richards, Politico, www.politico.com, July 14, 2025, Why billions in disaster aid go unspent – POLITICO
2 National Institute of Building Sciences (NIBS), Mitigation Saves: Federal Grants Provide a $6 Benefit for Each $1 Invested, https://nibs.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/ms_v3_federalgrants.pdf