A renewed awareness: Reinvigorating preparedness research for crisis and disaster management

In the summer of 2023, a vast array of disasters and devastating fires reaped havoc around the globe. Extreme weather dominated headlines for weeks. A deadly blaze ripped through the island of Maui, Hawaii, engulfing entire landscapes and catching communities off guard. The death toll has risen to 114, and more than 1000 people remain missing at the time of writing. Hawaii was not the only tragedy, however. In Algeria, huge wildfires cost the lives of 34 people and left over 200 wounded, as the fire raged across forests, villages and small towns in the mountainous north of the country. Multiple fires raged across Greece, threatening Athens and the Island of Rhodes during the longest heat-wave in the country so far. On the Canary Island of Tenerife, fire crews struggled to contain one of the largest wildfires in its history. In Canada, as well, over 20,000 habitants of the provincial capital city Yellowknife were summoned to evacuate as incoming wildfires raged out of control. As if this was not enough, wildfires were not the only hazard that impacted communities in the summer of 2023. Unprecedented storms raged across Scandinavia for days, resulting in extensive flooding across Norway, Sweden and Denmark. Likewise, Hurricane Hillary battered the US west coast, confronting communities with a major hurricane for the first time in over 80 years. Indeed, the summer of 2023 reminded us that a changing climate can have brutal consequences. The worrisome part is that in all of these cases, the natural hazards seem to take place on a larger scale and more frequently than expected. The summer of 2023 surprised climate scientists by the magnitude and severity of the natural hazards. It is a worrisome observation that warrants a response. What can we do to prevent or mitigate the impact of these events, and prepare ourselves for future occurrences? It is a question often posed in the aftermath of catastrophes, and one that has fueled research into disaster preparedness for decades. In this editorial, we take a closer look into a bundle of four papers about disaster preparedness that together make up the September issue of Risk, Hazards and Crisis in Public Policy. Each of the four papers provides a unique perspective on preparedness research that helps to reinvigorate the academic debate on this important topic. In our review of 20 years of crisis and disaster research (Wolbers et al., 2021), disaster preparedness, next to crisis response, ranked as one of the most frequently researched topics in our field. Research into preparedness focuses on the use of knowledge, experience and technological advances to systematically and consciously gain ever-more-encompassing protection from natural and human hazards, disasters, and calamities (Tierney et al., 2001: 4−8). As we argued above, the very idea of preparedness often comes with a sense of urgency that we need to act now to prevent future harm. Contingencies that require preparedness are often true magnets of attention in the public debate and are often translated directly into renewed plans and exercises (Heino & Huotari, 2023). Indeed, research into preparedness has documented that preparedness tends to increase after communities are affected by disaster (Kapucu, 2008). This is also what Nikkanen et al. (2023) find in their contribution to this issue. The authors investigated what drives the feeling of responsibility for disaster preparedness between individuals and society in a large-scale survey. They compared the disaster-prone country of New Zealand with Finland, which experiences much fewer disasters. The authors find that self-efficacy strongly predicts the perception of responsibility and actual preparedness measures. Doing so, the study echoes past research that preparedness is strongly related to previous experience with hazards. The historical and societal context shapes the individual's feelings of responsibility for disaster preparedness, while the authors note that self-efficacy remains the most salient factor in empowering individuals to take responsibility. Despite the call for self-efficacy, we also know that memory of past events is short-lived, and preparedness efforts ease-off over time. Most people in disaster prone regions know they should prepare, but very few actually do (Kapucu, 2008). Notwithstanding, the long shadow casted by a calamity often drives the incentive for politicians and policymakers to make sure this will never happen again. This type of reaction poses the risk that disaster preparedness becomes reactive and narrow, merely based on past events. To step up preparedness policies, we might be better off assessing generic risks and preparing for a broad set of contingencies, instead of letting the recent past guide our efforts in a specific direction. This is the point that, Heino and Huotari (2023) bring forward in their paper: “How considering memory as an analogy to preparedness reveals its weaknesses.” They claim that while disaster preparedness is shaped by our current conceptions of what might occur, threats that fully escape our attention pose a true and invisible danger to us. Figuring out what these threats are and how they might affect us, requires a renewed toolkit. Heino and Huotari (2023) identify analogies as a helpful tool for this task to systematically analyze the presumptions underpinning our conception of risk and vulnerabilities. They point out that we often group knowledge together instead of remembering lots of pieces of information when we attempt to remember critical information, and likewise treat distinct vulnerabilities as if they belong to equivalent categories. Categorization plays a key role here, which has received scarce attention in preparedness research. Being more sensitive to categorization might help to identify vulnerabilities that have escaped our attention. Heino and Huotari (2023) claim that the challenge is to find ways to systematically cast light on the categorization of vulnerabilities. Progress lies in enhancing the power of imagination as a disciplined approach to reflective practice (Weick, 1989). How real this fallacy of letting lessons from past events fully absorb professional attention and determine the sphere of practical solutions, becomes clear in the contribution from Räisänen et al. (2023). The authors analyze pandemic preparedness among Finnish infectious disease experts before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. They show that the initial conceptualization of COVID-19 was based on the historical analogy of an influenza type disease. Like many experts around the world, also for Finnish crisis managers this conceptualization limited them in grasping the extent of the crisis. The influenza analogy shaped the initial response, but over time experts stressed the need for a comprehensive risk assessment. They had overlooked the extent of transboundary crisis management capacities that were required to secure long-term response efforts. Interestingly, when writing our review of pandemic publishing (Kuipers et al., 2022), we noted a similar absence for more generic preparedness in research on epidemics and pandemics, as public health scholars were inclined to focus more on the particularities of specific diseases. Using the power of imagination to identify what unidentified hazards might impact our society, is something that Louis-Charles et al. (2023) take very literally. In their paper, they conduct an empirical analysis on the probability of civilian casualties from rocket launch anomalies, or from falling space debris. This study provides a glimpse into how emergency managers incorporate new types of hazards in their preparedness plans. While a significant number of documents mention falling aircrafts, missiles from tornadoes and weapons of mass destruction, human-made or unknown space hazards remain outside the scope of imaginability in local emergency management plans, even in counties near space launch sites. We hope you are inspired by these contributions in the latest issue of Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy. These studies remind us that in many cases, we might never know whether prevention and preparedness efforts boosted community resilience. The ultimate proof only comes when the next natural hazard strikes, and preparedness and mitigation efforts prevent it from turning into a full-blown disaster. Ironically, successful prevention is invisible and meanwhile it is hard to prepare for the unknown. If anything, the summer of 2023 again taught us that in terms of preparedness: “there is no harm in hoping for the best, as long as you're prepared for the worst.” Jeroen Wolbers is Editor-in-Chief of Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy. He is Associate Professor of Crisis Governance and Director of Education at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs, Leiden University. His research focuses on coordination, sensemaking, and decision-making in extreme contexts. His work is published in leading journals, such as Organization Studies, Human Relations, the Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management and Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy. Sanneke Kuipers is Editor-in-Chief of Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy. She is professor of Crisis Governance at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs, Leiden University. Her research focuses on crisis response, accountability, blame, organizational survival and organizational reform. She publishes in leading journals such as Governance, West European Politics, Public Administration, the Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management and Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy.

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