345LocaL Government Performance and the chaLLenGes of re.docx

345
LocaL Government Performance
and the chaLLenGes of reGionaL
PreParedness for disasters
Brian J. GerBer
Louisiana State University
scott e. roBinson
Texas A&M University
ABSTRACT: As is well known, most emergency incidents are
managed by local
governments. However, when an incident of disaster-scale
occurs, the traditional
model of emergency management has certain limitations.
Emergency response
systems are primarily designed to manage incidents locally, not
to facilitate
coordination across multiple jurisdictional boundaries. As a
result, the threat of
a catastrophic terrorist attack and of other regional-scale natural
disasters like
Hurricane Katrina has led to a policy demand for actual regional
coordination
in emergency response. In this article, we discuss the local
development of
regionalism in emergency management and present an approach
to assessing
the effectiveness of such efforts (i.e., we examine local

government conditions
conducive to regionalization). We discuss various strategies for
assessing the
push for regionalism in emergency management, including
providing several
regional integration performance indicators and an outline of
the importance
of combining assessment strategies in this area. Our results
suggest that local
capacity for regionalization, just as in other areas of emergency
management, is
largely determined by unique local characteristics, thus
presenting a challenge
to new policy doctrine.
KEYWORDS: disasters, emergency management, emergency
response, regional
coordination
This decade has seen remarkable transformations in disaster and
emergency
management policy in the United states. the magnitude of the
terrorist attacks of
2001, coupled with the immediately perceived possibility of
future terror attacks
on a catastrophic scale, prompted a massive bureaucratic
reorganization producing
the U.s. department of homeland security (dhs). With the
creation of dhs—
and accompanying doctrine developments to deal with the threat
of terror attacks
Public Performance & Management Review, vol. 32, no. 3,
march 2009, pp. 345–371.
© 2009 m.e. sharpe, inc. all rights reserved.
1530-9576/2009 $9.50 + 0.00.

doi 10.2753/Pmr1530-9576320301
346 PPmr / march 2009
and other catastrophic incidents—the federal government moved
decisively away
from its more traditional facilitative role in emergency
management. instead it
moved to a much more centralized, top–down mode of policy
development, more
explicitly directing state and local government actions (cigler,
2007; schneider,
2005). following the 9/11 attacks, the hurricanes of 2005, and
especially the
ineffective response to hurricane Katrina, enhanced further the
saliency of the
debate over how best to re-shape systems of preparedness for
and management
of disaster incidents.
in the broadest sense, the 9/11 and Katrina events have
combined to raise a
series of questions about how to build governmental capacity
and how to design
organizational change most effectively (stanton, 2006). one
critical issue is
building the capacity for coordinated response across multiple
sites, multiple cit-
ies, and even multiple states. Large-scale incidents inherently
involve multiple
political jurisdictions and engage response efforts across levels
of government. a
notable element of the new national emergency management
doctrine, seen first

in the national response Plan (nrP; U.s. dhs, 2004) and
continued to a certain
degree in the nrP’s revised form, the national response
framework (nrf; U.s.
dhs, 2008a), was recognition of the need for regional response
capabilities.1
that is, improving emergency management on a regional basis—
which can be
defined as the capacity and capability for coordinated response
efforts across broad
geographic areas and across political jurisdictions by multiple
governmental ac-
tors—was conceptualized as one critical element in improving
preparedness for
potential disaster or catastrophic incident scenarios.
however, it is important to recognize that regionalizing
preparedness at the
direction of the dhs presents both political and practical
challenges. the develop-
ment and design of the dhs itself has been criticized on the
grounds that efforts
to impose centrally defined and centrally controlled national
goals are potentially
counterproductive given that emergency management in the
United states is char-
acterized by decentralized subnational policy networks
(schneider, 2005; Waugh &
streib, 2005; Waugh & sylves, 2002). Likewise, other political
and administrative
features intrinsic to american federalism, such as conflicting
incentives across
levels of government, do not augur well for an effective
centralized management
of a national homeland security policy strategy (eisinger, 2006).

not only is centralization of policy priority setting seen as
potentially prob-
lematic, there is debate over the particular issue of what
regionalized emergency
management would or should look like in practice. although the
nrP included
statements regarding the importance of regional response, the
term was used am-
biguously: at times it implied that regional responses are the
domain of federal
this research was supported by a national science foundation
(nsf) grant (award
number 0554332, Brian J. Gerber, Principal investigator); the
authors thank the nsf for
this support.
Gerber and robinson / LocaL Government Performance 347
authorities—presumably through administrative units of the
federal emergency
management agency (fema)—but at others it referred to regional
entities as
distinct from federal authorities. it did not clarify, however,
whether this refers to
trans-state regional efforts such as those of the mid-atlantic
states to prepare for
a disaster in the national capital region or to trans-local regions
such as those
in the north texas region (which includes dallas and fort Worth)
to coordinate
notification systems for tornados. this ambiguity has sown
conceptual confusion
over the expected nature and role of subnational governments

operating as regional
actors. further, the nrf largely avoids clarifying what
regionalism should mean
in practice for state and local government by limiting itself to a
general discussion
of fema’s own regional response coordinating centers.
While these hurdles exist, building regional coordination
capacity into pre-
paredness for disaster and catastrophe is a key element of the
post-9/11 national
emergency management doctrine. in spite of a certain level of
opaqueness, the
federal government does call for improved regional response
capabilities based on
the imperatives of “worst case scenario” planning—a series of
envisaged disaster
or catastrophic incidents that would affect a broad geographic
area or the entire
nation (White house, 2006). But while the need for
regionalization of prepared-
ness activities is presumed, what is less than clearly established
is a fundamental
question: how well do state and local governments actually
perform in meeting
these newly defined policy demands?
thus, our objective in this paper is to address that question by
assessing the
degree to which conditions at the local government level are
likely to promote
regionalized preparedness. our empirical analysis is framed by
providing evi-
dence for the following: how well might local governments
actually meet the
new demand for regionalization, what factors might explain

variation in such
performance, and what is a useful way to actually assess
performance by state
and local governments in this area?
We concentrate our attention on local government performance
on key indica-
tors and their relevance to potential regionalization because
many key functional
activities relevant to homeland security fall primarily within the
responsibility of
local government. more important, it is precisely those local
governments that have
initial responsibility for first response, and, as a result,
coordinating their response
efforts is the bedrock mechanism of developing regional
capabilities to manage
disasters and catastrophes. Understanding local government
performance in this
area is a critical indication of how well the homeland security
and emergency
management doctrine that has been developed since 2001 is
likely to function
when future calamities occur.
We address these questions first by outlining the basic
challenges of assessing
emergency management performance generally. We discuss the
concept of, and
specific constraints attendant to, regionally coordinated
emergency management
involving multiple jurisdictions, including state jurisdictions.
We then present a

rationale for performance assessment of regional coordination
based on a multiple
assessment strategy that incorporates perspectives and
assessments held by local
government officials with responsibilities relevant to emergency
management
policy issues.
Using data gathered from a nationwide survey of city and
county officials in
the fall of 2006, our assessment suggests three basic insights.
consistent with
well-established findings in the disaster policy literature,
performance is likely to
be contingent on localized characteristics. insofar as
performance is dependent on
such characteristics, the new doctrine toward emergency
management is likely to
face familiar federalism-based challenges to effective
implementation. second,
regionalization of emergency management is a multi-
dimensional construct that
requires both greater conceptual elaboration and new strategies
for capturing its
realization in practice. finally, the mixed set of measures used
here suggests insight
for future efforts to improve performance measurement in the
area of emergency
management preparedness activities.
Approaches to Assessing Preparedness and Response
Effectiveness
the performance measurement movement has had a difficult

time penetrating
the emergency management field. at its heart, the challenge
stems from a dif-
ficulty in measuring policy outcomes for emergency
preparedness. successful
emergency preparedness may mean that a community suffers
less of a loss than
it otherwise would have. the most basic problem is that we can
never observe
the loss that otherwise would have been experienced. any
assessment requires
the comparison of the observed losses to the counterfactual
losses hypothesized
to have otherwise been likely.
typically, the counterfactual problem is overcome through the
brute strength of
large samples. the typical strategy is to approximate the
counterfactual by collect-
ing data on many similar situations. in a classic policy
evaluation example, consider
the assessment of the effect of a new law requiring all operators
of motorcycles
to wear helmets. We can only observe the actual fatality and
injury rates after the
law passes. it is impossible to know exactly the effects of a
motorcycle helmet
law after its adoption because we can never see what the fatality
and injury rate
would have been in that specific year in the absence of the law.
instead, assessors
use a large collection of states and years, some of which
adopted the helmet law
and some that did not, to estimate the mortality and injury rate
in the hypothetical
year without the helmet law. the assessor then compares this

estimated quantity
to the observed mortality and injury rate to find an estimated
policy impact. the
accuracy of the policy impact estimate depends on having a
large sample of com-
parable units on which to base the counterfactual estimate.
the expected difference strategy, relying on large samples of
comparable units,
is not generally possible in the case of emergency management.
emergencies—
particularly disasters—are rare and extreme events. By their
nature, they defy
the logic of repeated measurement. Quarterly evaluations, for
example, may be
appropriate for daily decision making (such as evaluating the
effectiveness of
repeated job training programs) because each quarter is a
comparable unit for
purposes of creating an accurate guess of what, say, next
quarter’s evaluations
should look like. this logic is difficult to justify in policy
decisions related to a
50-year flood. there have not been enough 50-year floods to
serve as the basis
for a sample. it is often the case that emergency planners have
information on
only a few of such events. the rarity of emergency events
(again, disasters in
particular) makes this counterfactual observation problem
described above all

the more binding.
the measurement problem inherent in rare counterfactuals is
compounded by
the inter-jurisdictional nature of emergency management.
emergency response
calls for the collaborative mobilization of a variety of
organizations, agencies,
and informal groups. failure may not be easily attributable to
any one actor or
organization because outcomes are the joint product of many
actors. for this rea-
son, evaluation may be more appropriate at the network level
than at the level of
individual organizations, as is typical in performance
management (mandell &
Keast, 2007; Provan, fish, & sydow, 2007). as a result,
is an area where policy outcomes are difficult to use as the basis
for performance
evaluation. any observed outcome could be the product of any
combination of a
large number of actors.
instead, the emergency management literature has focused on
the evaluation
of preparedness, where actions such as employee training are
the relevant outputs
(which, in turn, may or may not be closely related to actual
outcomes).2 Understand-
ing the emergency management community’s response to these
difficulties requires
understanding the phases of emergency management (mileti,
1999, pp. 22–23).
disasters are not generally preventable. instead, emergency
management involves

pre-disaster preparedness and mitigation activities and post-
disaster response and
recovery activities. the rarity and extremity of disasters make
measuring directly
the effectiveness of post-disaster response and recovery efforts
difficult. instead,
understanding emergency management performance focuses
one’s attention on
behaviors where managers have more leverage—preparedness
and mitigation
outputs. this logic is the basis for the target capabilities List—
the instrument
the dhs recommends to assess community preparedness.
Within the general strategy of assessing preparedness,
approaches to measuring
effectiveness have varied. the simplest approach involves the
subjective self-
evaluation of emergency management professionals or other
responsible parties.
in this approach, assessors ask respondents to describe their
general level of
preparedness. sometimes assessors ask these questions in terms
of an all-hazards
conception where each respondent is asked to indicate his
organization’s overall
preparedness for the emergencies it faces. other times, assessors
differentiate
between disasters asking, for example, about preparedness for
hurricanes or
terrorist attacks. this approach is simple but has built-in biases.

the resulting
evaluations are clearly subjective and may be subject to social
desirability bias
in that emergency managers may be reluctant to report that their
organization is
entirely unprepared—although that might be the appropriate
characterization in
many cases. on the other hand, the respondents to these
questions may be in the
best position to offer these summary evaluations and, under
traditional conditions
of anonymity, may see a low rating as an opportunity to force
policymakers to
increase investments in emergency preparedness. furthermore, it
is not clear how
consistently respondents define preparedness. a well-trained
respondent may
be much more critical of the preparedness of her organization
than a less well-
trained respondent in a similarly prepared organization. such
differences would
create variance in the data resulting from respondent
characteristics rather than
from organizational characteristics. the result is a series of
potential biases that
are hard to predict.
the second approach focuses on the analysis of documents
related to disaster
preparedness (Burby, 2003). document analysis has focused on
the disaster plans
of various organizations and whether the plans contained state-
of-the-art elements
of preparedness such as communication plans, clear lines of
authority, and dis-
semination plans. many favor this approach as more objective

than the subjective
assessments of the previous strategy, but this approach also has
its limits. first, col-
lecting documents related to disaster preparedness is costly and
time-consuming.
as a result, it is a difficult technique for evaluating the
preparation for a large
sample of organizations. it may be better suited for internal
assessments than
large-N comparative assessments. equally important is the
question of whether
the documents reflect real preparative activities or capabilities.
Well-written plans
may end up unopened on the shelf of administrators facing a
real emergency. this
measure may then indicate an upper bound on effectiveness
rather than a measure
of effective preparedness itself.
the last traditional approach to measuring disaster preparedness
is to focus on
actual preparatory behavior. the specific behaviors assessed
depend on the context
of the performance assessment. at the individual level, surveys
may ask individuals
if they have stockpiled certain goods such as water or fuel.
surveys ask emergency
management professionals if they conduct specific activities
such as tabletop
exercises or full simulations. this is a popular approach, but it is
still limited.
first, such measures tend to be domain specific. this approach
requires asking
about different behaviors if you are assessing preparedness at a
local government
level, in private sector organizations, or in individual

households. furthermore,
the activities representing preparedness for chemical or
biological events may be
distinct from efforts to prepare for flooding or earthquakes.
second, the behaviors
tend to be quite specific and may fail to account for the
diversity of preparedness
activities. an organization may be relatively well prepared but
not conduct the
specific activities asked for in the measures. as a result, the
organization may be
mischaracterized as poorly performing in terms of disaster
preparedness. third,
there are ever-present concerns about respondent reliability with
these questions.
as in the case of subjective assessment, there may be a strong
social desirability
effect on the part of emergency managers to indicate that they
perform generally ac-
cepted preparedness behaviors. to compensate for these
problems, it is essential to
include a variety of behavioral questions with activities varying
from low-cost (e.g.,
written plan preparation) to high-cost activities (e.g., full
simulation exercises).3
again, these sources of bias are not in a predictable direction or
of a predictable
magnitude, making them very difficult to account for in
assessments.
Because there is not a single best strategy for measuring

performance, perfor-
mance assessment should include combinations of approaches
including subjec-
tive assessment and behavioral assessment (and plan evaluation
where feasible).
the combination of these approaches may offset some of the
error embedded in
each approach. the key to avoiding the potential sources of bias
is to use multiple
measures with different sources of bias. this requires that one
assess the prepared-
ness level of each organization using a combination of
measurement strategies.
the hope is that combining measurement strategies with
different sources of bias
will result in the errors’ canceling out—as is assumed in the
traditional prefer-
ence for large samples in the expected comparison strategy
(relying on the Law
of Large numbers). examples of this approach include studies at
the individual
household level (Lindell & Perry, 2000) and the organizational
level (Gillespie
& streeter, 1987; Lindell & Whitney, 1995). the next section
further establishes
the emergence of regional preparedness before describing our
application of this
multi-strategy assessment of regional preparedness based on a
survey of local
emergency management professionals and other local officials.
Regional Disaster Response: A New Focus
to further understand the challenges of assessing emergency
management perfor-
mance, it is important to place the substantive demands of this

policy domain into
context. the traditional all-hazards framework, which refers to
the comprehensive
management of a broad range of potential emergencies or
disasters that result from
natural, technological, or other human sources, was
fundamentally reoriented by
the events of september 11, 2001. the most recent update to the
National Strategy
on Homeland Security makes clear that terrorism should be
viewed as the nation’s
primary hazard—at least in terms of the federal government’s
responsibilities. the
first sentence of the document’s overview states: “america is at
war with terrorist
enemies who are intent on attacking our homeland and
destroying our way of
life” (White house, homeland security council, 2007, p. 1). of
the four stated
national goals on homeland security, the first stated goal is the
prevention and
disruption of terrorist attacks. the strategy document declares
itself the basis for
a framework to guide national policymaking, which of course
includes directing
the policy and administrative structure that makes up the
system in the United states.
there are two key points to be made about this development.
first, changes in

performance objectives have not arisen from the highly
decentralized networks
making up the core of the system but instead have come directly
from the White
house, mainly by a series of homeland security Presidential
directives (hsPd)
and executive orders. the source of change matters in assessing
performance
because those loosely connected emergency management policy
networks may
not be either well suited or favorably disposed to fulfilling the
requirements of the
new national doctrine. second, it is also essential to understand
what exactly those
emergency management networks are being asked to do under
the new doctrine.
one core task is to improve readiness for large-scale disasters or
catastrophes,
which entails developing (or improving) regional preparedness
and regional re-
sponse capabilities. We elaborate on the significance of these
two points in the
following discussion.
ChANgES TO NATiONAl DOCTRiNE: TERRORiSm AS A
hAzARD
Perhaps most important among the documents that have defined
the national
approach to preparedness for emergencies and disasters have
been hsPd-5 and
hsPd-8. hsPd-5 tasked the secretary of dhs with developing and
administering
the national incident management system in 2003 and the
subsequent nrP. the
national incident management system, along with the nrP,

formally establish a
national incident management framework and a national all-
hazards emergency
operations plan. moreover, the President’s homeland security
council within
the executive office of the President (which was created via
executive order no.
13260) created 15 specific all-hazards planning scenarios that
all levels of govern-
ment are required to utilize in preparedness activities. the
importance of hsPd-8,
issued in december 2003, is its requirement of a national all-
hazards preparedness
goal that ultimately prompted dhs to create the target
capabilities List, which
state and local governments are required to develop and
maintain.
the nrP4 and associated documents make clear that the new
doctrine is heav-
ily oriented toward terror attacks as the guiding principle for
the national policy
reorientation. consider the 15 planning scenarios that federal,
state, and local
governments are supposed to use for development of response
capabilities: all but
3 of those 15 scenarios identify forms of potential terrorist
attacks. moreover, 5
of the 12 attacks scenarios could be plausibly described as
significant enough in
scale as to be characterized as a potential catastrophe.
envisaging those terror attack scenarios has profoundly
important consequences
for preparedness activities at all levels of government: it
prompts responsible

parties to devote more preparedness efforts to potential large-
scale disasters or
catastrophes. a catastrophic incident is defined in the nrP as
“any natural or
manmade incident, including terrorism, that results in
extraordinary levels of mass
casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the
population, infrastructure,
environment, economy, national morale, and/or government
functions” (U.s. dhs
2004, cat-1). Birkland (2006) noted, however, that a brightly
defined division
between emergencies, disasters, and catastrophes does not exist.
clearly the key
issue is of scale, and while some events seem fairly apparent as
to categorization,
Birkland argued that the definition of an event as a disaster or a
catastrophe itself
can be fraught with political implications (and as a consequence
it is a designation
choice that might be strategic).
the catastrophic incident annex of the nrP makes explicit a
series of plan-
ning assumptions, including the premises that catastrophic
incidents will cause
mass casualties and displacement; critical infrastructure will be
disrupted on a
large scale; large-scale evacuation, either organized or
spontaneous, may occur;
and the “response capabilities and resources of the local

jurisdiction (to include
mutual aid from surrounding jurisdictions and response support
from the state)
may be insufficient and quickly overwhelmed” (U.s. dhs 2004,
cat-3). Un-
derscoring that the federal government has placed a great deal
of emphasis on
major disaster and catastrophic events, dhs (2006) completed
the second of a
two-phase national review of national disaster preparedness
across the 50 states
and in the country’s largest urban areas. outside of a few
exceptions (e.g., florida,
which routinely confronts mass evacuations related to the
hurricane hazard), the
review gave mediocre to poor grades for the country as a whole
in terms of actual
incident preparedness and adequacy of emergency operations
plans, particularly
related to the issue of mass evacuations of citizens should a
major disaster or
catastrophic event occur.
the development, then, of this new doctrine makes a basic
policy demand on
the emergency management system in the United states:
Preparedness for large-
scale disasters and catastrophic incidents (whether from
terrorism or some other
hazard) means that local and state governments necessarily will
have to develop
or increase efforts to manage events on a regional scale.
Because a disaster or
catastrophe by definition is an extreme enough event to
supersede both local and
state resources, the policy need is one of pursuing emergency

management from
a regional perspective.
REgiONAl PREPAREDNESS, REgiONAl COORDiNATiON:
BASiC
ChAllENgES
Given the substantive content of the new national emergency
response doctrine
and how the federal government has chosen to evaluate state-
level efforts to date
(through the target capabilities List), whether subnational actors
can fulfill per-
formance expectations becomes a salient question. in general
terms, the ability of
any jurisdiction to cope with a disaster event, or a catastrophic
event, is in large
part a function of the ability of public authorities to effectively
plan for and man-
age a disaster event.5 it is also important to recognize the
challenge of managing
disaster events in the U.s. federal system. although the federal
government would
like to see stronger hazard mitigation and preparedness efforts
at the subnational
level, in part to reduce their own financial exposure, state and
local governments
face important disincentives to proactive management and often
lack the admin-
istrative capacity or commitment for effective policies (cigler,
1988, 2007; Kiefer

& montjoy, 2006; may, 1985; may & Williams, 1986; Waugh,
2000; Waugh &
streib, 2006). this means that state and local government
frequently do not develop
a level of effective disaster policy that matches their
responsibilities (see Burby,
1998). Both disaster response and ultimately policy response are
often episodic
and reactive in nature (see Birkland, 1997; schneider, 1995).
Within those broad limitations, several issues emerge in terms
of the specific
issue of preparedness for regionalized response coordination.
first, the concept of
region itself is not necessarily clear in its meaning in terms of
policy and planning
statements issued by governments at different levels. for
example, the Urban areas
security initiative, a component of the dhs’s major granting
program, requires
exercises to have a regional preparedness component. however,
regional is often
taken to mean incorporation of several local governments in a
metro area partici-
pating in the exercise, but that is only one type of regional
coordination.
as a practical matter, there are at least four distinct types of
regions when
regional coordination is discussed as a means of improving
emergency prepared-
ness. first, the term can refer to intrastate regional coordination,
where a state is
divided into regional administrative units for emergency
management purposes.
second, it can refer to a specific geographic area within a state,

such as multiple
local governments in a metropolitan area. third, it can refer to
interstate coordina-
tion in a regional sense, as in several states that are likely to be
affected more or
less simultaneously if a disaster or catastrophe occurs. finally,
although it is not
typically considered in most discussions of the topic, local
governments (coun-
ties and cities) that lie along state boundaries can and do
proactively engage in
interstate coordination, though not in the formal sense of an
interstate compact.
that is, the practicalities of a potential emergency affecting
border areas—and
likely crossing state boundaries—create a strong incentive for
the development
of interstate professional relationships for such local emergency
management
personnel.
two papers produced by the heritage foundation in 2006 outline
a series of
limitations and obstacles to regional coordination in the way the
U.s. disaster
management is currently arranged, and what that means for
potentially significant
performance limitations should future catastrophes occur
(heritage foundation,
2006; rhodes & carafano, 2006). the obstacles identified by the
heritage papers

can be summarized in several basic categories.
first, the tiered emergency management system in the United
states does not
lend itself to preparedness for regional coordination. it is
designed to accommo-
date local preparedness first, and state and federal entities enter
into a response
situation as a means of providing additional resources and
support. second, along
those lines, the federal system of grants is not particularly
focused on developing
regional coordination preparedness. Post-9/11, grant programs
like the Urban
areas security initiative do indeed emphasize regional
coordination efforts, but
this is not a central focus of federal grants in this policy
domain. Perhaps more
important, without a clear delineation of the type of regional
coordination desired
(as previously noted), it is likely difficult to target funds in a
coherent way toward
the aim of regional coordination.6 third, historically there has
been very little
emphasis on regionally based training and exercises. While that
is changing in a
post-9/11 environment, there is still inadequate attention to
interstate exercises
for catastrophic events. this leads to a fourth point: the lack of
regional offices at
dhs is an additional impediment. regional offices could serve as
a focal point
for facilitating such interstate coordination efforts, meaning
their absence limits
state-level effectiveness.

there are also nontrivial legal hurdles when one considers
interstate responses
to a disaster or catastrophe. in key areas related to emergency
response and
public health, there are no standardized systems of licensing
and credentialing
during a crisis key emergency personnel. absent such pre-event
mechanisms,
efforts to credential during a crisis delays and makes response
assistance efforts
problematic. a sixth issue is the fact that there are no useful (or
even existing)
metrics to systematically evaluate the reasonable expectations
of regional response
resources and capabilities.
finally, although the emergency management assistance compact
(emac)
is a major vehicle for interstate cooperation and assistance
during disasters, it is
not a vehicle (at least at present) for pre-incident disaster and
catastrophic pre-
paredness efforts to promote regional coordination. instead, its
utility lies almost
entirely (with some qualifications in order) as a means of
providing a framework
for incident response assistance requests.7 together, these
categories of constraint
serve to limit the national capacity for creating regionally
coordinated disaster- or
catastrophic-event management systems.
Assessing local government Regional Preparedness Efforts
the preceding section indicates why regionalized preparedness
and response

coordination is difficult and why significant variation is likely
for subnational
government efforts in trying to meet that national objective.
Likewise, we also
describe the challenges in assessing emergency management
performance per se.
to further the discussion put forth in those two sections, we
propose that local
regionalization efforts can be productively analyzed by
considering a combination
of self-assessed and objective indicators of preparedness that
are fundamental to
several dimensions of regionalized emergency management.
more specifically, to account for local efforts on regionalizing
emergency or
disaster response, we ask the following: how do local officials
assess their own
government’s capacity to fulfill obligations under the nrP
(doctrine awareness),
how do local officials assess levels of coordination activities in
their jurisdictions
with other proximate jurisdictions (horizontal coordination),
how do local offi-
cials assess levels of preparedness across a range of event
scenarios (coordinated
response readiness), and what actions have local governments
taken with respect
to a key feature of major disasters or catastrophes—
preparedness for mass evacu-
ations (catastrophic incident readiness)?

variation across those four performance indicators is assessed
by considering
three potential explanatory factors. one is a proxy of policy
need: community
size. size, in terms of population, serves as a need proxy
because larger cities
presumably score higher on a terrorism vulnerability scale
(higher density, more
infrastructure targets, more symbolic value). a second
explanatory factor is amount
of commuter traffic into and out of a county jurisdiction (gross
commuter traffic
flow). this serves as a proxy for degree of community
clustering, the geospatial
context within which emergency management actions takes
place. this measure
has some degree of correlation with county population density,
but it is not an
exceptionally strong correlation (r = .37). While imperfect, it
captures the com-
munity proximity situation that respondents are facing.8 We
also examine the
possibility of geographic locations effects—the area of the
United states where a
local government official resides—to consider consistency
across different parts
of the country.
the data we use to address these questions are taken from a mail
survey of city
and county officials across the United states in cities with
resident populations
of at least 30,000. all american cities meeting this population
threshold were
stratified into one of three groups (small = 30,000 to less than

100,000; medium
= 100,000 to less than 250,000; large = 250,000 or more), and
sample units were
selected at random within each stratum. a total of 250 cities
were selected for
inclusion in the sample. multiple municipal officials at both the
city and county
level (the county in which the sampled city is located) then
constituted secondary
sampling units. those officials included a mix of elected and
bureaucratic officials
in the following areas: government executives (city managers,
mayors, county
executives); first responder personnel (fire or police department
heads, emergency
medical services department heads); city and county emergency
managers, city
and county public health officials, and general administrative
personnel, such as
offices with relevant responsibilities (e.g., transportation
management). the final
sample frame consisted of 1,767 city and county officials.
through interviews
with local emergency management and other officials in several
locations, a survey
instrument was constructed and pre-tested in June and July
2006. individuals in
the sample frame were mailed a notification letter in late
august; a first wave of
the survey was mailed in early september. two weeks later, a
reminder postcard

was mailed to the sample members, and a second wave of the
survey was mailed
the first week of october. a total of 725 completed, or partially
completed, surveys
were received for a response rate of about 41 percent.
PERFORmANCE iNDiCATOR: DOCTRiNE AWARENESS
an initial indicator of local performance is familiarity with the
response doctrine
itself. this is an important indicator for two reasons: first, as
donahue (2006, p.
141) noted, effective emergency response operations are
predicated on multiple
jurisdictions, sectors, and levels of government resolving
complex coordination
problems. second, as previously noted, there have been a
number of doctrinal and
policy changes since 2001. to resolve coordination challenges
and the uncertainty
associated with recent policy change, donahue pointed out that
having clearly
articulated and commonly understood missions, objectives,
strategies, and priori-
ties will help reduce frictions that typically characterize
multiple actors working
in complex policy spaces.
as a consequence, one way to understand this performance issue
is to examine
the degree to which local officials believe their government
(city or county) is
sufficiently ready to implement the nrP (the survey was
administered prior to the
revisions resulting in the nrf). respondents were asked to either
agree or disagree

with the following statement: “in the event of a catastrophic
terrorist incident in
my community, my city/county government has a clear
understanding of its pro-
cedural obligations under the national response Plan.” responses
were made on
a 7-point scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly
agree).
table 1 presents the means score of all respondents and then
treats the ques-
tion responses as the dependent variable and compares scores by
respondents’
city size in a one-way analysis of variance (anova). the F value
for the city
size comparison is statistically significant (p < .01). Given that
finding, post hoc
analyses were conducted to evaluate pairwise differences among
the means (to
determine exactly where the differences reside). the results of
those comparisons
are displayed in the next to last column of table 1.
the results indicate a reasonably positive local evaluation of nrP
comprehen-
sion. about 57 percent of respondents were higher than the
scale’s midpoint, with
an overall mean of 4.65, which is an indication of agreement
with the statement
posed. the anova results show that the mean score for officials
from medium
and large cities is statistically significantly higher than the
mean scores for of-

ficials for small cities (p < .01). in other words, respondents in
large and medium
cities are more likely to report that their city or county
governments do understand
their procedural obligations than are their counterparts in small
cities. there is no
statistically significant difference of mean scores between
medium- and large- city
respondents.
on the one hand, this result is intuitive insofar as the larger the
city or county
government, the greater the administrative capacity (all else
equal) and more than
likely a greater concern for terrorism as a hazard (Gerber,
cohen, & stewart,
2007). the more important point is this: While it is not entirely
surprising that
smaller cities and counties report statistically significantly
lower levels of nrP
procedural comprehension, smaller cities for the purposes of
this study—defined
as having a residential population of between 30,000 and
100,000—are still sub-
stantial communities for most areas of the country (only a
relatively few densely
populated notwithstanding). evidence that such communities
lagged behind larger
communities in reporting nrP comprehension offers a potential
indication of a
broader weakness in the national response system if and when
major disasters or
catastrophes occur. to investigate that point further, table 2
presents comparisons

made on the basis of those officials with the greatest degree of
need for functional
or operational awareness of national response doctrine: first
responder and emer-
gency management officials. the t-tests presented in table 2
makes clear that
those officials in smaller cities are significantly lower in their
reported doctrine
awareness, as compared to the national sample overall. again,
this underscores
the point that promoting operational knowledge of national
goals is a nontrivial
challenge throughout the country.
PERFORmANCE iNDiCATOR: VERTiCAl AND hORizONTAl
COORDiNATiON
Just as doctrine awareness is one way to reduce barriers to
coordination—through
common language and assumptions—routine contacts between
governments is
another way to promote coordination, including regional
coordination. Kapucu
(2006) noted the importance of preexisting interorganizational
communications
systems to effective response when disasters occur. robinson,
Berrett, and stone
Table 1. local Comprehension of the National
Response Plan by Community Size
Response by Mean St. dev. Differences n
all 4.65 1.53 717
small 4.48 1.593 p < .01 350
medium 4.85 1.434 — 223

Large 4.83 1.468 — 127
Note: F (2,697) = 5.058; p < .01.
(2006) offered the same finding. similarly, donahue (2006)
detailed the example
of the space shuttle Columbia’s disaster-recovery effort being
more effective
because of daily joint planning meetings of the various
government agencies
involved. that logic can be extended to preparedness for
regional coordination
planning and exercise efforts across jurisdictional lines. as a
result, local of-
ficials were asked to rate how well both the federal and their
state government
have been in facilitating regional preparedness and response
efforts. specifically,
respondents were asked to either agree or disagree with the
following two state-
ments: “federal officials at dhs (including fema) have done a
good job at
facilitating regional preparedness and response capability,” and
“officials from
my state government have done a good job at facilitating
regional preparedness
and response capability.” responses were made on a 7-point
scale from 1 (strongly
disagree) to 7 (strongly agree).
comparing the responses to the two statements revealed a more
positive as-

sessment of local-to-state vertical interactions. the mean score
of all respondents
gave a slightly negative rating to federal officials with a mean
score of 3.83 (which
is below the scale’s midpoint), in comparison to a relatively
more positive rat-
ing to state-level officials. the mean score for state officials was
4.44. a simple
comparison of means test reveals that the difference between
these two ratings is
statistically significant (p < .001).
follow-up anova comparisons to check whether these responses
varied by
community size revealed that while officials from larger cities
and counties give
slightly more negative ratings to both state and federal officials,
those ratings are
not statistically significantly different from small and medium
communities. an
obvious inference from the divergent ratings as presented is that
local officials work
more closely with state officials, and, hence, a more positive
rating is provided.
But this assessment of vertical integration does not capture
horizontal coordination
between other local government entities in the same geographic
area.
from the local perspective, horizontal coordination presents
slightly different
challenges than vertical coordination. in the case of vertical
coordination, the matter
Table 2. Comprehension of the NRP by Select Respondents

Response by Mean St. dev.
Mean
difference Sig. n
all 4.65 1.53 — 717
emergency managers & first
responders only, small cities
4.18 1.63 –.472 p < .01 197
emergency managers & first re-
sponders only, medium cities
4.71 1.51 .063 p < .07 115
emergency managers & first
responders only, large cities
4.86 1.48 .209 n.s. 71
is, in part, a function of the local government receiving
communication from and
reacting to directives from a government with ultimately greater
policymaking
authority. in contrast, horizontal coordination for preparedness
relies on mutual
information exchanges and mutual operational efforts, as
opposed to compliance
and frequent one-way information flows. one way to assess
performance in this

regard is to measure how well city and county governments
within the same
county jurisdiction engaged in preparedness actions.
specifically, respondents in
city governments were asked to “rate the level of coordination
your city govern-
ment has with county officials on homeland security planning”
(or the inverse,
of course). again, a seven-point scale was used with higher
values indicating
greater coordination.
table 3 provides the mean score for all respondents on this
question and then
treats the question responses as the dependent variable and
contrasts scores by
respondents’ community size, by the community clustering
proxy previously
described, and by a community’s geographic location. the anova
analysis is
statistically significant (p < .02), and a post hoc comparison
shows that officials
from small-sized cities report statistically significantly lower
coordination ratings
than their counterparts. as we stated earlier, the community size
measure serves
as a policy need proxy: after the 9/11 attacks, security-related
issues rose in rela-
tive importance in the political discourse of urban areas
(savitch, 2003). as a
consequence, the model suggests that greater perceived
vulnerability helped drive
Table 3. City–County Coordination Assessment:
Size, Clustering, and location Effects

Response by Mean St. dev.
p-value,
mean diff. n
all responses 4.84 1.57
community size effects
small 4.67 1.53 .05 347
medium 5.05 1.54 — 223
Large 4.94 1.72 — 124
F(2,690) = 4.217; p < .02; n = 694
community clustering effects
Low commuter flow 4.96 1.54 — 315
medium commuter flow 4.83 1.59 — 214
high commuter flow 4.64 1.59 .10 170
F(2,696) = 2.273; p < .10; n = 699
Geographic area effects
coastal ne 4.32 1.62 .05 78
Gulf/coastal se 4.81 1.62 — 191
central 4.87 1.64 — 258
coastal West 5.06 1.34 — 171
F(3,694) = 4.099; p < .01; n = 698
population-dense communities to invest more effort in
planning and risk assessments (eisinger, 2004).

however, when one considers the effects of the degree of
potential clustering of
communities, a more complex picture emerges. the clustering
proxy is a measure
of total commuter traffic into and out of a county jurisdiction.9
for simplicity, the
measure was collapsed into three categories: medium amount of
commuter traffic
flow (+/– one-half standard deviation about the mean), low
commuter traffic flow
(lower than one-half standard deviation below the mean), and
high commuter traffic
flow (higher than one-half standard deviation above the mean).
While the value
of F for the anova is only significant at a low threshold (p <
.10), the fact that
the high commuter counties have the lowest coordination ratings
is interesting.
it at least raises the possibility that there are unique geospatial
situational effects
for communities that are not simply a function of community
size.
to further expand on that idea, the location of respondents’
communities was
also considered to see if any unique geographic area effects
were discernible.
We placed respondents into four geographic categories: whether
they were in the
coastal northeast (states in fema regions i, ii, and iii), in the
coastal southeast
and gulf area (states in fema regions iv and vi), the coastal west
(fema
regions iX and X), and central states (fema regions v, vii, and
viii). the

bottom third of table 3 shows that local officials in states from
fema regions i,
ii, and iii report statistically significantly lower levels of
horizontal coordination.
the coastal west has the highest overall rating, but that rating is
not significantly
different from the southeast or central state areas. these
geographic-area effects
become more pronounced and more easily discerned as we look
at the next two
performance indicators.
PERFORmANCE iNDiCATOR: COORDiNATED RESPONSE
READiNESS
a third means of accounting for potential regionalization of
emergency response
is the degree to which local officials assess their current
readiness for different
potential terror attack scenarios; or to be more precise, to assess
readiness for re-
gional coordination of such a response. respondents were asked
to evaluate three
scenarios: the explosion of a small nuclear device in or near
their community, a
biological attack (e.g., airborne anthrax or ricin or intentional
contamination of
a food supply with botulinum toxin), and a large conventional
explosion (similar
to the oklahoma city bombing). respondents were asked to “rate
the probable
degree of regional coordination of response” to each event on a
seven-point scale
(ranging from limited to extensive). table 4 shows a set one-way
anova model
for each event, with differences displayed for community size,

clustering, and
geographic area effects. Looking at the top panel of the table,
while officials
from large cities have slightly higher ratings than their smaller
city counterparts,
the tests for difference effects is statistically significant only
for conventional
explosions. the pattern of the highest mean rating for
conventional bombings is
a pattern consistent across all three incident types.
however, that picture again changes when one considers the
degree to which
a community (within the county level) is in proximity to other
communities—a
clustering effect. table 4 also shows that in each case, counties
with a higher
volume of commuter traffic give statistically significantly
higher ratings to their
degree of regionally coordinated response capacity. this, of
course, is a highly
intuitive result; communities in greater proximity should be
expected to have
higher amounts of interaction with neighboring city or county
jurisdictions (mutual
aid agreements for bordering communities, the need to
coordinate planning for a
greater degree of shared community space and utilization of
similar infrastructure
resources, etc.). What is interesting about the result is its
contrast to the city-size

Table 4. Regionally Coordinated incident Response:
Size and Clustering Effects
Response by Nuclear incident
Biological
incident
Conventional
explosion
small 4.55 4.77 5.01
(1.64) (1.45) (1.40)
medium 4.75 4.89 5.24
(1.54) (1.45) (1.24)
Large 4.83 4.98 5.34
(1.56) (1.50) (1.33)
F-value 1.905 1.152 3.786
p = .150 p = .317 p < .05
Low commuter flow 4.40 4.62 4.94
(1.64) (1.49) (1.36)
medium commuter flow 4.86 5.03 5.27
(1.48) (1.33) (1.21)
high commuter flow 4.87 5.01 5.34
(1.63) (1.51) (1.41
F-value 7.613 6.97 6.562

p < .01 p < .01 p < .01
coastal ne 4.38 4.53 4.90
(1.41) (1.34) (1.18)
Gulf/coastal se 4.82 4.84 5.06
(1.61) (1.56) (1.45)
central 4.53 4.79 5.06
(1.60) (1.44) (1.30)
coastal west 4.80 5.06 5.44
(1.64) (1.39) (1.30)
F-value 2.498 2.625 4.288
p < .06 p < .05 p < .01
finding. the evidence displayed suggests that the community-
size measure (our
proxy for overall homeland security preparedness need) is
potentially unrelated
to the community-proximity or clustering effects.
of further interest is the fact that the gulf and southeastern
coastal states and the
coastal west states consistently report higher ratings than the
other two geographic
areas—for all three incident scenarios. one plausible
interpretation is that the
southeastern and western coastal areas are more prone to

experience with natural
hazards. a cursory look at historical distribution patterns in
presidential disaster
declarations suggests as much. this result then can be seen as
suggesting a type of
policy need–policy response match: regional coordination is
most likely to occur
only when local governments have strong incentives to engage
in that behavior
based on experience with past emergency and disaster incidents.
PERFORmANCE iNDiCATOR: DiSASTER OR CATASTROPhE
READiNESS
the last performance indicator to consider is the degree of
preparedness efforts
undertaken for an inherently regional problem: the mass
evacuation of a city or
county (or greater) area. from a disaster planning standpoint,
mass evacuation
events present two interrelated management challenges. first,
public authorities
must be able to safely and effectively facilitate the removal of
persons from a
disaster location. second, evacuees must be accommodated in a
way that mini-
mizes the potential harm to evacuees and the communities
receiving them during
the mass egress process. Generally, the focus of planning efforts
and academic
research on the topic of receiving evacuees has been on
sheltering issues (Phillips,
1992; Quarantelli, 1982, 1991, 1995) and has placed less
attention on how local
officials might fit into a model of regional event management.

this is important because, as the nrP notes, a catastrophe or
large-scale di-
saster that prompts population dislocation most likely will
represent a regional
emergency/disaster management challenge. if the scale of the
precipitating event is
large, it has the potential to affect multiple state and local
government jurisdictions.
the second-stage hurricane Katrina evacuation, which included
those persons
who did not or could not leave new orleans prior to Katrina’s
landfall, provides
a recent and nonhypothetical example of a disaster event that
produced evacuees
moving through the state and region as well as dispersing local
residents across
the United states. other events distinct from a catastrophic
natural disaster also
could produce massive population dislocations. a rand
corporation scenario
assessment of a groundburst nuclear explosion carried out by
terrorists in a major
U.s. port makes clear that related evacuation impacts would be
national in scope
(meade & molander, 2006).
Because the national planning scenarios have a significant
expectation that
all levels of government should be ready to accommodate large
disasters or
catastrophic events, it is productive to examine what activities

are occurring at
the local level in this regard. as an indication that mass
evacuations, which can
safely be presumed to present an interjurisdictional coordination
problem, may
present problems during future potential catastrophes, table 5
presents frequency
distribution information on local officials’ reporting whether
their city or county
government has taken specific steps in preparation for a mass
evacuation event.
respondents were asked to indicate whether their government
had performed one
or more of the following readiness tasks for a mass evacuation
event: planning,
tabletop exercises, or full field exercises. table 5 displays those
frequencies along
with a series of cross tabs with city size, commuter traffic, and
geographic area as
the independent variables. in the aggregate, the table shows that
about one-fifth
of the respondents indicate that they had undertaken no
activities at all, and only
about one-fifth had done the most demanding action of an actual
field exercise.
the cross tabs for each of the individual activity indicators
(multiple responses
were possible) show a pattern interestingly similar to the event
response ratings
above: there seems to be little discernible difference when city
size is taken into
account, but as the chi-square values for three of the four cross
tabs on commuter
traffic show, there seem to be clustering effects. even more
interesting is the dis-

tributions themselves. Looking at the two exercise indicators
(tabletops and field
exercises), high and low commuter traffic flows were higher
than the middle rank-
ing. one interpretive possibility is that lower-density areas
(suburban or exurban
areas) are coordinating activities with their urban core city in a
metro area (the
Table 5. mass Evacuation Preparedness Actions
Response
Planning only
(%)
Tabletop
exercises (%)
Field
exercises (%)
No actions at
all (%)
all responses 49.7 39.6 20.2 21.1
small cities 47.4 39.5 18.9 22.7
medium cities 52.1 36.5 19.2 21.9
Large cities 52.1 44.6 25.6 14.9
test (sig χ2) p = .34 p = .34 p = .26 p = .18
Low commute flow 48.1 44.2 22.9 17.7

medium commute flow 50.7 30.3 15.2 27.0
high commute flow 51.2 41.7 21.4 20.2
test (sig χ2) p = .75 p < .01 p < .08 p < .05
coastal ne 56.3 41.3 20.0 17.5
Gulf/coastal se 50.0 49.5 29.0 15.1
central 48.4 32.9 17.5 23.0
coastal west 47.6 37.1 14.7 27.1
test (sig χ2) p = .61 p < .01 p < .01 p < .05
logic of the Urban areas security initiative program). Likewise,
the most important
inference from the lower third of table 5 is that the most
hurricane-prone region of
the country (the southeastern atlantic coast and the Gulf of
mexico region) consis-
tently is the highest-performing area of the country in terms of
efforts at ensuring
mass evacuation preparedness. While intuitive for natural
hazards preparedness,
it also speaks to the challenge of getting the rest of the nation to
prepare for a
low probability–high consequence disaster or catastrophe as
specified in dhs’s
national planning scenarios for homeland security.
finally, table 6 presents a distribution of responses to another
indicator of
preparedness for disasters or catastrophes: the ability to absorb

ingress of evacuees
during a mass evacuation. respondents were asked to rate, on a
7-point scale rang-
ing from limited to 0, the capacity of their city or county
critical infrastructure to
receive a large number of evacuees from another community. as
in prior analyses,
the table displays three anova models, with response differences
by community
size, commuter traffic flow, and geographic area. in the
aggregate, the results for
all respondents are not terribly positive (lower than midpoint by
nearly a full point
on the scale). a rather intuitive result is shown in the top panel
of table 6, where
respondents from large cities give higher absorption ratings,
suggesting greater
civil infrastructure resources to handle evacuees. By way of
contrast, less easily
interpreted are the mean differences shown in the second anova
model. it seems
counterintuitive that the lower commuter traffic areas (less
clustered community
areas) should give higher average ratings on this measure.
Table 6. mass Evacuation Absorption Capacity:
Size, Clustering, and location Effects
Response Mean St. dev.
p-value,
mean diff n
all responses 3.19 1.58
small 3.03 1.52 .01 351

medium 3.23 1.54 — 223
Large 3.55 1.72 — 128
F(2,699) = 5.421; p <.01; n = 702
Low commuter flow 3.31 1.54 — 321
medium commuter flow 3.20 1.55 — 216
high commuter flow 2.93 1.65 .05 170
F(2,704) = 3.158; p <.05; n = 707
coastal ne 2.89 1.69 — 82
Gulf/coastal se 3.57 1.73 .01 193
central 3.32 1.52 .05 259
coastal west 2.69 1.24 — 172
F(3,702) = 11.55; p <.01; n = 706
it is possible that there are unique geographic location effects
that are relevant
to the finding on clustering effects. indeed, what is most
interesting about table
6 is its bottom panel. While respondents in the coastal west
states had reported
more positive assessments of regional coordination, on evacuee
absorption they
score significantly lower than the central and southeastern
states (along with
respondents in the northeastern part of the country). one
interpretation is that

these results are measuring the type of hazard incidents in the
southeast and gulf
area (especially hurricanes) and central states (especially
flooding) that make
short-term sheltering of evacuees relatively more likely. the
highest rating for the
gulf/southeastern coast area is consistent with the distributions
displayed in table
5: actual or anticipated performance seems to be closely linked
to the nature of
routinely experienced natural hazards.
Concluding Observations
the role of regionalization in homeland security and emergency
management is
an emerging issue in the development of our national posture
toward disaster and
emergency preparedness. We illustrate both the momentum
toward supra-local
response frameworks and the difficulty in achieving well-
integrated regional net-
works. We utilize a multi-indicator strategy to assess
preparedness performance
based on subjective assessments and behavioral measures. in
this, several limita-
tions of our ability to measure emergency preparedness became
clear.
the primary limitation of the current state of performance
measurement in
regional emergency response is the reliance on policy output
measurement.
for reasons detailed earlier, the measurement of policy
outcomes of emergency
preparedness is rarely possible. instead, we measured judgments

of emergency
response officials about their levels of preparedness and asked
them to report
behaviors relevant to preparedness. While these measures
capture conditions that
are potentially relevant to a regionalized management approach,
the meaning of
the linkage between judgments and reported activities is not
entirely obvious. it is
thought, for example, that tabletop exercises help to prepare
people for emergency
situations. however, prior research in this field has not actually
demonstrated
the degree to which—if at all—exercises contribute to actual
effectiveness in re-
sponding to and managing a large-scale incident. the substantive
meaning of the
linkage between these preparedness measures and actual, not
easily measurable
performance levels remains to be determined.
the second limitation was the difficulty of transferring
performance measure-
ment from one type of disaster to another. the list of behaviors
that one would
consider in a triangulation performance measurement strategy
will depend on the
nature of the emergency for which the community is preparing.
this paper focuses
on large-scale emergencies such as nuclear or radiological bomb
attacks or hur-

ricanes. these are disasters that, in various ways, commonly
include a need for
evacuation. other disasters would call for sheltering in place
(e.g., tornadoes), and
the evacuation measures would not be appropriate. this limits
the external validity
of the measurement strategy. a measurement strategy that works
well to assess
preparedness for hurricanes may not be as appropriate for
assessing preparedness
activities related to earthquakes. the need for differentiated
measurement strategies
will make the accumulation of knowledge related to best
practices in emergency
preparedness treacherous and likely slow.
the third challenge, common to survey-based performance
measurement, is the
social desirability effects in each of the measures. While the
evidence presented
here suggests that respondents were willing to give answers that
indicated igno-
rance of the nrP, the possibility exists that such survey
measures will understate
ignorance or negative attitudes (e.g., such as reluctance to
follow the nrP). inter-
preting survey-based performance measures should be
approached with caution, as
social desirability effects can compress the variation in the
responses (toward the
positive end of the scale) and differentially affect measures
(especially attitude-
based measures or others that would be impossible to contradict
with variation).
these results, however, do provide some lessons for emergency

management
professionals and scholars in spite of those qualifiers. first, the
momentum
toward regional coordination is clear. as a nation, we are still
quite far from
fully regionalized emergency response systems. Local
preparedness efforts
still predominate. however, collaboration and consultation
between local
preparedness efforts are increasing—and are increasingly
necessary (see, e.g.,
comfort & Kapucu, 2006; robinson et al., 2006). this calls for
new strategies
for preparedness planning as well as new strategies for
measuring preparedness.
second, measurement of preparedness will require a multi-
strategy assessment.
one cannot rely on simple measures of preparedness because of
the complexity
of the subject and the imprecision of each individual measure.
instead, pre-
paredness measurement requires a multi-faceted approach that
considers the
development of pro-preparedness attitudes, subjective
assessments of the state
of preparedness, and measures of preparedness-related
behaviors. combined,
these measures can tell a much more complete story about
preparedness than
each could tell individually. as a result, we can have more
confidence in the
results of multistrategy assessments.
the nature of the threats facing emergency responders is
changing. new
threats cross traditional jurisdictional boundaries and call for

regional responses.
it is becoming clear that while regional response plans are
emerging, ours is still
a local system of emergency response. We hope that this article
helps prepared
emergency management officials to better measure their
progress in preparation
for the diverse array of emergencies they face in providing at
least an initial basis
for performance assessment on regional preparedness. further,
we hope that the
discussion of issues here provides a sense of the difficulties that
these regionaliza-
tion efforts are likely to face.
Notes
1. the term regional has many meanings and uses. We use
regional to refer to a geographic area
encompassing multiple local jurisdictions (city and county
governments) or multiple state boundaries.
We discuss the complexity of the term in greater detail in
further discussion that follows.
2. in an important illustration of the possible limits of
preparedness actions such as exercises,
Kiefer and montjoy (2006) noted that because of federal
prompting, prior to hurricane Katrina,
an active southeastern Louisiana regional disaster management
network had been developed.
the utility of exercising those networks, however, is not

altogether straightforward; exercises
may not serve a gaps-analysis function—a critical deficiency.
3. the latter two measurement strategies, documentary analysis
and preparatory behav-
ior assessment, correspond to what donahue and tuohy (2008)
referred to as compliance
assessments.
4. as previously noted, the nrP was revised into the nrf in 2008.
the process was
controversial both because it underscored the centralized nature
of policy development under
the Bush administration and because the document has been
described as too broad and vague
to be useful. one local emergency manager described it as a
public relations document, dis-
connected from post-Katrina legislation that tries to strengthen
fema’s role within the dhs
(hsu, 2007a). further, state and local input was minimized, and
the president of the national
emergency management agency at the time declared that the
process of excluding such input
indicated a more polarized environment between federal and
state government on emergency
and disaster policy than he had ever seen in his career (hsu,
2007b).
5. it is, in part, an issue of governmental leadership (robinson et
al., 2006) and partly an is-
sue of recruiting and motivating local nongovernmental partners
(robinson & Gerber, 2007).
6. there is one major exception to this claim: the regional
catastrophic Preparedness
Grant Program (rcPGP). the aim of rcPGP is to enhance

catastrophic-event planning and to
prepare and expand regional collaboration. the program
describes itself as promoting resilience
by funding efforts that “fix shortcomings in existing plans;
build regional planning processes
and planning communities; and, link operational needs
identified in plans to resource allocation,
including homeland security grant programs” (U.s. dhs, 2008b,
p. i). however, there are two
important qualifiers: first, the funding of this program is limited
(at present) to the 2009 fiscal
year only, and, second, the program lists 10 areas nationally as
eligible. that is, program scale
is limited, and it does not represent a broad national initiative.
7. it is worth noting that emac began as a regional interstate
compact with the southern
Governors association, primarily to offer assistance between
states during disasters—especially
hurricane incidents. that agreement was transformed formally
into emac in 1996 (federally
codified in Public Law 104–321). emac functions at its core as a
cooperative interstate mutual
aid agreement (along with providing guidance on intrastate
mutual aid agreement processes).
Preparedness on a regional scale—with the multiple levels of
regionalism outlined above—
requires an institutional structure that goes beyond a mutual aid
compact like emac to address
the constraints just outlined.
8. this measure has significance in two ways. first, it is relevant
because central place
theory, based on the work of geographer Walter christaller,
posits that the nature of community
clustering has a variety of effects, including impacts on regional

economics and the spatial
character of urban development and administration (see
heilbrun, 1987; seninger, 1989).
second, in the context of homeland security, community
characteristics, including population
density and community economic conditions, seem to have an
impact on preparedness efforts
(see Gerber et al., 2007).
9. the measure was obtained from stats indiana
(www.stats.indiana.edu).
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Brian J. Gerber is associate professor in the Stephenson
Disaster Management
Institute and the Public Administration Institute, Louisiana
State University. His
research areas include disaster management policies and
practices, homeland
security policy, and the effects of bureaucratic design on policy
outputs and out-
comes. His work has been published in Public administration
review, Journal of
Public administration research and theory, Policy studies
Journal, Urban affairs
review, and others. He can be reached at [email protected]
Scott Robinson is associate professor of Government and Public
Service at the
Bush School, Texas A&M University. His research focuses on
the management
and politics of public agencies and the dynamics of public
policy—with special
attention to education management and disaster preparedness.
His work has
been published in Policy studies Journal, review of Policy
research, american
review of Public administration, Political research Quarterly,
Public manager,

and american Journal of Political science. He can be reached at
[email protected]
bushschool.tamu.edu.

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