The future of emergency management will not be just filling in another X on your emergency management bingo card even though many emergency management practitioners have felt like that is all that they have done for the past few years. Whether it has been a slow and steady drip or a large tidal wave, the landscape in which emergency managers have operated has dramatically shifted over the last five years.
New squares on the emergency management bingo card have been added in the past five years to include a global pandemic, civil unrest, the arrival of noncitizen migrants and the subsequent immigration raids, assassination attempts on elected officials, school shootings, a global network outage and climate impacts.
Emergency managers can no longer afford to prepare only for the disasters they have already seen. They must think of the unthinkable and then prepare for it. Emergency managers are now expected to combat viral misinformation campaigns while simultaneously coordinating shelter operations, cyber disruptions and politically charged public messaging.
During Hurricane Helene in 2024, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) leadership had to establish a website to manage all the mis- and disinformation that was being spread on the internet and by word of mouth in Asheville, North Carolina. The rumors asserted that Washington used weather control technology to steer Helene toward Republican voters in order to tilt the presidential election toward Democratic nominee Kamala Harris.
On July 29, 2025, the city of St. Paul faced a significant cyberattack that led to the activation of the Minnesota National Guard and a declaration of a state of emergency. The attack disrupted core city systems and was identified as a “deliberate, coordinated digital attack” by a sophisticated external actor targeting critical city infrastructure.
With each of these events, it has become crystal clear that with communities having to find new ways to adapt to incidents and disasters, the future of emergency management will have to find new ways to adapt as well. The world is not standing still, and neither can the profession of emergency management. Emergency management is entering a period of rapid transformation that is driven by new risks, new technologies and increased public expectations. The field of emergency management must shift from reactive models to proactive and anticipatory approaches and not remain static.
From reaction to anticipation
What does the future landscape of emergency management look like?
The need to move from reactive to predictive: The future of emergency management will heavily rely on data, analytics and emerging technologies. Next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) is no longer a novel concept for emergency managers. AI is already reshaping emergency management through predictive analytics, drone mapping and automated resource allocation, allowing emergency managers to transform how they anticipate and respond to disasters.
Moving from single agency to cross-sector collaboration: Politics has always influenced disaster response, but today it too often defines it. Exacerbating this is the threat of mis/disinformation which has evolved beyond rumor and print to something that is visual, viral and convincing. Emergency managers must now guard against information disasters as vigilantly as the actual disaster itself to ensure that the truth remains louder than the noise.
Stronger partnerships across government, nonprofits, private sector, and community and faith-based organizations are essential. Collaboration with these key partners expands capacity to prepare for, respond to and recover from a disaster, improves situational awareness to combat mis/disinformation and strengthens resilience.
Strategic foresight: Strategic foresight is a multidisciplinary approach to understanding and anticipating future trends, challenges, and opportunities to inform decision-making and shape long-term strategies. The concept of strategic foresight is a new tool in the toolkit for today’s emergency manager serving as a linchpin for effective preparedness, response and recovery.
By systematically scanning the horizon for emerging threats, technological advancements and societal shifts, emergency managers can enhance their capacity to anticipate and mitigate varied potential risks before they present as emergencies or disasters. Strategic foresight fosters a culture of continuous improvement and learning, ensuring that emergency response strategies are agile and effective in the face of the evolving threats of today’s world.
Traditional disasters no longer exist. Instead, emergency managers are handling complex, overlapping crises with every disaster they face. The future of emergency management will not be defined by how we respond to the last disaster. It will be defined by whether we are willing to prepare for the next one before it arrives.
The future leaders in the field of emergency management must cultivate adaptability, strategic foresight and the ability to rapidly integrate new ideas. The profession’s future depends on leaders who can bridge operational experience with innovation and foresight.
Kristi Rollwagen is an instructor in the Master of Science in Emergency and Disaster Management program at the University of St. Thomas. She has three decades of emergency management and fire service experience.
