Trends in Interagency Hazard Coordination Programs

Multiple agencies across the Federal government participate in preparedness, response, and recovery for hazards including weather and meteorological events. For many of these hazards, the Federal government has instituted interagency and/or intra-agency coordination programs that assign specific roles to individual agencies before, during, and after crises. For example, the National Hurricane Program is an interagency partnership across FEMA, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and the NOAA National Hurricane Center. Despite the importance of these programs, they have not previously been analyzed comparatively. Here, we examine domestic Federal interagency coordination programs for preparedness, response, and recovery to hazards. We consider 10 types of natural and human-caused hazards including hurricanes, windstorms, landslides, earthquakes, and space weather. We review the structure of these hazard coordination programs, including their governance, integration of science and technology throughout the decision-making process, authorities and guiding documents, and role of Federal and non-Federal agencies. Based on this analysis, we identify best practices and challenges across existing Federal interagency hazard coordination programs. Taken together, these insights may inform future efforts to design interagency coordination programs for other extreme weather or meteorological hazards.