The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has summarised the state of national preparedness in its 2022 National Preparedness Report to help support US emergency managers and whole-community partners in decisionmaking about program priorities, resource allocations and community actions.

The report covers prevalent national risks, such as cyberattacks and climate change, capability trends across threat and hazard identification and risk assessment and stakeholder preparedness review reporting communities, and management opportunities that outline steps to assist communities in managing risks and addressing capability gaps.

Some of the key findings include:

• 92% of communities identified at least 1 natural hazard associated with climate change as being most stressful to emergency management.
• The nation overall has the lowest capability in the Body Recovery/Storage and Medical Care target areas, indicating potentially inadequate preparation to meet these needs in response to a catastrophic disaster.
• Factors such as poverty, lack of access to transportation, and over-capacity housing occupancy continue to weaken the ability of individuals and communities to prevent injury, death and financial loss in a disaster.

The full report can be found here.