Volume 21, Issue 1

A few years after the end of the Cold War, Richard Betts argued that a specter was haunting the field of strategic studies, “the specter of peace,” and asked whether that field should survive the new era. Today, more than two decades after the 9/11 attacks that stimulated the field of homeland security (HS) studies, we could ask a similar question about that field. Should it survive as an academic field of study, and if so, how should it adapt and change in an era in which concerns about terrorism have in large part been overtaken by great power competition, climate change, AI, pandemics and a host of other asymmetric threats? Is it/can it be an academic discipline? A profession? What questions does it ask and what contributions does it make to practitioners, policy makers, or society? This article reviews the state of HS studies today and what sub-fields and disciplines it touches. It examines HS publication and education in the United States and evaluates the contributions that HS studies have made to date. This review suggests homeland security studies should indeed survive, as a meta discipline that serves a valuable purpose by addressing the question of how governments and societies should best prepare for and respond to threats to their security that can range from local to global in scope, from small to large in scale, and from tame to wicked in character.

Increasingly confronted with the acute risk of large-scale disaster, local governments across the globe are searching for effective and efficient strategies for scaling their disaster response capacity. Emergency management research has examined such strategies in various urban settings, but still suffers from the lack of proper theoretical frameworks for studying how institutionalized modes of governance condition local scalability in different national contexts. Building on the research tradition of urban governance, this article develops a conceptual framework for conducting institutional analysis of overarching values, norms and practices that shape the local scaling of disaster response capacity. It demonstrates the analytical value of the framework by applying it in an illustrative case study of disaster response systems in the three Scandinavian countries of Sweden, Denmark, and Norway. The framework proves useful for systematizing and discussing nuances within and across institutional contexts.

The widespread availability of mobile devices offers enormous opportunities for first responders to have instant access to sources of information, and collaborate with one another when responding to an emergency. Although various knowledge management systems have been developed in different domains, no mobile knowledge management application so far has been developed in the area of emergency or crisis management. This study addresses various technical requirements for a mobile knowledge management application specifically designed for first responders to an emergency or crisis.

School closures during the COVID-19 pandemic compromised access to essential meals for many children. In response, a public/private partnership known as the Emergency Meals-to-You program was established to deliver meals in affected rural areas of the United States. This study builds on this using a scorecard approach adapted from the United Nations Ten Essentials for Making Cities Resilient to identify and prioritize actions for strengthening food system resilience. A pilot food system resilience scorecard facilitated data collection from five workshops with professionals familiar with the program, emergency management, public health, or food systems. Data analysis and interpretation identified nine priority actions. These included integrating the food sector and schools within emergency management, mapping local food sector capacities, working with schools to receive de-identified data about nutritional, allergy and other health needs, developing disaster plans for sustaining food access at the school district level, and protecting ecosystem services and agricultural areas. There is an urgent need to embed the food sector and schools within emergency management. These systems are local, designed to coordinate complicated tasks in crises, multidisciplinary, and are used in many countries. Providing a ready-made framework for locally driven initiatives to strengthen food systems now and into the future.

The following article examines the cascading effects that took place from February 11–20, 2021, through the perspectives of emergency managers, FEMA employees, and others who responded to “The Texas Freeze.” The research discusses the literature on cascading disasters as well as the methodology that was utilized to conduct this study. It then examines the unique challenges experienced before and after the storm. In particular, the article explores the loss of power that subsequently resulted in the lack of water, the freezing of pipes, and flooding. In addition, it mentions other problems such as transportation and the provision of fuel as well as numerous consequences that posed considerable challenges for hospitals, long-term care facilities, and emergency managers. The article concludes with recommendations to strengthen infrastructure, mitigate winter storms, and increase planning and preparedness for complex disasters. The main point to be made is that far more consideration needs to be given to proactively understand and anticipate cascading disasters.