A Futurist*s Guide to Emergency Management

A Futurist's Guide to Emergency Management provides interdisciplinary analysis on how particular sets of conditions may occur in the future by evaluating global trends, possible scenarios, emerging conditions, and various other elements of risk management. Firmly based in science, the book leverages historical data, current best practices, and scientific and statistical data to make future projections to help emergency management, homeland security, and public safety officials make appropriate planning, preparedness, and resource management decisions in the present to prepare for future conditions and risks.

• Focuses on trends in citizen behaviors, expectations, and choices related to technology, media, communication, and cross-cultural behavior
• Reflects the impacts of age, gender, and sexuality roles on emergency response expectations as well as the increasing politicization of disaster response and recovery activities
• Evaluates how perceptions of risk are changing―particularly in light of low probability, but high consequence events
• Considers emerging physical, social, environmental, and technological issues such as climate change, sustainability, globalization, and cyber threats

Divided into three sections, the book first focuses on trends in citizen behaviors, expectations, and choices related to technology, media, communication and cross-cultural behavior. It then explores the impacts of age, gender, and sexuality roles on emergency response expectations as well as the increasing politicization of disaster response and recovery activities. Additionally, the second section evaluates how perceptions of risk are changing – particularly in light of low probability, but high consequence events. The book concludes with coverage of emerging physical, social, environmental, and technological issues such a climate change, sustainability, globalization, and cyber threats.

Adam Crowe is a certified emergency manager (CEM), associate business continuity professional (ABCP), and master exercise practitioner (MEP). He is a nationally recognized leader in social media and emergency management and routinely engages in cutting-edge planning, training, and exercise opportunities that improve the readiness of communities, organizations, and businesses to respond to and recover from emergencies and disasters.

He has spoken at over 50 regional, statewide, or national conferences on how social media impacts emergency management and has been published more than a dozen times in professional journals. In addition to A Futurist’s Guide to Emergency Management, he is also the author of Disasters 2.0: The Application of Social Media in Modern Emergency Management (2012) and Leadership in the Open: A New Paradigm

in Emergency Management (2013).

He currently serves as the director of emergency preparedness at Virginia Commonwealth University and lives with his wife and children in Richmond, Virginia.