WASHINGTON -- FEMA has released a report providing an overview of the nation’s current disaster risk and capability landscape.

The 13th annual National Preparedness Report (NPR) outlines progress toward achieving the national preparedness goal of a secure and resilient country. It highlights the nation’s preparedness across all sectors and levels of government for events ranging from extreme weather to sophisticated cyber incidents. 

As the nation navigates these complex challenges, resilience must continue to be a collective endeavor, requiring the active participation of the whole community. This year, the report places particular emphasis on four core capabilities: Mass Care Services, Public Information and Warning, Infrastructure Systems and Cybersecurity. These areas—identified through ongoing assessments, leadership priorities and recent disaster impacts—continue to present significant challenges, but also opportunities for enhancing our national resilience.

“The 2024 NPR addresses the work that needs to be done at all levels – federal, state, local, tribal and territorial – to strengthen national preparedness. While emerging threats and hazards will test us as a nation, our collective efforts across the whole community will drive our progress toward a safer, more resilient future,” said FEMA Administrator Criswell. “Together, we can ensure every individual and community is better prepared to face the uncertainties of tomorrow.”

For more than a decade, FEMA has been reporting on the state of national preparedness to identify the risks and opportunities that inform emergency management decision-making. This annual report once again offers practical insights into preparedness and capabilities at the federal, state, local, tribal and territorial levels as well as the individual household level to inform decisions about program priorities and resource allocations that increase community resilience. 

Analysis presented in this report shows the nation faces persistent challenges in an evolving threat and hazard landscape. Awareness of these challenges mitigates risks, lessens vulnerabilities and drives all levels of governments to strategically direct investments to build resilience.

Disasters are becoming costlier and deadlier. 
Since 1980, the U.S. experienced 376 individual billion-dollar weather and climate disasters, amounting to a cumulative cost exceeding $2.665 trillion. Since 1980, around 16,350 fatalities occurred in association with billion-dollar disasters. 

Sophisticated data analysis tools are essential to develop effective, place-based recovery strategies.
Of the top five most stressing threats and hazards identified by communities in 2023, four were natural hazards including earthquakes, hurricanes/typhoons, tornadoes and floods. Leveraging sophisticated tools with large-scale data processing helps identify and prioritize top threats and hazards based on community input, ultimately facilitating more effective recovery strategies.

Individuals and households are taking disaster preparedness more seriously and improving their risk literacy. 
FEMA’s 2023 National Household Survey found that 51 percent of adults believed they were prepared for a disaster, which is a 9 percent increase in preparedness perception from 42 percent in 2017. The survey also indicates that people are becoming more proactive and better informed about their risks.

Decaying legacy infrastructure and outdated building codes continue to pose a significant vulnerability nationwide for the foreseeable future. 
The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) funding are only a starting point for addressing residential, institutional and commercial building safety across this nation, which increases vulnerability to threats and hazards. Outdated infrastructure can leave communities and the nation vulnerable to critical system disruptions, impacting transportation routes, services and the economy.

The rapid advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology allows determined adversaries to strike harder and with less warning. 
The proliferation of accessible AI tools likely will bolster our adversaries’ tactics. Cyber actors use AI to develop new tools that allow them to compromise more victims and enable larger scale cyber-attacks, while nation-states seeking to undermine trust in our government institutions, social cohesion and democratic processes are using AI to create more believable foreign malign influence campaigns. Of particular concern are impacts of AI attacks on critical infrastructure, which could result in nefarious actors disrupting or denying activities related to Internet of Things (IoT) technologies or networked industrial systems. 

National assessments enhance our understanding of evolving risk and resilience challenges for disadvantaged communities. 
Risk and resilience across the nation is evolving, but not uniformly. Publicly available risk assessment tools and resources including the White House Council on Environmental Quality’s (CEQ) Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool (CEJST), the U.S. Global Change Research Program’s (USGCRP) 5th National Climate Assessment and FEMA tools such as the National Risk Index (NRI), Community Disaster Resilience Zones (CDRZ), Community Resilience Challenges Index (CRCI), HAZUS 6.1 and Building Code Adoption Tracking (BCAT) highlight these changes and how they intersect. These tools support decision making, enable collaboration with governmental and private sector partners and identify areas for improvement within resilience. 

The National Preparedness Report was established in Presidential Policy Directive/PPD-8, signed on March 30, 2011, which required the Secretary of Homeland Security to submit to the President the first national preparedness report based on the National Preparedness Goal.

To read the full report, go to fema.gov/emergency-managers/national-preparedness#reports.