This guide highlights the findings of the National Governors' Association (NGA) Emergency Preparedness Project study, recommends an approach to comprehensive state emergency management, and offers pertinent management advice and tools based on hard-won experience in a variety of states. Case histories based on actual experience, as told by governors, their aides, and state emergency office directors, appear as insets throughout the text. These case histories both illustrate and augment the surrounding text. The outcomes of cases describing comprehensive emergency management are hypothetical, as this practice is not yet implemented in most states. Intended for governors and their staff aides, this guide is concerned with emergency management. It is one of a series of five companion publications of the NGA Center for Policy Research.

This guide is intended to provide governors and their staff with with policies, procedures, and general information regarding homeland security, and to address the major issues they should be aware of and prepared for.

Because governors have become increasingly concerned about the lack of a comprehensive national emergency policy, as well as the dispersion of federal responsibilities among numerous federal agencies which has hampered states' ability to manage disaster situations, they took concerted action in 1977. During the fall of that year, the National Governors' Association, which represents the mutual interests of the combined U.S. governors, took these actions: adopted a policy statement calling for a national policy, and consolidation of federal emergency preparedness and response services; set up a Subcommittee on Disaster Assistance; initiated a comprehensive one-year study to analyze the problems of all-risk management, and recommend federal-state-local assistance improvements; and began working with the Federal Emergency Preparedness and Response Study of the President's Reorganization Project (PRP/FEPR).

This guide, produced by the NGA's Center for Best Practices, is intended to provide governors and their staff with with policies, procedures, and general information regarding emergency management, and to address the major issues they should be aware of and prepared for.

Meant to aid State & local emergency managers in their efforts to develop & maintain a viable all-hazard emergency operations plan. This guide clarifies the preparedness, response, & short-term recovery planning elements that warrant inclusion in emergency operations plans. It offers the best judgment & recommendations on how to deal with the entire planning process -- from forming a planning team to writing the plan. Specific topics of discussion include: preliminary considerations, the planning process, emergency operations plan format, basic plan content, functional annex content, hazard-unique planning, & linking Federal & State operations.