Emergency Preparedness and Response: Identifying the Key Factors Driving Risk for Levee Owners

In a world often driven by costly structural fixes and a heavy focus on physical infrastructure, emergency management actions offer an impactful, low-cost alternative for dam and levee owners.

By conducting risk assessments and integrating a risk-informed approach, owners can identify the key factors driving risk across individual systems and entire portfolios. This includes understanding the potential consequences of poor performance or failure—whether operational or structural—along a line of defense. Human impacts, particularly Potential Life Loss (PLL), frequently drive risk-reduction decisions for dams and levees.

Risk reduction strategies can include both structural and nonstructural measures. Structural measures often involve significant investments to modify or build physical systems and can be costly—sometimes by multiple orders of magnitude. Nonstructural measures, while not always inexpensive, often deliver meaningful risk reduction at far lower cost. Emergency preparedness and response planning stand out as a solution that can be implemented within weeks or months and with a much lighter funding burden. How? Keep reading for five emergency management activities that dam and levee owners, flood control agencies, levee districts, and local municipalities can implement to significantly reduce risk.

Develop a Comprehensive Emergency Action Plan

A comprehensive Emergency Action Plan (EAP) is the foundation of effective emergency preparedness. It clearly defines who is responsible for what actions during an emergency, ensuring agencies, responders, and officials can act decisively under pressure. One of the most critical determinations—who has the authority to issue mandatory evacuation orders—must be established well before an emergency unfolds.

An effective EAP also identifies available communication systems and emergency alert channels that allow emergency management agencies to notify authorities and the public quickly and reliably. Whether through sirens, mass notification tools, or other warning systems, clarity and redundancy are essential to timely protective actions.

The plan is further strengthened by a well-defined threat matrix. By setting action thresholds based on water-surface elevations, levee degradation, pump station performance, or drainage issues, owners can proactively manage escalating risk. Each threat action level assigns clear responsibilities, ensuring the right actions occur at the right time.

Levee Breach Analysis and Risk Assessment

Understanding risk requires understanding consequences. Levee breach analyses help estimate potential life loss and provide insight into how that risk is distributed across communities. These analyses transform abstract risk into actionable intelligence.

Mapping the geospatial distribution of PLL supports informed evacuation planning, alert timing, and emergency response actions. Some areas may require earlier warnings due to higher vulnerability or limited evacuation time. While others may face compromised egress routes as floodwater rises. Identifying these challenges in advance allows agencies to adapt plans, prioritize alerts, and reduce life-safety risks.

Establish Clear Communication Protocols

Clear communication is essential during emergencies. Threat action levels in the EAP must be directly tied to agency responsibilities and individual roles, including clear ownership of all communications.

Regular, concise, and coordinated communication among emergency managers, levee owners, and response teams enables swift, effective action. Without strong communication protocols, response actions may be delayed and public alerts issued too late—significantly increasing the potential for catastrophic impacts.

Conduct Emergency Drills, Training, and Exercises

Emergency plans are only effective if people know how to execute them. Regular training, drills, and exercises ensure that EAPs are understood, practiced, and improved over time.

The Homeland Security Exercise and Evaluation Program (HSEEP) provides a structured framework applicable to federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial agencies, as well as critical infrastructure partners. HSEEP supports preparedness through four phases: program management, exercise design and development, exercise conduct, and evaluation and improvement planning.

Exercises may include tabletop sessions that walk participants through scenarios, as well as functional exercises that simulate real-time emergency response. After-action reports then capture lessons learned and identify opportunities to strengthen preparedness.

Additional resources, such as Dennis Mileti, PhD and John Sorensen, PhD’s “A Guide to Public Alerts and Warnings for Dam and Levee Emergencies,” provide valuable guidance for agencies responsible for public safety during disasters.

Maintain Response Supplies and Equipment

Even the strongest plans and best-trained teams can fall short without the necessary resources. Effective emergency response depends on maintaining, inventorying, and regularly testing response supplies and equipment.

These resources may include backup power and redundant water supplies, sandbags and flood barriers, personal protective equipment, first aid and medical equipment, and specialized response teams such as swiftwater and aerial rescue units. Ensuring these assets are available and ready for deployment is essential to successful emergency response.

Proactive emergency preparedness and a well-maintained inventory of response resources can fundamentally change the outcome of a disaster. Improving emergency preparedness and response protocols is a low-cost, accessible, and efficient way to reduce risk and protect lives for dam and levee owners. Preparation today builds the foundation for safety tomorrow. For more information or resources, please contact me.