Structural Mismatches between Prescribed Governmental Response Routines and Actual Hurricane Response Collaboration Networks: Implications for Disaster Management Policy

Abstract

Crisis response collaboration is critical for timely and effective emergency management. Formal guidelines such as the Incident Command System (ICS) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)’s Mission Assignments program provide standardized procedures, but may not fit large-scale crises that require non-routine tasks. Mismatches between prescribed guidelines and actual collaborations can hinder coordination and delay assistance to affected populations. This study analyzes mismatches between formal routines and real response networks during four major U.S. hurricanes. We compared networks derived from governmental guidelines with those extracted from FEMA’s Mission Assignments, Statements of Work, and daily Situational Reports. Results show minimal similarity between prescribed routines and actual networks at both egocentric and whole-network levels. Overlap appeared only between federal guidelines and actual networks at the egocentric level (Jaccard NodeSim: 0.2–3%; EdgeSim: 0.001–0.7%) and between local guidelines and statement-of-work networks at the whole-network level, which exhibited scale-free topologies. These findings empirically show the structural gaps between planned and emergent response collaborations, and are helpful to refine policy and planning so that response routines better align with the collaborative dynamics that emerge in real crises. Code, data, and visualizations from this work are available at https://figshare.com/s/35f4b16d1f46ddf02730.