The Federal Emergency Management
Agency today released the latest National Threat and Hazard Identification and
Risk Assessment (THIRA). The National THIRA is the process through which FEMA
identifies catastrophic threats and hazards, the consequences of those threats
and hazards, and the capabilities the nation needs to address those hazards.
The 2019 National Threat and Hazard
Identification and Risk Assessment (THIRA): Overview and Methodology is
available on FEMA’s website at https://www.fema.gov/national-risk-and-capability-assessment. The document outlines FEMA’s approach to that process,
which uses the same standardized impact and target language that states,
tribes, territories and members of the Urban Area Security Initiative grant
program use for their THIRAs. For more information on the community THIRA,
stakeholders are encouraged to consult the Comprehensive
Preparedness Guide 201, 3rd edition,
which outlines the steps in this standardized approach.
FEMA designed the THIRA methodology to
support collaboration between state and local governments, federal agencies,
and other emergency management entities. Because the National THIRA process
described in this document uses the same language as the community THIRA, FEMA
and federal departments and agencies will be able to compare state, tribal,
territorial, urban area and—eventually—federal and national preparedness
estimates against the national-level assessment. This common assessment will
allow FEMA and other federal agencies to track progress over time and provide
concrete answers in specific, measurable terms to the question: “How prepared
is the nation?”