This week, FEMA released the 12th annual National Preparedness Report, which provides an overview of the nation’s current disaster risk and capability landscape. This year’s report highlights cyber threats, gaps in individual and household preparedness, and the lack of building code adoption as key areas for improvement to increase national resilience.

The report includes numerous statistics and cases speaking to the challenge of cyber threats, noting they have remained among the top threats and hazards communities report as the most likely and stressing. It identifies attacks against critical infrastructure as one particularly disruptive form of cyber attack, noting past incidents involving healthcare facilities. In terms of gaps in individual and household preparedness, it cites a statistic from the 2022 National Household Survey on Disaster Preparedness, which found 42 percent of respondents plan to prepare for identified threats and hazards in the future but have not started yet. As WaterISAC emphasized in a session with a FEMA speaker during this year’s H2OSecCon, individual and household preparedness is also important because it affects the ability of utilities to respond. Therefore, utilities should encourage and support their employees with being more prepared. Finally, the report notes the inconsistent adoption of building codes is one of the most significant factors that compounds risk and increases costs from natural disasters. It also acknowledges the federal government does not have the authority to enforce these, which instead fall to the state, local, tribal, and territorial levels. This year’s report continues to highlight the reality of rising costs, frequency and severity of disasters due to climate change. In addition, it identified cyber threats, gaps in individual and household preparedness and the lack of building code adoption as key areas for improvement to increase national resilience. Access the report at FEMA.