Response Mission Area

Definition of Mission Area:

Response includes those capabilities necessary to save lives, protect property and the environment, and meet basic human needs after an incident has occurred.

Planning Core Capability Target:

  1. Develop operational plans at the Federal and Regional level, and in states and territories, that adequately identify critical objectives based on the planning requirement, provide a complete and integrated picture of the sequence and scope of the tasks to achieve the objectives, and ensure that the objectives are implementable within the timeframe contemplated in the plan using available resources.

Planning Considerations:

  1. Communities regularly deal with emergencies and disasters that have impacts of lesser magnitude than those considered to be the greatest risk to the Nation.
  2. Communities have capacities to deal with the public’s needs locally for many lesser incidents.
  3. Take into account the needs of State, Local and Tribal communities.
  4. Remember to plan for:
    • Persons with access and functional needs
    • Animals and pets
    • Private-sector and community involvement
    • Hard-to-reach or otherwise isolated areas and territories
  1. Catastrophic incidents will require a much broader set of partners to accomplish capability targets.
  2. The scope and magnitude of a catastrophic event can involve legal, policy, and regulatory waivers/exemptions/exceptions to achieve capability targets.
  3. These waivers/exemptions/exceptions should be identified during pre-incident planning.

Other Core Capabilities:

In addition to planning, the other core capabilities of the response mission area are:

  • Public Information and Warning
  • Operational Coordination
  • Critical Transportation
  • Environmental Response/Health and Safety
  • Fatality Management Services
  • Infrastructure Systems
  • Mass Care Services
  • Mass Search and Rescue Operations
  • On-scene Security and Protection
  • Operational Communications
  • Public and Private Services and Resources
  • Public Health and Medical Services
  • Situational Assessment

For additional information on each of these core capabilities, review the National Preparedness Goal available on the resources page.