Abstract

Emergency management remains one of the most popular fields under the public administration and policy umbrella for studying collaborations and networks. This is because emergency management represents a field of study that constantly works with different sectors and levels of government to build capacity to mitigate against, prepare, respond to, and recover from natural and man-made hazards. Although scholars have examined various aspects of emergency management networks in recent years, there is no comprehensive framework for assessing the effectiveness of these networks. This chapter addresses this research gap by developing a framework for assessing the effectiveness of emergency management networks. Prior to describing the framework, this chapter reviews the extant literature on the major types of networks as well as relevant frameworks for assessing network effectiveness in the field of public policy and public administration. This chapter concludes with a discussion on the implications for emergency managers.