Pick any disaster and read the after-action review. The recommendations follow a predictable pattern: "Improve response times." "Enhance coordination speed." "Deploy resources faster." Page after page emphasizes speed—how quickly we can move, decide, and act.

But there's something we haven't fully grasped about modern crises. What if we've been exposed to a completely new dynamic that we simply haven't considered before?

I'd like to introduce the concept of "the velocity of crisis"—a term that has yet to really be indoctrinated or appear in current literature around emergencies and disasters. We see similar terms such as "systemic risk", but nothing that captures the intent of what we're discussing here about velocity.

Governments, organizations, and communities all expect rapid response times when incidents occur. There's a collective expectation of quick emergency assistance, one we've been messaging for decades.

Here's the problem: when we look through the lens of velocity in cascading systems, not every piece of infrastructure has rapid response capability. That distinction isn't semantic—it's the difference between working against the dynamics of a crisis and learning to work with them.

Remember Physics Class? Neither Do We—And It Shows

In physics, speed measures how fast something moves. Velocity measures both speed and direction. The distinction seems elementary, yet when we add the metric of velocity, we find that modern disasters and crises now escalate faster than our existing institutional response systems can adapt.

Traditional emergency management isn't oriented toward velocity—we continue thinking about responding to one complex incident at a time, and that takes up most of our focus. We're not necessarily prepared for multiple systemic failures quickly overwhelming resources. Since we don't want to acknowledge system failure, we often orient around the idea that the odds of something like this happening are relatively low. We structure our exercises around predictable responses, our “bread and butter responses” so to speak, with maybe some complexity thrown in to test the edges.

The world has changed, and emergency management as a function of government (more on that later…) is still trying to catch up through bureaucratic silos and decision-making processes. This isn't about moving faster. It's about understanding how crises actually move.

What Does the Velocity of Crisis Look Like?

Nature journal's 2025 special issue on cascading disasters found that "disasters are no longer defined by natural extremes; instead, they are increasingly the product of complex interactions among multiple hazards, entrenched social vulnerabilities, and systemic governance failures."

Think about what that means. We're no longer managing single-hazard events. We're confronting compound disasters that amplify each other, accelerating through interconnected system failures faster than response protocols can adapt.

Take the Spain and Portugal power outages of April 2025. When the grid failed, the crisis didn't simply happen fast—it moved through systems following a completely predictable sequence. Traffic lights stopped functioning first. Hospital backup generators kicked in. Communication networks stuttered and failed. Airports delayed flights. Each failure created the exact conditions needed to accelerate the next.

Dr. Susan Cutter from the University of South Carolina captured the acceleration problem: "The more complexity you have in a system — unless there are tremendous redundancies, which isn't always the case with water — you will have secondary and tertiary effects. The interval between disasters is shortening, or in some cases disappearing altogether."

Authorities tried to respond faster, but they were chasing the crisis rather than anticipating its trajectory. The velocity of cascading infrastructure failure operates at infrastructure speeds, not administrative speeds. That's the core mismatch we're dealing with.

Why Do Systems Fall Like a House of Cards in a Hurricane?

ASCE studies on cascading infrastructure failures found that approximately 3.69% of simulations lead to large cascading failures across power and water systems. These failures "compromise entire systems in a very short time" through "sudden spikes across all nodes." These aren't random events. They follow predictable velocity patterns, building gradually until reaching critical mass, then accelerating exponentially.

The 2021 European floods illustrate this quite well. Despite European Flood Awareness System alerts issued days ahead, 35% of respondents in North Rhine-Westphalia and 29% in Rhineland-Palatinate received no warning because the system couldn't process and disseminate information fast enough for flash flooding conditions. The system wasn't simply overwhelmed by volume—it was overwhelmed by the velocity of information processing requirements moving through interconnected warning systems.

This isn't a capacity problem. It's a velocity problem disguised as a capacity problem. The question becomes: if traditional response systems can't match crisis velocity, what can?

What Happens When Speed Isn't Enough?

While human-centered response systems consistently fail to match the velocity of crisis, technology solutions are proving they can bridge this gap by working with the physics of how crises actually spread through interconnected systems.

Consider California's ALERTCalifornia program, which has demonstrated early wildfire detection capabilities, alerting authorities and enabling faster firefighter response and evacuations. The system represents decades of evolution from basic camera networks to sophisticated AI-enabled detection systems.

Similarly, Crisis Control's CRAiG AI Assistant shows significant improvement in engaging incident responders and managers, while Everbridge's Critical Event Management Platform can rapidly orchestrate SOPs, communications, and action plans during crises. Research indicates that organizations using automated Critical Event Management platforms can resolve incidents significantly faster and reduce downtime costs compared to manual approaches.

These systems succeed because they don't just move faster—they coordinate responses before the cascade begins, rather than trying to catch up after it's already overwhelming human decision-making capacity.

How Do You Actually Work With the Velocity of Crisis?

The most effective interventions don't just respond to current conditions—they take proactive measures across all systems and infrastructure that could be impacted, rather than waiting to see if they're impacted. The real difference is shifting from our traditional approach of resolving one problem and then recovering, to taking preventative measures that get ahead of velocity. This may mean cutting power early to neighborhoods, shutting off water systems, or implementing other protective protocols as preventative measures rather than reactive ones.

This requires understanding three velocity principles that represent governance challenges, not just emergency management issues, and implementing them as part of an awareness of velocity in design and planning:

First: Velocity Is Predictable Across Systems. Since everything is interconnected, we can map out systems and structures and understand cascading effects well in advance. The velocity and mapping of infrastructure systems exists, but it's not matching our decision-making models. If we can use technology to support decision-making, then we can start to get ahead of velocity. This means anticipatory positioning—not just positioning resources based on predicted trajectories rather than current conditions, but also making anticipatory decisions to get ahead of velocity based on data and information.

Second: Intervention Points Have Windows. If we can get into predictive analytics, we can have windows in time where we can catch up to the velocity of crisis and head things off. There are specific moments where interventions can redirect trajectory. Miss the window, and you're chasing the crisis. Hit it correctly, and cascading failures can be prevented before they gain momentum. This translates to cascade interruption—planning for the interruption of velocity by identifying critical nodes where crisis velocity can be slowed down or redirected. Our goal should be controlling their trajectory through existing systems and redirecting rather than trying to stop disasters, as that's likely impossible.

Third: Automation Matches Physics. This gives us a window of opportunity to make decisions that, while they may not seem connected to the outside or to the public, are able to get ahead of the velocity of crisis. Human decision-making operates at human speeds. The velocity of crisis operates at system speeds. This means deploying automated triggers that can activate certain responses at system speed rather than administrative speed, especially if they are pre-decisions or pre-discussed and agreed protocols. This requires infrastructure investment in real-time data processing, which enables continuous monitoring and decision-making at speed.

All of this requires orchestration—as many decisions and preparatory actions taken in advance or pre-agreed as much as possible, so that automation can help while leaving the more consequential or complex decisions for human-level decision-making, always maintaining this human-in-the-loop response.

What Is the Future of Emergency Management When We Have to Compensate for Velocity?

Emergency management must change from a largely reactive, human-centric decision-making model to one that's augmented by technology approaches that can operate and expedite decisions and pre-decisions in order to interrupt the velocity of crisis. The key point is that technology adaptation, pre-agreed decisions, and interrupting velocity is going to help shape the future. We're not talking about eliminating human judgment and decision-making—we're enabling human decision-makers to operate at speeds that modern crises now demand.

Are We Ready to Stop Running Behind and Start Getting Ahead?

Emergency management as a government function faces transformation comparable to the technology and innovation disruption of other professions. Everyone who's been watching the news can see that velocity is overwhelming response capability—from LA fires to Texas power outages to floods across multiple states. It's always a story of overwhelming response and connected systems. 

The velocity of crisis challenge isn't about building faster response systems. It's about building systems that understand where crises are traveling and can mitigate their acceleration as part of the response.

In a world of compounding, cascading, and persistent disasters with perpetual recovery, success won't belong to those who respond fastest to current conditions. It will belong to those who understand velocity and implement systems that allow them to mitigate the velocity of crisis as part of their response. We have “smart cities” so how far are from having “smart emergency management”?

The physics haven't changed. Our understanding of them can. And maybe that understanding is enough to transform everything that follows.

About Crisis Lab

Crisis Lab helps senior professionals and organizations prepare for and manage complex risk and crisis. We work at the leading edge of crisis management, analyzing trends, indicators, and information across the international space about evolving threats and the changing landscape. Our focus is on better serving senior professionals in their roles and helping organizations prepare to manage crises in an ever-changing world. We accomplish this through numerous international partnerships, academic partnerships, and our own IACET-accredited professional development platform. We also support international programs for institutional capacity building, international organizations, as well as non-profit organizations in achieving their mission through support with niche, high quality, expertise.