ABSTRACT
This volume contributes practical suggestions to enhance the services' capacity to manage large-scale emergency events in this future world as well as pointing to areas in need of further attention. As the chapters in this volume have discussed, the world of emergency services responders and managers is complex. Decisions are frequently made under ambiguous, dynamic and uncertain conditions involving trade-offs, with the consequences impacting many people. These complexities are driven by a number of trends. Those trends include climate change, which exacerbates the vulnerabilities of communities and our environment intersecting with other dynamic influences such as global socio-economic shifts, demographic changes, and biological system shifts. Another trend comes from interdependencies of social, technical and infrastructure systems. There is also a strong reliance on energy in our society for food production, transport and even social interactions. Interconnectivity of urban systems also means that negative impacts on one system could have a cascading affect and influence on the functioning of other systems.
