Emergency Management Futures Lab
Expand your horizon, understand emerging risk, and explore uncertainty to gain a strategic advantage in future operational environments!
The Emergency Management Futures Lab (EMFL) offers strategic foresight and design services to support strategies for adaptation and resilience. Our lab is designed to integrate forward-looking activities into emergency management planning to:
- build new adaptive leadership capabilities to navigate an increasing turbulent, complex and uncertain world
- expand the hazard and risk lens to understand dynamic system drivers of change, trends, emerging issues and leverage points within a complex system
- explore plausible and possible futures to test the viability of current strategies, identify opportunities to build capacity and shape the system to respond to future challenges
Our process
Baseline Assessment
Focus on futures literacy, assumptions, risk assessment, risk perception and strategic planning or design needs
Action Learning
A facilitated process to lock in learning and insights to move into action
Workshops
Anticipate, explore, generate insights, shape strategies and design for adaptation, resilience and impact
Workshop 1
Horizon Scanning
To sense and make-sense of:
- system dynamics and the changing environment to enhance situational awareness
- potential emerging and future risks through a climate lens
- possible convergence and potential disruption
Workshop 2
Future Scenarios
Facilitate conversations to:
- explore complexity, uncertainty, and ambiguity
- unlock potential new ideas and innovative opportunities to build adaptive capacity, and actively shape the system towards resilience
Workshop 3
Future Narratives
An inclusive and participatory approach to:
- engage participants to imagine and shape a shared long-term vision (or “north star”) of future resilience
- align and adapt planning strategies to navigate towards the future vision
Workshop 4
Disaster Risk Reduction & Sustainability
A community design thinking workshop to:
- support learning and problem solving
- frame challenges, explore new ideas to reduce risk, enhance coping capacity and community well-being
- empower communities to use their own knowledge and decision-making processes to take action on climate change
Workshop 5
Disaster Risk Reduction & Sustainability
A foresight to design workshop to:
- enhance awareness, stimulate discussion of the SDGs and identify opportunities for action to reduce risk and advance sustainability
- explore trends and emerging issues, and identify actions that align with an organization’s mission and values
- frame challenges, explore new ideas to reduce risk, enhance coping capacity and community well-being
Questions? Comments? We’d love to hear from you.
Strategic foresight and design services
We recognize the evolving risk, pace of change and growing pressures faced by organizations and local communities.
Our focus is disaster risk management and sustainability. We serve both public and private sector organizations in emergency management, healthcare, critical infrastructure and mining. We are dedicated to supporting our clients’ unique needs, and working with communities to enhance future well-being and resilience.
Designing for adaptation and resilience
Strategic Planning
A holistic approach to understand and navigate an organization within a changing environment
Design Research
Use human-centered and participatory design methods that generate knowledge theories to advance research, innovation and design
Intensives
Move deep learning and exploration of a challenge area into design for action
Workshops
Introduction to design methods with activities to enhance learning and planning
Co-Creative Events
Cross sector collaboration to explore new ideas, models and partnerships to enhance value
Lessons Learned
Double loop learning process to actively capture knowledge and experience, and frame opportunities for mitigation, preparedness, response and/or recovery