National Response Framework

The Department of Homeland Security has released the second edition of its National Response Framework (NRF). The framework serves as "a guide to how the Nation responds to all types of disaster and emergencies."

The NRF is a "component of the National Preparedness System mandated in Presidential Policy Directive (PPD) 8: National Preparedness." The PPD seeks to strengthen the country's security and resilience "through systematic preparation for the threats that pose the greatest risk to the security of the Nation. PPD-8 defines five mission areas—Prevention, Protection, Mitigation, Response, and Recovery—and mandates the development of a series of policy and planning documents to explain and guide the Nation’s collective approach to ensuring and enhancing national preparedness."

The objectives of the National Response Framework are to:

• Describe scalable, flexible, and adaptable coordinating structures, as well as key roles and responsibilities for integrating capabilities across the whole community, to support the efforts of local, state, tribal, territorial, insular area, and Federal governments in responding to actual and potential incidents
• Describe, across the whole community, the steps needed to prepare for delivering the response core capabilities
• Foster integration and coordination of activities within the Response mission area
• Outline how the Response mission area relates to the other mission areas, as well as the relationship between the Response core capabilities and the core capabilities in other mission areas
• Provide guidance through doctrine and establish the foundation for the development of the supplemental Response Federal Interagency Operational Plan (FIOP)

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