Navigating Poly-crisis
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Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
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June 2023
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ESSAY
belfercenter.org/homelandsecurity
HOMELAND SECURITY PROJECT | JUNE 2023
Navigating Poly-crisis:
The New Reality for Crisis
Management in the United States
Luke Beckman
This paper is part of a continuing publication series for the Global Crisis & Resilience Forum led by Juliette Kayyem,
Faculty Chair of the Belfer Center’s Homeland Security Program. The forum is supported by McKinsey & Company.
The ideas in these papers are the independent product of the author.
What is Poly-crisis and why is it
the new normal?
For those of us in crisis management roles, when something goes wrong, it starts as a challenge
and then escalates to a problem. Problems then grow to become any one of three broadly inter-
changeable words: emergencies, disasters, or crises. For this discussion, I combine emergencies
and disasters into the bucket of crisis. Many feel that the reality of emergency management is no
longer “disaster”-specific but is more broadly the all-inclusive concept of a crisis. A problem
becomes a crisis when we lose our ability to cope, and a part of the system becomes overwhelmed.
Crises become catastrophes when the resources and structures meant to respond to that crisis
become overwhelmed and break down. Something can be catastrophic at the local level but
perhaps just a crisis at the regional or national level, and much of that nuance depends on
someone’s on-the-ground perspective and historical experience.
Luke Beckman is the Disaster Director for California, focusing on state relations, with the American Red Cross. He has
been leading public health and crisis operations for the past 15 years. He has led operations at the local, state, national, and
international levels, responding to hurricanes, typhoons, floods, tornadoes, earthquakes, and mass shootings. Notably, he has
responded to Hurricanes Katrina, Maria, and Sandy; Typhoons Ketsana and Haiyan; the 2010 Haiti Earthquake; and every major
wildfire in California since the Thomas Fire in 2017. He graduated with honors from Stanford University and completed the
Executive Leaders Program in the Center for Homeland Defense and Security at the Naval Postgraduate School.
