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OHSS | Office of Homeland Security Statistics

Emergency and Disaster Deployments

On April 1, 1979, President Carter established the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Its two functions are civil defense and emergency management. In 2002, President George W. Bush signed the Homeland Security Act. This Act created the U.S. Department of Homeland Security on March 1, 2003. It united FEMA and 21 other organizations. 

FEMA’s mission is helping people before, during, and after disasters. FEMA gets its authority from the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act (Stafford Act). FEMA may provide support when the President of the United States declares an emergency or major disaster under the Stafford Act. FEMA's staff assist with emergencies, disaster response, and recovery. 

About This Report  

In the data file, we provide deployment data for all events authorized under the Stafford Act.  We also have a report file that explains more about the data and shows examples of how to use the data.

Data Fields and Definitions

Deployment

A deployment is the assignment of an individual to an event for a defined period. The following fields relate to deployments:

Data FieldDescription
Deployment IDUnique identifier for each deployment
Date on SiteThe date the individual arrived at their duty station for the deployment
Departure DateThe date the deployment concluded. If the deployment was still active as of September 30, 2023, the departure date is blank.
Days DeployedThe duration of the deployment, equal to the number of days between the Departure Date and the Date on Site. If the deployment was still active as of September 30, 2023, the days deployed is blank. 

Event

Deployments are all made to support specific events.  There are five fields in our data that describe an event:

Data FieldDescription
Event IDFour- or five-digit unique identifier for each event
Event Start DateThe first date deployments could be made in support of the event
Event TypeFive categorical events described in Declaration/Deployment Type section
Event RegionFEMA Regional Office responsible for the event
Event LocationState or territory the duty station the deployment is in

Hazard

An incident is a natural, technological, or human caused occurrence that may cause harm and that may require action. The source of an incident is a hazard. Each event is associated with a single hazard. There is one field in our data that describes the hazard: 

Data FieldDescription
Hazard TypeCategorical grouping of hazards

Declarations

FEMA releases data about declarations made by the president of the United States on OpenFEMA.  There are two fields in our data that can be matched to the declarations. 

Data FieldDescription
OpenFEMA Declaration StringAgency standard method for uniquely identifying Stafford Act declarations — concatenation of declaration type, disaster number and state code
OpenFEMA Declaration TitleTitle for the disaster

Grouping

All events are unique to a single state, but many incidents FEMA responds to impact several states. Also, within a single state, deployments often transition from one event to another based on the lifecycle of FEMA’s response to an incident. There are two grouping fields in the data to explain the relationships between events. 

Data FieldDescription
IncidentGroups events across the country related to the same incident. This is a discretionary field in DTS and not all events are grouped into an incident.&
Event GroupUnique identifier to group all predecessor events within a single state through the lifecycle of FEMA’s response to an incident. A blank Event Group means the event did not have a predecessor or successor event.

Methodology

Data Source 

The data in this report come from FEMA’s Deployment Tracking System (DTS). The FEMA Workforce Management Division Deployment and Analysis Branch operates the D TS. This web-based system assigns and tracks the deployment of disaster personnel.  

Date

Data are as of July 26, 2024.

Data Processing

To get data for this OHSS report, we link DTS data to OpenFEMA declaration data using the disaster number to match records.  We create the Event Group variable using network analysis of DTS data on event predecessors. We anonymize the Deployment ID to protect the confidentiality of the people being deployed. We also correct for various data entry errors that may appear in the DTS data (e.g., negative days deployed).  

Unit of Measure 

The units of measure for fields in this report are:  

  • Deployments — count of Deployment ID, representing the number of deployments of a person to an event for a continuous number of days. 
  • Active Deployments — For a given date, count of Deployment ID with the given date between the Date on Site and Departure Date. 
  • Person-days Deployed — For a given date range, cumulative sum of Active Deployments on each date in the date range. 
  • Events — count of Event ID, representing the number of events people were deployed to. ere deployed to. 

Download Data

Data File File Extension File size Date Posted Report Year Data Category categories
FEMA Deployments Table: Fiscal Years 2016-2023 csv 27.54 MB 08/30/2024 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 Emergency and Disaster Deployments 48
Emergency and Disaster Deployments: Fiscal Years 2016-2023 pdf 1.14 MB 08/30/2024 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016 Emergency and Disaster Deployments 48