The impact challenge in emergency management

Why it matters for decision-making in complex environments

In emergency management, success often looks like nothing happening. 

The fire that didn’t spread. The flood that didn’t inundate. The event that caused less damage than it might have. 

But increasingly, that framing doesn’t fully hold. 

In a climate-challenged environment, events will still occur – often more frequently and with greater intensity. The impact of mitigation is not always that nothing happens, but that outcomes are different: less severe, less widespread, less fatal. 

This makes impact difficult to measure – and more importantly, it makes it difficult to use. 

Across the sector, there is already strong investment in evaluation. Many agencies have mature approaches to measuring outputs and outcomes. 

What is becoming more pronounced is a different challenge: as funding mechanisms like the Disaster Ready Fund increase the focus on outcomes – and as operating conditions become more complex – this translation matters more. 

Impact is more than data

Even with robust quantitative measures, there is often a further step: connecting data to a clear understanding of what difference is being made. As Rosie Tran, who works in impact evaluation across social enterprises and not-for-profits, puts it: 

"You need the quantitative data, but equally you need to tell the real-life stories that demonstrate the impact.” 

Data provides scale and credibility. But it is the connection to lived experience that makes it meaningful—and usable. 

Where impact becomes difficult

Even with strong evaluation practices, some challenges persist: 

• Prevention is hard to measure – outcomes are often avoided or reduced, rather than visible
• Time horizons are long – benefits may not align with funding cycles
• Attribution is complex – outcomes reflect multiple interacting factors
• Data is always partial – particularly in dynamic environments.

These do not prevent evaluation, but they do shape how confidently impact can be used in decision-making. 

What makes impact useful

In practice, three characteristics make impact more usable for leaders.

Insight needs to be quickly understood. 

If it isn’t, it won’t be used. “If decision makers… don’t read it or don’t understand it, then what’s the point?” 

Clear articulation about what is known – and what is not.

“Being really transparent about your organisation’s constraints and limitations… is part of the impact story.” 

Embed impact in how decisions are made. 

Impact is most useful when it is embedded in how teams think and operate – informing ongoing decisions, rather than sitting alongside them as a separate process. 

“How can impact evaluation be integrated seamlessly into your operations?” 

From reporting to prioritisation

For leaders, the question is not whether impact can be measured perfectly. It is whether there is enough insight to support sound decisions.  In practice, this means using impact to: 

• prioritise investment
• identify gaps in capability
• understand where demand exceeds available resources
• make the case for sustained or increased funding.

This is where impact becomes most valuable – when it informs what should happen next. The impact challenge in emergency management is not just technical. Many agencies already have strong evaluation practices in place. The greater opportunity lies in how impact is embedded – how it becomes part of everyday thinking about priorities, trade-offs and strategy, rather than something considered after the fact. 

As Rosie Tran’s work highlights, the value of impact evaluation is not only in what it produces, but in how it is integrated – how it becomes part of everyday conversations, not a separate exercise. In that context, impact is not a discrete input into decision-making. It is part of how decisions are made. 

Rosie Tran works in impact evaluation across the social enterprise and not-for-profit sector, and is currently completing a fellowship in impact evaluation with the University of Melbourne.