Crisis Management in Hindsight 189

Th is article argues that cognition is central to perfor-mance in emergency management. Cognition is defi ned as the capacity to recognize the degree of emerging risk to which a community is exposed and to act on that infor-mation. Using the case of Hurricane Katrina to illustrate the collapse of the standard model of emergency manage-ment without a clear focus on the role of cognition, the author reframes the concept of intergovernmental crisis management as a complex, adaptive system. Th at is, the system needs to adjust and adapt its performance to fi t the demands of an ever-changing physical, engineered, and social environment. Th e terms of cognition, communica-tion, coordination, and control are redefi ned in ways that fi t the reality of practice in extreme events. A reframed intergovernmental crisis management system may b