Disasters from all-hazards will continue to affect our homeland and challenge DHS across a range of missions and frontline operations, exacerbating known and unknown risks to public safety and national security. Physical impacts of natural hazards and environmental degradation will increasingly intersect with human impacts of population growth, economic development, and technological innovation.
The Department will be affected in the short- and long-term with rising disaster costs and losses, worsening risks of environmental degradation, critical infrastructure and supply chain disruptions, civil unrest, and social instability. Adversarial threats from terrorism and extremism will continue to emerge as malign actors seek to exploit these risks for advantage and tensions mount with particular effects on the most vulnerable.
2024 DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis Homeland Threat Assessment
- "...natural disasters pose acute and systemic threats to the United States, often converging with more traditional national security threats."
- "Wildfires, drought, heavy precipitation and other extreme weather events increase risks to our supply chains and have the potential to impact the availability of goods and services, generating cascading economic effects.”
- "Natural disasters or extreme weather in vulnerable nations across the world, but particularly in Latin American and Caribbean states… will drive continued migration to the United States. These events have the potential to stretch U.S. and law enforcement resources, particularly along our southern border."
- "Both Russia and China have signaled their intent to exploit expanding access to Arctic regions and resources, raising the risk that the Arctic could grow increasingly militarized."