The United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction [ISDR] defines Emergency Management as: the organization and management of resources and responsibilities for dealing with all aspects of emergencies, in particular preparedness, response and rehabilitation. It involves plans, structures and arrangements that are established to engage government, voluntary and private agencies in a comprehensive and coordinated way in order to respond to the whole spectrum of emergency needs.

ISDR also defines a hazard as: a potentially damaging physical event, phenomenon or human activity that may cause loss of human life or injury, property damage, social or economic disruption or environmental degradation

Emergency management encompasses the complex interdisciplinary process of dealing with the mechanisms necessary to ensure resilience. This is done to effectively protect an organization or country's population, key personnel or critical assets from the risks and hazards that can cause crises and disasters.

The overlapping elements of emergency management deal with the identification and evaluation of risks, hazards and vulnerabilities, the adoption of prevention or mitigation strategies designed to prevent hazards from developing into disasters or to minimise their overall impact, the continuous preparedness cycle of planning, organizing, equipping, training, exercising and reviewing the overall capability prior to an event, the response and overall control of the necessary emergency personnel and resources required to respond to an emergency, the recovery operations designed to deal with the needs of a population or organization in the aftermath of any catastrophe and in returning the community as closely as possible to the state it was in prior to the event.