Relationship to Other Mission Areas

The National Planning System is an essential part of the National Preparedness System, which guides, organizes, and unifies the Nation’s homeland security efforts to support the achievement of the National Preparedness Goal.
Many Prevention coordinating structures and organizations contribute directly to activities and inform efforts within the other mission areas. The Prevention mission area is focused exclusively on terrorist threats. The other four mission areas—Protection, Mitigation, Response, and Recovery—are “all-hazards.” In addition to the terrorist threats identified above, the SNRA identifies a range of hazards (e.g., natural disasters, pandemics, technological accidents, and malicious cyber activities) that pose a risk to the safety and security of the Nation. These hazards, and the core capabilities required to address them, are addressed in the other four preparedness mission areas, as appropriate.
Recognizing that Prevention efforts may interact with other efforts, especially those of Protection and Response, the core capabilities19 and coordinating structures of this Framework should be integrated with those of the other national planning frameworks. This integration will require the establishment of joint priorities.
Protection Mission Area
Prevention and Protection are closely aligned. The Prevention mission area focuses on those intelligence, law enforcement, and homeland security activities that prevent an adversary from carrying out a terrorist attack within the United States. Protection activities include a focus on decreasing the likelihood of an attack within the homeland. Protection and Prevention share a number of common elements and rely on many of the same core capabilities. Many Protection and Prevention processes described in these frameworks are designed to operate simultaneously and to complement each other.
Mitigation Mission Area
The law enforcement, intelligence, and homeland security communities play a significant role in the Mitigation mission area. Outreach and community involvement help to establish and maintain strong partnerships to increase awareness of potential threats. Intelligence-focused relationships among local, state, tribal, territorial, and Federal law enforcement; intelligence and homeland security entities; and with the public and private sector, academia, and other community organizations and NGOs facilitate information sharing. In turn, this creates more opportunities to thwart acts of terrorism and to lessen the effects of large-scale, manmade catastrophes should they occur. Through these dialogues, communities may better deter and detect specific threats and mitigate vulnerabilities. They may also develop new ways of reducing risks and reporting successful practices. Finally, through integrated and risk-informed planning efforts, law enforcement and homeland security partners can help improve the whole community’s ability to avoid future loss of life and property.

Response and Recovery Mission Areas
In the post-attack environment, terrorism prevention activities continue in order to prevent potential follow-on attacks. These activities require the coordination of efforts with Response and Recovery, likely to occur in a JOC in conjunction with the Joint Field Office. Similarly, Prevention- and Response-related authorities must be in communication during times of an imminent threat so that Response assets, to the extent practical and appropriate, may be pre-positioned. Prevention may involve processing the scene of a terror attack for evidence while Response will likely be working at the same time in the same space to save lives and minimize loss. Actions to be taken involve prioritizing activities across the Prevention and Response mission areas. Furthermore, Prevention assets may provide Response and Recovery personnel data concerning contamination in the impacted area, which will assist Response and Recovery activities.