Evaluation and Obstacle Analysis of Emergency Response Capability in China

Emergency response capability evaluation is an essential means to strengthen emergency response capacity-building and improve the level of government administration. Based on the whole life cycle of emergency management, the emergency capability evaluation index system is constructed from four aspects: prevention and emergency preparedness, monitoring and early warning, emergency response and rescue, and recovery and reconstruction. Firstly, the entropy method is applied to measure the emergency response capability level of 31 Chinese provinces from 2011 to 2020. Second, the Theil index and ESDA (Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis) are applied in exploring the regional differences and spatial-temporal distribution characteristics of China’s emergency response capacity. Finally, the obstacle degree model is used to explore the obstacle factors and obstacle degrees that affect the emergency response capability. The results show that: (1) The average value of China’s emergency response capacity is 0.277, with a steady growth trend and a gradient distribution of “high in the east, low in the west, and average in center and northeast” in the four major regions. (2) From the perspective of spatial distribution characteristics, the unbalanced regional development leads to the obvious aggregation effect of “high-efficiency aggregation and low-efficiency aggregation”, and the interaction of the “centripetal effect” and “centrifugal effect” finally forms the spatial clustering result of emergency response capability level in China. (3) Examining the source of regional differences, inter-regional differences are the decisive factor affecting the overall differences in emergency response capability, and the inter-regional differences show a reciprocating fluctuation of narrowing–widening–narrowing from 2011 to 2020. (4) Main obstacles restricting the improvement of China’s emergency response capabilities are “the business volume of postal and telecommunication services per capita”, “the daily disposal capacity of city sewage” and “the general public budget revenue by region”. The extent of the obstacles’ impacts in 2020 are 12.19%, 7.48%, and 7.08%, respectively. Based on the evaluation results, the following countermeasures are proposed: to realize the balance of each stage of emergency management during the holistic process; to strengthen emergency coordination and balanced regional development; and to implement precise measures to make up for the shortcomings of emergency response capabilities.