Oh how exciting! Right up my alley - sort of... (the emergency part anyway).

She should look up NIMS (National Incident Management System). This should help her with understanding how the different levels of government respond in an emergency.

What subject is your daughter doing?

Keep me posted!

My suggestion would be to go with a disaster that is potentially small, but gets out of control. For example, a forest fire in California. Then she could talk about escalation in governmental response - as the situation gets worse and worse.

Also, the issues involved with timing. When is the right time to implement "local plan X" etc etc.

One point to make is that the United States federal structure is rather complicated. Internationally, emergency plans are generally simplified because when they are implemented, a lot of people have never seen them before. The federal structure makes it difficult to come up with a simple plan.

Or more money has to be invested educating first responders before a disaster hits.

I have a million ideas now.