About
The work of Emergent Risk Management begins where existing systems falter.
We were founded in the ashes of the 2023 Canadian wildfire season, which shattered the consensus of what was possible. More people and planes were no longer an effective solution. Emergency professionals needed to develop entirely new categories of tools.
Emergent Risk Management is not a typical firm.
It is a vehicle for our founder and a network of trusted collaborators to tackle big-picture systemic issues. Who is in the room changes with the problem.
We bring experience at the highest levels of emergency response, locally, provincially, and nationally. Fundamental emergency management systems were built for a world that is now shifting under our feet. We've witnessed firsthand which adapt, which bend, and which break.
“It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so."
Meeting new challenges means rekindling curiosity: exploring difficult questions, and remaining open to solutions from surprising sources. Chess grandmasters. Cultural knowledge keepers. Medical researchers. Superforecasters.
Emergent Risk Management builds new collaborations to solve wicked problems on the ground. We are not an academic lab.
Our mission is not what can we know, but what must we do.
Our Principal
Jonathan Reimer
FounderAn incident commander with enough experience to know how much more there is to learn.
As Director of the WUI Branch on the 2016 Fort McMurray fire, Canada's costliest disaster and largest wildfire evacuation, Jonathan led the multi-agency response in and around the community. He navigated the seams and occasional ruptures between wildfire management, structural fire services, and emergency management agencies that occur during a large-scale disaster.
He has since led response on hundreds of emergency incidents across the country, including as a Director of BC's Provincial Emergency Coordination Centre, a member of Parks Canada's National Incident Management Team, and Director of the Emergency Operations Centre for the Capital Regional District.
He holds a Master of Science in Environment and Management, a certificate in Leadership Development, and is a Certified Wildland Fire Manager with the Association for Fire Ecology.
He has been featured by CBC and TEDx, presented to communities and conferences across Canada and the United States, and been Principal Investigator for applied research in leading academic journals.
