Homeland security planning will address each of the four mission areas identified in the National Strategy for Homeland Security: to prevent, protect against, respond to, and recover from terrorist attacks or natural disasters.61 In addition, planners must also consider the range of transnational threats not typically considered within the scope of these four mission areas, yet are no less imperative to our homeland security. (1) Prevention. Prevention comprises actions taken and measures put in place to reduce risk of threats and vulnerabilities, to intervene and stop an occurrence, or to mitigate effects of a potential incident, be it naturally occurring or man-made.63 (2) Prevention planning will identify actions that minimize the possibility of a natural or man-made disaster adversely affecting the safety, security, or continuity of the Nation, its critical infrastructures, its inhabitants, and their civil rights and liberties. (3) Prevention planning for terrorist attacks will focus on reducing the likelihood or consequence of threatened or actual terrorist attacks.64 These planning efforts will be aligned with the broader efforts of the National Implementation Plan for the War on Terror to disrupt and prevent terrorist attacks on the homeland, deny terrorist and terrorist weapons entry to the United States and disrupt terrorist ability to operate within the borders of the United States. Prevention planning must ensure the complete exploitation of classified and unclassified information to increase the likelihood of successfully thwarting terrorists plans.65 (4) Many aspects of prevention planning are sensitive and must be produced in and controlled in a classified or law enforcement sensitive environment. (5) Protection. Protection is the ability to protect critical infrastructure and key resources (CI/KR) and is vital to the national security, public health and safety, economic vitality, and way of life of the United States. It preserves life and property during a natural disaster or terrorist attacks. Protection safeguards citizens and their freedoms, critical infrastructure, property and the economy from acts of terrorism, natural disasters, or other emergencies.66 (6) Protection includes actions to mitigate the overall risk to CI/KR assets, systems, networks, functions, or their interconnecting links resulting from exposure, injury, destruction, incapacitation, or exploitation.67 It involves actions or measures taken to cover or shield from exposure, injury, or destruction. Protective actions may occur before, during, or after an incident and are designed to prevent, minimize, or contain the impact of an incident.68 (7) Protection planning will address structures and processes that are adaptable to incorporate lessons learned and best practices and adjust quickly within the time constraints of a fast-moving crisis or threat environment. This planning should manage risk and address known and potential threats and hazards.69 (8) Response. Response embodies the actions taken in the immediate aftermath of an incident to save lives, meet basic human needs, reduce the loss of property, and impact to the environment. Following an incident, either naturally occurring or man-made, response operations are essential to reduce the immediate psychological, social, and economical effects of an incident.70 Response planning will provide rapid and disciplined incident assessment to ensure response is quickly scalable, adaptable, and flexible.71 It will incorporate the national response doctrine as presented in the National Response Framework, which defines basic roles and responsibilities for incident response across all levels of government and the private sector.72 (9) Recovery. Recovery encompasses both short-term and long-term efforts for the rebuilding and revitalization of affected communities. Response and recovery operations are closely related. Recovery planning must provide for a near-seamless transition from response activities to short-term recovery operations - including restoration of interrupted utility services, reestablishment of transportation routes, and the provision of food and shelter to displaced persons.73 (10) Recovery planning must ensure a successful transition from short-term recovery to the long-term recovery, including rebuilding and revitalization. These long term recovery efforts differ from short-term recovery efforts by scope, complexity of efforts required, and the effect on the social fabric of the community. These efforts can take several months to several years to complete, depending on the extent of the catastrophic incident and how extensively CI/KR assets require redevelopment and reconstruction.74 (11) Long-term recovery plans must be designed to maximize results through the efficient use of finite resources. These plans must coalesce both public and private partnerships and integrate collective recovery efforts.75 (12) Transnational Threats. A significant and enduring threat to U.S. homeland security emanates from a wide range of transnational problems originating both from within our hemisphere and from the larger global commons. Transnational threats76 include those homeland security challenges not usually associated with terrorism, critical infrastructure protection, or catastrophic incident response, but focused instead on illicit activities (for example, drug trafficking, piracy, illegal immigration, trafficking in persons, and organized crime), impersonal forces (infectious diseases such as pandemic influenza and SARS, natural resource shortages, and environmental disasters), and humanitarian disasters (within our hemisphere and as a precursor to potential mass migration directed at the U.S. homeland). Transnational threats require both contingency and longer-term planning in crafting these homeland security plans; planners consider the integrity of our borders, national institutions and governmental systems and integrate planning across the air, maritime, land, and cyber domains. (FEMA, (Interim) Integrated Planning System (IPS) for Homeland Security (Draft Version 2.3), July 3, 2008 copy, pp. 2-6 through 2-8)