**5. Conclusions**

Effective emergency preparedness planning is characterised, among other things, by the fact that its process steps can be carried out with foresight and the defined measures can be effectively put into practice in emergency situations. The five process steps of risk and crisis managemen<sup>t</sup> have to be systematically taken into account.

The status of emergency preparedness planning in Germany was determined using a composite indicator. The data basis of the indicator system is formed by the case study of a water supply company and a survey of the NoWa I research project, which is representative for Germany. The results indicate a need for action in the different processes of emergency preparedness planning, because the process steps (1–5), especially risk analysis (2) are carried out rarely or insufficiently. However in the area of preliminary planning (1), numerous water supply companies and municipalities are already well positioned, and several preventive measures (3) are also being implemented. The regular evaluation (5) of these measures could be improved.

A need for action is especially identified in the development of practicable tools for implementation of an integrated risk and crisis managemen<sup>t</sup> process in order to intensify the exchange of the relevant actors. Furthermore training in the area of risk and crisis managemen<sup>t</sup> with the emphasis on extraordinary or extreme events should be conducted by water utilities and local authorities.

**Author Contributions:** Conceptualization: L.B., S.K., and I.W.; methodology: L.B. validation: S.K. and I.W.; formal analysis: S.K. and I.W.; investigation: L.B., I.W., and S.K.; resources: S.K. and I.W.; data curation: L.B.; writing—original draft preparation: L.B.; writing—review and editing: L.B., S.K., I.W.; visualization: L.B.; supervision: S.K. and I.W.; project administration: S.K. and I.W.; funding acquisition: S.K. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This research received no external funding.

**Acknowledgments:** The authors would like to thank all those involved in the survey for their commitment and support. Furthermore, the authors would like to thank Salomé Parra and Christian Platschek, who laid the foundation for further work through their preliminary work within the framework of the NoWa I project, as well as Renate Solmsdorf, Sybille Rupertseder and Karolina Eggersdorfer, who helped to digitise the data sets. This study was supported by the Research Center RISK and the Bundeswehr University Munich.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.
