•A new method is proposed to identify critical success factors in emergency management.•The evaluations of influencing factors are given by decision makers using 2-dimention uncertain linguistic variables.•The cause-effect classification of factors are found out based on an improved DEMATEL technique.•An example is presented to illustrate the practicality and usability of the developed method. Due to the variety and destructiveness of unconventional emergencies, it is of great necessity to analyze and optimize emergency management systematically. The performance of emergency management is often influenced by a lot of factors, and it is not realistic to improve all influential factors simultaneously due to limited resources. To address this concern, a new combined method based on 2-dimension uncertain linguistic variables (2DULVs) and decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) is proposed in this paper to determine critical success factors (CSFs) in emergency management. Specifically, the evaluations of influential factors given by decision makers are represented and processed by using 2DULVs. Based on the DEMATEL technique, the cause-effect classification of factors are obtained and the CSFs in emergency management can be found out. Finally, a case study is provided to illustrate the practicality and usefulness of the proposed 2-dimension uncertain linguistic DEMATEL (2DUL-DEMATEL) method. The results show that by enhancing the performance of five CSFs, the effectiveness and efficiency of emergency management could be promoted greatly.