FEMA has formed a working group to examine policies and practices for disaster recovery. The effort is welcome and long overdue. As a part of the input to the working group, there is an invitation to the public at large to comment by providing answers to a series of questions. (I have noted in the past that current FEMA leadership seems to be committed to listening. This is another welcome indication.) Thoughtful answers to FEMA’s recovery questions from across America will be helpful in shaping good recovery policies and programs.
A fundamental question is how to define a successful disaster recovery. CARRI believes that successful disaster recovery begins well before a disaster occurs with a deliberate and well thought out plan to achieve community recovery. Successful disaster recovery addresses all domains of community life – economic, social, ecological and physical systems – meeting the needs of the full fabric of the community in a sustainable and inclusive manner. While speed of recovery is important, thoughtful consideration to reduce vulnerabilities for future events is also required. Successful recovery includes adaptation where weaknesses can be identified and corrected as part of the recovery process in order to make the community more resilient to future incidents. Over time, successful disaster recovery should increase community functionality above pre-disaster levels so that recovery after the next disaster is less costly and more rapid. The ideal process for community recovery facilitates and is in harmony with long-term community goals.
We believe that there are three primary characteristics that influence the speed and quality of successful recoveries. First, resilient communities have deliberate plans for recovery in the same way that they have deliberate disaster response and emergency management plans. They plan in detail how the community will achieve a rapid return to normal. Second, successful disaster recoveries involve the full fabric of the community in every phase of their approach to recovery: planning, preparedness, response, and short- and long-term recovery. Third, successful recoveries involve broad-based use of formal and informal (official and unofficial) communication networks to facilitate recovery processes and involvement. These networks are identified and rehearsed before the disaster and thereby extend the reach and impact of formal, official communications. They also include all parts and domains of the community. The informal, unofficial networks are incorporated into official, long-term recovery communication networks.
These systematic examinations by FEMA of federal policies and programs that will ultimately influence community resilience are very welcome. We should support them fully and thoughtfully.
Monday, November 30, 2009
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
A Few Stray Items
Just a couple of items of interest for today:
The DHS Summer Employment Program application period ends next week. Each summer the department offers summer employment in the form of paid internships to full-time or part-time college and university students. This is an outstanding opportunity for qualified students to gain on-the-job experience in a number of areas all of which are posted on the website at www.dhs.gov/xabout/careers. CARRI has hosted DHS interns for the past two summers and has found them to be bright, helpful, knowledgeable and a true benefit to our work. In fact, one of them chastised me this morning by e-mail for not having crafted a good CARRI vision statement. The application period ends November 27th so if you have a candidate, get them to the DHS web site as quickly as possible.
FEMA began a 30-day comment period on the National Flood Insurance Program on November 5, 2009. From several indications it is clear that FEMA is truly trying to listen. There have been a series of public “listening sessions” and FEMA continues to solicit comments via the web. These sessions which were by invitation included a wide spectrum of groups including but not limited to environmental and historic preservation groups, fair housing groups, and representatives from the lending, insurance, emergency management, real estate, land use, planning and engineering industries. To learn more about the NFIP and to provide input go to, www.fema.gov/business/nfip. It is your opportunity to comment and be included in the discussion.
The DHS Summer Employment Program application period ends next week. Each summer the department offers summer employment in the form of paid internships to full-time or part-time college and university students. This is an outstanding opportunity for qualified students to gain on-the-job experience in a number of areas all of which are posted on the website at www.dhs.gov/xabout/careers. CARRI has hosted DHS interns for the past two summers and has found them to be bright, helpful, knowledgeable and a true benefit to our work. In fact, one of them chastised me this morning by e-mail for not having crafted a good CARRI vision statement. The application period ends November 27th so if you have a candidate, get them to the DHS web site as quickly as possible.
FEMA began a 30-day comment period on the National Flood Insurance Program on November 5, 2009. From several indications it is clear that FEMA is truly trying to listen. There have been a series of public “listening sessions” and FEMA continues to solicit comments via the web. These sessions which were by invitation included a wide spectrum of groups including but not limited to environmental and historic preservation groups, fair housing groups, and representatives from the lending, insurance, emergency management, real estate, land use, planning and engineering industries. To learn more about the NFIP and to provide input go to, www.fema.gov/business/nfip. It is your opportunity to comment and be included in the discussion.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
National Resilience – Who is leading?
I spent most of last week in DC. Some of my time was consumed in trying to determine how the concept of resilience is progressing at the national level. There are lots of indicators that meaningful conversations are occurring and that resilience is taking root as a more comprehensive way to organize the nation’s thoughts on natural and man-made disasters. For instance, the National Security Council has an office of National Resilience Policy. Significant thought on national resilience seems to have gone into the Quadrennial Homeland Security Review and it may emerge as one of the goals of the Department of Homeland Security. Virtually every federal department and many federal agencies have included the word resilience in their solicitations for studies or in their seminars, industry events, workshops and conferences.
While all of this is positive, I sense a void – a wide disparity in what is meant by resilience. We lack a thought leader or perhaps a number of thought leaders for national resilience. CARRI has spent the last two years working hard to figure out what resilience means in America’s communities and we think we have made significant progress. But if resilient communities can help build a resilient nation, someone needs to begin to organize resilience thought from a national perspective. And while studies in this area will be extremely helpful, we can’t wait a couple of years to determine a pathway.
CARRI will continue to do what we have been doing – trying to sort through the extremely complex issues of resilience in the nation’s communities. We are ready to help at the national level by convening and mobilizing the community effort and working to link it to national thought and national policy. It is interesting that foreign policy can claim a number of thought leaders in academia and in think tanks but domestic policy has very few and resilience has, as yet, no champion. CARRI is looking for partners at the national level.
While all of this is positive, I sense a void – a wide disparity in what is meant by resilience. We lack a thought leader or perhaps a number of thought leaders for national resilience. CARRI has spent the last two years working hard to figure out what resilience means in America’s communities and we think we have made significant progress. But if resilient communities can help build a resilient nation, someone needs to begin to organize resilience thought from a national perspective. And while studies in this area will be extremely helpful, we can’t wait a couple of years to determine a pathway.
CARRI will continue to do what we have been doing – trying to sort through the extremely complex issues of resilience in the nation’s communities. We are ready to help at the national level by convening and mobilizing the community effort and working to link it to national thought and national policy. It is interesting that foreign policy can claim a number of thought leaders in academia and in think tanks but domestic policy has very few and resilience has, as yet, no champion. CARRI is looking for partners at the national level.
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Community Resilience - An Old Dilemma: Resilience vs. Sustainability
The CARRI colleagues have broached the subject of resilience and its relationship to sustainability several times in the past without achieving any significant consensus. The subject surfaced again a few weeks ago and generated a several day exchange over e-mail. The spark for this exchange was an article in the Charleston, South Carolina Post and Courier reporting that the city of Charleston had just hired a Director of Sustainability, the only new position hired by the city this year.
A lively exchange ensued and on reviewing it, I think it is worthwhile to open the subject in this blog. One of the first thoughts on the relationship between the two terms came from Ann Olsen in Nashville. Ann wrote:
“My own thinking is that how the two connect depends on the breadth of the sustainability vision. When sustainability is conceived very broadly, then it seems to me that resilience may be (a) component of sustainability and enhancements to resilience support sustainability. In essence, resilience is all about sustainability through/beyond disaster. If we drew a Venn diagram, the circle of resilience would fall within the circle of sustainability. In reality, though, most folks looking at sustainability are not much thinking about how to sustain through/beyond disaster, and how to develop this capability, so this leaves resilience an undervalued aspect of the broader concept of sustainability. When the focus is more narrow, e.g., primarily environmental, then perhaps the two simply overlap.”
I believe that this subject of resilience and its relationship to sustainability (or vice versa) is one worthy of discussion. Let me know what you think and if the CARRI colleagues don’t jump in with their comments, I’ll post a few more of the e-mail exchanges later.
A lively exchange ensued and on reviewing it, I think it is worthwhile to open the subject in this blog. One of the first thoughts on the relationship between the two terms came from Ann Olsen in Nashville. Ann wrote:
“My own thinking is that how the two connect depends on the breadth of the sustainability vision. When sustainability is conceived very broadly, then it seems to me that resilience may be (a) component of sustainability and enhancements to resilience support sustainability. In essence, resilience is all about sustainability through/beyond disaster. If we drew a Venn diagram, the circle of resilience would fall within the circle of sustainability. In reality, though, most folks looking at sustainability are not much thinking about how to sustain through/beyond disaster, and how to develop this capability, so this leaves resilience an undervalued aspect of the broader concept of sustainability. When the focus is more narrow, e.g., primarily environmental, then perhaps the two simply overlap.”
I believe that this subject of resilience and its relationship to sustainability (or vice versa) is one worthy of discussion. Let me know what you think and if the CARRI colleagues don’t jump in with their comments, I’ll post a few more of the e-mail exchanges later.
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