Unrealistic Expectations

The following is offered by Dr. John Plodinec, Associate Director for Community Resilience Certification at CARRI and Science Advisor, Savannah River National Laboratory.

In the previous posting, I pointed out that the new reality of constrained resources created by the Great Recession makes the need for a community resilience framework more pressing than ever before. In this post, I’ll discuss another major reason a community resilience framework is needed now: the unrealistic expectations that have resulted from recent disasters.

In the aftermath of 9/11, and especially after Hurricane Katrina, a large portion of the populace seems to believe that the federal government should and can be the “White Knight” that charges in after a disaster and returns the community to normalcy. This belief has been reinforced by recent federal bailouts to financial institutions and automakers, and mirrors some of the rhetoric surrounding the health care debate.

Many current plans for emergency response and recovery reflect other facets of the same problem. For example, too many plans expect that the community’s behavior will conform to directives from the community’s leaders. And yet opinion polls in several locales have shown that large portions of the populace in hurricane-prone areas say they won’t leave no matter what they are told.

Further, plans made before the Great Recession most likely reflect the resources available when they were drawn up, not what the community actually has available to it now or in the near future. As I discussed in my last post, financial resources are likely to be limited for several years. But money isn’t the only constrained resource; the human capital needed for recovery is facing a major turnover. Even before the Great Recession, both the public and private sectors were concerned about how they were going to replace the experience of the Baby Boomers when they retired (in fact, almost 60% of the public sector workforce is likely to retire in the next ten years, while “only” 40% of the private workforce will). As an example, in Charleston, SC, we are now seeing the retirement of the generation who helped Charleston recover so rapidly after Hurricane Hugo. While there are highly capable replacements, in many cases they have not had to cope with the unexpected in real time, under extreme duress and stress. Thus, plans that assume a cadre of experienced leaders may need to be rethought.

Thus, our communities must build a new set of expectations – and a new basis for planning – that reflect the new realities of the Great Recession and the passing of the baton from the Baby Boomers to a new generation of leaders. A community resilience framework can help to accomplish this in several ways:

• It can help a community’s leaders to identify all of the resources actually available, and thus adjust their expectations. The new reality means that communities will have to mobilize much more of the resources available in their own communities – public, non-governmental, and private.
• It can help a community’s leaders communicate their expectations to the public, and to learn what their public’s expectations are. In some cases, this will lead to significant changes in plans. In others, this use of a community framework will mean that individual citizens will see the need to take more responsibility to limit losses.
• As a corollary, the use of a community resilience framework can increase the likelihood that a community’s plans will be more consistent with those of its citizens and businesses, enabling a more efficient and rapid recovery.
• A framework can help new leaders see the entire breadth of their communities, how their communities are structured, and find their place in communication networks.

Thus, our communities need a framework for community resilience. As they face the new reality created by the Great Recession and the retirement of the Baby Boomers, they need it now.

Impacts of the Great Recession on Communities

The following is offered by Dr. John Plodinec, Associate Director for Community Resilience Certification at CARRI and Science Advisor, Savannah River National Laboratory.

In previous postings, I’ve tried to present trends that pointed to the need for a community resilience framework. These trends (growing complexity of communities, the new spectrum of hazards facing communities, and the accelerating rate of change) by themselves make the case for the need for a community resilience framework. In this posting and the next, I’ll examine reasons why we need such a framework NOW – first the impacts of the Great Recession, and then the unrealistic expectations of so many of our citizens.

The Great Recession of the last two+ years has created a new reality for communities. The resources that communities, states, and the federal government have available for disaster recovery may not be there for the next disaster. Across the country, tax revenues are falling. At least 35 states expect to have budget shortfalls this year; last year, 49 out of the 50 actually did. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, that translated to almost 300,000 less workers in government in December, 2009, than a year before – and at least 17 states already have announced they will reduce staff again this year. This year, the National Debt is expected to approach 90% of our national GDP. We just don’t have the money - or the human resources - to repeat the recovery from Katrina (cost $230B and counting), at least not the way we’ve done it before.

And it does not look like the economic picture will significantly improve any time soon. Only the most glowing – and unrealistic – projections of our economy lead to reductions of more than a percent a year in unemployment over the next decade. These rosy assumptions fly in the face of the projections of many economists that we will see another economic dip within the next two years.

Overlaid on this economic bad news (no wonder economics is known as the Dismal Science!) is a ticking time bomb: the retirement of the Baby Boomers. Projections made five years ago were that the Medicare and Medicaid expenses alone would be at least 10 times the national debt (currently $12.3 T). But some nice work done by our colleague Dr. Andy Felts of the College of Charleston suggests that the costs may be even higher. Using data from Charleston County, SC, Andy showed that the per capita cost of providing county services to seniors (those 65 or greater) was rising almost twice as fast as for everyone else. These cost increases are expected to accelerate as the Baby Boomers become so-called “Super Seniors” (75 or older). We’re hearing similar projections across the country.

Thus, national economic recovery will be protracted, with no guarantee of complete success. Resources for recovery are likely to be constrained and harder to obtain. This puts a real premium on community efficiency: more precisely identifying the resources a community will need to recover from future disasters – before disaster strikes – so that the community can rapidly secure them after a disaster.

A community resilience framework can help improve community efficiency in several ways:

• Communities can more accurately predict what will be lost, i.e., what internal resources might not be available, and – of equal importance – what resources ought to be available within the community that can be utilized. For example, separating debris by disposal categories (e.g., separating “green” waste – downed trees, for example – from white wares can lead to big savings to communities in disposal costs. However, it is very expensive to do if all of the waste is aggregated. If the community prepares its citizens to carry out this task after the disaster it can save both segregation and disposal costs.
• Communities can identify sources of funding for recovery, and the requirements associated with them. Too many communities have built their plans on the expectation of federal funds only to find that they had to repay the federal government because they hadn’t complied with a particular agency’s rules. As you are reading this, meetings between FEMA and communities in Mississippi and Alabama are being held to decide how much of the Stafford Act funding moved so expeditiously after Katrina must now be paid back because of poor accounting or documentation practices.
• Communities can prioritize the sources of funds they pursue.
• Communities can assess how well they can use the resources, and streamline their systems to remove bottlenecks.

Thus, the Great Recession has created a new reality of constrained resources that communities must face. A community resilience framework can help communities survive and thrive even in this new era of constrained resources.

The Accelerating Rate of Change

The following is offered by Dr. John Plodinec, Associate Director for Community Resilience Certification at CARRI and Science Advisor, Savannah River National Laboratory.


In my previous post on the need for a national framework for community resilience, I focused on the new spectrum of hazards facing American communities. In this post, I’d like to look at another reason why a national framework is needed – the accelerating rate of change.

As I’ve noted earlier, in early American communities the pace of change was relatively slow – communities usually could adapt to emerging trends and new hazards at their own pace. A person in his prime in 1700 would not be all that uncomfortable in the America of 1800 (unless, of course, he was a violent royalist!). A city dweller in her prime in 1800 might be overwhelmed with all of the new technologies (street lights, streetcars, horseless carriages!) in the world of 1900, but her country cousin would still be able to recognize her world of 1800 in that of 1900. In today’s techno centric world, the accelerating rate of technological change means that those in their prime in 1900 would face a completely unfamiliar – and perhaps terrifying - world.

As noted in an excellent report by Susi Moser and Shanna Ratner (“Community Resilience and Wealth….”), available at the US Endowment for Forestry and Communities, http://www.usendowment.org/communityresilience.html, rural communities are now faced with the need to adapt, or re-invent, themselves every fifteen years. Why is that?

As technologies change, the businesses in a community are faced with a decision of whether to adopt new, or adapt existing technologies to meet their markets’ evolving needs. If they choose to adopt, they face the certainty of increased capital costs and the uncertainty of the value of the new technology. If they choose not to adopt new technologies, they run the risk of imitating the US steel industry after World War II, which was nearly destroyed by a Japan that eagerly embraced new technology.

Businesses making bad choices can start the clock ticking on a time bomb laid at the foundations of a community. We have only to look at how communities in Michigan, Ohio and Indiana are struggling to reinvent themselves in light of the poor choices made by the carmakers. Or how rural communities in the Southeast are struggling to survive in light of the new challenges facing them.

Communities dependent on furniture manufacturing provide an ideal example. Ten years ago, Mississippi produced more wooden furniture than anywhere else in the nation. However, the American furniture industry was very slow to adopt new technologies, for example robots to automate production. Conversely, their competitors in China aggressively pursued these new technologies, and now have captured much of the American market. As a result, many communities in northern Mississippi and Alabama are facing tremendous challenges because of an eroded tax base and a workforce mostly looking for work.

A resilience framework can help a community to successfully adapt to change. First, it should help a community identify its vulnerabilities, whether that is dependence on a single company or industry, or a poorly maintained bridge, or lack of a flexible workforce. The framework should then help the community look at the resources it has and identify actions it can take to reduce those vulnerabilities. A wise community will use these insights to reinvent itself – and reinvest in itself. The result – more resilient communities, better able to respond to change.

Community Complexity and Need for a Framework

The following is offered by Dr. John Plodinec, Associate Director for Community Resilience Certification at CARRI and Science Advisor, Savannah River National Laboratory.

Generally, communities in early America were formed based on the perceived self-interest of their members – at convenient points for land or water transportation, or near valuable natural resources, or for mutual defense or for religious reasons. These early communities quickly became hubs of activity for the common good – for defense against hostile intruders, for trade, for education.

In the earliest days, most communities were self-sufficient – the community provided its citizens with the essentials from local farmers, artisans and craftsmen. The community had to be relatively self-sufficient; most communities were rather isolated (for example, it would take two hours to go from Harlem to central Manhattan, even by ferry) and travel farther than a few tens of miles was both difficult and expensive. These early communities were also relatively stable; their reasons for being - whether economic, defensive or religious – changed very slowly. For most communities, this meant that in times of crisis, people almost instinctively knew who they could rely on for support in times of crisis. Timely assistance could only come from their friends and neighbors - people they had known their entire lives - to recover.

With the growth of cities like Philadelphia, Charleston, Boston and New York, the nature of communities began to become more complex. Instead of looking to the entire community in a crisis, people relied on their neighborhood for support. The neighborhood was largely a place where you lived, and citizens had to look to other neighborhoods – and eventually other communities - for some of their needs. Thus, while early American communities were self-sufficient, cities – and especially neighborhoods – became less so.

At the same time, communities became more dynamic. The waves of immigrants from Europe, then Asia, and then from within the US (particularly the Great Migration of African Americans from the South after Reconstruction ended) resulted in huge changes in the ethnic makeup of even single neighborhoods – for example, Harlem, in New York, was successively primarily Dutch (the Roosevelts lived there), Irish, Jewish, Italian, and African American within the span of 100 years. Thus, individual citizens were less likely to know all of their neighbors, and certainly not for all of their lives. In times of crisis, people more and more turned for support either to other types of “communities” – for example, their church – or to some organized and recognized assistance agency, either public or private.

Further, the changing needs of individual citizens within communities led to the growth of a patchwork quilt of infrastructures intended to fill those needs. These infrastructures might be in private hands (e.g., a private electric company), owned and serviced by the public (the road system), or a combination of public and private (private physicians, public and private hospitals, augmented with other services supplied by non-governmental organizations).

If we fast forward to the first decade of the 21st century, we find that these trends have resulted in communities enmeshed in a web of interdependencies. Within the community, the various infrastructures depend on each other, and can interact in complex ways. Virtually no communities are self-sufficient – they rely on others in their region or state, and sometimes foreign countries to provide some of the essentials of existence.

And there is no one model that describes every community. While communities all perform the same functions, they are distinguished by how – and how well – they perform them. Their organizational infrastructure – the mix of public and private organizations that actually carry out a particular community function - can assume a myriad of forms, each with its own advantages and disadvantages. Thus, in times of crisis, a community needs a roadmap telling it how it is connected both within and externally, so that it can identify where resources may be available, and how best to use them.

A community resilience framework can help communities develop that roadmap. A useful framework will provide a community with a means to look at itself and understand how it functions, including how it is interconnected with other communities. It will also enable a community to better anticipate the direct and indirect impacts of a disaster. As a result, the community will be able to identify the resources likely to be available after a disaster, and how to use them with maximum effect.

Need for a framework – now!

The following is offered by Dr. John Plodinec, Associate Director for Community Resilience Certification at CARRI and Science Advisor, Savannah River National Laboratory.

Two questions that we are hearing more and more are:

1) Why does the country need a community resilience framework?
2) Why should we work on developing one now?

There are several trends that point to the need for a framework.

THE GROWING COMPLEXITY OF COMMUNITIES. American communities today are much more complex than ever before, and becoming more so. Almost all communities are enmeshed in a complex web of interdependencies, both within the community and with other communities. A framework can help citizens, community leaders and state and federal entities better understand the nature of each community. In times of disaster, this understanding is essential for obtaining resources and maximizing their impact.

THE NEW SPECTRUM OF HAZARDS FACING COMMUNITIES. American communities have always been at risk from natural hazards and pandemics. However, growing community complexity and the rise of global terrorism have brought new vulnerabilities. A framework can help communities to better understand these vulnerabilities, and to take action to limit impacts.

THE ACCELERATING RATE OF CHANGE. In prior times, communities often could adapt to emerging trends and new hazards at their own pace. In today’s techno centric world, the accelerating rate of technological change means that communities are almost continually faced with the need to adapt – or re-invent – themselves. A framework can point out the paths a community can follow to successfully adapt to change.

We believe it is essential to develop a community resilience framework NOW.

IMPACTS OF RECESSION. The global recession has severely limited the resources that communities, states, and the federal government have available to help communities recover from disasters. National economic recovery will be protracted, with no guarantee of complete success. This means that communities must identify the resources they might need to meet future disasters – now, or risk compaction or collapse.

UNREALISTIC EXPECTATIONS. In the aftermath of 9/11, and especially after Hurricane Katrina, a large portion of the populace seems to believe that the federal government should and can be the “White Knight” that charges in after a disaster and returns the community to normalcy. Quite simply, the federal government doesn’t have the resources to repeat Katrina (currently $230 B and counting). In order to fully recover from future disasters, communities and their citizens must be ready to take charge of their own recovery. They must identify all of the resources that will be available for recovery – those within the community and outside, and prepare to use them if disaster strikes.

In the next few postings, I’ll expand on each of these.

Community Resilience – What Federal Government Can Do

In a 2009 paper by the British Think Tank, Demos, titled, “Resilient Nation,” author Charlie Edwards suggests that for the UK, the role of central government in community resilience should be limited and mainly supportive of local and regional efforts. He recommends a central government role based on four “Es” – Engagement, Education, Empowerment and Encouragement. Although written for the UK, the paper has great relevance for the US and is well worth reading. The full paper can be found on the Demos web site at http://www.demos.co.uk/. These four Es may be useful in thinking about how DHS relates to other partners in the homeland security enterprise in the area of disaster preparedness and recovery.

The federal government (largely through the Department of Homeland Security, Federal Emergency Management Agency) plays two significant roles in community disaster resilience. In the first role, DHS is the leader of the federal response to incidents of national significance – the nation’s first responder at the federal level. As such, DHS acts in a top-down manner as a cabinet-level department within the federal government. In the second role, DHS is the leader of the nation’s “homeland security enterprise” and must coordinate many different types of efforts including disaster preparedness and recovery. In the past, DHS has fulfilled this role by acting as the approver of state and local plans, providing funding for preparedness planning and coordinating federal efforts to prepare for recovery.

DHS has steadily improved its ability to carry out the first role. But while the National Response Framework lays out an operational framework for response, the framework has not been fully effective in helping DHS carry out its second role – coordinating preparedness and recovery efforts across the Homeland Security Enterprise. In fact, the lessons of the past decade demonstrate inherent tensions in these two roles that produce expectations that often cannot be met within the constraints of traditional emergency management.

In our view, nationally DHS must help nurture communities in developing their inherent resilience; help train them in concepts, tools, and practices that develop, support and enhance disaster resilience; and provide incentives to communities that demonstrably increase their disaster resilience. The returns to the nation for this federal effort are communities that enhance the power of national programs by inculcating realistic expectations and by applying local power in an effective and efficient way. This approach harmonizes the two roles of DHS and allows DHS to change from being solely a federal “control” agent (which it is sometimes seen as doing ineffectively) to becoming a facilitator of rapid and effective return to normal community functions (a role that will properly and successfully leverage the federal resources and might).

A number of surveys and studies reveal that the current federal hierarchical, response-centric approach has elevated the public’s expectations of federal responsibility and capability well beyond the nation’s needs —and the Federal government’s ability to deliver – particularly in light of longer term trends such as the projected increase in climate variability. The nation would be better served to engage communities in a way that sets more realistic expectations and increases the incentives to become resilient at the local and regional level.

Community Resilience: The Third Roundtable

The Community and Regional Resilience Institute conducted its third invitational Community Resilience Roundtable in Washington on December 1. The purpose of these roundtables has been to assemble a diverse group of resilience stakeholders, let them know what CARRI is doing, obtain their feedback and solicit their advice. This year’s group, by far the most senior and diverse assemblage to date, provided excellent counsel and guidance as CARRI presented an early draft of its work, “Toward a Common Framework for Community Resilience.” CARRI intends that the common framework described in this document will be the starting point for a broader development process that includes practitioners, researchers and a wide variety of other stakeholders.

A “common framework” would provide the nation and its communities with a widely accepted, coherent, measurable way of understanding community resilience and applying that understanding to the community in a meaningful way. In this context, a “framework” is an intellectual construct that is coherent (its parts fit together) and complete (considers the entire subject). A framework for community resilience should assist the community by helping it to discover how the interdependencies within and outside the community impact its resilience in a systematic and consistent manner. The framework should also help the community identify external resources that will aid in recovery and redevelopment after a disaster and provide guidance for pre-crisis investments.

The early draft of CARRI’s “Toward a Common Framework for Community Resilience” has been through an initial review by CARRI’s national research advisor team and their recommendations as well as the outstanding comments from last week’s CARRI Roundtable are currently being incorporated. The resulting revision will be circulated to a wider audience of reviewers and then serve as the starting point for a national dialogue on community resilience.

Those wishing to participate in this second review should contact the Community and Regional Resilience Institute at info@resilientus.org.

Community Resilience: Long-Term Recovery

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.

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.

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.

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.

Social and Professional Networking: Does it affect a community’s resilience?

The following is offered by Dr. Andy Felts, CARRI Research Associate and Director of the Joseph P. Riley, Jr. Institute for Urban Affairs and Policy Studies, College of Charleston, Charleston, South Carolina.

In the previous blog, John Plodinec gives a good definition of ‘community’ that reflects CARRI’s goal of promoting resilience. A community is a group bound by geography and perceived self-interest that carry out common functions.

While this has worked to keep the CARRI Team focused on a common goal, it is worthwhile to point out that it has raised a number of questions relating back to resilience for us as well.

One important question is whether or not new forms of social (and perhaps even professional) networking have an effect on a community’s resilience. While we have long had two-way forms of networking via telecommunication, it is undeniable that an explosion has occurred in the last few years. Text-messaging, instant messaging and Internet chat rooms now create virtual communities that are not constrained by geography. Voice over Internet, accompanied by cameras, now allows visual and voice communication halfway around the world for less than it used to cost to dial an adjacent area code. As these have consumed our time (and resources), do they have a negative, positive, or no effect at all on the building of social capital that once was done through more geographically specific ways such as interacting with others in our neighborhoods, clubs, churches and the workplace? Social capital is an important concept since it refers to the social cohesion that a community needs to carry out its common functions.

What about telecommuting? There are lots of good things to be said about it, including eliminating long hours for some that would be spent alone in a car. But the workplace also was once where ‘bridging social capital’ was created; that is, interaction between socially different groups. As people telecommute, do they lose a common community vision that may have been supported by workplace, face-to-face interaction? Does this affect resilience?

Finally, another question is raised by the sociologist Ray Oldenburg with his advancing of the function a “third place” plays in community building. By that term, he referred to places other than home or work where people go to relax and feel a part of a community. A third place can be a café, bar, neighborhood basketball court, barber or beauty shop, etc. As these have become more geographically less proximate for many because of community design, is community resilience affected?

It is important to note that these are CARRI questions. As such, they demand more research that specifically links them to community resilience before more definitive answers can be given. It will be research worth undertaking.

What is a community?

The following is offered by Dr. John Plodinec, Associate Director for Community Resilience Certification at CARRI.

When we talk about community resilience, discussion usually gravitates to "What is resilience?" We all think we know what a community is, but we know we're not sure what resilience is. However, defining community may be almost as important as defining resilience. A useful definition that reflects what CARRI is all about is:

"A community is a group of individuals and organizations bound together by geography and perceived self-interest to efficiently carry out common functions needed by the group."

Defining community in this manner is worthwhile because it leads to a valuable corollary: communities collapse when the perception of self-interest withers. This goes far toward explaining why so many rural communities are under duress: their original reason for existence - often, the railroad - no longer is as important. Former members of many rural communities have come to the realization that the benefits of belonging to their rural community no longer match the investment required. And so they leave, placing additional strains on those left behind.

This definition also helps explain why some community partnerships succeed and some fail. Successful partnerships have to be founded on mutual perceived benefit. I won't partner with you if I don't expect to get back more than I invest in the partnership. Even for flourishing partnerships, the partnership is likely to founder if the cost-benefit balance changes for one of the partners.

Community Resilience: A Resilience Speech

Secretary Napolitano’s speech marking the end of a successful and highly publicized National Preparedness month hit just the right resilience note. While clearly stating that protection of the nation from terrorism remains job one, she then went on to spend most of her address talking about building a resilient nation. She recognized several volunteers who are active in their communities and mentioned numerous other examples of ways to build resilience at the community level. In all it was a very good speech, effectively and robustly delivered. The Secretary clearly indicated that she is serious about national resilience and intends to focus some of the department’s energy there.


It struck me, however, that the discussion of community resilience focused solely on the preparedness of individuals and the participation of community organizations. That, in my opinion, is not nearly enough. It takes the full fabric of the community working together to make a resilient community. That means local governments, local businesses, local associations, local organizations and individuals working in concert over a significant period of time using whatever resources they have available toward a well thought out plan. It’s a lot more than moms and dads and book clubs.


Now I know that the Secretary knows this. What I’d really like to know is that this idea of robust, full-fledged community resilience is penetrating the rest of her organization.

Community Resilience: A Successful National Preparedness Month

As we come to the end of National Preparedness Month, DHS has announced that Secretary Napolitano will deliver a major speech on national preparedness tomorrow, Tuesday, September 29 at 2pm eastern time. We at CARRI will be listening intently to hear what the Secretary says about resilience, particularly at the local level. The speech will be carried live at http://www.dhs.gov/. For those not able to watch the speech live, it will be posted at http://www.ready.gov/ and http://www.citizencorps.gov/. We heartily recommend that our followers listen to the Secretary. It may give all us a clue on where the Department is headed in the area of resilience.

Community Resilience: Informing Policy

As I may have stated earlier in this blog, one of the tensions in the Community and Regional Resilience Institute work from the very beginning has been between what I call “getting it right” and “getting it now.” By that I mean that it is critical for the nation that the solutions we adopt to increase our resilience work in practice because they are grounded in knowledge gained from research and from practical experience. That’s getting it right. But we also have to realize that the nation needs solutions now. The next hurricane or tornado or terrorist won’t wait until we get it exactly right.

I’m not sure that this tension is recognized at the national level. I don’t claim to have great insight into or knowledge of all that is going on nationally on the resilience front but from my limited view of current processes and deliberations two things seem apparent. First, there is limited interaction between those scholars and researchers who have studied the various aspects of resilience for years and the policy community that is seeking to frame policies and processes for a more resilient nation. Second, virtually every federal agency is embracing a fairly parochial view of resilience with very little understanding of what other agencies (often in the same department) are doing.

I have been told that the first observation is not surprising. It has taken 25 years for the scientific community to begin to influence and have an actual impact on policy surrounding climate change. It seems to me that we should be trying to accelerate this interaction in the current resilience discussion.

Separate acceptance of resilience as an agency goal without understanding other efforts is likely to produce multiple, overlapping, and conflicting programs that will confuse and frustrate our communities and citizens. Coordination at the federal level is absolutely required now.

Community Resilience and Personal Responsibility

In its recently released report, Personal Preparedness in America: Findings from the 2009 Citizen Corps National Survey, FEMA discovered that we as individuals are not as prepared for disaster as we should be. The report (www.citizencorps.gov/ready/2009findings.shtm) provides a detailed look into individual perceptions of disaster readiness and responsibilities as well as interesting evaluations of demographic and contextual insights. I don’t think that anyone should be very surprised by this report.

Since Hurricane Andrew (maybe Hugo), American expectations of outside assistance particularly federal assistance have grown steadily, rapidly and unrealistically. Perhaps most evident in Katrina, our citizens and our communities seem increasingly to believe that FEMA will be on site at almost any level of disaster within 48 hours and will fix the problem. This report reveals, for instance, that more than 60 percent of the respondents plan to rely on emergency responders in the first 72 hours following a disaster despite repeated warnings from governments at all levels to the contrary. As interestingly, even among those who deem themselves prepared for disaster, the survey finds that most do not have adequate family plans and lack even a basic understanding of their community’s plans.

This problem is only a failure of the federal government in that we continue to believe that we can craft national solutions to local problems. At its heart, this is an indication of community failure. Very few communities have coherent, highly coordinated, individual preparedness efforts with a common message across jurisdictions and well thought ways to transmit the message to the full fabric of their societies. I am sure that there are some. In fact I highlighted one in my posting of March 24, 2009, the “I’m Ready Campaign” in Shelby County, Tennessee. The FEMA report, however, says that our communities are not doing enough or are not doing it right.

I am a big advocate of FEMA’s Citizen Corps. The thousands of Citizen Corps councils across the nation are in exactly the right place to solve this challenge. Citizen Corps hasn’t had greater success because communities continue to rely on federal funding of the councils, an expectation which belies the very name of their mission “citizen” corps. No matter how hard we try, the nation will never provide the resources to fully support all the nation’s communities in this way -- nor should we. This is a local community problem. Federal funding of what should be local initiatives only continues to foster the belief that preparing communities to recover from disaster is a federal responsibility. Communities have an inherent responsibility to protect their citizens. They need to put the skin in the game to get individual preparedness right.

Where Does Mitigation Fit?

One of our CARRI blog followers in a comment to the August 18 blog expresses the thought that “mitigation” should be in his words, “included as a component of any Sustainable and Resilient Nation.” (See the comment to “Simultaneous or Sequential,” August 18, 2009) He goes on to give several examples of how actions to mitigate would beneficially contribute to limiting the effects of disasters.


The comments have caused me to think about how CARRI is handling the important area of mitigation to disaster. Clear actions to mitigate are important and must be part of any community's plan to reach a state approaching resilience. Much of the writing about mitigation in disaster management seems to group mitigation actions into two categories – structural (engineered interventions) and non-structural (planning, codes, restrictions, material usage). Mitigation seems, therefore, to deal primarily with the physical environment. While this is clearly critical, it is not sufficient by itself.


CARRI treats mitigation as part of the total resilience mindset – culture – ethos. As we look at our proposed emergency management continuum – prevent, protect, respond and recover – undergirded by preparation, mitigation falls in the “protect” area of the continuum. Mitigation is one of the ways we protect ourselves and our stuff from the effects of natural or man-made disasters.


Resilience, however, also recognizes two things that affect our thinking about mitigation. First, we will never be able to mitigate all effects. Something will be damaged and some things will be damaged severely despite our best efforts. We still need to bounce back from this damage. Second, resilience includes more actions than just those which address physical effects. Resilience in a community has social and economic aspects that are not typically considered when one is looking at mitigation actions. Perhaps using resilience as our basis of thought can help us to enlarge our perspective of mitigation to include more than how disasters affect the physical environment.

Resilience at the Top

The President’s weekly radio address on Saturday was dedicated to remembering the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. It is worth noting that he used the word resilience in his address and called for the nation to be more resilient. He stated, “As we rebuild and recover, we must also learn the lessons of Katrina so that our nation is more protected and resilient in the face of disaster.” The President went on to support a multi-hazards approach to national preparedness giving examples in the natural, medical and man-made disaster areas. As I have noted earlier, the concept of resilience as a national goal seems to be gaining traction at the national level. Clearly, a significant number of senior federal officials are beginning to incorporate resilience to many hazards into their strategic thinking. Getting the President firmly ensconced into a culture of national resilience has to be a top priority.

Simultaneous or Sequential?

In a series of meetings in Washington last week (hot and humid and not very many people in town other than tourists), I began to see just how much traction the concept of resilience is gaining. Perhaps as some would suggest, it is just the newest buzzword that will run its course in time. I don’t think so. Those that I spoke with both in government and in the private sector are all very serious about the idea of making a more resilient America and have invested a significant amount of their time and energy thinking about this important subject. They really want to see it succeed.

At the national level this is going to take time. If the goal is to have national resilience as a national priority, Homeland Security Presidential Directives will have to be rewritten. An interagency that focuses on resilience across the departments may have to be created. Speeches and public announcements will have to be coordinated. This is a serious and important issue and will have to be treated as such. Additionally, resilience must compete with other challenges facing the national government that seem much more urgent in the short term – H1N1, national health care policy, energy policy and climate change.

The question for us at the Community and Regional Resilience Institute is whether creating a way for communities to work toward resilience in a systematic, meaningful way must – or can afford to – wait on the national process. Can we work simultaneously and in parallel with the national effort? Of course, I think we can. We need to start this year while there is significant momentum to convene the nation-wide forum necessary to find our way to a common framework for community disaster resilience. As the national policy work matures the two processes can inform each other. Communities will provide their input to help shape national policy and national policy will provide appropriate federal guidance and strong support to the community efforts.

That’s the way it should work.