Arthur (Andy) Felts

Individual Versus Community Resilience

May 25th, 2011 - Arthur (Andy) Felts  

One of the more interesting things to me about the flooding that is occurring in our heartland is that some are going to extraordinary measures to preserve their property. Recently, a picture of a single home, sand bagged, was shown. Gas generators were pumping what water seeped in as it inevitably did. The home was a bit of an island in a sea. It depended upon gasoline (or diesel) that might not be as readily available in a matter of hours. If it had a fire, then no fire department could respond. If someone broke in, then no police department could respond.

I do not fault any homeowner for trying to protect their investment. It is only natural. However, as they say, there are three things that are important about the value of a piece of property. Location, location, and location.

When I first moved to Charleston, I purchased a home next to one that was under construction when Hurricane Hugo hit. It was a pile of wood after that and was not removed for three years. That affected the value of my home. But more importantly, it robbed me of neighbors and a sense of place so I could watch them plant flowers and have kids playing in the yard. Instead, I lived with a pile of rubble for three years. That was not good.

I want to be careful in saying this-so I will do so as straightforwardly as I can. CARRI is about community resilience. Individual resilience contributes to that. But becoming a resilient community is more than that. The saying is that ‘no person is an island.’ But that is exactly one sense I got in watching the sand bagged home surrounded by water. In the best of all possible worlds, that home would become an anchor for rebuilding a neighborhood. But more anchors might be necessary and would certainly factor in people deciding to live there.

As we watch the flooding, we should realize that we are in a common boat, figuratively speaking. Community resilience is about learning how to protect our communities. In the end, the community is what caused us to choose to live where we did.

Warren Edwards

CRSI Quarterly Update (Part 2): Pilots and the CRSI Report

May 16th, 2011 - Warren Edwards  

Beginning Pilot Discussions:

From the beginning, we have planned to use a series of initial community pilots to validate, improve and complete the development of the CRS.  As we move forward with coding and building resources, we are also beginning the necessary discussions to identify and enlist these communities.  While we would like our set of communities to include the diversity that will allow us to understand how the system operates in a variety of settings – different sizes, different economies, different threats, and different geographies – the most important factor in pilot community selection is commitment.  To be successful, pilot communities must be able to bring together a dedicated core of community champions representing the full fabric of the community who will understand that this is not a short-term event and who will be able to lead the process to completion.  Several communities have reached out to us to begin discussions, usually through one or more “champions” within the community.  Those discussions are very important as they both reveal additional considerations that are important to the candidate communities and  allow us to set a realistic set of expectations for the communities as they begin the pilots.  We expect to complete these discussions by early summer and be actively engaged in building resilience with the selected communities by early fall. 

Documenting the Work and Crafting the Recommendations:

In addition to building the system and developing the pilot community plan, the CARRI CRSI team is working diligently to document the Community Resilience System Initiative process – the knowledge gained from numerous workshops, the hours of individual interviews, the subject matter expert contributions and the multiple surveys and “homework” assignments.  This final CRSI report, issued by the Steering Committee, will describe the CRSI participants’ view of a roadmap to community resilience.  The report will include an overview of the CRS, the collaborative thought process that led to its final form, and a thoughtful set of recommendations for enhancing community resilience development nationwide.  We will include a summary of the work of each CRSI working group as an appendix.  We hope that this report will serve not only as documentation of the CRSI effort but also as a substantive contribution to a continuing national discussion on building a resilient America. 

Finally:

The Community Resilience System becomes more complex, more robust and more powerful each day.  Much of that complexity, robustness and power comes from the very wide and deep set of supporting resources that will be linked to recommended community resilience actions.  Our challenge is to make this complexity transparent to the using community while retaining the power and robustness of the processes and the resources.  Our ability to accomplish that task has been greatly facilitated by the way many of you have come forward to identify and provide those resources.  We are truly grateful for your ideas, suggestions and contributions and we will continue to enhance the system based on your involvement through this development phase and well into the community pilots.  Keep the ideas coming.

Arthur (Andy) Felts

Planning to Recover: Some thoughts on what we know will happen when the flood waters recede

May 10th, 2011 - Arthur (Andy) Felts  

In his last blog, my good colleague, Warren Edwards wrote about what a CARRI Community would do differently after a disaster. He emphasized the need to communicate and develop a vision for a post-disaster community. This blog is intended to follow that line and delve more into what a CARRI Community might do.

 As I write this, the Mississippi Valley is experiencing unprecedented floods that will likely exceed the major one in 1927. Since then, the Mississippi has flooded many times of course. Sometimes these are minor, other times less so. Sometimes, like now, they appear to be catastrophic.

Since we live in a world of scarce resources, communities cannot prepare for every disaster they might face through efforts to mitigate—building yet higher dikes in the case of the Mississippi, which many think is bad policy. When the disaster is big enough, the mitigation efforts, wall/dikes in New Orleans, earthen dikes along the Mississippi, reinforced structures elsewhere, will fail and the disaster consequences may be all the greater when they do.

It is at this point that a community’s real resilience is tested. Even if they cannot employ techniques/policies that mitigate against disaster, they can still plan their recovery. We are witnessing some of this resilience thinking in many communities along the Mississippi. Homeowners are not just evacuating, they are moving their furniture and belongings as well in anticipation of flood levels yet to come.

 That said, much rebuilding must take place after the flood recedes. This is easy to see. But how many communities have developed resilient practices around that? How many have precertified building contractors who will come in to help rebuild? The alternative is a backlog of filings and unnecessary delays in getting back to normal? One easy way to precertify is simply to recognize licensed contractors that come from communities with essentially the same building codes. As well, how many communities have thought about their permitting process, including staffing, and have anticipated being figurative flooded with permits to review? The alternative is to have yet another time-delaying process imposed on homeowners and builders.

Recovery from the floods will take a long time. How many communities have thought about critical staff that will experience dramatically increased workloads? They will be working long hours and under a great deal of stress. Have the communities planned for this since we know it will happen. Are they prepared to provide assistance for critical employee’s families—help with living arrangements, schooling and other life necessities?

Utilities will need to be restored. Electric companies are excellent examples of resilient thinking in that many have reciprocal agreements with other companies. Equipped workers will come from far and wide to help restore systems. But how many community water systems or gas systems have similar agreements?

The flooding comes at a bad time—toward the end of the school year. Have communities thought about perhaps extending schools into the summer so parents can attend to rebuilding? Or, perhaps having day-camp programs for those who need them?

Disasters always surprise us in that things happen that were not anticipated. However, many things can be predicted, and resilient thinking attends to these to make recovery as smooth and quick as possible.

Warren Edwards

How would a CARRI community recover from a tornado?

May 5th, 2011 - Warren Edwards  

Earlier this week, a colleague e-mailed me and asked to send him some ideas on how I thought a Community and Regional Resilience Institute community using the  Community Resilience System would recover from a tornado.  I thought it made sense to give him a description of the environment within which the community would be conducting their tornado recovery.  This is how I think a CRS community would be positioned for response and long-term recovery:

A CARRI community would have assessed its vulnerabilities, catalogued its assets and determined which assets were most vulnerable, which could/should be restored first and identified the gaps for which outside resources would have to be requested well before the tornado. This would have been done by all parts of the community — individuals and families; local government; small and large employers.

A CARRI community would have a well planned and well rehearsed communications plan for getting information to all of its citizens based on a collaborative use of all the resources available to the community rather than just government.  The information provided by such a coordinated plan would be useful, relevant and trusted.

 A CARRI community would have well-established, trusted, community networks based on the full fabric of the community (government, private business, faith-based, associational) and those networks would have been proven through collaborative planning and continuous interactions before the catastrophic event.  The community would also have similar networks developed with other communities within its region.  The time to meet your neighbor (individual or community) is not post-disaster.

 A CARRI community would have a vision for a post-disaster community and a plan based on that vision.  The vision would be accepted by the community as a basis for action.  Because time is critical post-event, this vision and plan would help the community rapidly recover in a manner consistent with their long-term vision, goals and interests.

Warren Edwards

CRSI Quarterly Update: Community Resilience System

May 2nd, 2011 - Warren Edwards  

Coding the System: 

 After a year’s work by over 175 people representing the research world, the full spectrum of America’s communities and significant representatives from the private business sector, our developers are coding the software for the Community Resilience System (CRS) that we have envisioned from the beginning of this project.  Our challenge continues to be ensuring that the resulting system is highly flexible, simple, easy to use, and has robust embedded supporting resources.  The joint Community and Regional Resilience Institute (CARRI) and Meridian Institute team supervising the software engineers works daily to create a web-enabled product that has an attractive and user friendly portal for client interface while testing each step for logic and adherence to the principle that the tool must be useful to the community’s experts without outside assistance.  This entire process is overseen by the Community Resilience System Initiative (CRSI) Steering Committee which continues to actively guide and direct the entire project. 

Building the Resource Base: 

The Community Resilience System is designed to allow communities to work systematically through a number of recommended or required actions tailored to the community’s needs that culminate in an actionable plan to increase resilience.  One of the most powerful attributes of the system is the inclusion of robust sets of supporting resources that accompany each recommended action.  The supporting resources are varied and specifically designed to support the action with which they are associated.  They may take the form of checklists, templates, examples of successful practices, guidance material or data sources.  Each action has several pertinent supporting resources. 

The CARRI team is working hard now to complete the compilation of those resources.  For all actions, we want to find the best resources available to meet the specific need.  In most cases, we have been able to find one or more existing resources that can be used to meet the action requirements.    In no case do we wish to re-invent or duplicate an existing, proven resource with anything original and untested.  In this way, the CRS acts as a robust vehicle to expand the reach of existing private sector and government programs.  Where resources do not exist or additional guidance or instructions are needed, the team is creating these resources to be tested early in the community pilot process. 

More about the pilots and CRSI report to come…