John Plodinec

Adversity: the primer for resilience

January 30th, 2012 - John Plodinec  

Walt Disney said:

All the adversity I’ve had in my life, all my troubles and obstacles, have strengthened me… You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you.

Nietzsche wrote (and Jethro Gibbs repeated), Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

One of my favorites among the many definitions of resilience is – Positive adaptation to perceived adversity (slightly altered from Adger). But what Disney and Nietzsche (and Gibbs) are pointing out is that resilience is learned behavior whether at the individual, the community or the national level. We learn to cope by coping; we learn to adapt by adapting to those things we cannot change. But that begs the questions: How much adversity is enough? How much is too much?

I recently read a summary of some interesting work by Dr. Mark Seery at the University of Buffalo which sheds an interesting light on this. He looked at those who had faced much adversity throughout their lives, those who had faced some adversity, and those who had faced little to no adversity. He found that those who had experienced a great deal of adversity and those who had faced little adversity were both much worse at coping than those who had experienced only some adversity. And it didn’t appear to matter what the adversity was.

There are a few interesting parallels at the community level. The strengths Charleston developed during and after Hurricane Hugo undoubtedly helped it to successfully cope with the subsequent naval base closure. Without the adversity of Katrina and the levee breaks, would New Orleans have been able to withstand the Great Recession and the BP Oil Spill as well as it has (Next week, I’ll be writing a blog about some surprising – at least to me – lessons from New Orleans recovery.)?

Too often, we (especially our politicians!) seem to act as if we can’t allow anything bad to happen to anyone. But does trying to prevent bad things from happening to people, communities, or our nation actually mean that we are actually preventing people, communities and our nation from becoming more resilient? And, ultimately, such efforts are doomed to failure, anyway. Bad things will happen. The more little “bads” we’re able to prevent, the more severe the big “bads” will be, because we will have been deprived of the opportunity to learn to cope – to become more resilient.

As Helen Keller wrote:

Security is mostly a superstition.
It does not exist in nature
Nor do the children of men
As a whole experience it.
Avoiding danger is no safer
In the long run than outright exposure.
Life is either a daring adventure
Or it is nothing.
To keep our faces toward change and
Behave like free spirits
In the presence of fate is strength undefeatable.

John Plodinec

Notes on the International Disaster Conference and Expo

January 27th, 2012 - John Plodinec  

Last week, I attended the first International Disaster Conference and Expo in New Orleans. Rather than give a blow by blow rundown, it’s probably more useful to lay out major themes that kept popping up, as well as a few interesting (at least to me!) insights I gleaned.

Public-private partnerships, and the emerging importance of the private sector. Virtually every speaker spoke to the value of private sector involvement in disaster preparation and recovery. Craig Fugate talked on his “Waffle House indicator,” and the CEO of Waffle House described his company’s approach (He probably had to handle some of the toughest questions – for example: “Would Waffle House be as proactive if it was a publicly held company?” He did a superb job of laying out the importance of WH’s corporate culture for the corporation’s actions, something that receives too little attention.)

The presentations on the humanitarian response to the earthquake in Haiti provided an interesting twist on this theme. Several speakers pointed out that one of the unintended consequences of the outpouring of humanitarian assistance was the harm it did to local companies. By providing goods for free, aid organizations essentially shut out local companies that could have provided goods and services to strengthen the local economy.

Whole community. Craig Fugate did his usual good job of explaining this but the theme was reinforced and amplified by several speakers. I appreciated his point about the tax base being an indicator of recovery. In CARRI’s work, we have encountered those in local government who felt that they had no business worrying about business. As Fugate implied, they had better worry about business – if they lose businesses, their ability to provide the services expected by their citizens is diminished. Several of the international speakers echoed the importance of involving the entire community both before and after an event.

Information. This became the most important theme of the conference for me. If the Whole Community is to be effectively engaged, then each member of the community must have accurate, relevant and timely information. Dave Kauffman of FEMA pointed out that there is three times more information available now than in the 1980’s, and it’s volume is growing at 30%/year. Dave and one or two others talked about the need for tools to pan the river of data to find those golden nuggets of needed information. Social media can play a crucial role, as sentinels signaling a changing situation, as validators of data, and – increasingly – as platforms for action. This led me to wonder if we might see more mini-“Boatlifts” (the almost spontaneous organization of the evacuation of Manhattan Island after 9/11) facilitated by Twitter and its siblings.

Community resilience. I was very pleased to see more and more people looking at community resilience as a “virtue with big shoulders,” something vital and active rather than a pallid and passive shadow that is only seen after a disaster happens. Meir Elran from Israel pointed out that active communities were resilient communities, and that resilience could be built and enhanced. He described several steps being taken in Israel ranging from training elected leaders to providing age-appropriate programs for students from kindergarten to college. If we want to build a culture of resilience, what better way than starting with youth. Dave Kaufman pointed out that one of the key drivers FEMA sees in our future is the greater involvement of the entire community in preparation and recovery. We need to actively build trust between the governing and the governed to do this effectively.

Education. While this wasn’t an explicit theme in the presentations, I was struck by the number of educational institutions who were part of the Expo and what they offered. Noteworthy were:
• The Stephenson Disaster Management Institute at LSU. Probably their most visible accomplishment was conceiving and helping to foster the foundation of the Business EOC in Louisiana. An excellent example of government making a commitment to work with the private sector.
• The Center for Hazards Assessment, Response and Technology at the University of New Orleans. UNO also touted the usefulness of some of their urban planning programs.
• Tulane’s Disaster Resilience Leadership Academy. Dr. Ky Luu and his colleagues have pulled together an excellent interdisciplinary program. I have to admit somewhat ruefully, though, that the curriculum seems too daunting for any current leader to take it (which is too bad). Let’s hope their graduates are among the next generation of leaders.
• Anna Maria College, near Worcester, MA. They have some interesting “nuts and bolts” programs (e.g., a degree in fire science, as well as an MS in Emergency Management).

Warren Edwards

An Ideal Federal Program

January 18th, 2012 - Warren Edwards  

My colleague, John Plodinec, recently suggested that resilience has become a movement (CARRI Blog, “Resilience – One Movement, Many Voices,” December 19, 2011). If so, there is no better example of the movement beginning to take hold in some parts of the federal government than the publication in December of FEMA’s Whole Community Approach to Emergency Management” (www.fema.gov/about/wholecommunity.shtm). Not only does it mark a significant, practical milestone in the federal government’s acceptance of resilience as a policy but it is also the example of an ideal federal program for a new era.

By formulating the Whole Community Approach, FEMA has created a meaningful shift in the doctrine of national emergency response. FEMA has recognized according to Administrator Fugate that, “a government centric approach to emergency management will not be enough to meet the challenges posed by a catastrophic incident. That is why we must fully engage our entire societal capacity.” This movement from government as the focal point for meeting the nation’s challenges to the mobilization of American society to find new, innovative and much more collaborative ways to solve societal problems is a tremendous step forward for any federal agency. In the area of making resilience practical, FEMA is clearly in the lead.

FEMA has two critical roles in national emergency management. It is the responder of last resort. It brings the power of the federal government to situations where local, state and regional capabilities are not sufficient to meet the crisis. This is the way that the agency is most often viewed and the way it operates much of the time. But FEMA also has an equally critical role to facilitate, encourage, provide expert knowledge and set goals and standards for local and state emergency managers. The Whole Community Approach acknowledges that second role in a very helpful but non-intrusive way. . It does not prescribe, set unrealistic national goals or try to force its ideas into a single inflexible template. It does not provide funding that may not be sustainable and can never reach all communities. Instead it offers core principles, key themes and pathways around which communities may organize, assess, plan and take action to solve their own challenges. It exemplifies the ideal federal program – leveraging the power of the federal government to assist communities in identifying challenges, taking ownership and finding local solutions.

By itself, FEMA cannot foster truly resilient American communities. True resilience in communities encompasses all aspects of community life. Resilient American communities are resilient in their economy, their social capital and their various infrastructures. This standard of resilience is well beyond FEMA’s charter.

In the federal government, FEMA has taken the lead. It has taken the first practical steps to turn rhetoric into reality; to give the movement a real, useful shove forward. Other federal departments and agencies need to think about creating their own “ideal” federal programs.

Ian Moore

Risk, Utility and Probability

January 18th, 2012 - Ian Moore  

UTILITY

For the completely rational human being the concept of the ‘utility’ of a thing (that is its ‘usefulness’) should be directly related to the amount of the thing that they receive. For example £10 should be twice as useful as £5. Two cabbages should be worth twice as much as one cabbage.

Actually the relationship between most items and utility is more like the following diagram which depicts the relationship between utility and money for a typical person:

To demonstrate this, how would you answer the following question:

Which would you prefer?

100% chance of winning £1,500
50% chance of winning £3,000

Most people will choose the $1,500 even though logically they both have the same value.

This is because, as you can see from the graph, twice the amount of money corresponds to less than twice the amount of utility.

This utility/money curve of course varies from person to person and how risk averse they are but similar curves exist for the majority of people.

The curve also implies some other things. The further the amount of the resource increases (in this case money) the less the relative difference. For instance your response to the question above will probably be even less logical (and more risk averse) if the amounts were £10 million and £20 million. The other side of the curve implies that £20 probably has more than 10 times the utility of £2. The exception being if you needed the £2 for a bus home, in which case you would be highly risk averse to any gamble.

RISK AND PROBABILITY

This behaviour is also similar to our risk versus probability curve:

If we have a very low probability of something happening (the left hand side of the curve) then there is little perceived risk because it is very unlikely that we would make that choice. For instance if we could bet £1 at 1 in ten thousand odds of wining £10 we are highly unlikely to take the bet.

The right hand side of the curve also is perceived as low risk. It there is a very high probability of something happening we perceive it correctly as low risk.

The highest risk is at the 50/50 probability where it is totally uncertain if an event will happen or not.

From a purely logical perspective this curve does not make sense, it really should be a triangle with straight lines. It differs from this because humans do not easily perceive very low probabilities as being as low risk as they are (and vice versa for high probabilities.) For a probability of 99.9% that some event will happen there is a small doubt in our minds and this increases the perceived risk. consider the following scenario: your house insurance is normally £500 per year but your insurance company has a strange offer on, for £100 per year you can insure your house for all days starting with a T or an S (that is 4 out of 7 days), would you take out the insurance?

We do not react linearly to utility and resource, logically we should.

We do not estimate risk against probability well.

If we can incorporate an understanding of these behaviours into our decision making we will be able to improve it.

John Plodinec

Demographic Trends and Community Resilience

January 10th, 2012 - John Plodinec  

Two weeks ago, the Brookings Institution released an interesting report on Five Things the Census Revealed about America in 2011. The authors were focused on America as a whole, but in the following, I’d like to look to look a little deeper at what their findings may mean for American communities.

Minorities are driving growth, and replenishing America’s youth. In the 1950’s, about one-fourth of our population growth was due to minorities (non-whites). On the 2000’s, almost all (92%) of our population growth was due to minorities, mainly Hispanics and Asians.

While non-whites in particular are driving population growth, the overall rate of growth is slowing. The nation’s population increased by about 10% from 2000 to 2010, the lowest rate of increase since the 1930’s. This reflected less immigration because of a poorer economy, and a lower birth rate because of an aging population. It’s as if everyone in Quebec, Ontario and the rest of the eastern half of Canada (about three-fourths of their population) moved to the US in just ten years. We clearly are continuing the process of becoming a “majority minority” country, just a bit more slowly than we have been.

The rate of growth of the population 45 and over is eighteen times that of those 45 and under. As one important result, only one in five households consist of a married couple with a child under 18.

The rate of migration continues its slow decrease. About 20% of us moved our homes in the ’50s and ’60s; in the last five years that dropped to just over 10%. Simply put, more and more Americans are staying home – with one major exception. We are seeing a “Reverse Migration” of the Black population to the South, as well.

The median household income declined the past decade for the first time on record, by about 9%. There was a concomitant increase in the poverty rate, to 15%. As we’ve seen so pointedly for New Orleans after Katrina, poverty is spreading from inner cities to the suburbs as is ethnic diversity.

Clearly, each of these trends will impact our communities, and each in a different way, depending on the community. However, there are a few generalizations worth noting.

• Communities’ responses to the diversification process will be telling indicators of their resilience. Some communities will not cope well; others will find strength in their increased diversity. Fortunately, there are models that are working (e.g., Anaheim) that others can emulate.

• Perhaps the greatest danger inherent in this diversification is that the community’s sense of itself may be dampened or destroyed. Without positive action, there is a real danger that a community may splinter based on race, language, age, or economic condition. If these become barriers to communication in a community, groups will tend to isolate themselves, and their members may have greater allegiance to their group than to the community as a whole. As a result, community resilience will suffer. It will be important for communities to develop inclusive “community mythologies” to prevent these barriers from forming. The reduced rate of migration may be a trend that counters this in many communities.

• Concentrated poverty is an extreme example of this isolation and an important one because poverty has a tremendous impact beyond just the poor. We’ve seen what happens in many big cities (e.g., Detroit) when poverty is concentrated in a neighborhood like plaque on a blood vessel. Crime and other anti-community activity increases. Those who can, leave – creating a potential death spiral for the neighborhood and a resource-sucking “Black Hole” for the larger community.

• While there will be greater diversity (based on ethnicity, age…) within communities, at the same time we are likely to see greater diversity among our communities in terms of their makeup, the specific challenges they face, and the resources they have available to deal with them. This implies that one-size-fits-all solutions from the federal government will be even less likely to work. Given the inertia in the federal system, this also means that communities are going to have to cope with their demographic changes largely on their own.

• As communities aim toward the future, they will have to consider whether the present mix of community services matches future needs. If the immigrant population in the community is growing, that may imply a need for more youth services, and for provision for those with little or no English. If the community is “graying,” this likely will mean the need for more services aimed toward the elderly. In areas of high unemployment, homelessness will impact not only those agencies that serve the poor, but education, and others as well. More resilient communities will meet these changing needs with solutions that include private business, non-profits and other essential service providers, as well as local governments.

• At the same time, local governments and other service providers will have to look at their services in a regional context. As we’ve seen so pointedly in metropolitan New Orleans, poverty has spread to the suburbs. For many communities, this means that they will have to look at themselves in a regional context more than ever before. Through effective coordination of service delivery among different organizations and jurisdictions, there is the potential for greater efficiency and greater resilience as well.

Many of our communities are already being impacted by these trends. These trends indicate many more will be. A community’s anticipation of what these trends portend for it, and its actions to positively respond, will perhaps be the best indicator of that community’s resilience.

Warren Edwards

Searching for Project Impact

January 9th, 2012 - Warren Edwards  

In the FEMA “Think Tank” (www.ideascale.com) I recently noticed another recommendation to bring back Project Impact. That suggestion almost always surfaces in discussions of communities, community resilience and community disaster risk reduction. With such frequent mention the idea is clearly worth thinking about.

For the few who are not familiar, Project Impact was a program created by FEMA Administrator James Lee Witt that began in 1997 with seven cities and grew to several hundred cities. It was cancelled in the early days of the Bush administration in an effort to save $25M. The program’s purpose according a FEMA spokesman was to “protect families, businesses and communities by reducing the impact of natural disasters.” It accomplished that goal by bringing together different levels of government and the private and non-profit sectors to work in close partnership to identify specific actions and programs for reducing risks and enhancing response and recovery. By almost every account, it was a very successful federal program.

Its flaw may have been just that – it was a successful federal program. FEMA provided the funding for each city. Cities received federal grants to implement Project Impact and grants to implement the projects it produced. There doesn’t seem to be an instance of a city adopting a Project Impact program that was not subsidized by FEMA. It was a great idea that was widely embraced and achieved substantive results but because it was wholly sustained by federal funding it was not resilient. It was subject to the vagaries of shifting politics and it could never be funded robustly enough to reach all US communities.

Does that mean that we should abandon the idea of bringing back Project Impact? No. But we need to acknowledge the flaw in the original model and find a way to meet the original goal in other ways. Federal resources to assist communities in becoming more disaster resilient are declining and will continue to decline for the foreseeable future. There is simply neither the political will nor the available funding to begin a new federally funded, community risk reduction program.

Much more importantly, a fully federally funded program is the wrong way to approach the problem. The Project Impact vision of bringing the full community together to collaborative solve challenges was exactly right. But by tying it to federal funding the program never become the community’s program. Cities acknowledged the power of the process but never internalized ownership. In almost all cases, when the funding went away, the program ended.

Like it or not, communities own the challenges. Communities must own the solutions. Federal encouragement, facilitation and indirect support of Project Impact-like programs in America’s communities are desperately needed. A new federally funded program is not.

Warren Edwards

The Power of Community Assessments

January 3rd, 2012 - Warren Edwards  

We often view assessments of our communities as mechanical processes accomplished by outside experts who tell us what’s wrong with our community. But community resilience assessments collaboratively accomplished by the full fabric of the community using its own “experts” can be a powerful tool for building community unity, creating positive energy and amplifying what is right.

Community resilience assessments can be powerful team building exercises. Rather than calling on outside specialists, the process relies on community-based practitioners with inside knowledge of how common services are provided to their community. The process brings the community members with the greatest stake in a service together to assess it objectively. These stakeholders from throughout the community include elected or appointed officials, business leaders, naturally emergent leaders and ordinary citizens. By assembling these assessment teams for each service, the community creates a dedicated, insightful, group of advocates that can assess present conditions, envision a future and consider positive, practical and innovative actions.

Rather than simply using the traditional process of examining the community’s infrastructure and processes for vulnerabilities and risks, a community-conducted resilience assessment seeks community developed answers to the questions, “Who are we?” and What are we?” in preparation for answering the question “Who and what do we want to be?” The assessment is holistic in examining the community services that all communities provide, evidence based in that it is grounded in measurable community data, but it is also inward looking in a way that allows the community to collectively understand what makes it unique. In addition to examining vulnerabilities and risks, a comprehensive assessment acknowledges that a resilient community has a strong sense of identity – the special qualities and characteristics that make it unique. When a crisis occurs a resilient community works quickly to restore the positive aspects of its identity. But a resilient community is also aware of the negative aspects of its identity and recognizes that crisis can provide opportunities to change. The community resilience assessment provides an opportunity for the community to gain knowledge of itself in both aspects of its identity.

Building robust, community-based assessment teams and focusing them on the uniqueness of their community creates the conditions for objective, participative analysis of community services and the systems that provide them. The groups look at capacity – how well the service meets the community’s needs. They identify critical assets – which components of the services are essential to meeting community requirements. They identify the critical assets at risk – which assets are most at risk to the threats that the community has identified as the most significant. Finally, the teams look for the recovery resources – those resources that can be mobilized in the event of a crisis identifying gaps and shortfalls that must be addressed in the action planning phase of resilience development.

Objective assessments are critical to the community resilience development process. The assessment process imaginatively constructed, however, can be powerful in ways that help encourage community cohesion and commonality of purpose. Bringing together groups of stakeholders, creating a common view of community identity, and collaboratively but objectively assessing the unique characteristics of a community creates a powerful step on the road to resilience.