Community Resilience – What Federal Government Can Do

January 5th, 2010 - Warren Edwards

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. read the entire article >

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A Few Stray Items

November 17th, 2009 - Warren Edwards

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.

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National Resilience – Who is leading?

November 12th, 2009 - Warren Edwards

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.

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Community Resilience: A Resilience Speech

October 1st, 2009 - Warren Edwards

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.

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Community Resilience: A Successful National Preparedness Month

September 28th, 2009 - Warren Edwards

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.

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Simultaneous or Sequential?

August 18th, 2009 - Warren Edwards

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.

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Engaging the Full-Fabric of Communities

July 9th, 2009 - Warren Edwards

Not only must disaster resilience be the cornerstone of a new disaster management culture in the US, and not only must it be built on resilient communities and regions, but disaster resilience must also engage the “full fabric” of our society. While the efforts of governments (federal, state, local and tribal) are critical, they are not sufficient. True disaster resilience requires a complex collaboration of government at all levels with crucial private sector energies and assets. The private sector is not limited to the private business sector but also includes the non-governmental, volunteer, academic, non-profit, faith-based and associational organizations that make up our social fabric. All of these organizations are important to the resilience continuum – some are critical. The private business sector provides much of the nation’s critical infrastructure and must be integrated either voluntarily or through regulation. Each method of integration will have an accepted and welcomed place. The business sector will have an incentive to participate in resilience activities where they can be shown to prevent loss and ensure a degree of protection from business disruptions. Many large businesses already operate across the resilience continuum – preventing those things that seem preventable, protecting critical assets and information, responding to disruptions as required and getting their business back on line as quickly as possible. Because the best of them operate this way on a daily basis, the private business sector inherently understands disaster resilience. It is critical that the Department of Homeland Security continue its efforts to engage, involve, and embed all of these critical non-governmental elements into the full homeland security “enterprise.”

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An Evolved Disaster Management Paradigm

June 27th, 2009 - Warren Edwards

The traditional emergency management construct (prepare, respond, recover, mitigate) has served the nation well for many years and current Presidential Directives, policy documents, the National Response Framework, NIMS and operational and implementing documents reflect the centrality of this paradigm – we train to it; we exercise it; we fund it — we are prepared to respond. Underlying this paradigm is the inherent assumption that if we are prepared to respond quickly, efficiently, and effectively, recovery will naturally follow. This paradigm is further undergirded by the unspoken belief that responsibilities and efforts to prepare are “pushed” outwards from the emergency manager at the hub to the various “spokes” of the community. Authorities, responsibilities and resources are centralized and hierarchical.

The lessons and changes of the last decade, however, have led us to recognize the need for an expanded and potentially more powerful organizing principle for both the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the larger “enterprise.” This expands and adapts the traditional emergency management construct from its emphasis on “preparing to respond” to a new paradigm which emphasizes “preparing to recover” — not just recovering functional power and water supplies, for example, but full recovery of the normal rhythms, functions and capacities of everyday life. This modified paradigm adjusts the mission construct to a more complete continuum — prevention, protection (including mitigation), response and recovery (both short and long-term) — and more properly understands preparedness as a foundational necessity of every phase of the continuum. This paradigm envisions community disaster resilience as the outcome of applying this evolved and expanded continuum. Grounding DHS and the homeland security enterprise in this disaster resilience context will focus resources and actions on the appropriate outcome and provide an effective organizing construct, thus taking the first step toward a revitalized and effective department able to serve its mission and meet citizen expectations.

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Two Brief Thoughts

June 19th, 2009 - Warren Edwards

When CARRI began its investigation into the status of resilience thinking, research and policy development, the idea of resilience was not a concept in good standing at the Department of Homeland Security or in the White House. While there was growing energy among outside groups around the concept of resilience as an alternative to protection (see CARRI’s May 5, 2009 blog posting), the discussions were very limited and frequently somewhat acrimonious. It seems clear, however, that the landscape is shifting rapidly. The President has announced that there will be an office within the Homeland Security Council for resilience. Secretary Napolitano speaks of making the federal government an “engaged facilitator of long-term community recovery.” The designee to be Undersecretary of Homeland Security for Science and Technology, Dr. Tara O’Toole has made community resilience one of her primary goals. Resilience appears to be not just a concept in good standing but is quickly becoming a focus of policy thought. I think this is good.

There is apparently some confusion about what CARRI means by a common framework for community resilience (see CARRI’s May 18, 2009 blog posting). This confusion is generating a healthy internal discussion. In an effort to broaden that discussion, I offer my first draft of a definition.

COMMON FRAMEWORK FOR COMMUNITY DISASTER RESILIENCE: a widely accepted, coherent, measurable, way of understanding community disaster resilience and applying that understanding to a community in a meaningful way. A common framework would include objective, measurable, commonly accepted indicators; a practical assessment methodology to fairly, transparently and accurately assess the ability to return to normal; and processes facilitated by validated tools that allow the results of the assessment to be translated into actions that increase a community’s resilience.

Comments welcome!

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Resiliency IS Protection

May 5th, 2009 - Warren Edwards

For at least two years there has been an ongoing debate on the emphasis that the Department of Homeland Security should place on resilience in lieu of a perceived prejudice for protection.

The juxtaposition of resiliency and protection as themes for the Department of Homeland Security misstates the issues – it is not either/or. A different way of looking at the problem is as a continuum of Prevent, Protect (to include Mitigate), Respond and Recover — with preparedness as a theme underlying all of those tasks AND Resilience as the outcome. One needs to prepare to prevent, prepare to protect, prepare to respond and prepare to recover. Creating a capacity to address all of these areas in a coherent manner builds resilience in a system or in an organization. The Nation’s current challenge is to establish the full mission in one inclusive continuum that addresses national expectations and includes systems designed to achieve full recovery at the end of an event, preparedness for each segment of the continuum, and the inclusion of all relevant public and private actors in the processes.

Resilience is the goal of the continuum. We cannot prevent all occurrences, but we can prevent some, and we should focus on prevention where prevention is realistic – terrorism, flooding, pandemic and food borne illness, for instance. We cannot protect ourselves from all things, but we can focus on things that absolutely require high levels of protection – nuclear power plants, mass transportation assets, critical communications structures. While we will need to respond to failures in prevention and protection, we can focus recovery preparations on those events where we know that we will fail – hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, ice storms. True preparedness for recovery requires more than the current focus on short-term recovery of basic services and functions. It requires instead an adjustment of thinking which aims from the beginning at regaining the rhythms of life, commerce, and interactions which define the long term recovery of every community. We need to see and understand the linkages between the work done before the event along the resiliency continuum and the ability to recover fully and quickly after the event. read the entire article >

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