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.

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Resilience and the Hole in the Rock Expedition

December 5th, 2011 - John Plodinec

Jenae Holtzhafer in the Emmaus (PA) Patch posed this question in a posting this summer.

“What if our circumstances on this Earth suddenly changed? Would we be able to endure the extreme physical and mental challenges faced by our ancestors to push through the hardships and survive with nothing more than basic necessities?”

She pointed to the Hole in the Rock expedition of 1879 as an example of the resilience of our forebears. For those who don’t know the story, in late 1879, 236 Mormons set out on a missionary expedition to southeastern Utah. They had selected the shortest path to their destination – they expected it to take only six weeks, but one that was largely unexplored. Trapped by snow behind them two weeks after they started, they were forced to go forward. Perhaps their most difficult feat was building a wagon road through the hole in the rock – a narrow cut in the cliffs surrounding the Colorado River gorge – and crossing the river. It took them about 8 weeks to build the road and get all of their supplies across, and another 10 to reach the site they choose to establish their “colony.” Amazingly, no one died on the five-month trek, and 238 arrived at the new settlement – two babies were born en route.

Holtzhafer’s gut answer were “No, we are not as resilient – we have lost the skills to survive these hardships.” A closer reading of history, though, makes her conclusion less compelling. The intrepid party – even though they set out as winter neared – was reasonably well-prepared. Eighty wagons, over 1,000 head of cattle, tools, dynamite and other necessary supplies – they were ready to confront what they faced. They had taken full advantage of the technology available to them. In similar circumstances today, most of us we would do the same. While we may have lost some of the skills those hardy Mormons possessed, we have other skills and technologies they did not have.

However, the expedition has an important lesson to teach us – being ready for surprises. The missionaries expected to be gone about 40 days; instead, they were on the road for 100 more. They didn’t expect to have to build a bridge across the Colorado, but they did.

Most communities try to prepare for specific threats – hurricanes, earthquakes, human-induced crises. But look at some of the events the Gulf Coast has experienced in the last decade – a recession in 2001-2; Hurricane Katrina and the levee break; the BP oil spill; the Great Recession…what’s next?

The pessimist looks at this list and says “Why bother to prepare? The next event may well be different. We’ll just adapt to it when it comes.”

The optimist says, “We’re strong, we will weather whatever comes; let’s prepare for what we know.

But the resilient realist says, “Prepare for the known threats, but be sure to include in your preparations those things that will help you survive and thrive in the face of any threat. Most importantly, make sure your people know each other and will help each other, no matter what threat they face.”

A simple thought, but with some profound implications. First, it means we shouldn’t rely on institutions to pull us through a crisis, but on ourselves. Second, we can’t count on getting resources from outside in a crisis – we can only count on what we have in our homes and our neighborhood. Most importantly, the one thing “Government” in general is not doing but could do to prepare us is to hammer these messages home.

Yesterday, I was speaking to a victim of one of the many floods that have hit the St. Louis area. Her house up to the top of the first story was flooded – she had to live in the upper floors. She “commuted” to wherever she had to go in her neighbors’ boats. She pointed out that it took 45 days before the floodwaters had receded enough for safe vehicular traffic to her home. By the time she and her family were ready to begin recovering, the news cameras had moved on; her story was old news; most of the government assistance was gone. With good grace and a sense of humor, she is coming back more or less on her own, with the help of her friends and neighbors.

Her experience shows that some of us, at least, are as resilient as any who came before. Her experience also testifies to the wisdom of the resilient realist: people are the best preparation for surprises.

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Contradictory Information

November 23rd, 2011 - Ian Moore

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A Path to Economic Recovery and Resilience

November 10th, 2011 - John Plodinec

Just over a year ago, I wrote about what a more resilient economy might look like (see Recovering from the Great Recession – What Might a More Resilient Economy Look Like?). I talked about a value-driven rather than a consumer driven economy. That post begged the question, though – how do we get there from here? In the next few paragraphs, I’ll try to outline an answer to that.

Before I do, however, my disclaimer. I am clearly not an economist (I’m not sure that’s a disqualification, since the economists are all over the map on how to recover!). Further, politicians will be making the most crucial economic decisions over the next few months, and they are clearly not economists (not to mention their roles in getting us into this mess in the first place).

Our national economy is in what economists call a liquidity trap. In a liquidity trap, there is relatively little investment because those with money are very risk averse. Consumers don’t spend, businesses don’t hire, and everyone looks at the economic glass as half empty. And that’s what we’re seeing right now – individuals and businesses are paying off their debts, individual debt is at levels not seen since the early 1990’s; those who can are saving at rates not seen since the 1970’s; and businesses are sitting on their cash (and not borrowing) rather than investing in new products and jobs.

The two antipodes of the debate over how to fix our economy – escape the trap – are characterized by the “Spend, Baby, Spend” school and the Tea Party’s call for government austerity. The Spend, Baby, Spend school is epitomized by economists such as Paul Krugman, who vehemently believe that our federal government should be spending more, much more, to spur demand for goods and services. This group points to our nation’s crumbling infrastructure as a place where investment would create jobs, creating demand, and facilitating economic recovery. At its core, this view sees lack of demand for goods and services as the problem that needs to be addressed.

The Tea Party-ers, on the other hand, see the size of our government as the core problem. In this view, a smaller government, with fewer regulations and lower taxes, would put money back into people’s hands to spend on goods and services, thus jump starting the economy.

You’ll notice, however, that neither view really addresses the core problem – how we get out of the liquidity trap. Or, said a little differently, how do we help businesses, in particular, become less risk averse so that they will invest the cash they are now sitting on in new equipment or new jobs. Framed this way, it seems that government spending per se is somewhat irrelevant to getting out of the trap. Recovery will come only when people have confidence once again that there is a secure future. That’s not to say that government spending is unimportant, just that stimulus spending doesn’t really seem to be the right answer.

If this is true, then what should government do to put us on the road to a resilient economy? Simply put, governments should do those things that will remove uncertainty from people’s minds and those things that will make people more confident in their futures. In this light, it seems that we need to take some of the medicines prescribed by both schools of thought to help bring us out of our national malaise.

We need to recognize that the current pace of regulation creation is creating great uncertainties for businesses and individuals. In the first two years of the present administration in Washington, we created more regulations than we did in eight years of the previous administration. Further, whether we like it or not, small businesses are already telling us they won’t be hiring in the near term because of the possible impacts of health insurance reform (and those impacts won’t be fully known until 2014 at the earliest!).

We also need to recognize that our national debt is unsustainable – if we continue on our present path, we as individuals eventually will end up paying exorbitant amounts in taxes to support intolerably high interest rates to service both our national and personal debt. We as individuals or investors or business owners recognize this and are saving at almost unprecedented rates to provide our own safety nets for ourselves.

However, we also have to recognize that the government must continue to make investments that will help us to have a more certain future. We must invest in our infrastructure – not to stimulate spending but to ensure that we can continue to move goods, people, and information where they are needed. If we don’t, we will spend far more to respond to and recover from the disasters that will expose our infrastructure’s fragility.

We also need to heed the lessons we have already learned about what went wrong and put regulations in place that address the root causes of those problems. The current regulatory framework for the financial industry has much that is wrong with it; recently passed legislation is likely to drive smaller community banks – who in the main were not at fault in getting us into this trap – out of business. This will make it more difficult for entrepreneurs and small businesses to get the capital they need to start up or expand their businesses, i.e., will make our economy even less resilient. Meanwhile, many of the more speculative financial sectors remain unregulated even though they were prime actors in our economic tragedy (and are doing nothing to help us recover).

We must provide a safety net to those of our citizens with special needs. Not because of their vulnerability but as an investment in their future and in ours. The safety net should be focused on outcomes – for example, living healthier and more productive lives – rather than means, for example insurance. Just as with our physical infrastructure, if we don’t make these kinds of investments we will spend far more to respond to and recover from the human tragedies that will result.

I don’t think it requires a rocket scientist (or a Ph.D. economist!) to see a path to recovery. It only requires a clear recognition of where we are as a nation, and then some common sense actions to move to where we need to be. We have to cut government spending and the pace of regulation, but we also need to invest in ourselves and take actions to prevent us from falling in the same trap again. At its core, we have to restore our confidence in ourselves if we are to recover. Neither school of thought, neither political party, can or will be successful unless they grasp this simple truth – this is the only path to economic recovery and greater national resilience.

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Searching for Resilience: A Walk in the Woods

October 20th, 2011 - John Plodinec

I read an interesting article recently that crystallized several other thoughts for me. The paper – with the somewhat dry title of Resilience as Resource-based Design of Anticipated Situations (www.resilience-engineering-asso.org/ACTES/2011/Papers/13.pdf) – is couched in the language of safety and risk, but takes a very different approach to identifying resilience than I’ve seen before.

The authors start by talking about traditional safety and risk management approaches. To paraphrase the authors, these approaches have inherent limitations:

• They are based on analysis of failures. They do not reflect either that risks can emerge from “normal” situations, or that some of the greatest risks may actually be unanticipated surprises.
• They seek to mitigate without considering either the real gap between intended actions and real capabilities, or that coping with crises is dependent on “the strategies, initiatives, tinkering and ingenuity brought by individual and collective skills in real time.

The application of these to emergency management seems straightforward and very appropriate.

The authors then go on to quote a definition of resilience by Hollnagel:

The intrinsic ability of a system to adjust its functioning prior to, during, or following changes and disturbances, so that it can sustain required operations under both expected and unexpected conditions.

I’m not a big fan of defining resilience – too many have spent too much time in what becomes an unproductive exercise in navel contemplation – but the authors put legs under this one by trying to determine how anesthesiologists make decisions both in routine cases and in complex ones. Their conclusions are worth noting because they seem to apply so well to the relationship between the federal government and local community leadership.

• Resilience – in addition to vulnerability assessment – involves consideration of local resources and capabilities.
• Decisions are designed to empower those coping with crisis, and not to control them.
• Organizations should be structured so that local standard practices can be shared.

While some may argue about the conclusions, what was striking to me is the very different way of trying to find resilience. Most of the resilience literature focuses either on vulnerability or on case studies of past disasters. What the authors have done is look at behavior – both in routine and unexpected situations – to try to find clues to resilient behavior.

Thus, if we are trying to judge the resilience of a tree to a high wind, we may walk through the woods looking at one that has fallen and try to judge the cause and how to prevent it from falling. Or, as the authors have done, we can study the forest, during both calm days and those with brisk winds, and see how each tree adapts in its own context.

As we were putting the Community Resilience System (CRS) together, one of the strongest sentiments expressed by our Community Leaders Group was that the CRS had to improve normal operations as well as easing the transition to a new normal. This paper not only agrees with that, but shows that understanding how the community functions in normal conditions is a key to understanding its resilience to a crisis.

In other words, watching how trees bend and sway in the wind can often tell us more about the resilience of trees than exhaustively researching why one fell.

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It can’t happen to me

September 12th, 2011 - Arthur (Andy) Felts

As we watched Irene skirt along the East Coast, it became very clear that many buildings in both coastal and inland communities could see serious flooding. Also of note was that evidently many owners do not have flood insurance.

Many may not know that regular homeowner’s insurance does not cover flooding. This was the reason for protracted legal cases on insurance reimbursement after Katrina. If a home was destroyed by water (flood), then private insurers did not have to reimburse for damages. If the owner had enough foresight to buy flood insurance—separately purchased through an insurance agent but backed by the US government’s National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP)—then they would be reimbursed. If the home was destroyed by wind, then private insurance would cover—but when a home was simply gone in an area that had both high wind and water, it was very difficult to say which destroyed it.

Homes and buildings in high-risk flood areas with mortgages from federally regulated or insured lenders are required to have flood insurance. But many homes that could flood in an exceptional event are not required to have flood insurance. Such homes are not within a FEMA defined “flood zone.”

Zones that begin with “A” or “V” are high-risk flood zones, and the purchase of flood insurance is federally mandated on loans secured by properties located in communities that participate in the National Flood Insurance Program. Zones “C,” “B,” and “X” have a lower risk of flooding, and the federal mandatory purchase requirements do not apply. “V” flood zones are on the coast and are subject to wind-driven water, i.e., waves. “A” zones are subject to a 1% or greater chance of flooding in any given year; in short, they are in the 100-year flood plain.

Since most people buy their homes with a mortgage, if they are not required to buy flood insurance they assume they do not need it. With water forced many miles inland and torrential rains, many Katrina property owners found out the hard way that they were not going to be reimbursed or only partially reimbursed for their loss.

Access to outside resources—in this case, insurance money—is a critical part of community resilience. In lower flood risk areas, NFIP-backed insurance can be as low as $129 a year. That seems like a very small amount to insure against the risk of total loss.

Resilient communities build public awareness of the risks they face and the potential losses—they do not rely on mortgage companies to tell them their risk. No doubt many without flood insurance wished they had known this as they watched Irene move up the coast.

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Joplin, Missouri: An encouraging story of resilience

August 18th, 2011 - Arthur (Andy) Felts

One of the things that leaders who have reflectively seen their communities through disasters have consistently said is that people want to feel like life is getting back to normal. It makes sense. Immediately after a disaster there is often a sense of euphoria—people are glad that loved ones and neighbors have survived unharmed. For all, whether they have suffered a loss or not, it is in the human spirit to rise to the occasion.

But then the grind of recovery comes. I remember in Charleston seeing debris truck after debris truck after debris truck for several months. I remember getting several flat tires from roofing nails that were blown off roofs.

I remember the task of cleaning up my office building after it took several inches of surge water. Many thought the College of Charleston should shut down for the semester. But President Harry Lightsey defied those faculty and staff, and the College reopened a mere week and one-half after Hugo. The College’s buildings were largely ok—some with water damage and blown out windows and others with stripped roofs. Getting the College of Charleston kids back on the city’s streets was a remarkably fresh breath of normalcy.

In yesterday’s (August 17^th, 2011) New York Times, there was a remarkable story. I quote the reporter, A.G. Sulzberger in the story:

JOPLIN, Mo. — When the red brick schools here were reduced to rubble by a deadly tornado three months ago, local leaders announced a goal that seemed like a longshot: the new school year would start on time.

But on Wednesday the city made good on its promise, and students reunited for the first day of school, marking the end of a difficult summer as they streamed excitedly into makeshift facilities that replaced the 10 schools damaged or destroyed by the tornado on May 22.

As they exchanged standard so-good-to-see-you-again greetings — the boys slapping hands, the girls embracing — juniors and seniors swapped schedules and marveled at the modern touches of their new high school, built in just 55 days inside a recently vacant department store at the back of a shopping mall. Outside, residents of a local retirement home lined the streets to welcome them.

What could make life seem more normal than kids going back to school in the fall? With effective leadership, Joplin was able to achieve a “longshot.” Going for a reopening of schools likely took some priority over other things that needed tending, but such are the choices we have to make in planning recovery.

It is a remarkable story that gives me heart in the ability of communities to be resilient. Joplin has given us all a clear message about what is important in being resilient, and we should both take heed and applaud them. A difficult summer notwithstanding, the community has likely turned the recovery corner.

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Planning, Priorities and Resilience

July 25th, 2011 - John Plodinec

One of the ground rules we in CARRI have set for ourselves in developing the Community Resilience System (CRS) is that it must be outcome-oriented. As a result, everything in the CRS is focused on helping a community develop and implement a plan to improve its ability to avoid, adapt or learn from adversity.

Developing a plan, especially in a time when so many communities are strapped for resources, means making choices – we are going to do this, we are going to stop doing that, we’ll do the other later. In the CRS, we invite the community to develop a vision for its future that in effect becomes an operational definition of its common values and aspirations. This vision becomes the set of scales that the community uses to weigh the many options for action and to prioritize them.

CARRI recognizes that creating a common vision is hard work. It often requires the patience of Job to reach a consensus about what the community wants its future to be. But reaching that consensus is essential. Lacking a common vision, it is virtually impossible to take any long-term action to improve the community.

Our current impasse over the federal budget is a perfect example of this and a microcosm of the macrocosmic problem that plagues our nation at all levels: an unwillingness to prioritize because we lack a common vision of what we want to become. One of the primary reasons we lack this vision is because we do not have a common understanding of the problem. For example, surveys indicate that less than one-third of the electorate understands the realities of where our federal dollars go (40% debt, 40% entitlements, about 15% defense, and the rest everything else).

In developing the CRS, we have tried to provide community leaders with information about their communities – strengths, weaknesses, threats – that they can use to forge the necessary common understanding of the state of their community. Once that is gained, then achieving a common vision becomes easier (I didn’t say easy!). That vision can then drive the development of a plan to make the vision a reality. If done well, the result is a more resilient, more vibrant and more vital community.

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Social Capital: A necessary but not sufficicent condition for a resilient recovery

July 8th, 2011 - Arthur (Andy) Felts

There is a growing (and welcome) recognition amongst many disaster recovery researchers on the importance of social capital in rapid and equitable recovery. This is welcome because all too often disaster mitigation and recovery strategies have ignored this important dimension of our lives.

Welcome as well is a recognition that some actions taken during emergency response may actually erode social capital. Before Hurricane Hugo, in the Charleston region, there was one vehicle access point to Sullivan’s Island and the Isle of Palms. That was the Sawyer Bridge—a drawbridge that was literally spun off its balance point by Hugo’s winds.

Residents of Sullivan’s Island and the Isle of Palms were denied boat access to the island by National Guardsmen. The argument was the islands were overrun with snakes (an unlikely event since a surge would have swept them inland) and that structures were unstable and dangerous. The latter point is valid, but in many other areas throughout the region that actually were harder hit that the two islands, residents could not be stopped from entering because they had multiple points of access. I walked down King Street in downtown Charleston two days after the Hurricane when the street was littered with broken glass and everything from pieces of metal roofs to downed street lights.

From a risk analysis standpoint, the issue was one of someone stepping on a nail or getting cut from a sharp object. I do not question the good intentions of emergency managers here—rather only whether or not they factored social capital into their decision. Some individuals had a chance to sift through their wrecked homes and salvage things that were personally valuable to them. After several days of rain and weeks of being denied access, much of what they could have recovered was no longer recoverable.

Social capital is about holding on to a sense of place and that includes connections to the past. This is why it should be included in our analysis of community resilience.

But at the same time, by vaulting social capital to the forefront, I wonder if there is too much of a backlash.

In the social sciences, we speak of “necessary” and “sufficient” conditions for something to happen. A sufficient condition is one that in and of itself is enough to cause something to happen. A necessary condition is just that, but not sufficient to cause something to happen. Water in the atmosphere is necessary for rain, but not sufficient in and of itself. It needs other factors—temperature, etc. to make rain occur.

In terms of resilience, we should see social capital as necessary. Absent strong bonds to community and place, both created by social capital, community resilience will be seriously degraded. But social capital is not sufficient in and of itself to create community resilience.

Aside from social capital, communities need access to resources for effective and efficient recovery. Resources can come in many forms—help from outside volunteers, insurance, donations, government aid, savings accounts, etc. But these are not sufficient for recovery absent a resolve on the part of community members to stay and rebuild.

In addition, a community whose infrastructure is in bad shape before a disaster will have recovery hindered no matter how much social capital they have.

Recovery is about time in a very important way—how quickly a community can rebound from a disaster. Strong reserves of social capital are necessary, but so are access to resources. So is ensuring that a community’s infrastructure is maintained. There are a lot of necessary parts of recovery. None, alone, are sufficient.

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The Seven Ingredients of Community Resilience

June 29th, 2011 - John Plodinec

Last week I read an interesting article by Karen Reivich on the resilience of children. I was struck by how relevant her seven ingredients were to communities. So, with apologies to her for my modifications – the Seven Ingredients of Community Resilience.

The first ingredient is trust. For children, this means being aware of their emotions and being able to share them with people they trust. For communities, it is building trust so that everyone can speak honestly and openly about their values, their hopes, their concerns and their community.

The second ingredient is impulse control. Resilient children have developed a “stop and think” mechanism that helps them overcome the urge to act on their impulses. (Some of us are still working on that!) Resilient communities recognize that, after a disaster, there is a tremendous urge to get back to normal life quickly. Thus, these communities develop a vision and goals and sometimes even an action plan prior to a disaster to guide the thousands of individual actions that their members will take after it occurs.

Resilient children and resilient communities both have “realistic optimism.” They are able to recognize that things are less than perfect, but nevertheless have an upbeat belief that things will get better. For both children and communities, this optimism breeds health, effectiveness, and the ability to look at things honestly – what Nikos Kazantzakis calls “staring into the abyss.”

Closely allied with realistic optimism is the fourth ingredient – self-confidence. Both resilient children and communities are aware of their strengths and of their ability to use them. They both recognize that they can not only cope with adversity but can effect change as well.

The next ingredient is empathy – the ability to make meaningful connections with others. Anyone who has followed the work of Rick Weil looking at recovery after Katrina recognizes that community connections – both the strong ones inside the community and the weaker ones to the outside world – may be even more important for recovery than material resources.

Just as realistic optimism and self-confidence are closely aligned, so are the last to ingredients – reaching out and flexible thinking. By reaching out, Reivich means a willingness to try new things. For communities, this implies an openness to innovative approaches to solve wicked problems. Flexible thinking is the ability to look at things from different perspectives. For communities this implies not only a willingness to consider new ideas, but an innate interest in getting the whole picture, not just that from the leader’s perch.

Mix these ingredients with a generous amount of community involvement and bake in the passion of people who care about their community. All in all, a good recipe for a resilient community.

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