John T. Cooper

Adaptive Planning for Disaster Recovery and Resiliency: An Evaluation of 87 Local Recovery Plans in Eight States

Problem, research strategy and findings: A pre-disaster recovery plan that considers how a community should be redeveloped is a logical first step to support resiliency during high uncertainty and rapid change, yet limited attention has been given to recovery plans. In this study, we evaluate local disaster recovery planning in eight southeastern states and find that such planning receives limited public support: Less than one-third of vulnerable local jurisdictions had a recovery plan, and those plans received low plan quality scores. Unfunded state mandates produce weaker plans than plans in other states without mandates. We find that a collaborative network of stakeholders initially intent on reordering priorities results in stronger plans. Takeaway for practice: Local recovery planning should be designed to operate under conditions of high uncertainty. Local jurisdictions can choose plan design options that reflect how they build capability for recovery planning: 1) standalone community-wide recovery plan; 2) comprehensive land use plan; 3) emergency management plan; and 4) small area recovery plan. Because recovery planning lacks a public constituency, and is new to most local jurisdictions, the stand-alone community-wide recovery plan design option is the most effective at building local commitment. This option involves a plan-making process that concentrates time, effort, and resources focused on a building a network of stakeholders who likely have the greatest responsibility in rebuilding efforts because they care most about the impacts of a disaster.

Planning for Community Resilience

This timely handbook brings together the fields of planning, disaster response, and hazards management to provide a field-tested process on how to make communities disaster-resilient. How can we plan and design stronger communities? Communities struck by natural disasters struggle to recover long after the first responders have left. Globally, the average annual number of natural disasters has more than doubled since 1980. These catastrophes are increasing in number as well as in magnitude, causing greater damage as we experience rising sea levels and other effects of climate change. Communities can reduce their vulnerability to disaster by becoming more resilient, to not only bounce back more readily from disasters but to grow stronger, more socially cohesive, and more environmentally responsible. To be truly resilient, disaster preparation and recovery must consider all populations in the community. By bringing together natural hazards planning and community planning to consider vulnerabilities, more resilient and equitable communities are achievable. In Planning for Community Resilience the authors describe an inclusive process for creating disaster-resilient communities. This handbook guides any community through the process of determining their level of hazard exposure, physical vulnerability, and social vulnerability with the goal of determining the best planning strategy. This will be an invaluable tool for professionals working to protect communities from disturbance.

Assessing the Quality of Rural Hazard Mitigation Plans in the Southeastern United States

High-quality hazard mitigation plans may improve postdisaster outcomes in many ways, including establishing a community fact base and providing rationales for protective policies and actions. Hazard mitigation plans in eighty-four rural counties in the Southeastern United States were scored using an established protocol. To supplement quantitative data, twenty-one key informant interviews were conducted in a subsample of seven counties. While overall plan quality was poor, informants identified areas for improvement. Understanding potential shortcomings of rural hazard mitigation plans can help communities identify areas to direct limited resources to improve plans, particularly in communities that self-identify as highly vulnerable to disasters.

The development of a participatory assessment technique for infrastructure: Neighborhood-level monitoring towards sustainable infrastructure systems

Climate change and increasing natural disasters coupled with years of deferred maintenance have added pressure to infrastructure in urban areas. Thus, monitoring for failure of these systems is crucial to prevent future impacts to life and property. Participatory assessment technique for infrastructure provides a community-based approach to assess the capacity and physical condition of infrastructure. Furthermore, a participatory assessment technique for infrastructure can encourage grassroots activism that engages residents, researchers, and planners in the identification of sustainable development concerns and solutions. As climate change impacts disproportionately affect historically disenfranchised communities, assessment data can further inform planning, aiming to balance the distribution of public resources towards sustainability and justice. This paper explains the development of the participatory assessment technique for infrastructure that can provide empirical data about the condition of infrastructure at the neighborhood-level, using stormwater systems in a vulnerable neighborhood in Houston, Texas as a case study. This paper argues for the opportunity of participatory methods to address needs in infrastructure assessment and describes the ongoing project testing the best use of these methods.

Assessing Social Vulnerability

A critical piece, and often the most neglected piece, of resilience to disaster is the identification and mapping of a community’s social vulnerabilities. When disaster strikes, its impact is not just a function of its magnitude and where it strikes. Development patterns characterized by sprawl, concentrated poverty, and segregation shape urban environments in ways that isolate vulnerable populations so that poor and rich, white and black, owners and renters, primary residents and vacationers, are separated from one another in clusters and pockets across the community. In many communities, if not most, the social geography interacts with the physical geography to expose vulnerable populations to greater risk. Vulnerable populations are less likely to have access to both information and resources that would allow them to anticipate and respond to a real or perceived threat, yet they are more often than not the groups who most need to attend to warnings to evacuate or seek shelter.

Organizing and Connecting through the Disaster Phases

With the previous chapter’s definitions of resilience and community capital assets in hand, we now turn to a broad conceptualization of the disaster management phases. Actions taken to build resilience in a community can occur at any of the four phases of disaster management: mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery.

An Assessment of Hazard Mitigation Plans

This chapter introduces and discusses hazard mitigation planning and plans as a critical step in mobilizing a community to increase disaster resiliency. Hazard mitigation plans are in many respects a recent policy tool. Introduced by the federal government, hazard mitigation plans are an approach to help communities better understand their disaster vulnerability, identify strategies and actions the community can use to help lessen their vulnerabilities, and develop priorities for funding these mitigation actions and projects. The Disaster Mitigation Act of 2000 began the process of encouraging local jurisdictions to develop local hazard mitigation plans if the local jurisdiction wanted to gain federal funding to help implement mitigation projects and actions. By mid-2007 approximately 14,000 of these plans had been approved by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) throughout the United States. As of 2011, there were more than 26,000 approved plans.

Assessing Physical Vulnerability

The fact basis for both hazard mitigation and comprehensive planning has long been based on hazard exposure and physical or structural vulnerability. As discussed in chapter 4, hazard exposure is a function of the nature of the hazard agent and its potential to affect the geography of urban areas captured in risk maps. Physical or structural vulnerability, on the other hand, is a function of the location of the population and the built environment relative to the hazard. In other words, hazards become disasters when they interact with populated areas. When they strike communities, hazards interact with physical systems that include elements of the built and natural environment that are often taken for granted (figure 5.1). How often do we think about the pipes that carry our water or electricity? Do we ever consider the investment and value of wastewater or sewage facilities and the strength and integrity of our schools or fire stations? Thus, physical vulnerability is the susceptibility to damage and loss based on the interaction between exposure and physical characteristics. These include the following:

The New Era of Catastrophes

In recent years, we have seen the terrifying impacts of natural disasters, including Hurricane Katrina, the Wenchuan and Kobe earthquakes, the Fukushima tsunami and nuclear disaster, and, most recently, 2012’s Hurricane Sandy. Globally, the average annual number of natural disasters reported has more than doubled since 1980., These catastrophes are increasing in the number of meteorological events (tropical storms, severe weather, winter storms, hail, tornadoes, and local storms), hydrological events (flash floods, river floods, storm surge, and landslides), and climatological events (heatwaves, freezes, wildfires, and drought). Although geophysical events, such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, have remained more stable, there has been catastrophic damage to structures and lives, most notably seen in the Kobe earthquake, Wenchuan earthquake, and, more recently, earthquakes in Haiti in 2010 and Japan in 2011. We are experiencing not only an increased number of events but also an increase in their magnitude or severity. The number of “devastating” catastrophes (those with more than 500 fatalities or more than US

Assessing Hazard Exposure

650 million in overall losses) and “great” catastrophes (those with more than 2,000 fatalities, 200,000 homeless, severe hits to the gross domestic product (GDP), or the country being dependent on international support) continues to climb globally (figure 1.1).