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Summary
No person or place is immune from disasters or disaster-related losses.
Infectious disease outbreaks, acts of terrorism, social unrest, or financial
disasters in addition to natural hazards can all lead to large-scale consequences
for the nation and its communities. Communities and the nation thus face
difficult fiscal, social, cultural, and environmental choices about the best ways to
ensure basic security and quality of life against hazards, deliberate attacks, and
disasters. Beyond the unquantifiable costs of injury and loss of life from
disasters, statistics for 2011 alone indicate economic damages from natural
disasters in the United States exceeded $55 billion, with 14 events costing more
than a billion dollars in damages each.
One way to reduce the impacts of disasters on the nation and its
communities is to invest in enhancing resilience. As defined in this report,
resilience is the ability to prepare and plan for, absorb, recover from, and more
successfully adapt to adverse events. Enhanced resilience allows better
anticipation of disasters and better planning to reduce disaster losses--rather
than waiting for an event to occur and paying for it afterward.
However, building the culture and practice of disaster resilience is not
simple or inexpensive. Decisions about how and when to invest in increasing
resilience involve short- and long-term planning and investments of time and
resources prior to an event. Although the resilience of individuals and
communities may be readily recognized after a disaster, resilience is currently
rarely acknowledged before a disaster takes place, making the "payoff" for
resilience investments challenging for individuals, communities, the private
sector, and all levels of government to demonstrate.
The challenge of increasing national resilience has been recognized by
the federal government, including eight federal agencies and one community
resilience group affiliated with a National Laboratory who asked the National
Research Council (NRC) to address the broad issue of increasing the nation's
resilience to disasters. These agencies asked the NRC study committee to (1)
define "national resilience" and frame the main issues related to increasing
resilience in the United States; (2) provide goals, baseline conditions, or
performance metrics for national resilience; (3) describe the state of knowledge
about resilience to hazards and disasters; and (4) outline additional information,
data, gaps, and/or obstacles that need to be addressed to increase the nation's
resilience to disasters. The committee was also asked for recommendations
1
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2 DISASTER RESILIENCE: A NATIONAL IMPERATIVE
about the necessary approaches to elevate national resilience to disasters in the
United States.
This report confronts the topic of how to increase the nation's resilience
to disasters through a vision of the characteristics of a resilient nation in the year
2030. The characteristics describe a more resilient nation in which
· Every individual and community in the nation has access to the risk and
vulnerability information they need to make their communities more
resilient.
· All levels of government, communities, and the private sector have
designed resilience strategies and operation plans based on this
information.
· Proactive investments and policy decisions have reduced loss of lives,
costs, and socioeconomic impacts of future disasters.
· Community coalitions are widely organized, recognized, and supported to
provide essential services before and after disasters occur.
· Recovery after disasters is rapid and the per capita federal cost of
responding to disasters has been declining for a decade.
· Nationwide, the public is universally safer, healthier, and better educated.
The alternative, the status quo, in which the nation's approaches to increasing
disaster resilience remain unchanged, is a future in which disasters will continue
to be very costly in terms of injury; loss of lives, homes, and jobs; business
interruption; and other damages.
Building resilience toward the 2030 future vision requires a paradigm
shift and a new national "culture of disaster resilience" that includes components
of
(1) Taking responsibility for disaster risk;
(2) Addressing the challenge of establishing the core value of resilience in
communities, including the use of disaster loss data to foster long-term
commitments to enhancing resilience;
(3) Developing and deploying tools or metrics for monitoring progress
toward resilience;
(4) Building local, community capacity because decisions and the ultimate
resilience of a community are driven from the bottom up;
(5) Understanding the landscape of government policies and practices to help
communities increase resilience; and
(6) Identifying and communicating the roles and responsibilities of
communities and all levels of government in building resilience.
A set of six actionable recommendations (see Box S-1 at the close of
the Summary) are described that will help guide the nation toward increasing
national resilience from the local community through to state and federal levels.
The report has been informed by published information, the committee's own
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SUMMARY 3
expertise, and importantly, by experiences shared by communities in New
Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast, Cedar Rapids and Iowa City, Iowa, and
Southern California, where the committee held open meetings.
UNDERSTANDING, MANAGING, AND REDUCING DISASTER RISK
Understanding, managing, and reducing disaster risks provide a
foundation for building resilience to disasters. Risk represents the potential for
hazards to cause adverse effects on our life; health; economic well-being; social,
environmental, and cultural assets; infrastructure; and the services expected
from institutions and the environment. Risk management is a continuous
process that identifies the hazard(s) facing a community, assesses the risk from
these hazards, develops and implements risk strategies, reevaluates and reviews
these strategies, and develops and adjusts risk policies. The choice of risk
management strategies requires regular reevaluation in the context of new data
and models on the hazards and risk facing a community, and changes in the
socioeconomic and demographic characteristics of a community, as well as the
community's goals. Although some residual risk will always be present, risk
management strategies can help build capacity for communities to become more
resilient to disasters.
A variety of tools exist to manage disaster risk including tangible
structural (construction-related) measures such as levees and dams, disaster-
resistant construction, and well-enforced building codes, and nonstructural
(nonconstruction-related) measures such as natural defenses, insurance, zoning
ordinances, and economic incentives. Structural and nonstructural measures are
complementary and can be used in conjunction with one another. Importantly,
some tools or actions that can reduce short-term risk can potentially increase
long-term risk, requiring careful evaluation of the risk management strategies
employed. Risk management is at its foundation a community decision, and the
risk management approach will be effective only if community members
commit to use the risk management tools and measures made available to them.
THE CHALLENGE OF MAKING INVESTMENTS IN RESILIENCE
Demonstrating that community investments in resilience will yield
measurable short- and long-term benefits that balance or exceed the costs is
critical for sustained commitment to increasing resilience. The total value of a
community's assets--both the high-value structural assets and those with high
social, cultural, and/or environmental value--call for a decision-making
framework for disaster resilience that addresses both quantitative data and
qualitative value assessments. Ownership of a community's assets is also
important; ownership establishes the responsibility for an asset and, therefore,
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4 DISASTER RESILIENCE: A NATIONAL IMPERATIVE
the need to make appropriate resilience investments to prepare and plan for
hazards and risks. Presently, little guidance exists for communities to
understand how to place meaningful value on all of their assets. Particularly
during times of economic hardship, competing demand for many societally
relevant resources (education, social services) can be a major barrier to making
progress in building resilience in communities.
Accessing and understanding the historical spatial and temporal
patterns of economic and human disaster losses in communities in the United
States are ways for communities to understand the full extent of the impact of
disasters and thereby motivate community efforts to increase resilience.
Historical patterns of disaster losses provide some sense of the magnitude of the
need to become more disaster resilient. The geographic patterns of disaster
losses--e.g., human fatalities, property losses, and crop losses--illustrate where
the impacts are the greatest, what challenges exist in responding to and
recovering from disasters, and what factors drive exposure and vulnerability to
hazards and disasters. Although existing loss databases in the United States are
useful for certain kinds of analyses, improvement in measurements, accuracy,
and consistency are needed. Furthermore, the nation lacks a national repository
for all-hazard event and loss data, compromising the ability of communities to
make informed decisions about where and how to prioritize their resilience
investments.
MEASURING PROGRESS TOWARD RESILIENCE
Without some numerical means of assessing resilience it would be
impossible to identify the priority needs for improvement, to monitor changes,
to show that resilience had improved, or to compare the benefits of increasing
resilience with the associated costs. The measurement of a concept such as
resilience is difficult, requiring not only an agreed-upon metric, but also the data
and algorithms needed to compute it. The very act of defining a resilience
metric, and the discussions that ensue about its structure, helps a community to
clarify and formalize what it means by the concept of resilience, thereby raising
the quality of debate. The principles that resilience metrics can entail are
illustrated by some existing national and international indicators or frameworks
that address measurement of the resilience of different aspects of community
systems. The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design for developers,
owners, and operators of buildings is one example. Comparison of the strengths
and challenges of a variety of different frameworks for measuring resilience
suggests that the critical dimensions of an encompassing and consistent
resilience measurement system are
· Indicators of the ability of critical infrastructure to recover rapidly
from impacts;
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SUMMARY 5
· Social factors that enhance or limit a community's ability to
recover, including social capital, language, health, and
socioeconomic status;
· Indicators of the ability of buildings and other structures to
withstand earthquakes, floods, severe storms, and other disasters;
and
· Factors that capture the special needs of individuals and groups,
related to minority status, mobility, or health status.
Presently, the nation does not have a consistent basis for measuring
resilience that includes all of these dimensions. Until a community experiences
a disaster and has to respond to and recover from it, demonstrating the
complexity, volume of issues, conflicts and lack of ownership are difficult. A
national resilience scorecard, from which communities can then develop their
own, tailored scorecards, will make it easier for communities to see the issues
they will face prior to an event and can support necessary work in anticipation of
an appropriate resilience-building strategy. A scorecard will also allow
communities to ask the right questions in advance of a disaster.
BUILDING LOCAL CAPACITY AND ACCELERATING PROGRESS:
RESILIENCE FROM THE BOTTOM UP
National resilience emerges, in large part, from the ability of local
communities with support from all levels of government and the private sector
to plan and prepare for, absorb, respond to, and recover from disasters and adapt
to new conditions. Bottom-up interventions--the engagement of communities
in increasing their resilience--are essential because local conditions vary greatly
across the country; the nation's communities are unique in their history,
geography, demography, culture, and infrastructure; and the risks faced by every
community vary according to local hazards. Some universal steps can aid local
communities in making progress to increase their resilience and include:
· Engaging the whole community in disaster policymaking and planning;
· Linking public and private infrastructure performance and interests to
resilience goals;
· Improving public and private infrastructure and essential services (such
as health and education);
· Communicating risks, connecting community networks, and promoting
a culture of resilience;
· Organizing communities, neighborhoods, and families to prepare for
disasters;
· Adopting sound land-use planning practices; and
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6 DISASTER RESILIENCE: A NATIONAL IMPERATIVE
· Adopting and enforcing building codes and standards appropriate to
existing hazards.
Community coalitions of local leaders from public and private sectors,
with ties to and support from federal and state governments, and with input from
the local citizenry, become very important in this regard. Such coalitions can be
charged to assess the community's exposure and vulnerability to risk, to educate
and communicate risk, and to evaluate and expand the community's capacity to
handle such risk. A truly robust coalition would have at its core a strong
leadership and governance structure, and people with adequate time, skill, and
dedication necessary for the development and maintenance of relationships
among all partners in the community.
THE LANDSCAPE OF RESILIENCE POLICY:
RESILIENCE FROM THE TOP DOWN
Strong governance at all levels is a key element of resilience and
includes the making of consistent and complementary local, state, and federal
policies. Although resilience at its core has to be carried forward by
communities, communities do not exist under a single authority in the United
States, and function instead under a mix of policies and practices implemented
and enforced by different levels of government. Policies that make the nation
more resilient are important in every aspect of American life and economy, and
not just during times of stress or trauma. A key role of policies designed to
improve national resilience is to take the long-term view of community
resilience and to help avoid short-term expediencies that can diminish resilience.
Certain policies of the federal Executive Branch, including Presidential
Directives and Executive Orders, policies initiated by federal agencies, and
policies of the Legislative Branch can and do function to help strengthen
resilience. Presidential Policy Directive-8 (PPD-8) calls upon the Department of
Homeland Security to embrace systematic preparation against all types of
threats, including catastrophic natural disasters. Because the scope of resilience
is sometimes not fully appreciated, some who contemplate national resilience
policy think first of the Stafford Act and its role in disaster response and
recovery. Although the Stafford Act does provide guidance for certain
responsibilities and actions in responding to a disaster incident, national
resilience transcends the immediate impact and disaster response and therefore
grows from a broader set of policies. Many of the critical policies and actions
required for improved national resilience are also enacted and implemented at
the state and local levels.
Policies at all levels of governance do exist to enhance resilience;
however, some government policies and practices can also have unintended
consequences that negatively affect resilience. Furthermore, gaps in policies
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SUMMARY 7
and programs among federal agencies exist for all parts of the resilience
process--including disaster preparedness, response, recovery, mitigation, and
adaptation, as well as research, planning, and community assistance. Although
some of these gaps are the result of the legislative authorization within which
agencies are directed to operate, the roles and responsibilities for building
resilience are not effectively coordinated by the federal government, either
through a single agency or authority, or through a unified vision.
Community resilience is broad and complex, making it difficult to
codify resilience in a single comprehensive law. Rather, infusing the principles
of resilience into all the routine functions of the government at all levels and
through a national vision is a more effective approach.
LINKING COMMUNITY AND GOVERNANCE TO GUIDE NATIONAL
RESILIENCE
Increased resilience cannot be accomplished by simply adding a
cosmetic layer of policy or practice to a vulnerable community. Long-term shifts
in physical approaches (new technologies, methods, materials, and infrastructure
systems) and cultural approaches (the people, management processes,
institutional arrangements, and legislation) are needed to advance community
resilience. Resilience to disasters rests on the premise that all aspects of a
community--its physical infrastructure, its socioeconomic health, the health and
education of its citizens, and its natural environment--are strong. This kind of
systemic strength requires that the community members work in concert and in
such a way that the interdependencies among them provide strength during a
disaster event.
Communities and the governance network of which they are a part are
complex and dynamic systems that develop and implement resilience-building
policies through combined effort and responsibility. Experience in the disaster
management community suggests that linked bottom-up and top-down networks
are important for managing risk and increasing resilience. Key interactions
within the nation's resilience "system" of communities and governance can be
used to help identify specific kinds of policies that can increase resilience and
the roles and responsibilities of the actors in government, the private sector, and
communities for implementing these policies. For example, to understand
hazards or threats and their processes, research and science and technology
policies allow federal and state agencies to coordinate efforts on detection and
monitoring activities that can be used by regional and local governing bodies,
the private sector, and communities to evaluate and address their hazards and
risks. Identifying resilience policy areas, identifying those in community and
government responsible for coordinating activities in those areas, and
identifying the recipients of the information or services resulting from those
activities reveal strengths and gaps in the nation's resilience "system."
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8 DISASTER RESILIENCE: A NATIONAL IMPERATIVE
Advancing resilience is a long-term process, but can be coordinated
around visible, short-term goals that allow individuals and organizations to
measure or mark their progress toward becoming resilient and overcoming these
gaps. However, as a necessary first step to strengthen the nation's resilience and
provide the leadership to establish a national "culture of resilience," a full and
clear commitment to disaster resilience by the federal government is essential.
BUILDING A MORE RESILIENT NATION: THE PATH FORWARD
No single sector or entity has ultimate responsibility for improving
national resilience. No specific federal agency has all of the authority or
responsibility, all of the appropriate skill sets, or adequate fiscal resources to
address this growing challenge. An important responsibility for increasing
national resilience lies with residents and their communities. Input, guidance,
and commitment from all levels of government and from the private sector,
academia, and community-based and nongovernmental organizations are needed
throughout the entire process of building more resilient communities. The
report frames six recommendations (Box S-1) that can help guide the nation in
advancing collective, resilience-enhancing efforts in the coming decades.
BOX S-1
Summary Recommendations
Recommendation 1: Federal government agencies should incorporate
national resilience as a guiding principle to inform the mission and actions
of the federal government and the programs it supports at all levels.
Recommendation 2: The public and private sectors in a community should
work cooperatively to encourage commitment to and investment in a risk
management strategy that includes complementary structural and
nonstructural risk-reduction and risk-spreading measures or tools. Such
tools might include an essential framework (codes, standards, and
guidelines) that drives the critical structural functions of resilience and
investment in risk-based pricing of insurance.
Recommendation 3: A national resource of disaster-related data should be
established that documents injuries, loss of life, property loss, and impacts
on economic activity. Such a database will support efforts to develop more
quantitative risk models and better understand structural and social
vulnerability to disasters.
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SUMMARY 9
Recommendation 4: The Department of Homeland Security in conjunction
with other federal agencies, state and local partners, and professional
groups should develop a National Resilience Scorecard.
Recommendation 5: Federal, state, and local governments should support
the creation and maintenance of broad-based community resilience
coalitions at local and regional levels.
Recommendation 6: All federal agencies should ensure that they are
promoting and coordinating national resilience in their programs and
policies. A resilience policy review and self-assessment within agencies and
strong communication among agencies are keys to achieving this kind of
coordination.
Increasing disaster resilience is an imperative that requires the
collective will of the nation and its communities. Although disasters will
continue to occur, actions that move the nation from reactive approaches to
disasters to a proactive stance where communities actively engage in enhancing
resilience will reduce many of the broad societal and economic burdens that
disasters can cause.
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