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"Resilience begins with leadership, appropriate planning
both in terms of action-plans but also in terms of
proper community planning and development visions."
Dr. Larry Weber, University of Iowa
6
The Landscape of Resilience Policy--
Resilience from the Top Down
INTRODUCTION
The key elements of resilience include strong governance at all levels,
including the making of consistent and complementary local, state, and federal
policies. As previously discussed, communities are not under a single authority,
but must function under a mix of policies and practices implemented and
enforced by different levels of government. Furthermore, 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. Policies to improve community and national resilience may
be designed and promulgated specifically to address issues of resilience, or they
may be policies designed for another reason that acknowledge the importance
and process of building resilience. In some cases, policies designed to
accomplish one positive goal may unintentionally cause deterioration of
community resilience. Therefore, policies and programs at all levels of
government require examination to assess their impact on the long-term
resilience of communities and the nation.
Increasing national resilience through specific policy measures involves
addressing the multiple aspects of resilience that have been discussed in this
report. For example, as Chapter 2 emphasizes, policy mechanisms play a role in
risk management through provision of data and information to evaluate potential
hazards, although, as Chapter 2 outlined, information alone does not ensure
resilience. Likewise, progress toward improved resilience is driven by the need
and value propositions outlined in Chapter 3, and likely monitored using the
indicators and tools described in Chapter 4 of this report. At the national level,
policies that enhance national resilience are not simply disaster reduction
policies. Because the scope of resilience is sometimes not fully appreciated,
159
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160 DISASTER RESILIENCE: A NATIONAL IMPERATIVE
some who contemplate national resilience policy think first of the Stafford Act
and its role in disaster response and recovery. Although the Stafford Act
(discussed further below) does provide for certain responsibilities and actions in
the face of a disaster, national resilience, as has been demonstrated throughout
this report, transcends the immediate impact and disaster response and,
therefore, grows from a broader set of policies. Many of the policies that affect
national resilience are not related to specific hazards or disaster events at all,
including some policies that may apply only to specific subsystems of a
community (Longstaff et al., 2010), and others that may have effects on
essential community services such as education and health care (see Chapter 5).
With this background, this chapter is developed from the idea that
improvement of national resilience relies on collections of coordinated and
integrated policies at multiple levels rather than a single comprehensive
government policy. The subsequent sections provide context for considering
policy options across the full range of stakeholders and authorities that
constitute the landscape of resilience, and describes several current practices at
federal, state, and local levels that support resilience, as well as policies that
unintentionally undermine resilience. Identification of specific roles and
responsibilities of government in building resilience flows naturally from
discussion in Chapter 5 of the complementary roles and actions that
communities can embrace as part of a systemic national effort to increase
resilience. The interdependency and interaction of community initiatives and
government policy are critical for increasing resilience (see Chapter 7 for the
way in which bottom-up and top-down approaches may be linked).
EXISTING FEDERAL POLICIES THAT STRENGTHEN RESILIENCE
Federal policies are intended to provide a set of nationally uniform laws
or practices to address national needs that transcend the conditions or needs of
individual states or cities. Federal policies address issues that have national
scope and importance, even if the issues and consequences are local. These
policies exist at the level of the Executive Branch--in both the Office of the
President and in the Cabinet Departments as well as in independent federal
agencies--and in laws enacted by the Legislative Branch. An outline of the
most critical of the policies that the committee determined would provide
support to strengthen resilience is briefly reviewed below.
Federal Executive Branch Policies Supporting Resilience
U.S. national leaders continue to seek broad policies for strengthening
the nation against both terrorist acts and natural disasters. Certain Executive
Branch policies, for example, are promulgated by the President through
Executive Orders or Directives that guide the actions of federal agencies. These
Presidential Directives and Executive Orders have the force of law. Directives
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THE LANDSCAPE OF RESILIENCE POLICY 161
may take different forms, but most recent Presidential Directives affecting
national resilience have been either Homeland Security Presidential Directives
(HSPD) or Presidential Policy Directives (PPD). A Presidential Policy
Directive (PPD-8) from 2011 entitled "National Preparedness" begins by saying:
This directive is aimed at strengthening the security
and resilience of the United States through systematic
preparation for the threats that pose the greatest risk to the
security of the Nation, including acts of terrorism,
cyberattacks, pandemics, and catastrophic natural disasters.
(White House and DHS, 2011)
The Directive calls for the development of a National Preparedness
System to guide activities that will enable the nation to achieve the goal of
strengthening its security and resilience; for a comprehensive campaign to build
and sustain national preparedness; and for an annual National Preparedness
Report to measure progress in meeting the goal. Importantly, the President calls
on DHS to embrace systematic preparation against all types of threats, including
catastrophic natural disasters.
Preparedness is not synonymous with resilience, but they are related.
According to PPD-8, "The term `resilience' refers to the ability to adapt to
changing conditions and withstand and rapidly recover from disruption due to
emergencies" (White House and DHS, 2011). This definition is in keeping with
the definition of resilience established by the committee during the course of this
study (see Chapter 1). The Directive also recognizes resilience as a
characteristic of an individual, community, or nation and that resilience is
enhanced through improved preparedness as noted below:
The Secretary of Homeland Security shall
coordinate a comprehensive campaign to build and sustain
national preparedness, including public outreach and
community-based and private-sector programs to enhance
national resilience, the provision of Federal financial
assistance, preparedness efforts by the Federal Government,
and national research and development efforts.
(White House and DHS, 2011)
As Box 6.1 shows, an entire series of HSPDs has been issued since
September 11, 2001. Although many of these directives are heavily focused on
terrorist threats, the preparation and response of communities to terrorist threats
contain many of the same elements as preparation for natural hazards. Thus,
significant and deliberate overlap exists in the application of HSPDs to both
human-made and natural threats. PPD-8 is one that can be broadly applied in
this way.
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162 DISASTER RESILIENCE: A NATIONAL IMPERATIVE
Importantly, PPD-8 recognizes that our national response to a wide range
of events, from the 2009 H1N1 pandemic to the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill,
has been strengthened by leveraging the expertise and resources that exist in our
communities. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is directed to
coordinate a "comprehensive campaign," informed by the long-term
requirements for national resilience, to reach the goals of the Directive.
Although the President assigns the Secretary of DHS to coordinate this
comprehensive campaign under PPD-8, the directive indicates that DHS is not
expected to conduct all of the work itself, but to coordinate the work of others.
The Committee supports the role of DHS in serving as coordinator of these
broad efforts to enhance national resilience under PPD-8 (see additional
discussion in Chapter 7).
BOX 6.1
Homeland Security Presidential Directives Relevant to National Resilience
· HSPD-1: Organization and Operation of the Homeland Security Council.
Ensures coordination of all homeland security-related activities among
executive departments and agencies and promotes the effective development
and implementation of all homeland security policies (October 2001).
· HSPD-3: Homeland Security Advisory System. Establishes a comprehensive
and effective means to disseminate information regarding the risk of terrorist
acts to federal, state, and local authorities and to the American people (March
2002). This system was replaced by the Terrorism Advisory System in 2011.
· HSPD-5: Management of Domestic Incidents. Enhances the ability of the
United States to manage domestic incidents by establishing a single,
comprehensive national incident management system (February 2003).
· HSPD-7: Critical Infrastructure Identification, Prioritization, and Protection.
Establishes a national policy for federal departments and agencies to identify
and prioritize U.S. critical infrastructure and key resources and to protect them
from terrorist attacks (December 2003).
· HSPD-8 Annex 1: National Planning. Rescinded by PPD-8 (below): National
Preparedness, except for paragraph 44. Individual plans developed under
HSPD-8 and Annex I remain in effect until rescinded or otherwise replaced
(December 2003).
· Presidential Policy Directive/PPD-8: National Preparedness. Aimed at
strengthening the security and resilience of the United States through
systematic preparation for the threats that pose the greatest risk to the security
of the nation, including acts of terrorism, cyber attacks, pandemics, and
catastrophic natural disasters (March 2011).
· HSPD-20: National Continuity Policy. Establishes a comprehensive national
policy on the continuity of federal government structures and operations and a
single national continuity coordinator responsible for coordinating the
development and implementation of federal continuity policies (May 2007).
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THE LANDSCAPE OF RESILIENCE POLICY 163
· HSPD-20 Annex A: Continuity Planning. Assigns executive departments and
agencies to a category commensurate with their COOP/COG/ECG
responsibilities during an emergency (September 2008).
· HSPD-21: Public Health and Medical Preparedness. Establishes a national
strategy that will enable a level of public health and medical preparedness
sufficient to address a range of possible disasters (October 2007).
· HSPD-23: National Cyber Security Initiative (January 2008).
Source: DHS, http://www.dhs.gov/xabout/laws/editorial_0607.shtm.
Notes: PPD-8 (http://www.dhs.gov/xabout/laws/gc_1215444247124.shtm) replaces HSPD-8 (2003)
and HSPD-8 Annex I (2007). Relevance of all HSPDs in this list to national resilience has been
evaluated by the Committee for this study.
The language of PPD-8 makes clear that American communities and
the private sector play central roles in enhancing national resilience and,
therefore, that DHS's coordination of federal efforts also involves effective
engagement of those critical stakeholders. Significantly, DHS is also called
upon to coordinate federal financial assistance, the preparedness efforts by other
federal agencies, and national research and development efforts.
The issuance of PPD-8 was a significant advance in increasing and
improving the federal role in national resilience, and its goals were amplified by
the report of the Homeland Security Advisory Council's Community Resilience
Task Force (CRTF, 2011). That report, released in June 2011, builds on the
Quadrennial Homeland Security Review Report1 and contains a set of
recommendations intended to define the role of DHS in advancing national
resilience through the mechanism of PPD-8:
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS)
clearly has an important role to play in building national
resilience, but at its core, the resilience charge is about
enabling and mobilizing American communities. The CRTF
acknowledges that many relevant activities are already
underway, particularly in fostering development of
preparedness capabilities, but observes that those activities
are rarely linked explicitly to resilience. (CRTF, 2011)
1
The Quadrennial Homeland Security Review Report
(http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/qhsr_report.pdf) contains five Homeland Security missions.
Mission 5 is Resilience to Natural Disasters, which outlines the traditional elements of hazard
mitigation, enhanced preparedness, effective emergency response, and rapid recovery. These issues
are also discussed in the DHS Bottom-Up Review Report
(http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/bur_bottom_up_review.pdf) released in July, 2010.
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164 DISASTER RESILIENCE: A NATIONAL IMPERATIVE
The recommendations contained in the CRTF report (Box 6.2)
represent a strong and clear starting point for federal involvement in building
national resilience. The recommendations are directed specifically to DHS and
call for clarification of responsibilities, building knowledge and public
awareness to enhance individual and societal resilience, and providing long-term
targets to support urban planning and the built environment.
BOX 6.2
Recommendations of the Homeland Security Advisory Council,
Community Resilience Task Force (CRTF)
2011
CRTF Recommendations that apply across the full range of Community
Resilience activities include:
CRTF Recommendation 1.1: Build a Shared Understanding of the Shared
Responsibility. DHS should take the lead in working with key stakeholder
groups to develop and share models for resilience--illustrations of resilience in
operational settings--within the context of each group. The purpose is to
motivate stakeholders to learn from each other and to do what they can to
enhance resilience without waiting for external intervention.
CRTF Recommendation 1.2: Build a Coherent and Synergistic Campaign to
Strengthen and Sustain National Resilience. DHS should align policies,
programs, and investments to motivate and operationalize resilience, and should
use its leadership charge from PPD-8 to motivate similar actions across the
federal government and throughout the Nation.
CRTF Recommendations 1.3: Organize for Effective Execution. DHS
should establish a National Resilience Office and charge it with building the
resilience foundation envisioned by the QHSR.
CRTF Recommendation 1.4: Build the Knowledge and Talent Base for
Resilience. DHS should implement a research program to build the intellectual
underpinnings for resilience training and education programs to be delivered
throughout the Nation.
CRTF Recommendations related to enhancing individual and societal
resilience include:
CRTF Recommendation 2.1: Update ready.gov. DHS should establish and
execute a plan for periodic review and update of the content and presentation of
information on ready.gov; messages should be linked explicitly to resilience
outcomes.
CRTF Recommendation 2.2: Build Public Awareness. DHS should develop
and implement a comprehensive and coherent suite of communications
strategies in support of a national campaign to increase public awareness and
motivate individual citizens to build societal resilience.
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THE LANDSCAPE OF RESILIENCE POLICY 165
CRTF Recommendation 2.3: Motivate and Enable Action. DHS should adapt
and implement proven incentive and award programs to motivate individual and
community engagement and action, and further develop mechanisms to facilitate
and enable engagement.
CRTF Recommendations targeting urban planning for the built environment
include:
CRTF Recommendation 3.1: Leverage Existing Federal Assets. DHS, in
conjunction with the General Services Administration and local officials, should
develop a Resilient Community Initiative (RCI) that leverages federal assets and
programs to enable community resilience.
CRTF Recommendation 3.2: Align Federal Grant Programs to Promote and
Enable Resilience Initiatives. DHS should review and align all grant programs
related to infrastructure or capacity building, and should support development of
synchronized strategic master plans for improvement of operational resilience
throughout the Nation.
CRTF Recommendation 3.3: Enable Community-Based Resilient
Infrastructure Initiatives. DHS should transform its critical infrastructure
planning approach to more effectively enable and facilitate communities in their
efforts to build and sustain resilient critical infrastructures.
CRTF Recommendation 3.4: Enable Community-Based Resilience
Assessment. DHS should coordinate development of a community-based, all-
hazards American Resilience Assessment (ARA) methodology and toolkit.
Source: Homeland Security Advisory Council, Community Resilience Task Force
(http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/hsac-community-resilience-task-force-recommendations-
072011.pdf), June 2011.
In addition to the CRTF recommendations, the National Preparedness
Goal developed by DHS in response to PPD-8 provides a statement of national
preparedness that includes preemptive actions designed to mitigate or reduce the
impact of both terrorism and natural hazards in order to develop a more resilient
nation (Box 6.3). The National Preparedness Goal deals with preparedness
across jurisdictions and at a national scale.
The formulation of the National Preparedness Goal, the operational
implementation of its many aspects, and the administration of several
community funding programs, primarily through the Federal Emergency
Management Agency (FEMA),2 place DHS in a strong position to provide
leadership in the interagency efforts required to build national resilience.
2
http://www.dhs.gov/ynews/releases/20110217-dhs-fy12-grant-guidance.shtm.
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166 DISASTER RESILIENCE: A NATIONAL IMPERATIVE
BOX 6.3
DHS National Preparedness Goal (excerpt)
"We describe our security and resilience posture through the core capabilities
. . . that are necessary to deal with great risks, and we will use an integrated,
layered, and all-of-Nation approach as our foundation. We define success as:
A secure and resilient Nation with the capabilities required across the
whole community to prevent, protect against, mitigate, respond to, and
recover from the threats and hazards that pose the greatest risk.
Using the core capabilities, we achieve the National Preparedness Goal by:
Preventing, avoiding, or stopping a threatened or an actual act of terrorism.
Protecting our citizens, residents, visitors, and assets against the greatest
threats and hazards in a manner that allows our interests, aspirations, and way
of life to thrive.
Mitigating the loss of life and property by lessening the impact of future
disasters.
Responding quickly to save lives, protect property and the environment,
and meet basic human needs in the aftermath of a catastrophic incident.
Recovering through a focus on the timely restoration, strengthening, and
revitalization of infrastructure, housing, and a sustainable economy, as well
as the health, social, cultural, historic, and environmental fabric of
communities affected by a catastrophic incident.
...These are not targets for any single jurisdiction or agency; achieving these
targets will require a national effort involving the whole community."
Source: Department of Homeland Security, National Preparedness Goal, 1st Edition, September,
2011, http://www.fema.gov/pdf/prepared/npg.pdf.
The conduct of federal activities in partnership with state, local, and
private partners may also be the goal of other Presidential directives. For
example, the interaction of federal agencies with the private sector to advance
the goal of improving resilience has been demonstrated in the area of critical
infrastructure. Homeland Security Presidential Directive 7 (HSPD-7) gives the
Secretary of Homeland Security oversight responsibility for protecting 18
critical infrastructure sectors, and gives selected agencies and the Environmental
Protection Agency the ability to direct national infrastructure protection for
some sectors (Box 6.4). These responsibilities require close coordination with
state and local government, as well as the private sector, and may provide a
model for the federalstatelocalprivate partnerships required to develop
broader strategies for building resilience in U.S. communities.
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THE LANDSCAPE OF RESILIENCE POLICY 167
BOX 6. 4
Roles and Responsibilities of Sector-Specific Federal Agencies in Critical
Infrastructure Protection
"18. Recognizing that each infrastructure sector possesses its own unique
characteristics and operating models, there are designated Sector-Specific
Agencies, including
a. Department of Agriculture--agriculture, food (meat, poultry, egg
products);
b. Health and Human Services--public health, health care, and food (other
than meat, poultry, egg products);
c. Environmental Protection Agency--drinking water and water treatment
systems;
d. Department of Energy--energy, including the production refining,
storage, and distribution of oil and gas, and electric power except for
commercial nuclear power facilities;
e. Department of the Treasury--banking and finance;
f. Department of the Interior--national monuments and icons; and
g. Department of Defense--defense industrial base.
19. In accordance with guidance provided by the Secretary, Sector-Specific
Agencies shall:
a. collaborate with all relevant Federal departments and agencies, State and
local governments, and the private sector, including with key persons and
entities in their infrastructure sector;
b. conduct or facilitate vulnerability assessments of the sector; and
c. encourage risk management strategies to protect against and mitigate the
effects of attacks against critical infrastructure and key resources."
Source: Homeland Security Presidential Directive 7: Critical Infrastructure Identification,
Prioritization, and Protection, December 17, 2003.
Other types of federal policies may also strongly affect resilience in
very broad ways. For example, evidence is growing that changing global
climate is increasing the nation's exposure to natural hazards through more
frequent and severe storms, as well as more extensive droughts and increased
vulnerability of our coastal regions through sea-level rise (NRC, 2012). Thus,
one type of long-term federal policy goal to improve U.S. national resilience
might include an energy policy that addresses carbon emissions and dependence
on imported energy resources. Addressing carbon emissions could help mitigate
climate change which otherwise may result in an increase in frequency and
intensity of weather-related hazards and could help support a national effort to
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168 DISASTER RESILIENCE: A NATIONAL IMPERATIVE
become less import-dependent for our energy needs (NRC, 2010). Although
such policies may not be recognized immediately as affecting resilience to
natural disasters, they are examples of the far-reaching implications of policy
decisions that may have impact on national resilience.
Finally, strategic investment of federal funds in local communities--
even within the structure of existing statutes and programs--may provide a
strong impetus to develop more resilient communities. Communities realize
that stronger infrastructure and institutions would make their population less
vulnerable to disasters, but they generally lack the resources or political will to
make capital-intense short-term investments even if they believe that those
investments will reap long-term benefits. In the future, predisaster funding may
serve as a critical tool in building national resilience. The practice of federal
funding of post-disaster recovery within local communities should be
strategically complemented with predisaster funding of the highest-priority
resilience elements within a community, such as enforcement of building codes,
land-use and development planning, and disaster-resistant health care services.
Existing programs such as those within FEMA3 could be strengthened to place a
greater emphasis on resilience. Careful analysis and consideration of a strategic
approach to federal funding of resilience are important in efforts to reduce the
impact (and cost) of disasters.
Coordination of Executive Branch Federal Agencies
In addition to the Executive Branch policies issued through Presidential
Directives and Executive Orders, agency policies may be initiated by individual
federal agencies through the rulemaking process, and may include such things as
management practices for federal lands or other resources, or rules and policies
that outline roles and responsibilities of various federal agencies in managing
federal assets, including those directing or supporting the activities that foster
community resilience. A key challenge for the federal government is how to
maintain motivation and accountability among all of the federal agencies in the
pursuit of defined, common goals toward increasing resilience. Each federal
agency has a specific mission, has a budget that is largely separate from the
budgets of other agencies, and is accountable to the President and to Congress,
rather than to other agencies.
A large number of federal agencies play key roles in mitigation,
preparedness and response aspects of building resilience. The ways in which
federal agencies are coordinated to address resilience issues on individual,
community, state, and national levels are currently not always clear, and the
process of coordination should be defined around a common vision of resilience
in order to leverage the effectiveness of each agency's efforts and investments.
DHS, by virtue of its mission and because it contains the major response
3
www.fema.gov/government/grant/hma/index.shtm.
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THE LANDSCAPE OF RESILIENCE POLICY 169
agencies, FEMA and the Coast Guard, houses much of the federal responsibility
and accountability for fostering national resilience and has a leading role during
response to incidents. However, DHS partners with other agencies that provide
research, information, and response capabilities essential to national resilience.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the U.S.
Geological Survey (USGS), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration,
the U.S. Forest Service, and the the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers play crucial
roles in providing scientific understanding and real-time assessments of
weather-related issues, fires, earthquakes, floods, tornadoes, and other natural
hazards, relevant both for short- and long-term monitoring and planning before
disasters occur and during actual events. The Corps of Engineers, the Bureau of
Reclamation, the National Resources Conservation Service, and the Federal
Energy Regulatory Commission manage or provide oversight for levees and
other structures and therefore play a critical role in flood reduction and
management, water supply, and energy generation. The Department of Energy
has key responsibilities for the energy infrastructure--coordinating such aspects
as energy infrastructure security and energy restoration, and emergency
preparedness and response for critical energy infrastructure.
In addition to attention to natural science and infrastructure
components, resilience relies on the health and welfare of the citizenry, and so
federal agencies such as the Department of Health and Human Services, the
Department of Education, and the Department of Housing and Urban
Development, and other federal agencies play key roles in helping to build the
total resilience of U.S. communities. A partial list of the numerous federal
departments and agencies engaged in some aspect of building community and
national resilience is shown in Table 6.1 along with some of their ongoing
resilience-related activities and initiatives. Of course it is difficult to coordinate
these numerous and diverse federal efforts, but failure to adequately harmonize
the work of these agencies reduces the effectiveness of the overall federal effort
to increase national resilience. On the other hand, improved coordination of
federal resilience programs in communities provides significant opportunities
for leveraging federal funding and ensuring that agencies are not working at
cross purposes.
Many agencies have demonstrated successful federalstatelocal
private cooperation arising from internal agency vision or goals, For example,
USGS and NOAA have worked with nonfederal partners to transfer research
results to their stakeholders, and have worked successfully to help communities
to assess and mitigate their earthquake and coastal hazards. These successful
examples have not happened by accident, but result from explicit policies within
each agency. The vision statement from the NOAA Administrator in the
agency's 5-year plan says:
NOAA's mission is central to many of today's greatest
challenges. The state of the economy. Jobs. Climate Change.
Severe weather. Ocean acidification. Natural and human-
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186 DISASTER RESILIENCE: A NATIONAL IMPERATIVE
Government, while acknowledging the primary role of local,
State and Tribal governments, is prepared to vigorously
support local, State and Tribal governments in a large-scale
disaster or catastrophic incident.18
However, many communities do not address, in a comprehensive
manner, the numerous and complex issues that produce resilience until after a
severe event occurs. The best time to develop resilience in a community is
while the community is being planned and built or reconstructed after a disaster,
and that is when the state and federal agencies may have somewhat limited
roles. Therefore, it is critical that individuals and community leaders
understand their roles and responsibilities relative to state and federal
responsibilities, and that they consciously seek to improve the resilience of their
community through their decisions and governing processes.
An example of building community resilience with specific local
policies is through the implementation of resource planning policies by states
and regional authorities that recognize threats from natural hazards also
contribute to community resilience. For example, the State of Massachusetts
recently adopted a climate change plan (Commonwealth of Massachusetts,
2011) to help avoid the consequences of anticipated changes resulting from
climate change, and the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development
Commission (2011) issued a set of recommendations targeted at helping the San
Francisco Bay area prepare for changes resulting from climate change and sea-
level rise. Maryland has recognized the vulnerability of its coastal zones,
particularly in light of the potential changes in sea level and climate, and has
developed adaptation strategies for their coastal areas (Maryland Commission
on Climate Change, 2008). Efforts such as these contribute to community and
national resilience by identifying hazards and threats before a disaster occurs,
allowing local administrations to adjust their development plans to protect their
citizens.
UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES: POLICIES AND PRACTICES THAT
NEGATIVELY IMPACT RESILIENCE
Much of this chapter has focused on policies and programs that provide
the framework for governance, responsibilities, and support of community
resilience from the top down. But community resilience may also be affected by
policies that are seemingly unrelated to resilience. Policies and practices
18
http://www.fema.gov/national-disaster-recovery-framework, p. 9.
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THE LANDSCAPE OF RESILIENCE POLICY 187
promulgated to address a wide variety of other national problems may have the
unintended consequence of reducing resilience. Furthermore, in some cases,
failure to enact a policy that would increase resilience results in a deterioration
of resilience. In other words, the absence of a specific beneficial policy is, in
itself, a policy. We present here a few examples of policies where unintended
consequences have effectively reduced community resilience.
Agricultural policies provide one example of unintended consequences
that reduce resilience. In this example, shifts in agricultural practice in the
United States in response to farm policies designed to improve field drainage
and productivity have unintentionally but significantly exacerbated flooding in
the Midwest. Westward expansion of farming during the 19th century motivated
farmers to improve the drainage in flat or low-lying farm fields to make them
more productive. Improvement in field drainage was accomplished by the
installation of drain tiles or perforated pipes just under the surface of the field to
remove excess water. The effect of this accelerated drainage during the spring
months of each year was to move water quickly from the fields to the streams
and rivers, which exacerbated--and still exacerbates--flooding along many
stream and rivers in the Midwest.
The contribution of field drainage to flooding was made even worse
after the implementation of new agricultural policies following the Great
Depression. As part of his suite of New Deal policies, President Franklin D.
Roosevelt believed that true prosperity would not return to the nation until
farming was prosperous. Roosevelt's Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938
made federal price support mandatory for corn, cotton, and wheat and
established permissible supports for many other crops and farm products.19 The
result of this policy was a fundamental shift in farming practice to row crops
(mainly corn and soybeans) replacing traditional sod farming (perennial
vegetation such as hay and densely sown small grains including oats, wheat,
barley, triticale, and rye undersown with pasture grasses and legumes) as
demonstrated for Iowa in Figure 6.1 (Jackson, 2002; see also Mutel, 2010).
19
Agricultural Adjustment Act, P.L. 75-430, United States Code, Title 7, Chapter 35,
http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-
bin/usc.cgi?ACTION=BROWSE&TITLE=7USCC35&PDFS=YES.
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188 DISASTER RESILIENCE: A NATIONAL IMPERATIVE
FIGURE 6.1 Shift in farming practice in Iowa to row crops from earlier focus on sod crops around
1938 as a result of the Agricultural Adjustment Act. Source: Adapted from Jackson (2002).
For more than 60 years (1870 to the 1930s) Iowa farmers had
maintained about 50 percent sod crop, but with passage of the Agricultural
Adjustment Act of 1938 row crops began to dominate, with dramatic
implications for flood resilience (Jackson, 2002). The traditional sod crops had
dense root masses that absorbed rainfall without runoff and released it back to
the atmosphere via transpiration and through underground flow into both
shallow and deep aquifers (Jackson and Keeney, 2010). Because the crops were
perennial, after harvest the root mass remained and was not tilled up, thus
retaining and improving top soil. Knox (2006) describes the agricultural
conversion of prairie and forest in the upper Mississippi Basin as the most
important environmental change that influenced fluvial (river and stream)
activity in this region in the past 10,000 years.
Even without impacts of climate change, farm practice (responding in
part to policy) has significantly increased the flood potential in the Midwest.
The overall effect of facilitating the drainage of millions of acres of farm fields
through underground drains, combined with the shift from sod crops to row
crops and the encroachment of many communities into the floodplain, was to
reduce the resilience of cities and towns along Midwestern rivers by increasing
the likelihood and intensity of flooding. To address this problem, Jackson and
Keeney (2010) summarize a variety of proposed novel mitigation strategies
including crop rotation, strip-cropping practice, crop mixing, as well as setting
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THE LANDSCAPE OF RESILIENCE POLICY 189
aside small percentages of row-crop land for perennial "buffer strips" along
streams. This example, like many others, contains many variables and many
forces, and cannot be distilled into a simple choice between flooding and soggy
fields or subsidies that encourage unsustainable farming practices, but it serves
to demonstrate that unintended consequences of well-intentioned national
agricultural policies may ultimately reduce local resilience.
Forest management policy provides a second example of unintended
consequences of policies or practices. A century of aggressive suppression of
wildland fires combined with recent broad and extended periods of drought,
have substantially altered many of the nation's forests and have resulted in
devastating wildfires at the wildlandurban interface in many locations across
the United States. These fires are difficult to control, threaten adjacent urban
areas, and are expensive to fight (Cohen, 2008). Corrective policies that
emphasize fuel management are often underfunded or infeasible. In their
review, USDA ecologists Donovan and Brown (2007) recommend a different
approach to wildfire management that focuses on encouraging managers to
balance short-term wildfire damages against the long-term consequences of fire
exclusion. The approach deemphasizes fire suppression. Recent changes in the
management of wildland fires recognize the effects of past policies on forested
communities and these new policies increase the resilience of those communities
and accommodate the sustainability of ecosystems (National Wildfire
Coordinating Group, 2009).
Likewise, government policies for coastal zone management have
traditionally been intended to balance economic development along the coasts
with preservation of coastal habitat and environment while recognizing the risks
of development along the coast.20 Now more than 50 percent of the U.S.
population lives within 50 miles of a coastline and this proportion is expected to
increase in the future.21 Economic development, including residential,
commercial, recreational, and industrial development in the coastal zone has
greatly increased the exposure to storm surge, coastal erosion, and sea-level rise.
Federal policy for coastal zones has been to encourage and support coastal states
in the proper development and management of their coastal areas, but some
states have placed short-term economic development above long-term safety and
community resilience.
Perhaps the classic example of unintended consequences of well-
intentioned historical policies is the effects of Mississippi River flood
management on the City of New Orleans and the Mississippi River delta
communities. This series of historical decisions and engineering efforts has
been thoroughly documented in several publications (Coastal Protection and
Restoration Authority of Louisiana, 2012). Many decades of efforts to levee and
channel the Mississippi River to reduce flooding and facilitate navigation along
20
Coastal Zone Management Act of 1972, as amended through P.L. 109-58 and the Energy Policy
Act of 2005, http://coastalmanagement.noaa.gov/czm/czm_act.html.
21
NOAA, http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/population.html.
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190 DISASTER RESILIENCE: A NATIONAL IMPERATIVE
the course of the river as well as the construction of large dams on the main stem
of the Missouri River combined with construction of channels for transportation
of oil and gas exploration have starved the Mississippi River delta of sediment
and have resulted in increased vulnerability to tropical storms and hurricanes in
the Mississippi delta region. The normal natural processes of sedimentation and
delta growth were halted and the subsidence of the delta edifice was not
counteracted by the deposition of new sediments across the delta. The result is a
subsiding and shrinking delta with reduced capacity to mitigate storm surge.
These effects have severely degraded the resilience of the delta and the human
settlements in the region, including New Orleans. These historic policies have
made the entire Mississippi delta region less resilient.
In addition to unintended consequences of individual policies, the lack
of communication and coordination among federal agencies may have real
consequences for communities or victims of a disaster. Sometimes an individual
policy may be beneficial, but when multiple federal agencies independently
apply mutually unknown policies to the same geographic area or structure, those
policies may be contradictory and may inhibit recovery or slow the enhancement
of resilience. For example, if one agency bases the distribution of funds on the
value of a property on a floodplain at the same time that a policy of a different
agency is changing the value of that property through acquisition or demolition,
the property owner may be caught in a quandary and may be excluded from a
funding mechanism through no action or fault of his or her own. The
application of federal policies either before or after disasters needs to be
informed by the goals of the community and by the knowledge of other policies
that are being applied by other agencies. This coordinated application of
policies will only be achieved if communication and coordination among federal
agencies is achieved, and if agencies are aware of the needs and priorities of the
affected community or individual.
An unintended consequence of certain security policies adopted after
the September 11, 2001 World Trade Center attack is the difficulty of some
local governments and the private sector in gaining access to certain information
necessary to secure privately owned infrastructure against various hazards and to
develop plans to deal with emergency events. A report on National Dam Safety
to FEMA by the University of Maryland identified the restrictions placed on
release of information on dam integrity and potential downstream inundation as
significant impediments to disaster planning and preparedness (Water Policy
Collaborative, 2011). A 2012 Report by the National Research Council on dam
and levee safety and community resilience similarly concluded that
Those subject to the direct or indirect impacts of dam or levee
failure are also those with the opportunity to reduce the
consequences of failure through physical and social changes in
the community, community growth planning, safe housing
construction, financial planning (including bonds and
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THE LANDSCAPE OF RESILIENCE POLICY 191
insurance), and development of the capacity to adapt to
change. (NRC, 2012, p. 107)
As pointed out by Flynn and Burke (2011), investment and operational
decisions by corporations that own critical infrastructure may be made without
full security awareness because information that has been classified by the
Department of Homeland Security is sometimes not available to the corporate
executives making the decisions. Because an increase in community resilience
requires coordination and cooperation among all key players within the
community, including the private-sector owners of infrastructure, it is vitally
important that communities be aware of prescribed rules and methods of sharing
restricted information in a secure way among all partners, including the vital
private-sector partners, as detailed in Executive Orders 12829,22 12958,23 and
13292.24 Some types of data may be sensitive, but giving local partners the
opportunity to work with state and federal stakeholders on equal footing is
important to build long-term resilience.
Finally, even some policies that seem unrelated to community or
national resilience may unintentionally and negatively affect resilience. A
recent example of this is the Budget Control Act of 2011. The President signed
the Budget Control Act of 2011 into law (P.L. 112-25) on August 2, 2011. The
purpose of that legislation is primarily to increase the U.S. debt limit, establish
caps on the annual appropriations process over the next 10 years, and to create a
Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction that is instructed to develop a bill
to reduce the federal deficit over the 10-year period. One provision of this new
law that affects U.S. national resilience is an amendment to Section 251 of the
Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985. That
amendment provides for disaster relief appropriations each fiscal year based on
"the average funding provided for disaster relief over the previous 10 years,
excluding the highest and lowest years." In this bill, "the term `disaster relief'
means activities carried out pursuant to a determination under section 102(2) of
the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act (42 U.S.C.
5122(2))." As discussed elsewhere in this report, developing national resilience
encompasses more elements than disaster recovery alone. Building a resilient
community requires thoughtful and strategic long-term investments in multiple
aspects of the physical and social fabric of communities that contribute to
resilience. Of course, disaster recovery is an integral part of that process
because the ability of communities to recover after a disaster, and the way that
they recover, is closely tied to becoming more resilient to subsequent trauma.
Therefore, the federal commitment to assist communities in a timely fashion is
central to the long-term resilience of communities. When a community's
22
http://www.archives.gov/isoo/policy-documents/eo-12829.html.
23
http://www.fas.org/sgp/clinton/eo12958.html.
24
http://www.archives.gov/isoo/policy-documents/eo-12958-amendment.html.
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192 DISASTER RESILIENCE: A NATIONAL IMPERATIVE
capacity to respond to a disaster is overwhelmed, its very survival depends on
how recovery is conducted. If resources are delayed or curtailed during the
critical recovery phase of a disaster, it is possible that states, local communities,
businesses, and neighborhoods may be unable to rebuild in a resilient way (or
not at all) and even greater costs will result over the long-term.
RESILIENCE POLICY GAPS AND NEEDS
Recognizing that community resilience is advanced by a variety of
policies at the federal, state, and local levels, combined with corporate policies
and practices, it is important to ask what policies might improve resilience.
What policies are absent and badly needed? What new policies should be
adopted at each level of government to continue the improvement in the
resilience of U.S. communities? Federal policies to strengthen the resilience of
communities may be broad or narrow, short term or long term. Because
resilience grows over the long term through the application of principles and
policies that guide local decisions, the most fruitful policies will be those that
acknowledge the broad, long-term needs of communities. Although
identification of specific resilience policy gaps is essential to advancing the
nation's resilience, an a la carte approach to resilience policy, in the absence of
an overall national strategy, may result in contradictory policies or gaps. Strong
communication and coordination among agencies and stakeholders will help
ensure effective actions.
The nature of resilience requires some flexibility and adaptability
because the patterns of risk, development, and culture vary so widely among
communities (see also Chapters 3 and 5). Consideration of this need for
flexibility is important for policymakers pursuing mechanisms to enhance the
resilience of communities. The fluid and progressive nature of seeking a
resilient community does not lend itself to laws or policies mandating resilience
as a perfect condition of a community. Any federal, state, or local policies that
attempt to mandate resilience would imply that resilience is a perfectly definable
condition, which it is not. Community resilience is highly desirable, but broadly
complex, and would be extremely difficult to codify in a single comprehensive
law.
Rather, governments at all levels have to formulate their own visions of
resilience and take the steps in all of their processes to advance resilience
through all of its components, forms, and functions, and seek to infuse the
principles of resilience into all routine functions of the government. Some ways
in which this might be done is the topic of the next chapter.
Currently, gaps in policies and programs exist among federal agencies
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
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THE LANDSCAPE OF RESILIENCE POLICY 193
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 about how these roles and responsibilities for promoting resilience
could be organized. The roles and responsibilities in the federal government for
long-term recovery and improvement of resilience constitute a particularly
significant policy gap despite some recent legislation and initiatives.
Implementation of PPD-8 should help address this gap. At the state and local
levels, many jurisdictions have made excellent progress in taking both a long
and broad view of community resilience, and these communities can be used as
models. However, many local communities find themselves torn among
competing priorities, and the advancement of long-term community resilience is
often undermined by the need or desire to address an urgent condition or
opportunity in the community. Clearly, policies and processes to improve
national resilience at all levels of government will improve as the benefits of
resilience are realized and the efforts to improve resilience are integrated across
jurisdictions.
SUMMARY, FINDINGS, AND RECOMMENDATION
Leaders at the local, state, and federal level are increasingly aware of
community resilience and how it might be advanced through a variety of
decisions and processes. Although many of those critical decisions and
processes to improve resilience occur at the state and local levels, the federal
government plays a central role in providing guidance for policy and program
development to assist local communities in their pursuit of greater resilience.
Development of new policies can be informed by an awareness of resilience,
how it can be promoted through decisions and processes, and how resilience can
be unintentionally eroded through poorly informed decisions.
Three significant findings from the assessment of the policy landscape
of resilience are:
(1) The development of appropriate policies, creation of optimal governance
structures, and informed and coordinated management at all levels of
government are crucial to improving community resilience. Community
resilience will grow as the knowledge, experience, and understanding of
these roles and responsibilities grow among decision makers at all levels
of government.
(2) Currently a multitude of activities, programs, and policies exist at local,
state, and federal levels to address some part of resilience for the nation.
Several of the critical processes, such as land-use planning and building
code enforcement, are the responsibility of local groups or governments.
The federal policy role is primarily to ensure that resilience policies are
nationally consistent and to provide information and best practices for
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194 DISASTER RESILIENCE: A NATIONAL IMPERATIVE
development of appropriate policies at all levels. Consideration of
potential unintended consequences of a new policy with respect to
disaster resilience is also important.
(3) The nation does not currently have an overall vision or coordinating
strategy for resilience. Recent work on homeland security and disaster
reduction are good beginnings, but the current suite of policies, practices,
and decisions affecting resilience are conducted on an ad hoc basis with
little formal communication, coordination, or collaboration. In fact, some
policies, decisions, and practices actually erode resilience.
Implementation of PPD-8 will address some of these consistency and
coordination issues.
Recommendation: All federal agencies should ensure 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.
Such an assessment should reveal how each agency's mission
contributes to the resilience of the nation, and how its programs provide
knowledge or guidance to state and local officials for advancing resilience.
Finally, each federal agency should evaluate its interactions with state and local
governments and with the public to evaluate the extent to which its resilience
work is made available to those who need it.
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