Monthly Archives: January 2019

“Building Cultures of Preparedness”

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New report released by FEMA’s Higher Ed Program: Building Cultures of Preparedness (40 pp.); Jan. 2019.

The Diva thinks this is an unusually well written and thoughtful report on a topic that may be new for many. She highly recommends it.

The first goal of the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) 2018-2022 Strategic Plan is to Build a Culture of Preparedness. Preparedness strategies to date have increased first responder and government capabilities, but individual and community progress towards enhanced levels of preparedness have been limited. Achieving the 2018-2022 Strategic Plan’s vision of enhanced preparedness requires a bottom-up approach to close these gaps.

This report highlights the vast diversity of American communities and households, indicating that a one-size-fits-all strategy is not well-suited to the specific demands of variable and distinctive environments – our Culture of Preparedness will have to be built one community at a time. Preparedness is a local matter, requiring solutions tailored to different cultural contexts and embraced by communities. Supporting the vision of a resilient nation in the Strategic Plan requires us to think in the plural, in terms of building ‘Culture(s) of Preparedness’.

This report presents a culture-based approach to the preparedness goals laid out in the Strategic Plan. It lays out four Guiding Principles for building Cultures of Preparedness, followed by practical strategies and examples that demonstrate successful outcomes in real-world settings:

Trust – Develop trust by understanding the culture, context, and history of communities outside of disaster, as well as when an event occurs.

Inclusion – Bring the cultural perspectives of all stakeholders to the table

Cross-cultural communication – Design communication efforts as cross-cultural encounters.

Support local practices and successes – Learn about the ways people are already prepared and enhance these efforts using culturally-aware strategies.

 

 

 

 

Aftermath of CA Fires – cleanup problems

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Why the Cleanup From California’s Camp Fire Could Hit a Major Roadblock. A potential problem has emerged: Nearly half of the property owners in the hill country around Paradise have not given the government permission to enter their properties to do the work.

Preliminary cleanup has already begun for what may be a $2 billion-plus effort, said to be the largest and costliest in state history. The main work, involving a complete scraping and clearing of burned-out properties, is scheduled to begin later this week.

San Francisco Mayor Orders Preparations for “the big one.”

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From HSToday: Mayor Orders San Francisco to Prepare for the Big One: 72 Percent Chance Before 2043

According to a statement from the Office of Mayor London Breed, “It is estimated that San Francisco has a 72 percent chance of experiencing a 6.7 magnitude or greater earthquake before 2043.”

Breed says, “We know that the next major earthquake will hit at any time and every day we should be working to prepare for it,” announcing that she is ordering city organs to “make our buildings safer now, but also [create] a comprehensive plan” for recovery in the face of an eventual disaster.

Comparison of Federal Responses to Three 2017 Hurricanes

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Quantifying inequities in US federal response to hurricane disaster in Texas and Florida compared with Puerto Rico. ( 6 pp.)

Our results show that the federal government responded on a larger scale and much more quickly across measures of federal money and staffing to Hurricanes Harvey and Irma in Texas and Florida, compared with Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. The variation in the responses was not commensurate with storm severity and need after landfall in the case of Puerto Rico compared with Texas and Florida. Assuming that disaster responses should be at least commensurate to the degree of storm severity and need of the population, the insufficient response received by Puerto Rico raises concern for growth in health disparities and increases in adverse health outcomes

Resilience Bonds

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Review of RESILIENCE BONDS: A BUSINESS-MODEL FOR RESILIENT INFRASTRUCTURE by Shalini Vaijhala and James Rhodes, re:focus partners, 2018/
Source: https://www.institut.veolia.org/en/resilience-bonds-business-model-resilient-infrastructure

Reviewer: Jasper Cooke

This article outlines a financial strategy to help facilitate greater investment in mitigation, called a Resilience Bond. These bonds are designed to solve the challenge of investing in mitigation when the benefits are uncertain and would occur far into the future.

What are Resilience Bonds and how do they address this problem? Simply put, they are a form of insurance. They build on the idea of Catastrophe Bonds (Cat Bonds), which are much more like “insurance policies and not traditional municipal bonds.” They usually differ from traditional insurance in that once disaster losses reach a pre-set level, the Cat Bonds immediately pay out. Resilience Bonds include the addition that if a community implements a mitigation project that quantifiably reduces the risk to the insured property (and therefore the likelihood that the Cat Bond will ever have to pay out), then the ‘sponsor’ of the Resilience Bond (i.e. the person looking to reduce their own risk) will get a premium reduction.

To use an analogy from the authors, “If Catastrophe Bonds are similar to life insurance policies that only pay out when the worst disasters strike, then Resilience Bonds are more like progressive health insurance programs that provide incentives to make healthy choices—quitting smoking or exercising regularly—that reduce long-term risks and the cost of care.”

While the market for Cat Bonds is estimated at $30 billion annually and growing, the authors also lay out some challenges before issuance of the first Resilience Bond. For example, responsibility for public assets is often very broad and the process to implement a mitigation project suitable for a Resilience Bond could take years. Since the bond wouldn’t take effect until the project is complete, it can be hard to synchronize the timelines. The authors recommend collaborating both with design and engineering firms, as well as financial partners, so that the project can take advantage of all perspectives early on. Continuing the life insurance analogy, your life insurance company has to find out that you’ve quit smoking to reduce your rate, so these kinds of collaborative discussions are key for all partners to fully appreciate and realize the benefits.

Ultimately the authors hope that Resilience Bonds will help further increase the number of mitigation investments both by creating a direct financial incentive and by creating a broader quantified understanding of risk and risk reduction benefits. In my view, they are right. Resilience bonds make sense and, as long as catastrophe bonds continue to increase in popularity, resilience bonds will also continue to grow in potential utility. Better understanding of risk is key to any comprehensive national or local program to reduce it, along with clear responsibility for the range of risks a community faces, and resilience bonds can directly address these areas.