ProPublica has been on crusade regarding the Red Cross’s expenditures of donations after H. Sandy. Here is the latest from their site: Red Cross Reverses Stance on Sandy Spending “Trade Secrets;” The charity has released some new details on how it spent over $300 million raised after the storm.
Michael Berkowitz: Community is the secret of urban resilience . The author is CEO of the Rockefeller Foundation’s 100 Resilient Cities initiative, an emerging movement in municipal planning and development: the quest to make urban communities far more resilient to social, economic and physical shocks.
Some quotes from the article:
With so many cities clamoring to participate, what will convince the 100 Resilient Cities to pick one over another? Answer: the camaraderie of its citizens, the fabric of its churches and religious organization, even the footprint of the transportation network and how it defines where neighborhoods end and begin.
“We see a key differentiator is community cohesion,” Berkowitz noted. “In other words, how much do neighbors check on neighbors? How tight-knit are communities that can come together during stresses or after shocks like earthquakes, big floods or hurricanes? Communities that are cohesive in that way always rebound better or are more resilient.”
Order now for the fall semester. Details about the table of contents, authors, and special features can be seen on the publisher’s website. [Note: the Diva is the editor of this book.]
For those of you who want to know the origins and history of FEMA, this book tells all!
Gaza is the ultimate challenge for recovery because none of the essential elements are in place. For starters, there is no political stability, questionable local governance, and no clearly identified source(s) of major funding needed. And then there are the usual requirements for effective recovery……
Here are some recent articles that describe the needs and challenges:
New research by the University of Otago maps different levels of poverty across New Zealand and shows that Christchurch is better off than it was in 2006.
The number of people living in the least-deprived parts of Christchurch has grown by about 13,000, while the number in the most deprived areas has fallen by about the same number, the latest deprivation index by the University of Otago reveals.
The second article deals with infrastructure restoration in CHCH.
New Journal: Journal of Extreme Events
http://www.worldscientific.com/worldscinet/joee
Free access to articles until 3/31/15 with registration at World Scientific.
Thanks to Chris Jones for this information.
From the Miami Herald: As natural disaster threats around the world increase, so do risks to businesses’ customers, supplies
Richard S. Olson, director of the Extreme Events Institute at Florida International University, said companies have a growing incentive to reduce the risk of disaster damage to suppliers and customers because the insurance and reinsurance industries increasingly account for such risk in pricing their coverage.
Natural disaster risk is starting to command more attention because it is increasing worldwide. “The private sector’s awareness has spiked because of the vulnerabilities they’ve seen in their supply and production chains, and because the insurance and reinsurance industries are paying more attention to track recurrences of hurricanes, cyclones and typhoons,” Olson said. “There’s much more attention being paid by risk modelers to natural disasters.”
National Protection Framework Released.
The National Planning Frameworks consists of five separate documents that describe how the whole community works together in preparedness, response and recovery to become a secure and resilient nation. They are the cornerstone for the implementation of Presidential Policy Directive / PPD-8: National Preparedness. The National Protection Framework was the last to be released; it describes what the whole community should do to safeguard against acts of terrorism, natural disasters, and other threats or hazards. It describes the core capabilities; roles and responsibilities; and coordinating structures that facilitate the protection of individuals, communities, and the Nation.
I now have direct links to all of the reports. I have not yet had time to read them all, but they appear to be a significant recap of the many reports both the OIG and GAO have completed in recent years.
As of Monday aft., here is the revised version of what is available:
#1: From HS Today, article titled “FEMA Under Fire for Excessive Costs and Mismanagement of Disaster Aid Programs.” Some quotes from that article:
In an attempt to stem the increasing costs of disaster aid programs, the Office of Inspector General (OIG) for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently advanced proposals to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) disaster response and recovery programs.
The OIG and GAO detailed systemic risk issues within the various grant programs that have led to redundancy of disaster aid requests and managerial issues within FEMA.
The OIG report said many of those responsible for administering disaster grant programs have little to no experience managing federal grants and are often disaster survivors themselves, resulting in ineligible and unsupported costs and noncompliance with federal contracting requirements.
“In June 2011, we found that FEMA’s Strategic Human Capital Plan did not define critical skills and competencies that FEMA would need in the coming years or provide specific strategies and program objectives to motivate, deploy and retain employees, among other things,” GAO said. “As a result, we recommended that FEMA develop a comprehensive workforce plan that identifies agency staffing and skills requirements, addresses turnover and staff vacancies, and analyzes FEMA’s use of contractors.”
While demand grows for professionally trained managers, FEMA is forced to hire from a population pool with no real world experience or training in disaster management. Until this gap in experience is filled, FEMA will have no choice but to continue to hire unqualified managers and put those employees through extensive disaster management training.
#2: Here is the link directly to the GAO site for their recent testimony report (18 pp) titled FEMA: Opportunities to Achieve Efficiencies and Strengthen Operations.
#3: Here is the link to the DHS IG report based on testimony to the Senate on July 24 (38 pp).
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Thanks to reader Christine Lilly-Holbrook for the URL for the last-mentioned report.
Recovery Diva 