Image by Joel Abroad via Flickr
A few weeks ago, the first ever international conference on Societal Resilience was held in Fairfax, VA. Today the conference organizers provided a link to the full text of the presentations. Click here for a link to their website.
Timely new report from the National Academy of Sciences. It’s full title is Application of Social Network Analysis for Building Community Disaster Resilience. Note that the full report is 131 pages, but the you can browse it or just download parts of it at no cost. Hard copies also can be ordered.
The report was done for the Dept. of Homeland Security with the intention of providing an agenda for future research needs. It is not an easy read. I recommend Chapter 4, titled From Theory to Practice, for those wanting some essential points. More later when I get to read the entire document and think about it!.
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Before the Next Katrina: Urgent Recommendations for the President & Congress on Gulf Coast Resilience; Center for National Policy, August 27. In a compelling new report, authors Steve Flynn and Sean Burke address a few new problems, namely, the likelihood of a major hurricane affecting the same Gulf Coast area impacted by the B.P. Oil Spill and how to clarify, coordinate, and reconcile the two federal response systems that pertain. The Oil Spill response and now the recovery process are proceeding under the authority of the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, but a major hurricane is likely to get a Presidential declaration under the Stafford Act. The authors do an excellent job identifying problem areas and issues that should be address before another big hurricane reaches the Gulf Coast this season, which could be quite soon. See this C-SPAN interview.
I recommend the interesting discussion , and useful comments, regarding resilience that is on the Homeland Security Watch blog for Sept. 5 and also Sept. 8th. Mark Chubb the author of the posting has extensive experience working in NZ.
By way of background, NZ has a very high risk of earthquake in most parts of the country. (For a listing of the major earthquakes in N.Z. in recent years, go to this site on GeoNet.) The leaders are aware of it and have taken many steps to deal with it, including the creation of special insurance, run by their Earthquake Commission. One surprise was that the fault that triggered the recent set of quakes was previously unknown.
One example of the foresight of the NZ government, which I am aware of — in 1995, the Commission was a sponsor of an international conference that dealt with recovery and rebuilding of a major city after an earthquake. I was privileged to participate in the conference, which was excellent, and a high quality report was issued. The report is titled “Wellington after the ‘Quake: The Challenge of Rebuilding Cities.” I hope the Commission makes the text available in digital form soon.
One of the unique features of the ChristChurch event is that the country acknowledges its high earthquake risk and has mandated insurance for residential structures. More about this feature follows. Also, it will be interesting to see to what extent their construction and building inspection standards, zoning, and land use requirements may have contributed to the outcome of no deaths and relatively few injuries.
New Zealand Quake Damage Could Cost $1.4 Billion; WSJ, Sept. 5.
The cost of the damage is still being assessed, with teams working through the central city to check on building soundness. The Earthquake Commission, which covers residential damage on properties insured for natural disasters, said it had received about 2,800 claims for damage to property but was expecting a significant increase in claims over the next couple of days.
Earthquake Commission Chief Executive Ian Simpson said the quake was going to result in hundreds of millions of dollars worth of claims, “but it could be up to a NZ$1 billion” with around 100,000 claims expected to come in over the next three months.
The commission is a government-owned crown entity funded by insurance premiums and pays out the first NZ$100,000 of a claim. The fund currently has around NZ$5.6 billion and is backed by reinsurance from overseas groups and a government guarantee. Mr. Simpson said this will be the single biggest claim on the fund since it was established in the 1940s.
There are so many articles about the Katrina anniversary, it is hard to know which to pay attention to. Two articles dealing with long-term aspects and resilience in particular are as follows: We’re still not ready for another Hurricane Katrina; by Stephen Flynn, Washington Post, August 29.
With local communities having exhausted their ability to bounce back, the problems with our country’s approach to managing disasters loom especially large. Three are most serious: continued uncertainty in the gulf region about how the federal government would organize to support it after a storm; confusion about how or whether insurance companies would pay claims; and signs that stepped-up evacuation preparedness has not been matched with planning to quickly return people to their communities.
We tend to think of resilience as something achieved or not, but this article indicates that various degrees of resilience may exist just in one block of one neighborhood. That suggests to me that measuring resilience for a community is going to be a hard job. On One Block, Resilience and Despair, Jourdan Avenue’s Uneven Recovery Reflects New Orleans as a Work in Progress; Finally Back at Home—but No Hot Water August 28, WSJ.
Since the 5th anniversary will occur at the end of this month, several organizations have been reviewing the events and accomplishments. The Brookings Institution has issued a series of reports on what has been learned since Sept. of 2005; the listing of all reports is on the page titled The New Orleans Index at Five.
Their overview paper (20 pp) is subtitled From Recovery to Transformation, is a very thoughtful report that provides a excellent discussion of the key elements of recovery.
A useful new report titled Community Resilience: A function of resources and adaptability, from Syracuse University. June 2010. This 15 page report is a breath of fresh air — a clearly written, readily understandable account of resilience and its application at the community level. Well worth reading. [Thanks to Phil Palin for calling it to my attention.]
Additional concerns about the environmental and ecological outcomes. See Spill May Harbor Unique Hazards , Wall St. Journal, June 11.
“This is a three-dimensional spill,” said Columbia University oceanographer…”The physics, the chemistry and the biology action are very different when you have oil released from below.”
In the NYTimes today: BP’s Mess, and Wall Street’s
The Gulf of Mexico spill, like the financial implosion, was largely the product of people taking risks and knowing they wouldn’t be held accountable if things went wrong.
Recovery Diva 