Community Resilience Center of Excellence Webinar

NIST will hold a webinar on the Community Resilience Center of Excellence on Aug. 5, 2014 from 1:00-2:30pm ET. The webinar will offer general guidance on preparing proposals and provide an opportunity to answer questions from the public about the program. Participation in the webinar is not required to apply. There is no cost for the webinar, but participants must register in advance.

Update: See comment from Rob Dale re the grants available from NIST. Details are here.

The Diva knows that the topic of resilience is the one that gets the greatest number of hits of all topics covered.

Here is one more useful reference for those readers interested in the topic:  From the GSDRC organization in the U.K. see:
Disaster Resilience, topic guide (2014); 41 pp.

See this article in the LA Times: Los Angeles to Hire Chief Resilience Office to Plan for Drought

From the Wharton School at Univ. of PA, a 72-page, final draft version of a paper titled: Operationalizing Resilience Against Natural Disaster Risk: Opportunities, Barriers and A Way Forward.

The many authors cited are affiliated with the Zurich Flood Resilience Alliance and come from the Wharton School ( Univ. of PA) and the International Institute for Applied System Analysis, Austria.

Thanks to Shannon Cunniff for providing me with the citation.

Apparently, this announcement was issued on Sat. June 14th.  Given that timing, there has been little media coverage so far.

Today, President Obama will announce the National Disaster Resilience Competition. Responding to demand from state, local and tribal leaders who are working to increase the safety and security of their communities, the nearly $1 billion competition will invite communities that have experienced natural disasters to compete for funds to help them rebuild and increase their resilience to future disasters.

Here is the basic info from the White House site:  FACT SHEET: National Disaster Resilience Competition.

UPDATE:  The Fact Sheet does not provide a lot of details. It appears that HUD has the lead role. And the HUD website offers no additional details.

Not exactly a great kick off for this new effort.

DISASTER RESILIENCE; Actions Are Underway, but Federal Fiscal Exposure Highlights the Need for Continued Attention to Longstanding Challenges; GAO-14-603T, May 14. Both a summary and full version of this 20 page are available for download.

This report is a very interesting summation of many years of GAO studies.  Be sure to read Why GAO Did This Study, which is in the Highlights section on page one of the full report.

See also this insurance industry article for more details.

I am not sure why I was surprised, but I noted with interest the cover of the April edition of the Harvard Business Review, which features an article titled, The Resilient Company; How to Thrive in a Warmer World. An excerpt follows:

Though companies today face many global-scale challenges—from destabilizing demographic shifts to the threat of financial system collapse—extreme weather caused by climate change and increasing limits on resources are both having an unprecedented impact, threatening corporate profits and global prosperity. These “megachallenges” will require companies to fundamentally rethink their strategies and tactics.

To manage them, all parts of society—government and public institutions, the private sector, and citizens—must act in concert. But business, with its financial and material resources and unique innovativeness and talent, must lead the way.

As you would expect, the article provides a sophisticated discussion and analysis aimed at business leaders. I recommend it.

Article in the Guardian about the report titled Resilient Urban Form and Governance Report.
The link to the full report, which is 122 pages, is here.  From the lead in:

The three most resilient cities? They’re all in Canada. Toronto, Vancouver and Calgary top a new report measuring the least vulnerable and most adaptive cities on the planet – while the high-growth cities of the Bric nations teeter precariously on the edge of danger

Thanks to Ashutosh Madhukar for the link.  [You have to love the Internet: a gentleman in India reading the online version of the Guardian (UK), finds an article highlighting Canadian cities and sends it to U.S.- based blog!]

QUESTION TO READERS:  The Diva has not yet had time to read this full report, but she is puzzled by the apparent conflict – 3 Canadian cities rank high on resilience, but just two weeks ago (April 1) this blog cited two reports lamenting the state of Canadian preparedness and readiness for natural disasters. Does anyone have an explanation?

I mentioned these last month, but I think they warrant a reminder note. See: NIST’s April 7 Workshop Launches Effort to Improve Disaster Resilience of Communities.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Gaithersburg, Md., will host the first of six workshops devoted to developing a comprehensive, community-based disaster resilience framework, a national initiative carried out under the President’s Climate Action Plan.* The workshop will be held at the NIST laboratories in Gaithersburg, Md., on Monday, April 7, 2014.

Focusing on buildings and infrastructure lifelines such as communications and electric power, the planned framework will aid communities in efforts to protect people and property and to recover more rapidly from natural and man-made disasters. Hurricane Katrina, Superstorm Sandy, and other recent disasters have highlighted the interconnected nature of buildings and infrastructure systems and their vulnerabilities.
The six workshops will focus on the roles that buildings and infrastructure systems play in ensuring community resilience. NIST will use workshop inputs as it drafts the disaster resilience framework. To be released for public comment in April 2015, the framework will establish overall performance goals; assess existing standards, codes, and practices; and identify gaps that must be addressed to bolster community resilience.

NIST has convened a series of workshops engaging a broad network of stakeholders to help develop the Community Resilience Planning Guide for Buildings and Infrastructure Systems (Guide), with a focus on the role that buildings and infrastructure play in ensuring community resilience.

These workshops were held to support the continuing development of the Guide. The first workshop was held on April 7, 2014 at the NIST Gaithersburg, MD campus. Following workshops were held at locations throughout the country to engage a broad range of stakeholders and their experiences.

After receiving feedback from stakeholders NIST has released Volume I and II of the Guide.

The Community Resilience Planning Guides and related materials are available from https://www.nist.gov/el/resilience/community-resilience-planning-guides