From the Journalists Resource website, maintained by Harvard University, here is a recent roundup of research on the topics of Global warming, rising seas and coastal cities: Trends, impacts and adaptation strategies.
Climate adaptation plans are getting mixed results across the U.S.
Ever wonder how state adaptation plans adopted across the country are actually being implemented on the ground? There’s now a website that tells you, and the results are mixed.
The Georgetown Climate Center is launching an expansive online database analyzing progress on the plans, which provide guidance on adapting to floods, fires and other climate-related problems. The tool reveals whether a state has an adaptation plan at all, and if so, which programs, laws or regulations may have resulted from goals or guidelines within it.The center found that 14 states have finalized plans, meaning they have gone through an official state process with a task force or subset of officials and have sent the plans back to the governor or legislature. Additionally, eight more states and Washington, D.C., are moving toward a finalized climate plan via their internal planning process. However, less than half of the states have completed plans, even if their localities sometimes are taking action.
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In total, the 14 states that have finished plans are mainly coastal: Alaska, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Massachusetts, Maryland, Maine, New Hampshire, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Washington. In those states, the rate of completion of the adaptation plans — meaning goals outlined in them have resulted in some sort of tangible outcome, like a regulation or program — ranges from a single digit to about 14 percent. When “progress” on the goals is included, the percentage rises to as high as 86 percent, said Aaron Ray, institute associate at the center.
From the CRS, The Ebola Outbreak: Select Legal Issues; 2 page brief.
From SARS to Ebola: Legal and Ethical Considerations for Modern Quarantine, by Mark A. Rothstein. University of Louisville – Institute for Bioethics, Health Policy, and Law; University of Louisville – Louis D. Brandeis School of Law. Indiana Health Law Review, vol.12, no.1, 2015 Forthcoming. Full paper, which is available for download, is 44 pp. Abstract follows:
Quarantine remains an important part of the strategy for containing infectious diseases, especially when there is no vaccine or effective treatment. Recent experiences with SARS and Ebola indicate that large-scale quarantine is fraught with ethical challenges. In the United States, legislation authorizing quarantine has been enacted in every state, and these laws have been upheld by the Supreme Court. The following ethical principles should guide public health officials in deciding whether and how to impose a quarantine: (1) necessity, effectiveness, and scientific rationale; (2) proportionality and least infringement; (3) humane supportive services; and (4) public justification.
My former colleague Bill Cumming reminded me of this time line chart we completed in 2002. At that time there was no national health response plan, and from all indications there still is not one today. But for those people who are thinking about creating one, here is some of the history of Federal Civil Response Planning in the U.S.
The chart is a bit dated. But anyone interested in having us update it, and providing the modest financial support to do so, please contact the Diva.
Update: In the Washington Post, on Oct. 21, I found this article on the need for a national plan – mainly dealing with hospitals and public health matters.
From National Geographic, see: Two Years After Hurricane Sandy Hit the U.S., What Lessons Can We Learn From the Deadly Storm? In an era of extreme weather, we have to keep the risk of weather disasters in the front of our minds, author says. An excerpt from the author of the book:
I think Sandy’s message to us is that we cannot know how big the risk is. We just have to assume it’s huge—and that when a storm is coming and people are telling us to evacuate, we have to listen.
From the New Yorker, see: Retreat from the Water’s Edge
Nearly two years after Hurricane Sandy, New York has begun a “managed retreat” from some low-lying areas that are vulnerable to flooding and storm surges. Many residents of the Oakwood Beach section of Staten Island have opted into a program that allows them to sell their homes at pre-Sandy value, to the State of New York, which intends to return hundreds of parcels of land to nature. The cleared neighborhood will then serve as a buffer zone to protect other parts of the island. The program has been extended to other areas of Staten Island and Long Island that are at continued risk of flooding in the face of climate-change-related events. In this video, residents describe their experiences with the buyout program, and urban planners explain why communities along the East Coast need to consider moving away from the water’s edge.
From the Washington Post, two book reviews: “Storm Surge” and “Superstorm.”
Report of a recent meeting of experts on Sandy and resilience.
More on the importance of social capital, from Newsweek.
The full report, which is 342 page, is titled Water/Wastewater Utilities and Extreme Climate and Weather Events: Case Studies on Community Response, Lessons Learned, Adaptation, and Planning Needs for the Future.
Also on the same website are six fact sheets and full case studies and syntheses.
This is the first posting on the topic of adaptation to climate change. If you are working on something related, please let the Diva know.
From an opinion piece by Dana Millbank in the WashPost, see The nasty politicization of Ebola. Here is the lead in:
Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, administered a dose of truth to political Washington this week.
For this honest service, Collins was pilloried. Collins shared with the Huffington Post’s Sam Stein his belief that, if not for recent federal spending cuts, “we probably would have had a vaccine in time for this” Ebola outbreak.
Ebola, the CDC and why government struggles with unprecedented disasters. One key element of the explanation:
A main culprit of government fecklessness, Light wrote, is communication. This is in part “because information has to flow up through multiple layers to reach the top of an agency, while guidance must flow down through the same over-layered chain. The result is a disastrous version of the childhood game of ‘gossip’ in which key information gets lost, discarded, distorted, or ignored as it is passed from one child to another.”
This is a continuation of the Recovery Issues discussion and it also builds on the earlier posting titled Disaster Recovery is a National Disgrace. I think the problems described are not just in the U.S. but are international.
Since this blog is dedicated to discussing the recovery phase of disasters, it attracts comments and questions from readers in many countries. The Diva often chats with experienced and influential researchers and practitioners in Canada, NZ, Australia, and other countries also are struggling to find the intellectual and practical knowledge base re recovery. Typically, they are unable to find good definitions, policies, guidance, and case studies with respect to long-term recovery from disasters.
In this digital era, a country should be able to find a way to work through some of the needs for information sharing, knowledge collection, and a repository for best practices. And ideally countries could be working with each other to advance the state of the art and practice.
Anyone want to take on the challenge?
Update: So far 3 people have contacted me to tell me about efforts underway. Be glad to hear about more.
Long term recovery from a disaster or emergency consists of those efforts taken to help a community return to “normal” however that might be defined by the community and, if possible, better than the pre-disaster state. Recovery is especially affected by actions taken during the preparedness and mitigation phases of the emergency management cycle. Recovery usually consists of two parts: short-term and long term. Typically, short-term recovery begins while the response phase of a disaster is still going on and includes such items as temporary housing, structure stabilization, restoration of utilities, debris removal, and assessing damage. Long-term recovery addresses permanent housing and the rebuilding of public buildings and infrastructure, use of scientific and engineering solutions, upgrades to codes, and environmental restoration. Long- term recovery from a disaster is often the most expensive phase of emergency management and the longest in duration. Full recovery may take years, if not decades to be completed.
Academic Perspective
As a nation, we still are not making the kind of progress that is needed with respect to long-term recovery. We still do not have an understanding of the many variables and complexities of recovery. Nor are we doing an adequate job documenting, assessing, and compiling a knowledge base about recovery. Ideally, an effective practical recovery research knowledge base would include information sources and resources on:
• Recovery theory
• Best practices
• Case studies
• Outcomes
• Models
The lack of attention to creating a body of recovery theory has been a concern, at least for the research community, for many years. In November 2010, the Public Entity Risk Institute sponsored a workshop at the University of North Carolina, with funding support from the National Science Foundation, to deal with this topic. For the first time, about 25 academics, researchers, and practitioners from across the country assembled to address the topic of recovery theory and related aspects.
The results of the workshop were published as a Special Edition on Disaster Recovery in the International Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters August 2012, Vol. 30. No. 2. It was unfortunate that it took two years to get the results published, and that they were published in a journal that is not as well publicized outside of academia. Nevertheless, that issue is perhaps the single best summary of recent thinking about recovery theory.
Another useful source is an article by Gavin Smith and Dennis Wenger ”Sustainable Disaster Recovery: Operationalizing an Existing Agenda” (Smith and Wenger, 2006.) With regard to best practices, case studies, and outcome see also several other chapters in the Handbook of Disaster Research cited above and another journal article: Long Term Recovery; the Neglected Component of Emergency Management (Rubin, 2009 ).
Other excellent research has been done by Laurie Johnson and Prof. Robert Olshansky. For example, their recent work with the American Planning Association and their recent book titled Clear as Mud: Planning for the Rebuilding of New Orleans.
Among the various reasons for the deficiencies in the progress of long-term recovery is that federal agencies are not providing enough guidance and technical assistance to states and localities—especially those localities that may only experience long-term recovery perhaps once (if they are lucky) in the tenure of their public officials or in the lifetime of most citizens. Often, what is missing is one or more of the following: knowledge of threats/ disasters, knowledge and practice of emergency management, ability to act (including public management capabilities and money), and the political will and muscle that is needed to address and implement recovery at the national and other levels. Another key deficiency is that there is no explicit federal mandate for recovery—no recovery equivalent of the Disaster Mitigation Act of 2000.
Since the issuance of Presidential Policy Directive (PPD) 8: National Preparedness, and the advent of the National Disaster Recovery Framework more attention is being given to recovery theory, practice, and cases examples, but these are general guidance and recommended actions only. There is no mandate that compels federal, state, and local governments or citizens to incorporate the recommended recovery practices. Hence, we still have a long way to go. Among the needed undercarriage for recovery are mandates such as statutes and regulations, policies, programs, local codes, and funding akin to response and preparedness. Additionally, a Recovery Knowledge Base has not been assembled; hence, recovery experience is not being captured, analyzed, improved upon, or shared in the 25+ years that we’ve been tracking this area.
Practitioner Perspective
Practitioners at all levels of government have struggled to find positive models of recovery and templates or checklists of items to be considered but have often been unable to develop a sufficient list. From our perspective, their frustrations are due to several factors:
• Recovery is very complex and varies considerably from place to place. There are so many variables to be considered that simple guidance documents and checklists really are not feasible.
• Although FEMA has been in existence for 35 years, the agency only issued the National Disaster Recovery Framework in September 2011. And the guidance for implementing that framework has yet to be issued (as of Sept. 2013). Furthermore, that Framework applies mainly to FEMA and its federal partners. States and local governments are not required to follow it.
• The lack of a knowledge base on recovery, particularly information about both good and bad examples of local experience with recovery.
Systemic Problems
As noted above, the lack of laws, regulations, guidance, and technical assistance from the federal government to state and local governments contributes to serious systemic problems and leaves large areas of uncertainty for governmental and nongovernmental organizations responsible for disaster response and recovery. Another issue has to do with the extent that federal policies and programs, like the National Flood Insurance Program, may have inadvertently contributed to coastal structural damage rather than reduce it by providing flood insurance that is low-cost and doesn’t require necessary mitigation that would likely reduce damage to insured structures.
Two other problems regarding long-term recovery were brought to the forefront recently by Superstorm/Hurricane Sandy. One concerns the problems that arise after flooding events; rebuilding is dependent on FEMA’s flood maps (under the NFIP). Given the unpredictable areas of impact and the coastal or riverine changes resulting from the flood event, new mapping efforts must be done and such efforts often take 12-18 months. In the meantime, elevation and set back requirements are unknown as yet, while residents anxious to rebuild are in limbo. They can and do work off of estimated base elevation maps, but final determinations may take a year or more. In the NY and NJ area the maps were last updated about 25 years prior to Hurricane Sandy, so the changes caused great anguish for property owners.Another concern, also related to the NFIP is the issue of repetitive flood losses.
For a fuller discussion of recovery projects and needs, from the federal perspective, see the Report of the Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force, issued in August 2013. That 300 page report contains 69 recommendations, and is too new for the authors to fully incorporate the materials in this chapter.
Recovery Diva 
