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Community and Regional Resilience Initiative
The Year
Ahead
by
Warren Edwards
Director, Community and Regional Resilience Initiative (CARRI)
In our last newsletter, I closed with this look backward at 2007:
"At year's end, we find
the Community and Regional Resilience Initiative well launched. We have a superbly qualified research team drawn from across the
nation. We have three partner communities - Gulfport, Mississippi; the Memphis, Tennessee Urban Area; and the Charleston, South Carolina
Urban Area - fully integrated into the program and participating robustly. But of greatest importance, we know what we will do over the next
few years - build the definitions and processes that will allow America's communities to become resilient. Finally, we know the course that has
been set has potential to bring meaningful change to America's homeland security processes, helping our community and ultimately our nation
become more resilient."
But a look backward can also be a means to charting the way forward, which is what I want to discuss in this
first note of 2008 about what we expect to accomplish. I'll start, however, by noting that CARRI is on the front end of a wave - a
resilience movement - that is gathering momentum within the preparedness community and government at all levels. As you will see in the press
release below, Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff recently emphasized the importance of CARRI's efforts within the Southeast
Region Research Initiative to study and increase resiliency in our communities.
We've also seen a major OpEd
piece from former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani titled "The Resilient Society" that mirrors our
philosophy;
"...The next administration's approach to homeland security should be based on
three core principles: prevention, preparedness, and resilience...Government should harness the inherent strength of the American people and the
private sector in order to build a society that may bend-but not break-if catastrophe does strike."
CARRI has also been engaged by a number of representatives of state and federal governments
to discuss our approach with our partner communities. In some cases, those representatives want to leverage what we create and what we learn as our
research continues unabated. In other cases, they see CARRI as a means to create dialogue between disparate elements of government which might
otherwise not communicate or coordinate their efforts.
Similarly, we are making inroads in reaching out to members of the financial and insurance
industries because they are critical players in helping communities bounce back from disasters. All told, we believe we are garnering a
reputation for innovation, credibility and progress that will benefit our partner communities as they seek to become resilient.
Speaking of our partner communities, we are conducting community workshops in the Memphis, Tennessee Urban Area (which is
actually a tri-state area, given the nature of the geological threat). In addition, CARRI researchers will attend the National Earthquake
Conference in February to learn about new state of the art technologies in earthquake prediction and response.
In the Gulfport, Mississippi/Gulf Coast area, similar community workshops are in progress among
various sectors of the community.
In the Charleston, South Carolina/Low Country area, we are building our team and organizing
for the future; after a late start, our team is already offering some very exciting ideas about becoming resilient.
2008 is shaping up to be a very exciting year as we continue to create the processes and the
intellectual and practical underpinnings of being declared a resilient community. We invite your comments and inquiries as we move into this
future that is so vital to this nation.
_______________________________________________________________________________
Chertoff Points to Resilience and CARRI as
Leading the
Future of Emergency Preparedness
CARRI News Release
January 29, 2008
In a recent speech to the National Congress for Secure
Communities, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff cited the Oak Ridge National Laboratory's (ORNL) Southeast Region Research Initiative
(SERRI) and its focus on community and regional resiliency as one of the nations leading programs on promoting resilient communities.
Secretary Chertoff spoke of reaching out to the
private sector and focusing on the community's ability to rebound and restore critical government and business functions after a disaster
occurs.
"To that end we've provided funding to organizations
like the Southeast Region Research Initiative to study and increase resiliency in our cities and other communities," Chertoff continued. "Our
goal here is to make sure that if, despite the best preventive and preparedness efforts, a disaster strikes, we can get back up and running and
recover, as quickly as possible. And some of these efforts are now underway in Mississippi, Tennessee and South Carolina, working to increase
community resiliency through SERRI-directed research."
Warren Edwards, director of ORNL's Southeast Region
Research Initiative, added that the Community and Regional Resilience Initiative took a simple economic rationale as its basis.
"From uninterrupted police and fire protection, to the
immediate restoration of vital utilities, to getting banking and financial services back online, to the re-opening of local businesses and
manufacturing firms to restore family incomes - too many of the basic building blocks needed for full economic recovery cannot seem to be restored
quickly enough in the face of a catastrophic event," Edwards continued. "The goal of the Community and Regional Resilience Initiative is not
only to help communities and regions rebuild quicker, but to recover economically as well."
Edwards is very excited about the progress of the
Community and Regional Resilience Initiative and is optimistic about the prospects for 2008.
"As we enter 2008, we find the
Community and Regional Resilience Initiative well launched," said Edwards. "We have three partner communities - Gulfport, Mississippi; the
Memphis, Tennessee Urban Area; and the Charleston, South Carolina Urban Area - fully integrated into the program and participating robustly.
But of greatest importance, we know that the course that has been set has potential to bring meaningful change to America's homeland security
processes, helping our communities and ultimately our nation become more
resilient.
_______________________________________________________________________
CARRI-Memphis Urban Area Team to Co-Host Summit During Earthquake Preparedness
Week
CARRI Announcement
January 29, 2008
The CARRI - Memphis Urban Area (MUA) team is joining
with The Center for Earthquake Research and Information at the University of Memphis and the West Tennessee Seismic Safety Commission to host a MUA
Community Resilience and Earthquake Preparedness Summit in Memphis on February 11th.
This summit will leverage the energy and enthusiasm of Earthquake Awareness Week sponsors and participants to bring
groups and organizations with missions and members associated with resilience to share ideas, missions, accomplishments and definitions of
resilience. The event will be held the first morning of West Tennessee's Earthquake Awareness Week, February 11, 2008 at the University of
Memphis FedEx Center.
The event addresses the call for CARRI-MUA to help
increase coordination between multiple local efforts and to explore needs that might be prioritized based on gaps and overlaps in existing
efforts. Special thanks to co-hosting partners, corporate sponsors of West Tennessee Earthquake Awareness Week, and members of the CARRI-MUA
Advisory Group for efforts to make this event
possible.
_______________________________________________________________________
CARRI Community
Briefs
Charleston, South Carolina
The CARRI-Charleston team continues to meet
with civic leaders while expanding its scope to include the educational, utility and medical communities. Representatives of the
Charleston County School District and Trident Technical College agreed to participate in, and support, the CARRI-Charleston team's
process. The Executive Director of the Berkeley Dorchester Charleston Council of Governments and the CEO of Santee Cooper (one of the
primary electric utilities for the community) also agreed to participate.
In addition, the director of the Medical University of South
Carolina's National Crime Victims Research and Treatment Center also agreed to participate. This is especially important because this
Center is an important part (along with the University of Michigan and Dartmouth College) of a Department of Homeland Security (DHS)-funded
initiative to determine the trajectories of recovery for the nation's next natural disaster.
The CARRI-Charleston team also met
with Chief Greg Mullen and Tom O'Brien of the City of Charleston's police department who enthusiastically pledged their support.
Charleston's police department is embarking on an initiative that runs parallel to CARRI's objectives to improve community
resilience.
Efforts continued in support of the ThinkTEC meeting in Charleston in February. The first meeting of the Charleston steering
committee is now scheduled for February 12.
Memphis, Tennessee Urban Area
(MUA)
Given the task to understand and quantify elements of
community resilience, the CARRI-Memphis Urban Area (MUA) team has been working in collaboration with research and community partners on targeted
projects. Three specific efforts, which are a part of current community and research efforts ongoing in the MUA, are helping create a growing
understanding about resilience and its components.
CARRI-MUA researcher Arleen Hill, who has acted as a
consulting researcher for the 2007 Shelby County Emergency/Disaster Preparedness Survey funded by the Assisi Foundation, has assisted with developing
the questionnaire and is looking forward to exploring what preparedness suggests about individual resilience in the MUA. The survey was conducted
through the Mid-South Social Survey Program at the University of Memphis with Drs. Norris-Tirrell, Dupont and Pitts of the School of Urban Affairs
and Public Policy at the University of Memphis serving as project Principal Investigators. The team of Pitts, Norris-Tirrell, Dupont and
Hill is preparing a report of the survey for the Assisi Foundation and is looking forward to exploring the data collected through a phone survey
conducted in November of 2007. This is an opportunity to expand the survey to the entire MUA region through CARRI-MUA efforts and to explore the
spatial and social patterns of preparedness as part of CARRI's exploration of the human side of resilience.
CARRI-MUA's research of the social
fabric of the community as a source of resilience and vulnerability will be explored as part of a larger research collaboration with the West
Tennessee Seismic Safety Commission. The project is pending funding approval and will be mentioned in the next newsletter with other research
updates.
Gulfport, Mississippi
The CARRI-Gulfport team has been identifying community baseline data and
potential resilience
indicators and collecting and organizing community lessons
from Katrina. The team has also been meeting with key stakeholders and
is
forming an advisory group of community leaders to help guide the partnership
going forward. The Gulfport research team at the University of
Southern
Mississippi has prioritized its agenda for the next six months.
On a staffing note, Heather Lair is leaving CARRI to work on
campus
sustainability issues at the University of Maryland. Ann Olsen, a seasoned
facilitator based in Nashville, has joined the Gulfport
Team. Ann has worked
in healthcare, higher education, government, and the private sector, and will
focus on community engagement in
Gulfport. Ben Thomas from Oak Ridge National
Laboratory and the Southeast Region Research Initiative has also joined the
Gulfport Team. Ben and
Ann will be contacting folks in the coming weeks to
introduce themselves and look forward to working in the Gulfport and greater
Gulf Coast
community. |
