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Community and Regional Resilience
Initiative
Year in Review
by Warren Edwards
Director, Community and Regional
Resilience Initiative (CARRI)
In early 2007 the Department of Homeland
Security suggested the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) look at "resilience" as part of the congressionally mandated Southeast Region Research
Initiative (SERRI). With some considerable doubt and uncertainty, we began a fairly comprehensive examination to determine what the term
resilience meant in the context of homeland security.
Our initial investigations took the form
of engaging a wide spectrum of individuals, organizations, and governmental entities. We talked to anyone with experience who would talk
to us - over one hundred experts and practitioners from government, private industry, academia and non-governmental groups - about the
state and direction of resiliency.
These wide ranging conversations led us
to several tentative conclusions and to our current project, the Community and Regional Resilience Initiative (CARRI). We think we found that:
1) national policy is driven by protection; 2) there is a growing realization that a national policy of protection cannot possibly address the full
array of threats the nation faces and will face in the future; 3) while the body of resilience study is growing, much of it involves understanding
resilience as it applies to sectors; and 4) there is no comprehensive effort to apply resilience knowledge in a holistic way to the operational level
of our society - communities where we all work and live.
All of this suggested to us that ORNL and
its partners at Savannah River National Laboratory and in our partner universities could best contribute to the growing resiliency effort by
concentrating on community resilience, eventually linking communities to regions and regions to the nation.
We took as our basis a simple economic
rationale: communities have a quantifiable level of functional capacity. In a catastrophe that capacity declines at a rate and to a depth
that is largely dependent on the nature of the catastrophe, the community's level of preparedness for that specific catastrophe, and the rapidity and
effectiveness of that response. More importantly, the recovery rate from the catastrophe largely depends on those same factors.
As the scope of the project began to take
shape, there was a growing realization that the necessary understanding about community interdependencies and interconnectedness could not happen in
national laboratories or academic institutions alone. There clearly needed to be a strong, coordinating research component to the program but
the real learning must come from working in, with and around communities.
The capabilities of resilience experts
must be coupled with the everyday experience and understanding of people who face the challenges on a daily basis. Additionally, if this
program is to have national implications, then the communities must allow us to study what is common and what is unique. We needed at least
three communities that were economically, geographically and demographically diverse.
Coupling that partner community base with
our team of research experts drawn from across the nation and from various academic disciplines would allow us to create a toolbox for
resilience. Most of this toolbox could be applied to any community, but some of it would have to be adjusted for the uniqueness of
the specific community.
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.
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Savannah River National Laboratory's
Resilient Home Program
by Dr. John Plodinec
Science Advisor, Savannah River National Laboratory
Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) is
managing the Resilient Home program for the Southeast Region Research Initiative (SERRI), a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) program. The
goal of the Resilient Home program is to make community recovery more certain by dramatically speeding up the return of the homeowner to the home
after a natural disaster. To accomplish this objective, the program team will treat the home (house and grounds) as a system and recovery as a
process with four phases - prevention, response, assessment and rebuilding. Briefly, these be can described as:
- Prevention - long- and short-term means of protecting a home from a
disaster. These means may include, for example, the development and implementation of new construction methods or materials that would allow houses
to better survive disasters, as well as actions to prevent the spread of dangerous chemicals or the growth of mold. A key part of this is a home
vulnerability assessment that anticipates probable damage modes. This assessment is used to develop mitigating measures that the individual homeowner
can take.
- Response - actions taken to stabilize the home, and render it a safe
interim shelter. This includes rapid assessment tools for emergency responders to alert them to dangerous conditions.
- Assessment - means of determining the extent of damage (e.g., structural,
chemical, biological) that has occurred to the home so good decisions can be made concerning whether to demolish or repair the existing
structure, and appropriate payments can be made to the homeowner quickly to initiate repair or reconstruction.
- Rebuilding - methods to rebuild the home with constrained resources, but
in a more durable manner than before the disaster.
The team (SRNL, North
Carolina State University, Tuskegee University, ORNL and Construction and Engineering Research Laboratory (CERL) - Army Corp of Engineers) is
carrying out a comprehensive needs assessment (gap analysis) across the entire recovery process.
A project kick-off meeting was held on December 5-6,
2007 at North Carolina State University. The team developed goals in each of the recovery phases as follows:
Assessment:
- To develop means to efficiently gather the
data on the damage to the home and the extent of the damage (structural, chemical, biological, architectural)
Response:
- To develop a simple, cost-effective,
temporary way to enable homeowners to reinhabit the home. These response actions should facilitate permanent rebuilding.
Rebuilding:
- To develop a practical,
permanent way to complete re-habitation of the home.
- To develop a practical method of
protecting against future disasters.
Prevention:
- To develop a short-term, cost-effective
method of protecting homes from the effects of natural disasters.
- To develop a long-term, cost-effective
method of protecting homes from natural disasters before they occur.
In addition, the SRNL team has visited the Clemson
University Civil Engineering Department and the Charleston County Program Works Department in South Carolina to discuss the program.
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Partner Community
Briefs
Gulfport,
Mississippi
In early December, the CARRI-Gulfport team convened
an informal session with a dozen non-governmental organizations (NGOs) from across the Gulf Coast at the University of Southern Mississippi Long Beach
to discuss resilience lessons that NGOs are making use of on the ground. While the groups are currently focusing on the long-term recovery of the Gulf
Coast, it was noted that pre-Katrina, these organizations were working on many of the same issues, albeit on a much different
scale.
The local
research team received a number of suggestions on background research that should be done to better understand the Gulf Coast's resilience and
capture the lessons that have already been documented.
One outcome from the meeting is that
the local research team, headed by Dr. Tom Lansford, will be working to assemble baseline data on the community (statistics on employment, community
"affordability, housing, health-care, etc.) to help CARRI and the community better understand the status of essential community functions.
Lansford's group will be focused on compiling the available data and research into a user-friendly format and plans to have a draft available
early in the New Year.
Plans for January 2008 include sitting down with additional sector leaders (government, the private sector, etc.) to test
CARRI's emerging resilience framework and to document resilience lessons and enhancements.
Charleston, South Carolina Urban
Area
The Charleston-CARRI team met with local leaders from
Summerville, as well as civic leaders from the United Way and the faith-based community from across the three county region, to obtain their support
for and participation in the local CARRI effort.
In addition, the CARRI-Charleston team obtained the
partnership and collaboration of the local U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the South Carolina Port Authority on matters relating to waterways
and the Port.
The CARRI-Charleston team also met with a small group
from government, private sector and civic organizations to discuss the organization of the CARRI-Charleston Steering Group. These
representatives helped to refine the definition of the CARRI-Charleston Steering Committee and discussed initial concepts of the resilient community
as a network of functions. The group also began consideration of how the CARRI-Charleston work should move forward over the next few weeks.
A meeting of the full Steering Committee is anticipated for late January or early February.
The CARRI-Charleston team also continues to support
plans for the ThinkTec session on Community Resilience in February, along with support of a DHS-led meeting on 2nd and 3rd order effects of pandemic
flu.
Finally, the CARRI-Charleston team initiated
collaboration with the 113 Calhoun Street Foundation as a way of addressing resilient housing in the Charleston area.
Memphis, Tennessee Urban
Area
CARRI's Memphis Urban Area (MUA) Team
participated in the Maritime Area Security Committee meeting on December 13. At the request of the committee, the MUA Team presented a
brief on the CARRI program.
The MUA Team also continues to meet and work
with Memphis First, discussing mutual missions and areas where CARRI and Memphis First can work together.
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