CARRI Releases Initial Research On Community
Resilience
by Dr. Tom Wilbanks, CARRI Research Director
The Community and Regional Resilience Initiative (CARRI), part of Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s (ORNL) Southeast Regional Research Initiative, recently released the first four in a series of
research summaries on community resilience, its dimensions and strategies for enhancing resilience.
This
information will provide the framework, essential benchmarks, tools and techniques for communities across the country to help them anticipate, prepare
for, respond to and rapidly recover from significant natural and man-made disasters with minimal downtime to basic community, government and business
services. The research is part of a series that, when complete, will also include the research CARRI has done in its three partner communities:
Gulfport, Mississippi; Memphis, Tennessee and Charleston, South Carolina.
The
first four reports look at resilience and what the disaster and research community have compiled about the topic. They
examine the vulnerabilities and responses to global environmental changes such as climate change, identify those segments of the population that are
the most vulnerable to threats and reveal lessons learned from Hurricane Katrina.
Quick summaries about the first four reports follow:
Community and Regional Resilience: Perspectives from Hazards, Disasters, and Emergency
Management
Written by Susan L. Cutter, Lindsey Barnes, Melissa Berry, Christopher Burton, Elijah Evans, Eric Tate
and Jennifer Webb from the Hazards & Vulnerability Research Institute
This research paper outlines what makes people and places
vulnerable, including location, infrastructure and economic factors; what makes communities resilient, including recognizing and understanding hazards
and planning for disaster recover, planning and land use and development, which includes building standards, development regulations, critical public
facilities and information dissemination; and barriers to planning for resilience, which looked at federal and state barriers, policies and commitment
among governments at all levels.
Community Resilience: Lessons from New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina
Written by Craig Colten from Louisiana State University; Robert Kates, an independent scholar; and
Shirley Laska with the University of New Orleans
This
report examines the vulnerability and resilience in New Orleans, both throughout its history and after Hurricane Katrina.
The study highlights the anticipation of a major hurricane like Katrina and examines the risks that were not addressed, such as disrupted
funding to the Corps of Engineers, which left levees incomplete and construction standards for flooding that were not
met.
Also examined are the problems that arose during and immediately following the crisis, including disrupted
communication and transportation; overwhelmed institutional response and confusion; and the inability of aid and funding to reach those in
need. The report also looks at the lessons learned in order to help New Orleans and other communities understand and better prepare
themselves for recovery from future disasters.
Community Resilience: A Social
Justice Perspective
Written by
Betty Hearn Morrow with SocResearch Miami
This study addresses the key social factors that make a community vulnerable and what needs to be changed in order to
become resilient. The study showes that issues such as economic status, ethnicity, gender and education level play a tremendous
role in a community’s ability to be resilient, and that a community is only as resilient as its weakest link. The report
shows that in order to change and become resilient, communities must address their education, employment and housing vulnerabilities; find ways to
reach high risk populations, which include disseminating information in different languages and at various reading levels, as well as communicating
with existing community networks, like women’s groups, church networks and communicating to extended families of ethnic minorities through
children; and finally, a community must have civic participation at all levels and permanent and sufficient funding sources to be truly
resilient.
Resilience in the Face of Global Environmental Change
Written by Susi Moser with Research and Consulting; Institute of Marine Sciences, University of California, Santa
Cruz
This report provides relevant insights on resilience from the pertinent global change literature to complement critical
insights gleaned from the hazards and ecological literatures by other collaborators to the CARRI project. This study reviews definitions and the
emerging understanding of resilience in the social sciences. It also discusses a number of aspects feeding into resilience, such as
vulnerability, adaptive capacity, and social capital. Lastly, the report points to some promising research frontiers on resilience in the
human dimensions field.
Please
visit the CARRI website located at http://www.ResilientUS.org/ to read each of the research
reports in their entirety and to learn more about the CARRI research component.
Further reports will be issued in the coming months, along with a
synthesis of the perspectives from different research traditions that can serve as CARRI’s integrated perspective.
________________________________________________________________
CARRI Hosts 2nd Annual Resilience Roundtable
CARRI Release
Washington DC – The Community and Regional Resilience Initiative (CARRI) hosted its second annual Resilience
Roundtable on October 22nd. This day long meeting brought together members of the public and private sector to discuss
the CARRI program, the importance of developing resilient communities and the best way for communities to achieve resilience.
The
roundtable featured an address by Dr. Stephen Flynn. Dr. Flynn is an Ira A. Lipman Senior Fellow for Counterterrorism and National Security Studies with the Council on Foreign
Relations. He is the author of The Edge of Disaster: Rebuilding a Resilient Nation (2007) and America the Vulnerable (2004). Mr. Flynn was a former adviser on homeland security for the U.S. Commission on
National Security (Hart-Rudman Commission) and a retired Coast Guard officer. He researches and writes on issues related to homeland security and
is an expert in catastrophic
terrorism; emergency preparedness; critical infrastructure protection; trade and transportation security; and border control
modernization.
After the address by Dr. Flynn, the meeting provided an opportunity for the CARRI team to update attendees on the
progress the CARRI program is making in its national research effort and in CARRI's three partner communities of Gulfport, Mississippi; Memphis,
Tennessee and Charleston, South Carolina. There was also a discussion on where the CARRI program is headed over the next
year.
“We were honored to have such a great group attend the roundtable,” said Warren Edwards, CARRI
director. “ We had great participation from the public and private sector, our partner communities, as well as numerous
non-government organizations. We look forward to taking the innput we received from this meeting and making 2009 even more
successful than 2008.”
________________________________________________________________
Community Briefs
Memphis, TN Urban Area (MUA)
On October 8,
members of the CARRI-MUA Advisory Group participated in the Emergency Preparedness & Incident Conference (EPIC) hosted by the Mid-South Association of
Contingency Planners. EPIC is the largest business continuity/disaster recovery conference in the mid-south region with over 150
business professionals in attendance.
One of the CARRI-MUA team members gave a presentation entitled "Earthquake Awareness and
Preparedness: Foundations for Resilient Communities" at the Arkansas State University Earthquake Preparedness and Awareness Conference on
October 21.
The CARRI-MUA team continues planning for the
November 12 Capstone Meeting.
Gulfport,
Mississippi
CARRI-Gulfport focus area teams are currently working to
enhance resilience of the Gulfport community in three focus areas: communications and collaboration across sectors, individual and family
resilience, and preparedness and affordability of housing. The teams first met during the September 19 CARRI-Gulfport workshop and
will meet at least twice more by early December to produce roadmaps to increase community resilience through improvements in each of the focus areas.
Additional community members have been invited to join each team.
The CARRI-Gulfport Advisory Group met on October 29 and
will meet again on December 10 to review progress on the roadmaps and to begin planning efforts for 2009. Plans for early 2009 include
developing roadmaps for three more focus areas and guiding implementation of the first three roadmaps.
The University of Southern
Mississippi is leading the development of a case study on Gulfport community resilience. An initial draft has been completed and submitted to
CARRI for review. A final draft of the document is scheduled for completion by the end of the year. The case study will be used by CARRI
to support development of a national perspective on community resilience and by the CARRI-Gulfport stakeholders to support further development and
refinement of the resilience roadmaps.
Charleston, South Carolina Tri-County
Area
The CARRI-Charleston Tri-County Area held their first focus group meetings in early
October for the following two areas: (1) transportation and mobility and (2) communication and information sharing. These are focus areas
the Charleston Tri-County Advisory Group recommended initiating in 2008. The meetings begin the process of organizing the focus groups and
developing concrete action plans to make Charleston Tri-County more resilient through improvments in these critical areas. Each focus group
will continue working together in 2009 to complete their roadmaps.
Advisory Group liaisons have been appointed for each focus group: Laura Varn,
Vice President of Corporate Communications, Santee Cooper is the liaison for Communications and Information Sharing; Cory Pharr, The Maritime
Association, Port of Charleston, is liaison for Transportation and Mobility.
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