Typical Omissions in Disaster Risk Reduction
By Dr Peter Williams chairs ARISE-US. His background includes 30 years in IBM, where he became an IBM Distinguished Engineer, and extensive experience in creating DRR tools such as the UN City Disaster Resilience Scorecard and its many offshoots, now used by hundreds of cities (and countries) globally. His PhD is in Politics.
As Chair of ARISE-US, I come to read and hear about, and see at first-hand, many communities' Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) efforts. It seems to me that a number of omissions and weaknesses repeat themselves from community to community, and I thought it might be useful to set these out, as a checklist for those working on DRR. I will use the UN DRR's "Ten Essentials" as a framework for this.
Essential 1: "Organize for Resilience"
Failure to engage with key stakeholders - sections of the community, perhaps, privately owned infrastructure operators, or small-medium enterprises (SMEs);
Lack of a single master plan agreed between all stakeholders and embodying assumptions shared by all - especially about risks, and about what each stakeholder can be expected to do or achieve in the event of a disaster to restore community functions;
Integration of DRR with other community functions - planning, engineering, finance, emergency management, code compliance, sustainability.
Essential 2: "Identify, Understand and Use Current and Future Risk Scenarios"
Using outdated, incomplete or insufficiently specific risk information;
Not planning for the future impacts of urbanization and climate change;
Failing to plan for combined risks (for example, a wildfire accompanied by a landslide);
Failing to share risk data;
Not understanding where cascading risks might arise, where an impact in one infrastructure system might trigger failure in others.
Essential 3: "Strengthen Financial Capacity for Resilience"
Not understanding the community's creditworthiness;
Failure to investigate all possible sources of finance;
Not having suitable tax and other incentives to become more resilient;
Inadequate insurance cover for property and business continuity cover;
Failing to set and safeguard budgets for DRR.
Essential 4: "Pursue Resilient Urban Development"
Land use zoning does not take account of latest hazard data;
Building codes are outdated relative to potential impacts and therefore not fit for purpose;
Large numbers of legacy buildings with no plans to update them;
Lack of enforcement.
Essential 5: "Safeguard Natural Buffers to Enhance the Protective Functions Offered by Natural Ecosystems"
Not being aware of the protections offered by ecosystem features (which may be many miles away, for example in the headwaters of a river flowing through the community);
Not protecting and ensuring the health of ecosystem features that help build DRR in the community;
Lack of a strategy for integrating "blue/green" (that is, natural) infrastructure with "grey" (manmade) infrastructure.
Essential 6: "Strengthen Institutional Capacity for Resilience"
Lack of appropriate skills and experience - and not looking around for sources of these (universities, private sectors, partner communities etc);
Lack of data - and not looking widely enough for sources of data;
Lack of data sharing between stakeholders.
Essential 7: "Understand and Strengthen Societal Capacity for Resilience"
Failing to see that community engagement is a process that must run for ever.
Missing engagement opportunities with community organizations;
Overlooking the potential for the private sector to help;
Omitting to translate engagement materials into all the languages spoken in the community.
Essential 8: "Increase Infrastructure Resilience"
Failure to engage infrastructure system owners;
Overlooking key infrastructure systems, which then fail in a disaster;
Not understanding the interdependencies between infrastructure systems, and thus the risk of cascading failures.
Essential 9: "Ensure Effective Disaster Response"
Inadequate early warning systems;
Unclear roles and responsibilities in disasters;
Failure to regularly plan and practice/drill for emergency response - including with community members;
Essential 10: Expedite Recovery and Build Back Better"
Not planning "through" the disaster, beyond the immediate response, to include the social and economic "reboot" for the community;
Failure to arrange on a contingency basis for foreseeable post disaster needs to be met;
Failure to lock in pricing in advance for post disaster support (for example through contingency contracts with specified charge rates) to prevent price-gouging.
Not holding drills or table-top exercises for post event recovery (as for event response).
I hope this list of potential omissions is not too daunting! But as they say, "forewarned is forearmed". Use the list as a checklist for your community's preparedness, and work over time to fill in the gaps. You may not be able to address all of these at once, but addressing any one of them will serve to reduce risk to some degree. You may find that the UN City Disaster Resilience Scorecard may help you. Good luck!