Community Continuity Planning...?
Cityscape
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.
Any sensible business plans for the aftermath of a major weather or seismic event, and indeed human-caused events such as terrorism or industrial accidents, too. They make plans in advance of the event for saving and accessing their data from a remote site, checking building safety, restarting operations and switching to alternative sources of power, supplies and logistics. The more farsighted ones also plan for helping their workforce get back to work - help with patching up damage to housing, emergency day care for kids, emergency transportation, and so on. The label often applied to this type of activity is business continuity planning (BCP) - the idea being to maintain the continuity of the business's operations, and thus cashflow and revenue, as far as possible.
Communities aware of the need for disaster risk reduction (DRR) may be advanced in mitigating disasters, dealing with them as they happen, and undertaking immediate post-event tasks such as looking for survivors. However, in my experience almost none of them think in advance of the event about how to enable actual recovery, for example of social and economic activity. As a result, that recovery takes far longer than it needs to and is far more difficult and expensive. Sometimes the community will never fully recover at all. Yet the issues that need to be dealt with after a disaster are often very predictable: therefore, they can and should be planned for in advance. I label this activity community continuity planning (CCP), as the counterpart of BCP just described.
In the aftermath of a disaster such as a wildfire, flood or tornado, for example:
There may be downed trees across roads;
Debris and maybe mudflows may need to be cleared;
Landslide risk may need to be checked;
Power lines may need to be repaired;
Communication systems may need to be repaired;
If there was a fire, water systems may need to be flushed to remove combustion byproducts and retardant;
People may have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD);
They may need temporary accommodation;
Animals may need to be housed also;
There may be a rush to find property inspectors and loss adjusters who are familiar with local building methods;
If the community is a remote one and the local gas station/foodstore/ATM is damaged, people will have to drive many miles for those services;
Local healthcare facilities may be damaged, ditto;
Schools may be out of action;
There may be extra law and order needs;
Local small businesses may need emergency loans or other support.
And so on! CCP is the activity of anticipating these needs (perhaps via a simulation exercise, just as for emergency preparation, plus studying other disasters), identifying in advance how the needs will be met, and making contingency arrangements to meet them. These arrangements might consist of memoranda of understanding (MoUs) with haulage or water tanker companies for a certain level of service (at a pre-arranged price, to prevent gouging!). They may require lobbying energy or communications companies, or the local healthcare provider or supermarket operator first, to understand what plans they already have and second, to improve those plans as needed. What back-up and surge capacity do they have, and what ability to provide temporary facilities, such as ATMs on trailers or mobile healthcare facilities? What contingency arrangements does the local education authority have for temporary classrooms (or accommodating teachers)? CCP will also require understanding help that will be available from other tiers of government and, in great detail, how to apply for and expedite that help. CCP may also extend to researching in advance alternative sources of finance - for example, private loans to complement those from the US Small Business Administration - and how to obtain these.
CCP is unlikely to anticipate every post-event need, and at any given time some of the needs it does identify will remain unmet. But a process of CCP will enable communities to understand what the aftermath of a disaster may actually be like and manage expectations, and to arrange to meet at least some needs in advance - and in so doing helping to maintain social and economic continuity and removing at least some of the many hurdles to the community resuming normal life. BCP is a defined discipline in many companies, often as an adjunct to engineering or risk management. CCP should become a defined discipline too, as an adjunct to emergency planning and management, and perhaps economic development.
