Purpose
The purpose of this activity is to accurately plan and prepare for recovery efforts.
Why?
Communities reduce their risk from similar future events by promoting disaster risk reduction and pursuing resilience. Resilient communities are:
- Less likely to be negatively impacted by a disaster and also better able to respond and recover effectively.
- Better able to adapt to changing conditions.
- Able to ensure the long-term health of community stakeholders and the local and regional economy and understand the importance of protecting natural ecosystems.
In this activity, you will ensure that recovery planning efforts are conducted in a manner that is cognizant of existing and emerging hazard risks and changing climatological and development-related changes and will take the necessary actions to ensure that recovery projects, programs, and efforts remain aligned with the community’s long-term resilience goals.
When?
Resilience and sustainability goals are established in the visioning process, and these serve to guide project formulation efforts throughout the planning. In pre-disaster planning and early recovery, regulatory or legislative actions (e.g., construction moratoria and reassessment of building codes and land-use frameworks) may be required to prevent risk-blind activities. (Days 1 - Ongoing)
Tips
- Find your Champion: It is vital that trusted community leaders, including the chief elected official, champion resilience-building efforts and the multiple long-term benefits as being central to the community’s recovery vision and goals. Recovery leaders and recovery planning organizations will need to become informed of resilience best practices to serve as effective champions of change.
- Adapt and utilize nature-based solutions: Communities need to determine how “adaptive” their recovery will be. Many traditional mitigation measures seek to exert control over hazard risk by ‘hardening’ structures or incorporating engineered solutions, which are akin to humans seeking to overcome natural processes. Many nature-based solutions can be implemented to help with adaptation, such as green infrastructure techniques. The recovery vision and goals can reflect such intentions and methods.
- Engage all Community Members: Engage with community organizations that have existing relationships with or that represent a diversity of populations. Engage across all committees and departments that manage all community hazard risk. Account for the way that hazard exposures and resulting vulnerabilities are influencing the community risk profile.
- Include Green Development Efforts: Resilience planning should be inclusive of energy efficiency, smart resource utilization, carbon sequestration, and other practices that prepare the community for a more sustainable future.
How does my community do this?
- Enlist planning support from resilience and mitigation subject matter experts, stakeholders, and organizational representatives in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors. For more information see the Community Readiness and Resilience Toolkit. Hazard mitigation and resilience building should extend across all recovery efforts.
- Integrate resilience into your approach and strategy for all recovery efforts, including with private-sector construction and development contractors supporting business and household recovery efforts. Resilience and risk reduction efforts need to begin in the earliest days and weeks of the disaster when initial recovery actions are most uncoordinated. Promote information about resilience goals, including existing and new construction and land use regulations, and provide access to training on resilient design and construction methods for local organizations engaged in recovery efforts (including construction contractors).
- Evaluate the adequacy of building and zoning codes and land use using new hazard information. The local governing board should reassess the utility and/or impact of building and land development codes to determine whether they are appropriate or adequate given new risk information. This could include:
- Private or voluntary structural mitigation during repair and rebuilding.
- Use of programs that support the land acquisition or transfer of development rights.
- Permanent changes to land use and zoning to relocate development away from high-risk areas.
- Risk reduction in the repair and reconstruction of community infrastructure and support the restoration of natural ecosystems and other features that provide hazard buffers.
- Ensure that planning efforts incorporate the findings and recommendations of existing community plans, including the all-hazards mitigation plan.
- Coordinate with State and federal agencies on hazard mitigation programs and resources, including FEMA Section 404 hazard mitigation grant program funding (if a Federal Presidential Major Disaster Declaration has been issued for the event).
Community Call Out: Big Thompson River Restoration Coalition
The Big Thompson River and the North Fork of the Big Thompson River basins experienced extreme flooding in September 2013. In response, the Big Thompson River Restoration Coalition (BTRRC) was formed as a grass-roots organization soon after the flood to help property owners and other stakeholders with cleanup, debris removal, and to facilitate longer-term recovery of the river corridors.