Key Terms

When the CRO works with communities to plan for and enhance their resiliency in the face of challenges like natural hazards and climate change, we often use some key terms that are important to understand to effectively implement resiliency work.

2 | A | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | L | M | N | O | P | R | S | T | V

2

211 Call System: 2-1-1 Colorado streamlines services and provides one central location where people can get connected to the resources they need. 2-1-1 can be called or an online searchable database can be used.

A

Adaptation: An adjustment in natural or human systems to a new or changing environment. Adaptation includes proactive planning and preparation to reduce risk, utilize new opportunities, and enhance resilience.

Adaptive capacity: The potential of a person, asset, or system to adjust to a hazard to limit damage, take advantage of opportunities, and cope with change.

Assets: People, resources, ecosystems, infrastructure, and the services they provide. Assets are the tangible and intangible things people or communities value.

C

Climate change: Changes in average weather conditions that persist over multiple decades or longer. Climate change encompasses both increases and decreases in temperature, as well as shifts in precipitation, changing risk of certain types of severe weather events, and changes to other features of the climate system.

Climate-smart: Plans, ordinances, strategies, and codes that proactively account for a changing climate based on current and future projections.

Community Stakeholders: Residents, groups of residents, organizations, companies, agencies, or others that have a connection to community resilience and a vested interest in the outcomes of any specific resilience project. These may be individuals or groups that can help in the assessment, preparation, recovery, or implementation of resilience strategies.

D

Disaster Assistance Center (DAC): A location that coordinates Disaster Assistance.

Disaster Case Management (DCM): Provides centralized support for community members affected by a disaster. FEMA has a grant program that can be used to provide this support. The program frequently involves a partnership between a case manager and a disaster survivor to develop and carry out the survivor’s long-term recovery plan.

Disaster Recovery Center (DRC): Generally opened post-disaster, the recovery center provides a one-stop-shop to support residents and community members affected by a disaster. 

E

Effectiveness:  Whether or not a resilience strategy is working as intended and meets the purpose for which it is designed. 
Emissions scenarios - Quantitative illustrations of how the release of different amounts of climate altering gases and particles into the atmosphere from human and natural sources will produce different future climate conditions. Scenarios are developed using a wide range of assumptions about population growth, economic and technological development, and other factors.

Emergency Operations Center (EOC): Immediate and ongoing emergency operations are conducted in a community’s Emergency Operations Center (EOC). Once activated, the EOC becomes the coordination nexus for people, information, and resources as outlined in the community Emergency Operations Plan.

Emergency Operations Plan (EOP): An emergency operations plan is an official document that details how emergencies and disasters will be handled within the jurisdiction.  They identify the personnel, equipment, facilities, supplies, and other available resources, and assign responsibilities and authorities as are required to conduct certain activities. Many communities’ EOP’s group specific roles, responsibilities, and resources into distinct functional annexes called Emergency Support Functions.

Emergency Support Function (ESF): An ESF is an organizational arrangement through which the different stakeholders involved in a specific disaster-related function are organized. In an Emergency Operations Plan, the ESF details the leadership and support arrangements that exist (inclusive of governmental, private sector, NGO, and other stakeholders), lists relevant statutory authorities, and details the actions and activities to be conducted by those relevant stakeholders.

Exposure: refers to the presence of community assets (be that human life, infrastructure, ecosystems, environmental functions, services, resources or other economic, social, and cultural assets) within an area that could be adversely affected by a hazard event such as an extreme weather event or changing climate condition.

F

FEMA Hazard Mitigation Grant Program (HMGP): The program is authorized by Section 404 of the Stafford Act, 42 U.S. C. 5170c. The key purpose of the program is to ensure the opportunity to take critical mitigation measures to reduce the risk of loss of life and property from future disasters is not lost during the reconstruction process following a disaster.

Frontline communities: Historically disadvantaged and underserved members of the community experience the first and worst impacts of climate change. These frontline community members may include older adults in the community, those with disabilities, low-income residents, BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and people of color), LGBTQ individuals, English as a Second Language (ESL) communities, the unhoused, those who lack transportation, and those who lack access to  television, radio, internet, and/or phone service.

G

Ground-truth: To confirm or validate directly (information or data derived indirectly), especially (in remote sensing) by direct observation on the ground, rather than by interpretation of remotely obtained data; to make observations of (land, an area, etc.) directly on the ground, especially in order to confirm or validate data obtained indirectly.

H

Hazard: An event or physical condition that has the potential to cause fatalities, injuries, property damage, infrastructure damage, agricultural losses, damage to the environment, interruption of business, or other types of harm or loss.

Hazard mitigation: Sustained action taken to reduce or eliminate the long-term risk to human life and property through actions that reduce hazard, exposure, and vulnerability. Hazard mitigation can be one component of climate change adaptation.

I

Impact: Effects on natural and human systems that result from hazards. Evaluating potential impacts is a critical step in assessing vulnerability.

Implementation plan: A formal or informal approach to establishing a clear, equitable, and actionable path towards the implementation of resilience strategies in your community. This entails defining your approach to both short and long-term implementation.

In-kind Donations: Good, services, and commodities (not money) that are donated, generally after a disaster.

Incident Command System (ICS): A component of the National Incident Management System (NIMS). The combination of facilities, equipment, personnel, procedures and communications operating within a common organizational structure, designed to aid in domestic incident management activities. It is used for a broad spectrum of emergencies, from small to complex incidents, both natural and manmade, including acts of catastrophic terrorism. ICS is used by all levels of government—federal, state, local and tribal as well as by many private-sector and nongovernmental organizations.

Individual Assistance: Direct assistance to individuals affected by a disaster.

L

Local Disaster Recovery Manager: The role of the Local Disaster Recovery Manager is to organize, coordinate, and advance the recovery at the local level. The experience and skill sets of these individuals should include a strong basis in community development and good knowledge of the community's demographics.

Long Term Community Recovery (LTCR): Phase of recovery that may continue for months or years and addresses redevelopment and revitalization of the impacted area, rebuilding or relocating damaged or destroyed social, economic, natural, and built environments and a move to self-sufficiency, sustainability, and resilience.

M

Mitigation (Climate): Measures to reduce the amount and speed of future climate change by reducing the emissions of heat-trapping gases or removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Moratorium: A legally authorized period of delay or waiting period set by an authority.

N

National Disaster Recovery Framework: The National Disaster Recovery Framework (NDRF) enables effective recovery support to disaster-impacted states, tribes, and territorial and local jurisdictions. It provides a flexible structure that enables disaster recovery managers to operate in a unified and collaborative manner. The NDRF focuses on how best to restore, redevelop, and revitalize the health, social, economic, natural, and environmental fabric of the community and build a more resilient nation. 

O

Objective: The desired outcome of your resilience efforts or what you are trying to achieve through your work.

Outcomes: The ultimate changes resulting from resilience action(s).

Outputs: The immediate, easily measurable effects (usually quantifiable) of a resilience action.

P

Pre-disaster recovery plan: Pre-disaster recovery planning promotes a process in which the whole community fully engages. It is an important process that allows a comprehensive and integrated understanding of community objectives, connects community plans to guide post-disaster decisions and investments, and aids in understanding the key considerations and processes that local governments can use to build a community’s recovery capacity.

Preparedness: Actions taken to plan, organize, equip, train, and exercise to build and sustain the capabilities necessary to prevent, protect against, mitigate the effects of, respond to and recover from threats and hazards and build adaptive capacity.

R

Recovery Support Function (RSF): Similar to an Emergency Support Function, an RSF is an organizational arrangement through which different stakeholders involved in a specific function are organized. RSFs have led and support agencies and the RSF structure establishes the necessary authorities, provisions, and resources required for these agencies to carry out their responsibilities as assigned.  Unlike the ESF-affiliated agencies, the RSF agencies report to a recovery coordinator appointed by the community lead official or board of commissioners. Ongoing activation of the RSF is unaffected by the deactivation of the EOC, which is not typically the case with the ESFs. Many communities link their RSFs with those of the National Disaster Recovery Framework (NDRF), which is FEMA’s recovery support construct.  Under the NDRF, there are 6 RSFs, including:

• Community Planning and Capacity Building
• Economic Recovery
• Health and Social Services
• Housing
• Infrastructure Systems
• Natural and Cultural Resources 

Resiliency (Resilience): The ability of communities to rebound, positively adapt to, or thrive amidst changing conditions or challenges (including human-caused and natural disasters) and to maintain quality of life, healthy growth, durable systems, economic vitality, and conservation of resources for present and future generations.

Resilience Action: A specific activity, act, project, program, or effort that your community can take to facilitate progress towards achieving a resilience strategy.

Resilience Strategy: A general area of action or statement that can help enhance the resilience of the community.

Risk: The potential total cost if something of value is damaged or lost, considered together with the likelihood of that loss occurring. Risk is often evaluated as the probability of a hazard occurring multiplied by the consequence that would result if it did happen.

S

Sensitivity: a community’s response to a hazard event is the degree to which community systems, assets, or resources could be affected by hazards.

Impacts: the effects on natural and human systems that result from a hazard event.

Adaptive Capacity: the ability of a human or natural system to adjust to the hazard, take advantage of new opportunities resulting from the hazard, and/or coping with the change from the hazard.

Vulnerabilities: are often described in terms of shocks and stressors.

Shocks: are direct vulnerabilities; they are intense, acute events that can disrupt communities. They include flash floods, wildfires, widespread loss of electrical power, dam failures, public health crises, and terrorist attacks. Shocks can lead to significant damage to infrastructure, as well as injuries and deaths or result in sudden changes in a community. Communities use hazard mitigation as a means to reduce vulnerability by reducing exposure to shocks.

Stressors: are underlying long-term conditions that can negatively impact a community’s environmental, social, and economic health; they are indirect vulnerabilities. Stressors can also limit a community’s ability to address and recover from a shock. Stressors can include aging infrastructure, an economic downturn, long-term high rates of unemployment, and a lack of affordable housing. Communities use resiliency planning as a way to reduce their indirect vulnerability by addressing and improving the underlying conditions that expose them to hazards and developing a capacity to adapt to changing conditions.

T

Threshold: A point at which a particular asset (or group of assets) is compromised so that it no longer functions as intended, or a change of circumstances (e.g. funding opportunity) arises that prompts decision makers to adjust or implement actions.

V

Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster (VOAD): VOADs are coalitions of volunteer and nonprofit organizations that respond to disasters as part of their overall mission. They are committed to fostering the “four C’s” – communication, coordination, collaboration, and cooperation - in order to better serve people impacted by disasters. VOAD organizations exist in all Colorado communities, even where no formal local VOAD exists. Following a disaster, VOADs may form a recovery organization focused on providing direct assistance to individuals.

Vulnerability: The degree to which something is susceptible to or predisposed to adverse effects of hazards as determined by exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity. Vulnerability can increase or decrease because of physical (built and environmental), social, political, and/or economic factors.

Together, a community’s exposure, sensitivity, impacts, and adaptive capacity are all analyzed to understand the community’s vulnerability to shocks and stressors: the predisposition to be adversely affected by hazards. While a community may not be able to change its exposure and have limited ability to alter its sensitivity, by developing resiliency plans and projects in your community, your community can enhance its adaptive capacity and reduce its vulnerability to future hazardous events. Explore the CRO Community Resilience and Post-Disaster Recovery Planning toolkits or reach out to the CRO staff to learn more.

Most glossary terms shown rely on descriptions from either the National Climate Assessment (2018), California Adaptation Planning Guide (2020), FEMA, the U.S. Global Change Research Program or U.S. Climate Resilience Toolkit.