Assessing community resilience: mapping the community rating system (CRS) against the 6C-4R frameworks

ABSTRACT

This paper introduces an holistic approach to assessing community resilience in the United States with respect to hazards by inventorying a community's strengths: Financial, Human, Natural, Physical, Political and Social, as sources of capital (6 Capitals, or 6Cs) and characterizing four properties of its resilience (4R) (robustness, resourcefulness, redundancy and rapidity). We link the 6C-4R framework to the National Flood Insurance Program's (NFIP) Community Rating System (CRS). There is a positive correlation between the 6C-4R framework and the CRS, demonstrating the extent to which that system might therefore be used to measure resilience holistically in an effective and efficient manner. We also provide illustrative examples of resilience strategies linked to the 6C-4R framework that were adopted by Ottawa, Illinois, Birmingham, Alabama and Cedar Rapids, Iowa, USA, the last being a community that joined the CRS in 2010 following a severe flood in 2008. The CRS does not cover all the aspects of a community's status and activities so in order to make informed decisions and prioritize the implementation of resilience-improving activities, community-wide cost–benefit analyses of CRS activities would be useful in the future as inputs for further developing a strategy for reducing future flood losses.

KEYWORDS:

• Resilience
• disasters
• National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP)
• Community Rating System (CRS)
• 6 Capitals (6Cs)
• 4 Resiliencies (4Rs)

Acknowledgements

This study was supported by National Science Foundation (NSF) grant EAR-1520683 and the Wharton Risk Management and Decision Processes Center. We thank Sandy Pumphrey for helpful comments on an earlier draft of the paper. We also thank the National Academy of Sciences’ Resilient America Roundtable members for their comments. We appreciate all the assistance we received from Linda Langston and others in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Other definitions refer to resilience in ecosystems or social systems at the level of the individual, municiapality or region.

2 http://www.spur.org/policy-area/sustainability-resilience.

3 https://fema.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Baseline-Resilience-Indicators-for-Communities-BRIC/467674-14692#idea-tab-comments

4 https://huxley.wwu.edu/ri/resilus

5 https://toolkit.climate.gov/tool/coastal-resilience-index

6 Although the SL framework is built in the context of the third world, the concept of different capitals within the framework can be applied to the United States and other countries as well. Also, “community” in this paper refers to CRS community boundaries.

7 We thank Sandy Pumphrey, Flood Mitigation, Public Works Departmentof the City of Cedar Rapids for pointing this out.

8 We thank the National Academy of Sciences roundtable members and the participants of the National Association of Counties (NACo) conference in Colorado for suggesting that political capital should be added to the 5C framework, as it focuses on whether or not a community has the ability to move forward to build and implement resiliency.

9 The 2016 TMAC Annual Report can be found at https://www.fema.gov/media-library-data/1492803841077-57e4653a1b2de856e14672e56d6f0e64/TMAC_2016_Annual_Report_(508).pdf

10 See: http://www.cityofottawa.org/City_of_Ottawa_Flood_Information_2015.pdf

11 A community's financial capital can also be negatively impacted by acquisitions and demolitions by the loss of tax-base

12 See http://www.senatorrezin.com/ILValleyFloodResiliencyAlliance.aspx

13 See http://www1.nyc.gov/office-of-the-mayor/news/347-13/mayor-bloomberg-mayor-s-fund-advance-new-york-city-release-one-year-on-hurricane/#/0

14 Parcel is alternatively called a “lot” or a “plot” owned as a pat of a homeowner's property

15 We thank Sandy Pumphrey, Flood Mitigation, Public Works Department, City of Cedar Rapids for pointing this out.

16 The computed elevation to which floodwater is anticipated to rise during the base flood.

17 http://www.cedar-rapids.org/local_government/departments_g_-_v/public_works/stormwater_best_management_practices_cost-share_program.php

18 See http://homelandsecurity.iowa.gov/documents/misc/HSEMD_RecoveryTaskForce2014_FinalReport.pdf

19 http://www.cedar-rapids.org/Economic%20Development/Flood%20Recovery%20Report.pdf