Whole Community Resilience: An Asset-Based Approach to Enhancing Adaptive Capacity Before a Disruption

Abstract

Problem, research strategy, and findings: Conventional hazard mitigation and pre-disaster recovery planning processes typically begin with hazard scenarios that illustrate probable events and analyze their impacts on the built environment. The processes conclude with responses to the hypothetical disruption that focus on “hardening” buildings or structures or removing them from threatened areas. These approaches understate the importance of natural and social sources of adaptive capacity. Three “proof-of-principle” exercises designed to strengthen the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)'s Risk MAP (Risk Mapping, Assessment, and Planning) process in Washington State suggest how better to conduct hazard mitigation and recovery planning. Each begins with workshops where stakeholders identify built, natural, and social assets that contribute to human wellbeing (HWB) before introducing earthquake scenarios that affect HWB. Participants then identify assets that could facilitate adaptation to changed circumstances (a “new normal”). Participants discuss how these assets would achieve the goals of comprehensive community planning as well as hazard mitigation and recovery from disaster. Neighborhood-scale social organization emerges as an important priority.

Takeaway for practice: Asset-based approaches enable communities to better recover from disaster and adapt to a post-disaster “new normal.” By premising planning discussions on a more holistic set of assets, communities can balance physical recovery goals with qualities that help them to adapt to future change. Furthermore, thinking about recovering before an event actually occurs can enlarge the menu of mitigation strategies. Planning for adaptation can also help communities achieve many non-risk-related objectives.

Keywords:

• resilience
• Risk MAP
• risk assessment
• disaster recovery
• hazard mitigation
• social capital
• natural capital
• built capital.

Acknowledgments

The study relied extensively on long-established community networks and those responsible for their availability: Andrew Winck (Makah Tribe), David DeHaan (Everett EM), and Charles Gorman (Redmond EM). And, the involvement of our graduate and teaching assistants: Maximilian M. Dixon (RA lead), Tim Lehman (RA), Jonathan Olds (RA), Jesse Reynolds (RA), and Chungho Kim (TA).

Notes

1 Risk MAP is a FEMA program that provides communities with flood information and tools they can use to enhance their mitigation plans and take action to better protect their citizens.

2 We define “better” as “community-defined HWB.” However, our exercise did not challenge the group to make tradeoffs or define priorities.

3 We refer to HWB for purposes of this analysis, but used “quality of life” in presentations during the exercise.

4 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment categories include “freedom of choice and action” as a fifth category. During this exercise, each group was asked to consider choice in a general way, although it also emerges in the range of sources and providers listed for any given good or service.

5 By “consensus” we mean that no dissension was expressed. We employed no mechanism to determine whether any participants held dissenting views but kept them private.