How much resilience 5.2

That is the equivalent of around Olympic size swimming pools. This was achieved through the cumulative impact of many NFM measures. In the right circumstances, NFM measures can play a supporting role in tackling more significant floods and coastal erosion. Here they can help to slow the flow of water through the catchment. The most popular measures in the NFM Programme involve leaky barriers. Tree planting and woodland management are common measures too.

NFM measures give the greatest flood reduction when they are used across a catchment using a variety of different techniques to increase the cumulative impact. Individual NFM measures are often lower cost when compared to many other flood risk management measures. However, multiple NFM measures are usually needed to have a meaningful impact on risk across a catchment. The overall costs will depend on the scale and objectives for the NFM project. NFM measures do more than reduce flood risk.

They can help communities to be more resilient so that when flooding happens, they can recover much faster. They can also provide benefits for integrated water management, from source to sea.

NFM projects can enhance community resilience to flooding when there is too much water and resilience to drought when there is too little water. NFM also provides a wide range of environmental benefits to people and wildlife. Alongside water storage, the NFM Programme has improved 4, hectares of habitat and kilometres of river. In doing so, the NFM pilots have helped to improve water quality, reduce soil erosion, and enhance biodiversity in the places where they are located.

Many NFM measures capture carbon, such as tree planting. The NFM Programme has planted more than hectares of woodland. Woodlands make the ground surface rougher which slows the flow of surface water run-off during high rainfall events. This reduces flooding downstream because less water arrives at the same time. Trees provide a climate benefit by capturing carbon from the atmosphere. By changing how the land is managed, the project team realised they could also reduce flooding as well as soil and nutrient run-off.

This created the opportunity to be part of the NFM programme. The project team worked with farmers to trial a suite soft engineering measures. They have created:. Hydraulic modelling and a comprehensive monitoring network have been installed as part of the project. This is generating evidence on how effective the NFM measures are for reducing flood risk and providing multiple benefits such as improving water quality and biodiversity.

This project would not have been possible without the enthusiasm of the local community, and supportive farmers ensuring the measures are maintained in the landscape. The importance of partner relationships and the power of positive landowner experiences is critical if we are to make our catchments climate resilient places. Cumbria has a variety of geology, soil depth, agricultural use, and altitudes which impact the choice and effectiveness of different NFM measures.

In addition, they wanted to assess which NFM measures would be acceptable to farmers and landowners at risk and the implications for farming practices. The primary focus was to see which types of NFM would make the biggest difference to flood risk.

The project team wanted to demonstrate how NFM measures could effect changes to river discharge water in the river. They partnered with Lancaster University to help with data collection and analysis. The project team aimed to slow or store 10, cubic metres of water per square kilometre. This enabled the trialling of a variety of NFM measures across different landscapes. The team worked with a variety of landowners and agricultural operations to better understand the measures trialled, which included:.

It has been fascinating and empowering to be able to trial a range of NFM across the catchments and landscape types. NFM relies on many local partners working together to achieve a shared vision for how they can reduce flood risk and improve their local environment. The NFM Programme had more than 85 partners involved in carrying out and supporting the projects including:. They will need to make decisions and facilitate compromise between all the stakeholders.

Many successful projects have been led by:. A high level of engagement is important in generating strong partnerships and inspiring others to get involved. The NFM projects have shown that it takes time and effort to build and sustain these partnerships. Project teams may need to use a significant proportion of the project budget on engagement and consultation with the community and other local stakeholders.

Community representatives on the project partnership can play an important role in building trust locally. Involving schools can also inspire young people to better understand how NFM can help their local communities plan and adapt to climate change. What we have learnt from the NFM projects has been the importance of local project teams listening to and working alongside the local community and local experts.

Their knowledge is important when considering which NFM measures to install and where best to locate them. Land managers are critical to the success of NFM projects. Farmers and landowners must agree to what is proposed and built on their land. Farmers can use advice on planting winter covering crops, soil management and ploughing along slopes which can often help to reduce flood risk.

It is also vital that project teams consider the impact of NFM measures on farm businesses. Did you notice any changes if you took actions? Consider too, if you are thinking about a career change, which resources might be needed in the new occupational area. As you work through this course you will need various resources to help you complete some of the activities. Making the decision to study can be a big step, which is why you'll want a trusted University.

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Week 2: Personal resilience — born or made? Using community representatives to review disaster scenarios and provide feedback on planned messaging is one approach Paton et al. In addition, evaluation of risk communication plans following a crisis event can be used to engage the community in being part of their resilience-building strategies NRC, a. When faced with uncertainty, people tend to turn to others for guidance and confirmation.

To maximize communication and public education, forums encouraging community members to discuss hazard issues with ample use of visual aids, compelling media, and peer group discussion methods has been suggested Mileti and Peek, For example, Los Angeles County Public Health and the University of California at Los Angeles have developed preparedness outreach programs using peer mentors to educate developmentally delayed adults and promotora 3 community health workers in the Latino community.

Social media, as discussed below, offer multiple promising opportunities for promoting community planning and discussion. The fabric and nature of community have been profoundly affected in recent years by the growth of online social media.

Social networks can now grow and survive without the same ties to geography that existed in the past. Instead, electronic media allow instant communication within networks of friends and strangers who may be separated by long distances, and lead to a sense of community that may have little to do with geography.

So much interpersonal interaction now occurs online that the very term social network often implies a digital medium such as Facebook or Twitter. These networks can play a very important role in strengthening community by providing new ways to interact, but at the same time their lack of ties to geography may weaken local communities by diverting some of their attention elsewhere.

Nevertheless, it is clear that efforts to strengthen communities and their social networks must include these new media. Individual citizens are now empowered by technology to collect and disseminate information, and such mechanisms have proven increasingly important during disasters, when reports from citizens may lead official information by minutes, and in some cases hours. Against these potential advantages the doubts about quality and the lack of the kinds of checks and confirmations of information are weighed.

Goodchild and Glennon , Liu and Palen , Palen et al. Such information is inevitably unreliable to some extent, coming as it does from volunteers who may have little training and may even have malicious intent, but it does provide immediate situational awareness.

In the various wildfires that have hit the Santa Barbara area in the past few years, Goodchild and Glennon showed that volunteers can also play a vital role in synthesizing reports culled from blogs, tweets, and other postings, and reconciling apparent contradictions. The problem of quality assurance in these situations needs specific attention. A fundamental principle of crowd sourcing argues that information is more reliable if it comes from multiple, independent sources.

More effective, however, is the kind of social hierarchy used by prominent sites such as Wikipedia and Open Street Map. Individuals with a track record of reliable information are promoted through the hierarchy and play a key role in moderating and vetting reports.

In essence, such systems replicate the structure of traditional government agencies, but in a manner that is consistent with their voluntary nature. In the final analysis, however, an individual citizen experiencing the effects of a disaster must make a simple choice: to act in response to potentially unreliable but timely information provided by voluntary mechanisms, or to wait until officials are able to check and verify, by which time the impacts of the event may be severe.

Efforts to strengthen communities and their use of social media, and to develop the social hierarchies that can foster trust, can do much to improve the quality, and thus increase the value, of crowd-sourced information during disasters or other traumatic events. Two different mechanisms may improve communication networks to ensure access to information for resilience: 1 creation of multipronged interconnected communication networks, and 2 ensuring equity in access to information.

A strong communications infrastructure can efficiently centralize collection and distribution of information and news at national, regional, and local levels before a disaster Andrulis et al.

This infrastructure includes the technological means to transmit information, skilled and trained human resources to carry out communication functions, and the organizational processes and social networks that facilitate the flow of communications FEMA, ; NRC, b; Comfort and Haase, Alternate routing and backup plans as a part of the infrastructure planning could prevent the type of communication breakdown that happened when Hurricane Katrina destroyed the communication system in New Orleans Comfort and Haase, Plans for communication that maintain parity with the technologies that the public widely uses, such as text messaging and social media, are also important Karasz and Bogan, ; Merchant et al.

Flexibility in the face of the unknown is vital to a communication network that can adapt to changing circumstances.

Reliance on rigid command-and-control strategies for communication can prove detrimental; instead, building multipronged networks that feed into and pull from many community nodes may constitute a better communication strategy Norris et al.

Dense communication networks contribute to community action because individuals tend to confirm information across multiple sources and within their social spheres before determining courses of action Wood et al. Inclusion of CBOs—along with local, state, and federal agencies and response partners—creates more avenues for rapidly delivering critical information. More importantly, incorporating CBOs also leverages sources of information that are already trusted in their communities, resulting in better outreach to diverse populations and more effective coordination of communications Andrulis et al.

A second component of the communications network is recognizing and addressing inequities in access to information that result from culture, language, socioeconomic status, functional ability, literacy, and trust Kasperson et al.

When these communication barriers are not addressed, equal access to food, medical treatment, safety information, and other lifesaving resources cannot be assured Fothergill et al. People who have difficulty accessing needed care and resources day to day are at even higher risk from disasters, and failure to ensure equity in access to information can further amplify the hardships these individuals face.

Communication networks that include diverse stakeholders are fundamental to reaching more diverse populations. People working in specific communities often have the expertise and relationships in place to best communicate to the families and individuals they serve.

Andrulis et al. A particular focus of the public education and awareness segment of this initiative is on communicating directly with vulnerable populations J. Moreno, personal communication, May 24, ; Appendix B. As standard protocol, communications and educational materials must be available in multiple languages and in translation Mileti and Peek, Translation alone may be insufficient, and the review by individuals from target communities to ensure cultural adoption and the ability of the materials to meet needs of people with lower literacy or different functional abilities can ensure that the messaging is appropriate and acceptable and is absorbed and adopted by the intended audiences Mileti and Peek, ; Andrulis et al.

Local communities have a variety of mechanisms at their disposal to reduce risks and enhance resilience—mechanisms that are largely under the control of local jurisdictions. Building codes set the minimum requirements for infrastructure and are established through a hierarchy of national, regional, and local governments. Codes and standards exist to guide construction of residential, commercial, and industrial buildings, and to inform zoning and land-use considerations Ching and Winkel, Building codes can support resilience by helping to prevent or minimize damage to the built environment during natural disasters; minimum standards of siting and construction can also help ensure public health and safety.

However, a balance between adding to the codes to protect infrastructures from disasters and causing the cost of buildings to increase to a point where the costs prevent or delay new construction are considerations that decision makers, the private sector, and community have to take into account.

Also, if adjacent communities adopt or enforce building codes differently,. Such discrepancies may call for increased regional or statewide consistency in the use of building codes. Additionally, the federal government constructs its buildings to meet a set of federal codes, and maintaining a balance between federal and local codes and standards is also challenging.

Presently, high-level resilience is not addressed in these minimum requirements for the codes, resulting in limited design guidance available to the community on providing enhanced safety to the built environment NIBS and DHS, National codes provide a base upon which regional and, subsequently, local codes are developed.

This base lays the groundwork for a minimum level of resilience to be set at a national level, with room for specific updates at the regional and local scales. The origin of the building codes used today lies in the fires that damaged American cities throughout the s and were initially written to support the needs of insurance companies for fire protection and hazard reduction NIBS and DHS, The codes are written in such detail that specifications for means of exiting from a building are included Ching and Winkel, At the core, the codes are designed to protect health and life—providing safe passage for individuals if a building should collapse.

Model codes published by ICC are adopted, sometimes in modified form, by the legislatures of individual U. These codes include 8 :. Accessed February 11, Accessed February 8, Building code enforcement, however, is generally the responsibility of local government, which hires building inspectors to ensure their implementation. Building codes have been shown repeatedly to be effective in reducing property damage, preserving human life, and increasing the resilience of communities Multihazard Mitigation Council, ; see also Box 5.

However, except where federally owned property or interests are involved, the federal government has little role in establishing local building codes and standards, or zoning laws see below. Thus, the adoption and enforcement of building codes and standards lie predominantly at the local level, and are highly variable across the nation. Rigorous enforcement of updated building codes continues to be one of the surest mechanisms for improving resilience of infrastructure.

The devastation wrought by Hurricane Andrew when it struck Florida in triggered a reevaluation of existing building code standards and their enforcement. In , coastal areas of Florida started to use and enforce high-wind design provisions for residential housing, including those that ensured that all loads were directed to the foundations. Builders and building officials received extensive training in concert with this development. In the late s, the state of Florida moved toward adopting a statewide building code, something that was achieved in This was accompanied by the training of all licensed engineers, architects, and contractors in the new code.

In , four major hurricanes, the first of which was Hurricane Charley, pummeled Florida from both coastlines over a period of 6 weeks. A study of losses in the hardest hit area, Charlotte County which had implemented high-wind standards in revealed that enforcement of modern engineering design-based building codes significantly enhanced the performance of residential homes during Hurricane Charley. Charlotte County policyholders for homes built after filed 60 percent fewer claims than those for homes built before ; when a loss did occur for a post home, the claim was 42 percent less severe than that for a pre home.

The study also concluded that the new building code requirements permitted homeowners to return to their residences more quickly, thus reducing the disruption to their daily lives. In a similar manner, zoning laws reduce the vulnerability and impacts of disaster in a community by preventing the development of communities in places exposed to hazards. Zoning laws are the responsibility of local, regional, or state authorities, depending upon the specific setting and agreements among authorities.

The authority for zoning laws generally lies with the city or county government, though agreements among jurisdictions may assign authority to a metropolitan or regional commission. The first municipality in the United States to develop a zoning law was New York City, which implemented its groundbreaking Zoning Resolution of in response to competing public needs related to urban development New York City, A recent example of such a law is the new zoning code adopted by New Orleans in , six years after the events associated with Hurricane Katrina Box 5.

The new master plan for development in New Orleans even contains a chapter dedicated to community resilience and has, as one of its goals, a broad and encompassing community standard of resilience with respect to flooding and other hazards. Clearly, effective community land-use planning and zoning are fundamental to building resilience.

To encourage and promote, in accordance with present and future needs, the safety, morals, health, order, convenience, prosperity, and general welfare of the citizens of the City of New Orleans;. To provide for preservation, protection, development, and conservation of the natural resources of land, water, and air;.

To provide for adequate public utilities and facilities, and for the convenience of traffic and circulation of people and goods;. To provide for the safe use and occupancy of buildings and for healthful and convenient distribution of population;.

To provide for promotion of the civic amenities of beauty and visual interest, for preservation and enhancement of historic buildings and places, and for promotion of large-scale developments as means of achieving unified civic design; and. Despite widespread availability of codes and zoning guidelines and agreement by most officials that these governance tools benefit community resilience, many unsafe buildings still exist and many communities continue to allow development in hazardous areas.

The major reasons that municipal and state jurisdictions find it difficult to enforce building codes and zoning laws include the lack of resources or number of qualified personnel to do so, pressure from developers to grow communities, and lack of political will to manage land use through zoning Burby, Building code enforcement costs money, namely in the form of salaries for qualified, trained technical staff who inspect both new and retrofit construction, issue judgments on compliance, and carry out follow-up inspections when failure to comply arises.

Municipal and county governments facing limited budgets, and many competing public demands often result in cuts to these critical personnel. As expressed by useful-community-development. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Many of the 19, incorporated towns and cities in the United States U. Census Bureau, struggle to maintain the most basic public services delivered by police, fire, and teachers. At the same time that inspectors are in short supply, the builders and building owners may resist compliance, especially if such measures require additional investment.

Though the short-term funding issues are unfortunately often the determinant of local code enforcement, the adoption and enforcement of building codes have proven to be economically beneficial in reducing property damage, improving life safety, and increasing the resilience of communities Cohen and Noll, ; Multihazard Mitigation. Council, However, tension between local and national interests arises when local building codes contain provisions that respond to specific community interests and concerns.

Existing engineering technologies, tools, and design criteria provide guidance for codes and standards to support prevention, mitigation, and risk avoidance; however, accelerating the enforcement of these regulations has proved to be difficult and expensive for local government. What is the best way to encourage and accelerate the enforcement of building and zoning codes where enforcement is currently not universal?

One potential mechanism is to tie the adoption and enforcement of building codes to state eligibility requirements for federal disaster relief funds and programs.

Although sometimes politically unpopular, such an approach can help build a culture of resilience. Other mechanisms may include the provision of additional training to public safety officials for code enforcement inspections e.

Finally, penalties and sanctions levied against developers who blatantly ignore codes is another option, but this may also result in the need for more inspections and the resources to hire additional staff. To address resilience in the built environment, codes and standards may also need to consider integrating new language, considering all of the building design criteria, and expanding standards beyond life-safety aspects, including safety and usability Poland, Performance-based standards and codes, for example, have historically served as objective-based requirements for a building designer to meet Ching and Winkel, New building codes and standards that extend beyond life-safety aspects may include resilient design concepts in a performance-based approach, as well as continuity of operations NIBS and DHS, Additionally, the codes could integrate frequent and well-adopted design measurements and standards, providing a flexible platform to address different facility and structure types and recognizing the differing levels of performance that are required.

Higher minimums for building codes may be another mechanism to increase the visible, direct links between building code and standard enforcement and resilience. The current minimum requirements prescribed by building codes, while laying the groundwork for resilience, do not provide adequate design guidance for resilience.

Uniform adoption by jurisdictions begins with the development of design criteria, building codes, and standards that address resiliency objectives and the technologies and validation for their use NIBS and DHS, A number of areas need additional research to fully understand local opportunities for and constraints to enhancing community resilience.

First, no systematic or evidence-based assessment has been conducted to identify which strategies are most effective in fostering local collaborations to build community resilience. Most of the information appears to be anecdotal or tied to case studies at present, with little evidence to support whether generic strategies can be customized for the local context.

Second, the economic impacts of changes in building codes or zoning laws are not tied well or directly to the receipt of disaster relief. At present, that question cannot be answered.

Finally, studies are needed to evaluate the reliability and validity of information communicated through social media and whether the integration of social media into disaster preparedness, response, and resilience efforts affects the costs, quality, or outcomes Merchant et al. Resilience requires reinforcement of our physical environment—the buildings and critical infrastructure that support the communities in which we live. It also requires the strengthening of our social infrastructure—the local community networks that can mobilize to plan, make decisions, and communicate effectively.

The interconnectedness of the social and physical infrastructure requires that both aree enhanced simultaneously with equal consideration to increasing resilience. The principal action through which a local community could vastly accelerate progress toward enhanced resilience of its. Accessed February 12, A truly robust coalition would have at its core a strong leadership and governance structure, with a person or persons with adequate time, skill, and dedication necessary for the development and maintenance of relationships among all partners.

Recommendation: Federal, state, and local governments should support the creation and maintenance of broad-based community resilience coalitions at local and regional levels. Efforts to support coalition development should include:.

Such an assessment could gauge whether communities have sufficient support and incentive to adopt collaborative problem-solving approaches toward disaster resilience and disaster risk management. The emergency management community is an important integrated part of these discussions, potentially taking on a leadership role. Building codes and standards are effective in mitigating and reducing disaster risk to communities. However, codes and standards have some variability due to the nature of local hazards; across the nation they are unevenly enforced and many people do not know they exist.

In addition to codes and standards, guidelines, certifications, and practices also can be effective in fostering resilience. Recommendation: Federal agencies, together with local and regional partners, researchers, professional groups, and the private sector should. This framework should include national standards for infrastructure resilience and guidelines for land use and other structural mitigation options, especially in known hazard areas such as floodplains.

The Department of Homeland Security is an appropriate agency to help coordinate this government-wide activity. The adoption and enforcement of this framework at the local level should be strongly encouraged by the framework document and accompanied by a commitment from state and local governments to ensure that zoning laws and building codes are adopted and enforced.

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