Disaster Resilience A National Imperative (2012) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
1 The Nation's Agenda for Disaster Resilience
1 The Nation's Agenda for Disaster Resilience
Pages 11-24
The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.
From page 11... ...
. Statistics indicate that total economic damages from all natural disasters in 2011 exceeded $55 billion in property damage, breaking all records since these data were first reported in 1980 (NCDC, 2012)
|
From page 12... ...
In 2009, with many more disaster declarations, the federal government conservatively spent $1.4 billion on federal disaster relief or the equivalent of about $4.75 per person.3 The past two decades in particular show highly devastating and costly events to the nation's treasury: the 1994 Northridge earthquake led to federal expenditures of $11.6 billion in disaster relief, relief costs for the 2001 World Trade Center attack totaled $13.3 billion, and Hurricane Katrina alone in 2005 led to more than $48.7 billion in federal disaster relief costs. Importantly, these expenditures do not even include insured property or business interruption losses, which 3 Computed from Federal Emergency Management Agency Presidential Disaster Declaration Data with totals adjusted to 2009 dollars.
|
From page 13... ...
What steps need to be taken to become more resilient in the near and long term? THE NATIONAL IMPERATIVE TO INCREASE RESILIENCE Decisions by communities, states, regions, and the nation regarding whether to invest in building resilience are difficult.
|
From page 14... ...
Public infrastructure is currently aging beyond acceptable design limits; 5) Infrastructure such as schools, public safety, and public health that are essential to communities are facing economically difficult times as the population grows and ages; 6)
|
From page 15... ...
Such data and research are critical for quantifying risk and measuring progress for resilience. Consistent federal assistance for community resilience based on loss avoidance or disaster risk reduction, rather than primarily on post-disaster relief.
|
From page 16... ...
. Definition 1.1 Resilience: The ability to prepare and plan for, absorb, recover from, or more successfully adapt to actual or potential adverse events.4 4 This definition was developed by the study committee based on the extant literature and is consistent with the international disaster policy community (UNISDR, 2011)
|
From page 17... ...
BOX 1.1 Why Effective Community Resilience Is Similar to a Healthy Human Body Communities can be viewed as a set of interrelated systems that share a common vision, and the overall resilience of communities may be viewed in much the same way as the overall health of the human body. A human body relies on the integrated functioning of its shared systems -- like the skeletal, nervous, and immune systems -- to maintain health and resist disease and injury.
|
From page 18... ...
A robust health infrastructure enhances resilience, and provides data essential to the early detection of naturally occurring or terrorist-induced epidemics and environmental hazards. Disaster resilience as an integrated part of community or government decision making is a relatively new concept that is only now being broadly or explicitly adopted through efforts such as Presidential Policy Directive-8 (PPD8; see below and Chapter 6)
|
From page 19... ...
. BOX 1.3 Increasing National Resilience to Hazards and Disasters Statement of Task An ad hoc committee overseen collaboratively by the Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy and the Disasters Roundtable will conduct a study and issue a consensus report that integrates information from the natural, physical, technical, economic, and social sciences to identify ways to increase national resilience to hazards and disasters in the United States.
|
From page 20... ...
This report responds to this charge by providing actionable recommendations and guidance on how to increase national resilience from the level of the local community, states, regions, and the nation. Because the nation's culture has traditionally been focused on responses to emergencies or to specific disaster events rather than on coherent assessment, planning, and evaluation to increase disaster resilience, the report also recognizes the need for a new national framework for a "culture of disaster resilience" that includes: (1)
|
From page 21... ...
Enhancing resilience is achieved through vigorous scientific, technical, and engineering research that enables improved forecasting, better risk and disaster management, the development of metrics for assessing progress toward increased resilience, advances in understanding community dynamics, advances in understanding the economics of insurance and disasters, and improved analysis of the legal and social forces at work in communities. Research is essential to building more resilient communities, and research challenges and needs to improve disaster resilience are presented throughout the report.
|
From page 22... ...
Fostering a culture of community resilience is viewed as a principal goal for the nation. Building or enhancing resilience at the national level is a long-term process, and it is expected that the tools and framework presented in this report will provide a structure for additional work across communities, including the private sector, and all government levels to advance, measure, and realize resilience in the United States.
|
From page 23... ...
2008. A place-based model for understanding community resilience to natural disasters.
|
From page 24... ...
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. White House and DHS (Department of Homeland Security)
|
Key Terms
This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More
information on Chapter Skim is available.