Disaster-Resilient Communities

The GSAA seeks to understand potential risks and threats, take steps to prepare and adapt to chronic and episodic events, and effectively deal with post-disaster response. The Disaster Resilient Communities (DRC) Issue Area Technical Team seeks to greatly enhance the understanding of ocean and weather dynamics and improve prediction, observation and forecasting capabilities for both episodic and chronic impacts from weather and climate change. The DRC Issue Area Technical Team identified these 5 objectives to be included in the GSAA Action Plan.:

1. Conduct regional and state-specific vulnerability assessments of a) public infrastructure, social assets, and economies to hazards and climate change and b) natural processes and features that support resilience, including valuation of these ecosystem services;
2. Develop and implement adaptation and mitigation strategies for climate change impacts with plans for retreat of natural and human communities;
3. Improve post-disaster redevelopment planning for coastal communities;
4. Create and employ incentives for locating and relocating development away from high risk areas, minimizing subsidization of development in high risk areas and re-evaluating of building standards and
5. Consider management and financial options for addressing short- and long-term beachfront and estuarine migration.

Specific action items can be found in the Implementation Plan.

Post-Disaster Recovery Planning Resources

The State of Florida, in partnership with Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina through the Governors’ South Atlantic Alliance sponsored a live broadcast of a session on disaster recovery at the 2013 American Planning Association (APA) Conference in Chicago, IL. This two-part session introduces the key concepts and lessons outlined in a forthcoming Planning Advisory Service report, Planning for Post-Disaster Recovery: Next Generation. Explore the essential role planners play in disaster recovery. Learn key concepts in recovering from natural disasters. Find out how to tie the goals of your community’s long-term recovery plan to other planning processes. Examine the pros and cons of pre-disaster versus post-disaster planning. And discover a new tool for recovery planning based on the impacts of a particular disaster.  For more information on post-disaster recovery from APA, please visit: http://www.planning.org/research/postdisaster/.

Find the complete video transcript here

Find the complete video transcript here

Prioritized Actions for 2014

• DRC3B – Develop guidance to improve redevelopment considerations in state and local hazards mitigation plans and local comprehensive and growth management plans.
• DRC3C – Explore short‐term economic recovery aspects of long‐term redevelopment, and opportunities to create partnerships in support of local business recovery.
• DRC5B – Develop regional standards or best practices for monitoring and mapping beachfront and estuarine shoreline changes for the purpose of targeting specific areas for management responses.

DRC Snap Shots

DRC Living Shorelines      DRC Shoreline Migration     DRC-WW Water Dependent Uses     DRC-WW Clean Resilient Marinas

Prioritized Action Items for 2012-2013:

Over the next 12-18 months, the DRC Technical Team wants to accomplish the following implementation steps under Action Items DRC3A and DRC3C:

DRC3A3 – Compile an online database of tools and resources with a forum for discussion that could be used to help PDRP.

DRC3A4 – Explore land use change analysis and planning tools that could be used during the PDRP process and implications for implementation

DRC3A5 – Examine current federal recovery resources and evaluate any barriers or obstacles that they present and offer ways to better coordinate with them through the states

DRC3C1 – Evaluate successful public-private partnerships.

DRC3C2 – Evaluate current tools available for this collaboration and their effectiveness (i.e. Business Continuity Information Network – BCIN).

DRC3C 4 – Begin to forge regional state collaborative efforts on sectors of the economy (i.e. tourism, water-related, etc.) that span all states and ways to leverage opportunities for expedited recovery.

Prioritized Action Items for 2011:

DRC3A – Evaluate nationwide Post-Disaster Redevelopment Planning initiatives to improve understanding of post-disaster redevelopment options.

The DRC Issue Area Technical Team completed two implementation steps items under DRC3A. A literature review (add .pdf link later)and inventory of post-disaster redevelopment planning processes was completed in the spring of 2012 (DRC3A1) and a Long Term Recovery Planning Summit (Executive Summary) was held in Jacksonville Florida in July 2012 (DRC3A2).

TECHNICAL TEAM

STATE REPESENTATIVES
Tancred Miller – NC Dept. of Environment and Natural Resources
Will Salters – SC Department of Health & Environmental Control
Jennifer Kline – GA Dept. of Natural Resources
Daniel Fitz-Patrick (Team Lead) – FL Dept. of Economic Opportunity

FEDERAL REPESENTATIVES
Richard Bandy – Dept. of Commerce/National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Colton Bowles – U.S. Dept. of Defense/U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
Linda Rimer – Environmental Protection Agency
Mary Rountree – Dept. of Homeland Security/FEMA
Holly Weyers – Dept. of the Interior/U.S. Geological Survey

ADDITIONAL MEMBERS
J. Chris Crew – NC State Hazard Mitigation Office
Melissa Berry Potter – SC State Hazard Mitigation Office
Terry Lunn – GA State Hazard Mitigation Office
Miles Anderson – FL State Hazard Mitigation Office
Jessica Whitehead – NC Sea Grant