CRO -- Chief Resilience Officer

In a move that hopefully signifies a change in how foundations and donors view funding disaster initiatives, the Rockefeller Foundation is blazing a path forward with the creation of a $100 Million Dollar Global Disaster Preparedness Fund. At the center of the fund is the "100 Resilient Cities Centennial Challenge," a global grant program that essentially works to incentivize the integration of resilience into urban and disaster planning. Those who win a grant award will receive funding for a "Chief Resilience Officer," an individual who will be responsible for oversight and implementation of the city's master recovery plan.

Beyond the initial PR splash, there are few details on the application / nomination process at this time, but will be something I watch for updates on given the questions an initiative of this nature raises. Since many cities already have robust preparedness plans in place, seeing how this position will integrate with those existing plans and where the position will sit within the Emergency Management hierarchy could be telling of how effective it will be. Will this position create another layer of planning and procedural bureaucracy that cities have to wade through, or will the Resilience Officer have the authority to begin to make sweeping changes to how cities define and enact resilience in the face of disasters? While much of the authority will most likely be derived from how and where the dollars are to be spent, it will be interesting to learn how the position is to be integrated in with the existing HR frameworks.

While I imagine cities are excited at the prospect of supplemental dollars in their preparedness coffers in light of dwindling federal money to support their efforts, non-profits should be equally excited or at the very least encouraged by this move. The quest for consistent funding for disaster-focused non-profits is all consuming and the results are often weak given the reluctance of foundations (public and private) to fund response activities...let alone general ops to keep the doors open.

The reason the creation of this fund with Rockefeller backing is so important, is because of the momentum and acceptance it will hopefully generate throughout the donor community when approached with opportunities to fund disaster initiatives. For the same reasons no one likes to go first for anything are the same reasons no one wants to be the first to fund something new.  

I'm hopeful that with the creation of this $100 million fund and the coverage it will generate, that mindsets will shift and the foundation world will recognize the importance of funding non-profit disaster-related initiatives associated with preparedness/response/recovery.

Shifts in mindsets move at a glacial pace when dollars aren't involved and a move of the type I would like to see happen would entail a lot of money, as a result, I don't see any radical changes happening anytime soon…but the creation of this fund is the first step in the right direction.

The Waffle House Index and Business Continuity

There are a lot of interesting relationships out there that seem to have no connection at face value--however, if you dig deeper you find interesting connections. The guys over at www.freakonomics.com/ are really good at finding these connections if you want to learn more. Some examples: skirt length and economic health or the amount of bacon consumed and how fat I get.

However, given that we like to talk about disasters, I'm referring to Administrator Fugate's now famous Waffle House Index. Long story short, this "index" uses Waffle House as a measure of a disasters impact on a community and it comes in three tasty levels that determine severity:

• Green: Waffle House is open and serving a full menu = minor damage and minor impacts
• Yellow: Waffle House is open but serving a limited menu, usually meaning the use of generators to get food into stomachs based on a limited food supply = issues with infrastructure / access and major impacts
• Red: Waffle House is closed = not good, area is unsafe to return

If you've never had the good fortune of eating at a Waffle House, you should remedy that because you're doing your waistline and arteries a disservice. Background: located throughout much of the south, especially the gulf coast states, they are as ubiquitous as Starbucks and known for always being open, 24/7/365. The combination of their geography and their business model, to be open as quickly as possible should they have to close the doors, makes them the perfect litmus test to gauge the impacts of an event in an area. 

It's a good menu...

Which brings me to my point, resilience on a personal level is at the crux of community recovery--if people don't rebuild, there is no community to come back to. However, just as important but less talked about is business resilience. Waffle House makes keeping the doors open a priority, as a result they need to be prepared when disaster strikes given where many of them are located--it's almost become a part of their organizational culture by default. Given that fact, duplication of supply chains and the ability to source things locally in order to get the doors open and butts in the seats as quickly as possible, is part of owning/running a Waffle House franchise. Along with Waffle House, Lowe's, Walmart, and Home Depot all strive to maintain a similarly high standard post-disaster. Given that these giants of industry have solid continuity planning integrated into their organizational culture...why is it that those models and procedural know haven't trickled down to help prepare small to medium-sized enterprises (SME)? 

We talk about whole of community but with the focus being on the individual/family. We need to push the availability of resources for small and medium-sized business as well...groups like the Small Business Administration and the Economic Recovery Support Function are some help to SME's, but in today's world of millions of messages being thrown around, the importance of business preparedness is diluted or lost.

The only reason people were able to get their hash browns covered, smothered, and chunked 3 days after Irene went through the mid-atlantic region in 2011, was because the Waffle House puts an emphasis on being ready...how many other businesses can claim the same?

The Languages of Disaster

A series of these maps are making the rounds on the internets illustrating the regional differences in vocabulary...the bottom line being, different parts of the country use different words for the same thing: soda = pop / hoagie = sub / sneaker = tennis shoe / etc...























The same can be said for how we talk about disasters, the nomenclature we use is as varied and idiosyncratic as the communities we help. The two camps that exist in the disaster world are those in the traditional emergency management infrastructure and those who are not.

Traditional emergency management is based on the tenants of the command and control structure of NIMS and ICS, and within that camp there's SEMS, the foundational "language" on which NIMS is based. Within this acronym-laden alphabet soup lives a language / structure with it's own HR procedures, protocols, ways of conducting field ops, and ways of requesting assistance from neighboring jurisdictions.

The other camp are the non-profit organizations and everyone else, including people holding positions within local gov't, all of whom speak their own language or are making it up as they go as it relates to response and recovery activities. This is not to say that some of the national organizations / city governments don't have personnel who aren't "versed" in NIMS/ICS, but it's usually only a small percentage and ends up reinforcing a divide between established response organizations and those emergent groups who only stand up after an event.

One of the hurdles that exists in bridging this gap is that a NIMS org chart looks like this:

Nice. Organized. Clear Delineation of Roles and Responsibilities

And a non-profit org chart is more like this:

Too many jobs for too few people

And the org chart for spontaneous groups look like this:

There isn't one

State and Local Emergency Management Agencies speak NIMS/ICS because there are funding strings attached, the non-profit world usually receives their funding from private sources and are beholden to a different set of requirements--none of which have anything to do with ensuring NIMS/ICS compliance.

When NIMS/ICS aren't part of the daily operational vernacular, there are going to be problems in level setting expectations and creating a common place to start from following an event, especially when trying to bring the various players together to create a unified and cohesive response effort.

To help create consistency in operations from a county, state, and federal perspective, a series of frameworks have been created: The National Prevention Framework, The National Mitigation Framework, The National Response Framework, and The National Disaster Recovery Framework. While the debate rages on about whether or not the federal gov't has too many or not enough frameworks, the fact remains that they exist and provide a roadmap in which roles and responsibilities are outlined.

If you turn to the non-profit sector or beyond you'll find that no such guidance exists. National VOAD has consensus and guidance documents but nothing that sets forth expectations around roles and responsibilities following an event, leaving the door open for a re-interpretation of how things should go every time disaster strikes.

The command and control mentality only works to a point, but if the whole of community and community resilience talk is to be anything more than words, a common language and common ground need to be found to bridge the gaps that currently exist. If we don't speak the same language, working together will continue to be a struggle fraught with the same mis-interpretations and mis-understandings that have plagued response for as long as I've been a part of it.

The resilient organization needs to speak the language of technology

The evolution of technology and its pervasiveness are influencing our daily lives. As a result of this rapid evolution, many feel like they're jumping from the rotary phone to the smartphone and are still unsure of what 'the cloud' is, and if it's something that will affect the weather.

Because of our reliance on servers and a host of technological platforms to conduct day-to-day business, continuity planning for businesses is a growing concern given the importance economic recovery plays as a community gets back on its feet.

Techsoup, a nonprofit tech resource has put out 'The Resilient Organization: A guide for disaster planning and recovery,' this guide to planning for and responding to a disaster from an IT perspective will aid in the mitigation of the impacts of disasters on your IT infrastructure.

You know the frustration you feel when you get access your email? Well imagine the feeling of anger and helplessness when you can't conduct business because a [insert type of disaster here] has wrecked havoc on your IT hardware/software/access to services...

Do yourself a favor and skim it, and while you're at it check out the other resources Techsoup has to offer...they're a great resource.