Recovery Planning Process Research Articles

Partnerships in the recovery planning process: lessons from Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria and Irma

PurposeTo assess which partnerships were most critical during the recovery planning process following Hurricanes Maria and Irma. We discuss the roles and impact of different types of partners, barriers and facilitators to partnerships and lessons in collaboration during the development of the economic and disaster recovery plan for Puerto Rico.Design/methodology/approachThe Homeland Security Operational Analysis Center (HSOAC) was tasked with assisting the Puerto Rican government with an assessment of damages from Hurricanes Maria and Irma and the development of the Recovery Plan. During the process, a small team compiled and coded a database of meetings with non-HSOAC partners. The team was divided into sector teams that mirrored FEMA’s Recovery Support Functions. Each sector completed two surveys identifying high impact partners and their roles and contributions, as well as barriers and facilitators to partnerships.FindingsA total of 1,382 engagements were recorded across all sectors over seven months. The most frequently identified high impact partners were federal and Puerto Rican governmental organizations partners. NGOs and nonprofits were noted as key partners in obtaining community perspective. Sector teams cited a lack of trust and difficulty identifying partners as barriers to partner engagement. Given the expedited nature of disaster response, establishing partnerships before disasters occur may help facilitate community input. Early networking, increased transparency and defining roles and responsibilities may increase trust and effectiveness among partnerships.Originality/valueTo our knowledge, this is one of the few studies that quantifies and illustrates the partnerships formed and their contributions during recovery planning, and lessons learned.

Integrating resilience attributes into local disaster management plans in Metro Manila: strengths, weaknesses, and gaps

Integrating resilience attributes into local plans is considered an important step in enhancing disaster risk reduction. However, the extent to which resilience is captured in local disaster management plans remains underexplored. This paper utilizes content analysis to examine the integration of the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction's (UNDRR) resilience attributes across 11 cities in Metro Manila. Results show strong integration in governance and risk identification while gaps exist in ecosystem protection, city-to-city learning, and disaster victims' participation in recovery planning. The paper recommends introducing metropolitan-level platforms for inter-city learning, turning local authorities' attention towards nature-based solutions, and including disaster victims in the recovery planning process.

Remote sensing for natural disaster recovery: Lessons learned from Hurricanes Irma and Maria in Puerto Rico

In September 2017, Hurricanes Irma and Maria devastated the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. Following these hurricanes, comprehensive and timely data collection was, and continues to be, required to assess both the severity of damage across Puerto Rico and to inform recovery and mitigation strategies. In this manuscript, we present how remote sensing data was incorporated into this assessment and planning process, focusing on the applications for Puerto Rico’s natural resources in the months following the hurricanes. We first describe how different types of satellite and airborne remote sensing data, along with existing and newly developed data processing methodologies, were applied to the damage assessment and recovery planning process for three natural resource applications: terrestrial forests, landslides, and coastal systems. We show that while remote sensing data offered a critical first assessment of the damage caused by the hurricanes, it was not always easily integrated into the recovery planning process and the variable timelines required by decisionmakers. Remote sensing data remains a powerful, if sometimes underutilized, tool in immediate and long-term disaster recovery efforts, and we conclude by suggesting future areas for improvement to facilitate the integration into natural disaster planning, assessment, and response.

S3 and Recovery and Resilience Funds: A Case Study Built on the Experience of 10 Spanish Regions.

The EU's response to the COVID-19 crisis, namely the approval of the Next Generation package, provides an opportunity to explore to what extent the existing Smart Specialisation regional strategies and related ecosystems have been taken into account in the highly relevant territorial context in which the national Recovery Plans have been designed. According to our results the potential of the Smart Specialisation approach (S3) in relation with its place-based strategic prioritisation may have been overlooked in the process. The research is based on a desk review of relevant documents and recent literature in this field; followed by semi-structured interviews with regional planners and practitioners from 10 Spanish regions (autonomous communities); complemented, in a second phase, by the organisation of a focus group to validate the initial results. During our research we identified the main contributions that the Smart Specialisation approach has so far made to the regions (mainly in terms of participative governance and creation of regional ecosystems); and the unanimous perception shared by all the practitioners interviewed that the S3 approach has led to a change of vision in public intervention. However, all of the interviewed regions have confirmed that the drafting of the national recovery and resilience plan lacked an ex-ante alignment with the regional S3 strategies, and failed to consider the existing regional S3 ecosystems. The separation of the recovery logic (based on the operation of public consultations at national level to identify strategic projects) from the S3 logic (based on a strategic prioritisation exercise conducted by each regional ecosystem) confirms that an opportunity may have been missed in the recovery planning process to consolidate the multi-actor, multilevel and place-based S3 approach. Although there is a certain degree of disappointment among regional practitioners as a result of this misalignment, the majority of them believe in the possibility of an ex-post alignment between the two processes, that can protect existing regional shared visions. However, without clear recognition of the S3 ecosystems and the S3 managing bodies, the significant role that Smart Specialisation could play in the recovery process may be at risk.

Rising oceans, flooded towns: How Georgia coastline communities are readying to recover despite a changing climate

Climate change is posing a significant threat to the coastal counties of Georgia. The Georgia Department of Natural Resources and Hagerty Consulting have recognised this threat and are facilitating a nine-year project aimed at developing a disaster recovery and redevelopment plan for the state’s coastal communities, and providing state-wide technical assistance. This paper provides an overview of this planning initiative and summarises the many insights into the pre-disaster recovery and resilience planning process gained from this project.

Before, during and after: Trauma-informed care in burns settings.

Trauma-informed care (TIC) is a model for the relationship of care between service users and service providers that recognises the importance of trauma, past and present, on that person's experiences, vulnerabilities and recovery. Burn injuries are a complex area of healthcare where trauma and the mental health disorders associated with trauma can both precede and proceed a burns injury with complications for recovery. Incorporating a model of TIC in the assessment and treatment of burns patients will proactively work to mitigate and arrest trauma responses, mental disorders and their sequelae in this population. With reference to the existing TIC knowledge base, we propose development of a model for the TIC of burns patients divided into three stages; before, during and after initial engagement with the patient. In the before stage, TIC will require clinical-level change, organisational integration, training and time. In the during stage, five elements are identified; creating safety, screening, collaborative inclusion of the patient in the intervention and recovery planning process, psychoeducation of the patient and supporters, and the use of peer-led services. In the after stage, patients need to be proactively supported through outreach and follow-up. Implementation of a trauma-informed model of care for burns injury patients provides significant opportunities to burns services and benefits towards their patients' recovery.

Stochastic optimal control methodologies in risk-informed community resilience planning

The absorptive and restorative abilities of a community are two key elements of community resilience following disasters. The recovery of communities relies on an efficient restoration planning of damaged critical infrastructure systems, household units, and impaired supporting social and economic functions. These interdependent systems form a dynamic system of systems that changes continuously during restoration. Therefore, an effective and practical recovery planning process for a community can be modeled as a sequential dynamic optimization problem under uncertainty. This paper seeks to enhance our understanding of dynamic optimization concepts and their role in formulating post-disaster, community-level recovery strategies. Various methods of classic dynamic programming and reinforcement learning are examined and applied. Simulation-based approximate dynamic programming techniques are introduced to overcome the curse of dimensionality, which is characteristic of large-scale and multi-state systems of systems. The paper aims not only to study the unexplored topic of dynamic optimization in community resilience, but also to be a practical reference for policymakers, practitioners, engineers, and operations analysts to harness the power of dynamic optimization toward assessing and achieving community resilience.

Agency Coordination of Private Action

This Article explores the previously overlooked role of relational contracting in forming and maintaining public-private partnerships. Relational contracting generally describes firms using formal but legally non-binding agreements to collaborate on shared objectives. Why do parties invest in forming elaborate contracts that they do not—and cannot—enforce in court? Contract theory suggests that the very act of contracting is relationship-building; it generates commitment, trust, cooperation, a win-win philosophy, and strengthened communication. Writing down goals and intentions allows parties to clarify expectations while maintaining flexibility for unforeseen conditions. This Article demonstrates that agencies also use relational contracting— creating unenforceable written agreements to build relationships with external actors. To shed light on agencies’ use of relational contracting, this Article provides a novel review of the recovery planning process required by the Endangered Species Act. A surprising finding emerges: private groups are providing crucial resources and logistical support to prevent the extinction of endangered species. Tribes, states, nongovernmental organizations, and sportsmen’s groups are providing necessary resources to further agency action. By orchestrating private action through recovery planning documents, the agency can garner the resources necessary to undertake species translocations, which it could not unilaterally facilitate. Although the plans are not judicially enforceable, they nevertheless play a coordinating and commitment-generating role in facilitating private actors to engage in recovery efforts. This example highlights the broader trend of relational contracting building and formalizing relationships between agency and non-agency actors. Environmental impact statements, forest management plans, and recovery plans for endangered species are all examples of such “relational contracts” governing inter-agency and private-public collaborations. Viewed in this light, seemingly prosaic planning documents are, in fact, a crucial component in facilitating many agency collaborations. Descriptively, this account adds institutional detail to literatures on new governance and public-private partnerships. Normatively, it raises questions about whether the benefits of contracting offsets the potential distributional inequities and mechanisms to shroud government actions created by the practice.

Implicit decision framing as an unrecognized source of confusion in endangered species classification.

Legal classification of species requires scientific and values-based components, and how those components interact depends on how people frame the decision. Is classification a negotiation of trade-offs, a decision on how to allocate conservation efforts, or simply a comparison of the biological status of a species to a legal standard? The answers to problem-framing questions such as these influence decision making in species classifications. In our experience, however, decision makers, staff biologists, and stakeholders often have differing perspectives of the decision problem and assume different framings. In addition to differences between individuals, in some cases it appears individuals themselves are unclear about the decision process, which contributes to regulatory paralysis, litigation, and a loss of trust by agency staff and the public. We present 5 framings: putting species in the right bin, doing right by the species over time, saving the most species on a limited budget, weighing extinction risk against other objectives, and strategic classification to advance conservation. These framings are inspired by elements observed in current classification practices. Putting species in the right bin entails comparing a scientific status assessment with policy thresholds and accounting for potential misclassification costs. Doing right by the species adds a time dimension to the classification decision, and saving the most species on a limited budget classifies a suite of species simultaneously. Weighing extinction risk against other objectives would weigh ecological or socioeconomic concerns in classification decisions, and strategic classification to advance conservation would make negotiation a component of classification. We view these framings as a means to generate thought, discussion, and movement toward selection and application of explicit classification framings. Being explicit about the decision framing could lead decision makers toward more efficient and defensible decisions, reduce internal confusion and external conflict, and support better collaboration between scientists and policy makers.

Incorporating climate change into recovery planning for threatened vertebrate species in southwestern Australia

Recovery plans are the main tool used for restoration of threatened species in Australia, and identification of key threatening processes is an important feature of them. The aim of this study was to identify how climate change can be incorporated into the recovery planning process using a case study of threatened vertebrates in a global biodiversity hotspot, southwestern Australia. Analysis of 79 recovery planning documents for threatened vertebrate species in the region found that prior to the year 2004, climate change was not included as a threatening process. Post 2004, 32 of 54 (59.3%) documents included climate change as a threatening process. Using bioclimatic modelling, 43 of these species were ranked in terms of their potential exposure to climate change, and a gradient of management intervention aimed at mitigating their exposure to climate change was proposed. This intervention gradient ranged from active management actions aimed at species potentially at risk of extinction due to climate change, through to preservation of habitat in species predicted to lose between 0 and 25% of their current population size. It was proposed that as a priority, the recovery documentation of the 20 species predicted to be most at risk and thus needing a high level of management intervention should identify climate change as a key threatening process, and that more comprehensive analyses of climate change vulnerability be undertaken for these species. Such an approach aimed at prioritising climate change mitigation in threatened species would be useful for other regions where it has been predicted that climate change could have a negative impact on biodiversity.

復興まちづくりにおけるまちづくり会社の組成プロセスに関する研究

Over 5 years have passed since the Great East Japan Earthquake of March 11, 2011. In many tsunami-affected municipalities, the reconstruction of infrastructure such as roads, ports, seawalls, or the preparation of tsunami-safe, raised building land is proceeding relatively well, following municipal reconstruction plans. This is due to a lack of communication and community involvement in reconstruction plans. In such situation, it would be effective to set up a community development council, which is a special form of public private partnership between the local government, residents, and landowners. The council would facilitate the communication between all the involved stakeholders and take care of the management of shared facilities such as shops or housing. At the Naiwan area of Kesennuma city, in Miyagi prefecture, the planning of invasive, large-scale coastal protections was proceeding without consensus being formed among the affected citizens of the area. Most of the public discourses materialized around the reconstruction of the infrastructure such as the seawall that would protect the Naiwan area, but debates about the overall recovery program with the reconstruction of buildings and community facilities didn't proceed accordingly. In order to reach a consensus, the members of the municipal reconstruction council enlisted the support of Waseda University, to which also the author belongs. The facilitation of the reconstruction planning process was promoted in the form of a participatory action research. This research was conducted in order to document and analyze the importance of establishment of community development corporations promoted in the form of a participatory action research. Our team supported the council with reaching an agreement for the overall recovery program and to prepare the field for individual reconstruction projects. The team facilitated this process by organizing discussion rounds and by using different physical as well as digital models of the area. In many disaster-affected areas of Tohoku the reconstruction of private residences and shops is still lagging behind and therefore a careful analysis of Naiwan's widely recognized and groundbreaking recovery planning process is of great importance. At first, we will explore and analyze the main issues of the Naiwan area, which had to be resolved through the reconstruction process. At the Naiwan area, a reconstruction planning council was established by the local citizens, in order to raise resistance against and develop alternatives to controversial government plans for the construction of large-scale and invasive coastal protections. However, beyond the issue of the hotly debated seawall, the discussion about the detailed local reconstruction program including the rebuilding of residences and shops as well as the establishment of a Machizukuri enterprise for the implementation of plans, didn't take place in the council. Next, in order to facilitate a wider discussion process and reanimate the stagnant reconstruction planning process, we designed a process to reach an agreement between all the stakeholder by soliciting and discussing creative ideas from the subcommittee in Management Conference, and then explaining and discussing the in wider plenary sessions. At the Management Conference, we supported the consensus formation from the broader development of plan to the development of the respective private project plans by utilizing workshops and various innovative communication and visualization formats by PDCA, plan-do-check-act cycle. Based on these results, we evaluated the result of the above reconstruction planning process, from the establishment of council to the development of recommendations and plans, as well as the establishment of community development corporations as business.

Resident perception of disaster recovery planning priorities

Purpose This paper aims to determine household perceptions of disaster recovery plan development and implementation, and to identify groups that may be less aware of the recovery planning process to provide recommendations to officials for improving participation in planning and resident support of implementation priorities. Design/methodology/approach Face-to-face interviews were conducted with 194 residents of a US Atlantic coast county impacted by Hurricane Irene. Respondents were selected via a two-stage cluster sampling method automated through the use of a Geographic Information Systems toolkit. Findings Although few households reported participation in the county’s recovery planning process, a majority felt that the plan would be better if it incorporated input from a wide range of stakeholders. The number one reason residents did not participate was the lack of knowledge that they could. Some vulnerable populations were less aware of the recovery plan, including the elderly and those living in poverty, while others were more aware, including those with children and those without access to a working vehicle. Respondents prioritized recovery activities around infrastructure and public safety, yet ranked activities related to public information and housing as less important. Practical implications This paper highlights potential successes of emergency management outreach and identifies groups that are not being reached during recovery planning. The paper provides insight on resident priorities for recovery after disaster. Originality/value There has been little research on the implementation of recovery plans and few studies that have examined the behaviors and opinions of households with regard to recovery plan development and implementation.

Assessing spatial covariance among time series ofabundance.

For species of conservation concern, an essential part of the recovery planning process is identifying discrete population units and their location with respect to one another. A common feature among geographically proximate populations is that the number of organisms tends to covary through time as a consequence of similar responses to exogenous influences. In turn, high covariation among populations can threaten the persistence of the larger metapopulation. Historically, explorations of the covariance in population size of species with many (>10) time series have been computationally difficult. Here, we illustrate how dynamic factor analysis (DFA) can be used to characterize diversity among time series of population abundances and the degree to which all populations can be represented by a few common signals. Our application focuses on anadromous Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha), a species listed under the US Endangered Species Act, that is impacted by a variety of natural and anthropogenic factors. Specifically, we fit DFA models to 24 time series of population abundance and used model selection to identify the minimum number of latent variables that explained the most temporal variation after accounting for the effects of environmental covariates. We found support for grouping the time series according to 5 common latent variables. The top model included two covariates: the Pacific Decadal Oscillation in spring and summer. The assignment of populations to the latent variables matched the currently established population structure at a broad spatial scale. At a finer scale, there was more population grouping complexity. Some relatively distant populations were grouped together, and some relatively close populations – considered to be more aligned with each other – were more associated with populations further away. These coarse‐ and fine‐grained examinations of spatial structure are important because they reveal different structural patterns not evident in other analyses.

Assessing the impact of the U.S. Endangered Species Act recovery planning guidelines on managing threats for listed species.

The Endangered Species Act (ESA) of the United States was enacted in 1973 to prevent the extinction of species. Recovery plans, required by 1988 amendments to the ESA, play an important role in organizing these efforts to protect and recover species. To improve the use of science in the recovery planning process, the Society for Conservation Biology (SCB) commissioned an independent review of endangered species recovery planning in 1999. From these findings, the SCB made key recommendations for how management agencies could improve the recovery planning process, after which the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service redrafted their recovery planning guidelines. One important recommendation called for recovery plans to make threats a primary focus, including organizing and prioritizing recovery tasks for threat abatement. We sought to determine the extent to which results from the SCB study were incorporated into these new guidelines and whether the SCB recommendations regarding threats manifested in recovery plans written under the new guidelines. Recovery planning guidelines generally incorporated the SCB recommendations, including those for managing threats. However, although recent recovery plans have improved in their treatment of threats, many fail to adequately incorporate threat monitoring. This failure suggests that developing clear guidelines for monitoring should be an important priority in improving ESA recovery planning.

Using ecological theory to develop recovery criteria for an endangered butterfly

Using ecological theory to develop recovery criteria for an endangered butterfly

Recovery Planning, the Courts and the Endangered Species Act

According to the United States Fish and Wildlife Service recovery is the cornerstone and ultimate purpose of the endangered species program. Recovery is by far the hardest thing the ESA requires. Past and future recovery efforts under the ESA grow out of the recovery planning process and the "recovery plans" the ESA authorizes and requires. Recovery plans were originally non-legal documents prepared by biologists, without the aid of lawyers, to assist agencies in making decisions about what to do to help protected species. Recovery planning has been dragged, reluctantly, but inevitably, into the legal arena. While some within the agencies would like recovery plans to remain forever "guidance documents" immune from judicial review, recovery plans have become too important and influential for courts to ignore. This article discusses the statutory foundations of recovery planning, how the courts have interpreted the recovery planning requirements, including the enforceability and adequacy of recovery plans, and the relationship of recovery planning to other important sections of the ESA.

Comparative Study on the Key Issues of Postearthquake Recovery and Reconstruction Planning: Lessons from the United States, Japan, Iran, and China

AbstractFrequent catastrophic earthquakes have highlighted the significance of postearthquake recovery and reconstruction (PERR) planning, a dynamic and inclusive process which encourages the building of more resilient communities. This paper aims to provide some meaningful lessons for quake-prone countries through a review, comparison, and discussion of PERR planning success and failure factors in the 1994 Northridge earthquake in the United States, the 1995 Kobe earthquake in Japan, the 2003 Bam earthquake in Iran, and the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake in China. The authors then provide some guidance for PERR planning in key areas such as formulating predisaster planning, enabling participatory planning, capacity building for public involvement, schedule control, process coordination, developing catastrophe insurance, protecting vulnerable groups, and assessing plan quality. Further in-depth studies could be done to conduct broader crossnational comparisons on some important specific aspects, such as predisa...

Change and continuity in post-Katrina New Orleans

In post-Katrina New Orleans the City Charter endorses the designation of the City Planning Commission (CPC) as the lead agency for both urban and recovery planning. The municipal level of government and the theory and practice of planning thus achieve positions of dominance in the recovery process. The paper notes a number of correspondences between the New Orleans model and Habraken's hierarchy of control of urban change, in which control over the top level, the city, confers dominance over the actions of agents operating at all lower levels. The post-Katrina planning literature records, however, that despite its mandate the CPC becomes just one agency operating within a competitive context in which the cataclysmic destruction of the physical environment is not reflected in the associated social structure of the city's agents of change. A considerable continuity of tenure within the membership of the city level's agents emerges from the literature, and the control of the recovery planning process becomes a common objective. The paper concludes with an assessment of the degree to which they succeed in exerting a controlling influence on the content and implementation of the recovery plans.

재난복구의 유형과 사전 계획에 대한 이론적 고찰: 미국의 재난복구를 중심으로

이 논문은 재난 복구에 대한 이론적 고찰을 통해 재난 복구의 유형화와 사전 복구 계획의 설계에 관한 주요 내용을 살펴보는데 목적이 있다. 복구는 재난 발생 직후부터 피해 지역이 재난 발생 이전 상태로 회복 될 때까지의 장기적이고 지속적인 활동이다. 그리고 복구 단계는 비상대책 기간, 복원 기간, 재건 기간, 개발 재건 기간으로 구분할 수 있다. 복구 대책 또한 구호와 재활 활동으로 이루어지는 단기 복구 대책과 재건 활동으로 이루어지는 장기 복구 대책으로 구분하여 실시하는 것이 요구된다. 그리고 사전 복구 계획을 설계하는 경우, 재난 복구 조직의 명확한 설정과 주요 이해관계자의 확인, 임시 주거지의 위치 선정, 중요한 과업 수행 방식의 사전 결정, 피해자들이 이용당하지 않도록 계약자 허가 부여와 모니터링, 소매가격의 통제, 역사적 유물 유적이 있는 장소에서의 복구 작업 수행 방안, 그리고 복구 기간 동안 재난 피해 완화를 위한 법률 제정의 목표 구현 인식이 요구된다. The purpose of this paper is to suggest the types of recovery activities and the major contents of preimpact recovery plan through theoretical review. Disaster recovery is to provide immediate support during the early recovery period necessary to return vital life support systems to minimum operation levels, and continuing to provide support until the community returns to normal. Disaster researchers distinguished 4 types in recovering from disaster as follows; an emergency period, a restoration period, a reconstruction period, and a developmental reconstruction period. And recovery measures are both short-term and long-term. Short-term measures are relief and rehabilitation and long-term measures include reconstruction. Finally, to design a preimpact recovery plan, we should define a disaster recovery organization that includes major stakeholders, identify the location of temporary housing, determine how to perform essential tasks, address the licensing and monitoring of contractors and retail price controls to ensure victims are not exploited, determine how recovery tasks will be carried out at historical sites, and recognize the recovery period as a unique time to enact policies for hazard mitigation and incorporate this objecive into the recovery planning process.

Equilibrium Analyses of a Population's Response to Recovery Activities: A Case Study with Atlantic Salmon

AbstractRecovery planning for populations in decline requires a thorough understanding of how life history characteristics, environmental conditions, and human activities interact to determine how abundance changes through time. In a detailed case study of the declining population of Atlantic salmon Salmo salar in the Tobique River, New Brunswick, we demonstrate an equilibrium modeling approach to analyzing the dynamics of the population so as to identify stressors and predict the population‐level response to potential recovery actions. Parameter values for the equilibrium analysis were obtained by fitting a life history model to population‐specific data, including annual estimates of juvenile density and egg deposition as well as the number and age composition of emigrating smolts. Two unique aspects of the statistical analysis—standardization of the electrofishing data using a generalized linear model and scaling of the juvenile density estimates to total abundance using a catchability coefficient—significantly improved model fits and resulted in parameter estimates that were biologically realistic. The subsequent equilibrium analysis was used to evaluate how population size was expected to change in response to recovery actions focused on fish passage, marine survival, and freshwater production. Recovery actions focused only on freshwater habitat or fish passage were not sufficient to produce an equilibrium population size greater than zero; however, either factor could limit the effectiveness of other recovery actions if not included in the recovery plan. The case study highlights the complex dynamics that can limit population growth, illustrates the need to consider the full life cycle of a species as part of the recovery planning process, and shows that responses to multiple threats may be required to bring about recovery.