PPA 573 Emergency Management and Homeland Security

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PPA 573 Emergency Management and Homeland
Security

• Lecture 4b Mitigation and Hazard Management

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Introduction

• The estimated cumulative toll from two 1989
  disasters, Hurricane Hugo and the Loma Prieta
  Earthquake, amounted to more than 10 billion.
  The cost of Hurricane Andrew exceeded 30
  billion. The cost of the World Trade Center
  attacks is likely to exceed 90 billion. Costly
  response and recover efforts to these and other
  natural disasters and also to technological
  disasters such as Three Mile Island and Chernobyl
  have been well documented.

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Introduction

• But there have been few published accounts of
  averting disasters or minimizing their effects
  through foresighted and ultimately less expensive
  mitigation programs.

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Benefits of Mitigation

• Saving lives and reducing injuries.
• Preventing or reducing property damage.
• Reducing economic losses.
• Minimizing social dislocation and stress.
• Minimizing agricultural losses.

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Benefits of Mitigation

• Maintaining critical facilities in functioning
  order.
• Protecting infrastructure from damage.
• Protecting mental health.
• Lessening legal liability of government and
  public officials.
• Providing positive political consequences for
  government action.

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Elements of Mitigation

• Hazard.
• Natural, technological, or civil threats to
  people, property, and the environment.
• Risk.
• The probability that a hazard will occur during a
  particular time period.
• Vulnerability.
• Susceptibility to injury or damage from hazards.
• Disaster.
• A hazard occurrence resulting in significant
  injury or damage.

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Role of the Emergency Manager

• Steps in implementing mitigation.
• Analyze the hazards faced by the community.
• Identify their associated risks.
• Reduce vulnerability to the hazards.
• Mitigate their potential disaster impact.
• To do this well, emergency manager must manage
  both the political and technical sides.
• Political local advocate for good mitigation
  practice.
• Technical local expert on specialized terms,
  methodologies, and programs.

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Local Hazard Mitigation Process

• Identifying all local hazards their
  characteristics Locations Probability of
  occurrence And potential impact on people,
  property, and the environment Also identifying
  appropriate actions to reduce structural and
  nonstructural damage.

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Local Hazard Mitigation Process

• Analyzing the probable risks of disaster
  occurrence and the vulnerability of people,
  property, and the environment to injury or
  damage. The analysis is based on inventories of
  structures and populations at risk, estimates of
  economic loss, studies of risk perception, and
  projections of mitigation costs and benefits.

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Local Hazard Mitigation Process

• Preparing, recommending, and maintaining a
  community mitigation strategy, including all of
  the technical and political, policy and program,
  plan and budget, and regulation and education
  aspects.

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Hazard Identification

• Hazard identifications means determining the full
  range of potential hazards faced by a community
  and grouping them according to characteristics,
  impacts, and potential mitigation actions.
• Types of hazards.
• Natural.
• Technological.
• Civil.

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Hazard Identification

• Functional characteristics.
• Predictability.
• Speed of onset.
• Extent of impact.
• Intensity.
• Warning time.
• Recurrence.
• Controllability.
• Destructive potential.

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Hazard Identification

• Emergency managers should group together
  disasters with similar functional characteristics
  to develop mitigation strategies that apply to
  more than one type of disaster.
• Natural hazards.
• The most common hurricanes, tornadoes, riverine
  floods, earthquakes, expansive soils, landslides,
  severe winds, and tsunamis.
• Given the current patterns of development
  disasters are likely to increase in the future.

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Hazard Identification

• Natural hazards.
• Natural hazards having varying characteristics
  but generally follow a well-understood causal
  sequence.
• Example Hurricanes result when ocean water
  condenses, releasing latent heat. They generally
  occur in certain geographic areas at the same
  season each year and have a warning time of a few
  days, high intensity, but low probability of
  occurrence, and a very high destructive potential
  and no possibility of control.

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Hazard Identification

• Technological hazards.
• Chemical emergencies and nuclear accidents
  constitute the major technological hazards.
• Most mitigation must be done at the national
  level, but local governments can reroute
  hazardous cargo and enact zoning, monitoring, and
  disclosure requirements.
• Accident rapid onset, low predictability and
  warning time, high intensity and destructive
  potential.
• Long-term exposure gradual onset, low
  predictability and warning, varying intensity and
  destructive potential.
• Both are under human control, because usually are
  caused by a human system failure.

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Hazard Identification

• Civil hazards.
• The most common are famine and hostile attack.
• Characterized by low predictability and warning
  and catastrophic intensity and destructiveness.
• Uncontrollable at the local level.
• Only preparedness possible.

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Hazard Identification

• Hazard impact groups.
• Hazards can be grouped according to whether they
  primarily affect people, property, or both.
• Highest priority is given to disasters that
  affect both.
• Within those types of disasters, highest
  mitigation priority is given to protection of
  people and second priority protection of
  property.
• Special priority is also given to protection of
  lifeline systems, essential public facilities
  vital to post-disaster response, and to
  facilities with a potential for significant loss.

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Hazard Identification

• Types of mitigation actions.
• Structural contain and strengthen.
• Non-structural use of government authority to
  limit exposure.

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Hazard Analysis

• Once potential hazards, their impacts, and
  possible mitigation actions have been identified,
  a hazard analysis can be conducted to provide
  information on the location and extent of risk
  and vulnerability, the roles played by different
  groups, the potential extent of losses, and the
  benefits that can be realized from mitigation.

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Hazard Analysis

• For each identified hazard, the hazard analysis
  should clearly state both the actual and
  perceived levels of risk and vulnerability.
• The analysis, which will include engineering as
  well as economic components, should be prepared
  in both written and mapped form to specify the
  characteristics as well as the location of
  hazards.

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Hazard Analysis

• In the report, techniques for determining risk
  and vulnerability should be clearly documented,
  and findings and conclusions should be presented
  in a useful and understandable form for the
  public and decision-makers.

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Risk and Vulnerability Mapping

• Risk is the probability of a hazard occurrence
  and vulnerability is the susceptibility of people
  and property to injury or damage.
• Risk and vulnerability mapping is simply a
  procedure for locating areas with different
  degrees of hazard probability and susceptibility.

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Estimating Economic Losses

• Estimating potential economic losses from a
  disaster in terms of dollars and cents is a
  powerful tool for alerting policymakers to the
  advantages of mitigation.
• Pre-disaster estimates are based on
  vulnerability.
• Post-disaster estimates are based on damage
  assessments and are used in extensively in
  recovery activities.

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Assessing Risk Perception

• How risks are perceived shapes the way people
  respond to them.
• Decision makers can be surveyed to assess their
  perceptions of risk from natural and
  technological hazards and the importance they
  accord such hazards on the public agenda.
• National surveys show that mitigating such risks
  is rarely at the top of local public policy
  priorities.

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Assessing Risk Perception

• Assessing the publics risk perceptions is
  important for determining how people will behave
  during an actual disaster as well as how they
  understand and will act upon the need for
  mitigation.
• Behavioral surveys most common technique for
  estimating evacuation percentages and shelter
  locations, understanding of hazard conditions.

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Estimating Mitigation Costs and Benefits

• Once the economic loss estimates are complete,
  emergency manager can estimate the benefits from
  mitigation.
• Projecting reduced disaster-related losses
  anticipated in the absence of the program
• Projecting disaster-related losses under the
  mitigation program, less the costs of the program
  itself.
• Comparing the projected loss without mitigation
  to the projected loss with mitigation.

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Preparing Mitigation Strategies

• Once hazard identification and analysis are done,
  the emergency manager can begin to create
  community awareness of and support for
  mitigation.
• Preparing mitigation strategies, the third step,
  involves working with local planners, decision
  makers, and community leaders to build mitigation
  into both public policy actions and private
  development practice.
• Involves working in the shared governance arena.

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Preparing Mitigation Strategies

• At this stage, the emergency manager
• Makes a tentative selection of the mitigation
  techniques that seem feasible
• Works with local planners to explore how these
  techniques can be integrated into comprehensive
  plans and development regulations
• Looks for linkages with other public and private
  efforts and
• Start to educate community leaders and the public
  on the importance of mitigation.

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Preparing Mitigation Strategies

• Natural hazard mitigation strategies
• Preserve and restore the innate mitigative
  features of the natural environment
• Strengthen exposed buildings and facilities to
  withstand hazard impacts
• Facilitate the evacuation and sheltering of
  exposed populations
• Relocate threatened development out of hazard
  areas and
• Limit future development in hazard areas.

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Preparing Mitigation Strategies

• Technological hazard mitigation
• Redirect movement of hazardous materials
• Neutralize hazardous material disposal areas
• Relocate away from population concentrations
  those facilities using or producing hazardous
  materials
• Strengthen containment systems for hazardous
  substances and
• Reduce hazard generation in manufacturing and
  industrial processes.

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Mitigation Tools and Techniques

• Plans
• Emergency management plans lay the groundwork for
  emergency operations.
• Should also work with the jurisdictions
  comprehensive or land use plans.
• Plans are necessary but not sufficient. Must be
  continually updated, monitored, and evaluated.
• Regulations
• Zoning ordinances, subdivision regulations,
  building codes, and public health regulations
  (pp. 154-155).

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Mitigation Tools and Techniques

• Spending and taxing programs.
• Relocation, public acquisition, and floodproofing
  are examples.
• Preferential or use value taxes (rather than
  market value), revenue generation for mitigation.
• Insurance.
• Hazard insurance spreads the cost.
• National Flood Insurance Program is the only
  federal hazard mitigation insurance program.

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Mitigation Tools and Techniques

• Hazard information systems.
• Systems record, update, analyze, and display data
  about the location, intensity, and impact of
  hazards.
• Used for evacuation plans, GIS systems.

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Mitigation and Public Policy

• Goal of mitigation is to save lives and dollars
  while preventing community fabric from being torn
  apart.
• Mitigation is controversial.
• Arguments.
• Benefit/Cost ratio of mitigation.
• Hazard mitigation is good business.
• Not to reduce risk is irresponsible.
• Mitigation often furthers other community goals.
• Wise emergency manager will look for political
  allies.