Measuring Cross-Community Disaster Preparedness and Resiliency: Theoretical and Practical Application Development

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The primary goal of this project is to broaden our conceptualization of community preparedness and resiliency in advance of crisis events. This will be accomplished by exploring the manner in which we measure "preparedness" and subsequently "resilience," at a community scale, seeking to develop a set of characteristics and criteria that can be standardized and measured. By creating a framework for measurement methodology, the research will seek to operationalize a long-standing theoretical construct in the hazards and emergency management fields, namely; that a disaster occurs when demands on the system are greater than the community's capacity. Specifically, the project will move closer to that goal by developing a foundation for meaningful measurement, and then the examining, refining, and applying a Community Disaster Preparedness index (DPi). The DPi, once applied, allows the development of a Community Disaster Resilience index score (DRi). The creation of these measurements has tremendous potential for multiple research and field applications. The indices will provide an opportunity to make meaningful cross-comparisons among communities with regard to their emergency preparedness, response capabilities, and potential for recovery from disaster events. The overall disaster index (DI) model would generate several important components, including a scoring or indicator system (based on weighted functional factors) directed specifically to a community's preparedness, and a systematic assessment of a community's capabilities and resources (resulting in a composite score). The resiliency index component would account for a community's exposure to a set of locational-specific hazards. The expected results will be of interest to a wide spectrum of researchers, practitioners, and organizations involved with hazard mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery. The development of these indices will provide a first cut theoretical framework and the identification of appropriate indicators that do not currently exist in the research community. In other areas, the DI model could potentially have substantial impact with regard to its use as: 1) a research instrument; 2) a community preparedness and recovery audit or assessment; 3) a risk pricing instrument for the insurance industry and others in risk management; 4) an instrument for the allocation of federal funding, both for mitigation and recovery activities; and 5) a political instrument to potentially increase attention to the level of preparedness and resilience in any given community.