How to Plan for Effective Disaster Recovery?

The National Disaster Recovery Framework (NDRF) establishes a common platform and forum for how the whole community builds, sustains, and coordinates the delivery of recovery capabilities. Resilient and sustainable recovery comprises more than restoring a community’s physical structures to pre-disaster conditions. Through effective coordination of partners and resources, we can ensure the continuity of services and support to meet the needs of affected community members who have experienced the hardships of financial, emotional, and physical impacts of devastating disasters.

Preparation always precedes need, so the NDRF emphasizes preparing for recovery before a disaster. The ability of a community to accelerate the recovery process begins with its efforts in pre-disaster readiness, including coordinating with community partners, mitigating risks, incorporating continuity planning, identifying resources, and developing the capacity to manage the recovery process effectively and through a collaborative and inclusive planning process.

source: fema.gov/disaster/4673

Collaboration across the whole community provides an opportunity to integrate mitigation, resilience, and sustainability into the community’s short- and long-term recovery goals. The framework is aimed at working together to support survivor needs and build resilience:

The recovery process is a sequence of related and sometimes simultaneous activities that progressively advance a community toward its planned recovery outcomes. Decisions made and priorities set by a community pre-disaster and early in the recovery process have an overwhelming effect on recovery’s nature, speed, and effectiveness. Disaster Management will be least effective if action is delayed until all disaster consequences have already played out. Recovery starts with planning before disaster even strikes. Furthermore, it is a whole community effort. Households, families, communities, NGOs, Private sector entities, and local governments participate in disaster recovery.

Eight capability areas

Recovery has eight capability areas that must be developed:

1. Planning: Conduct a systematic process engaging the community in developing executable strategic, operational, and tactical-level approaches to meet defined objectives.
2. Public Information and Warning: Deliver coordinated, prompt, and actionable information to the whole community through precise, consistent, accessible, and culturally appropriate methods to effectively relay information regarding any threat or hazard, the actions being taken, and the assistance being made available.
3. Operational Coordination: Establish and maintain a unified and coordinated functional structure and process that appropriately integrates all critical stakeholders and supports the execution of core capabilities.
4. Economic Recovery: Return economic and business activities (including food and agriculture) to a healthy state and develop new business and employment opportunities that result in an economically viable community.
5. Health and Social Services: Restore and improve health and social services capabilities and networks to promote resilience, independence, health (including behavioral health), and the well-being of the whole community.
6. Housing: Implement housing solutions that effectively support the whole community’s needs and contribute to its sustainability and resilience. Housing becomes a key priority post-disaster as people must be provided shelter immediately after the disaster and move to long-term stable housing as recovery progresses.
7. Infrastructure systems: Stabilize critical infrastructure functions, minimize health and safety threats, and efficiently restore and renew systems and services to support a viable, resilient community.
8. Natural and Cultural Resources: Protect natural and cultural resources and historic properties through appropriate planning, mitigation, response, and recovery actions to preserve, conserve, rehabilitate, and restore them according to post-disaster community priorities and best practices.
   Addressing disaster recovery activities is most effective when the whole community thoroughly considers and discusses the inclusive recovery process before a disaster has even occurred.

Key Activities in the Recovery Planning Process

• Form a collaborative Planning team:
  • Define team members and assign key roles
  • Develop and implement a partner engagement strategy
• Understand the situation:
  • Determine community risks, impacts, and consequences for the different types of disasters that may strike.

• Determine Goals and Objectives:
  • Assess the community’s capabilities and identify capacity targets

• Develop the Plan:
  • Determine leadership positions and define necessary operations
  • Establish processes for post-disaster decision-making and policy setting

• Prepare, Review and Approve the Plan:
  • Write the local pre-disaster recovery plan
  • Approve the pre-disaster recovery plan and associated regulations

• Implement and Maintain the Plan:
  • Identify ongoing preparedness activities, and modify plans as capacity changes.

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