Mitigating Disasters

Emergency management once focused almost solely on response strategies. Today, predisaster mitigation has become the order of the day, applying sophisticated tools to evaluate risk and vulnerability and evolving into a key component of sustainable community practices.

In many ways, the task of emergency management has never been more difficult. Natural disasters like wildfires, earthquakes, hurricanes, and floods, are increasingly challenging in a more populous world. Then there are the human-caused disasters, such as airplane crashes, train wrecks, and forest fires, and, of course, the stark reality of terrorism as an ever-present threat.

Lessening the impact of future natural and manmade disasters on lives and property is now fundamental to modern emergency management strategies. But it wasn’t all that long ago that the practice of emergency management was primarily concerned with responding to events only after they occurred.

An Evolving Concept

“This country had no comprehensive disaster program before 1950,” explains PBS&J Risk and Emergency Management Division Program Manager Dan Deegan. “Actually it was the passage of the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act in 1988 that set the stage for modern emergency management. In addition to giving us a new framework for managing federal disaster assistance, the Stafford Act provided a new mechanism for the mitigation of losses from future disasters: the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program (HMGP).”

Through the HMGP, funding became available to assist recovering communities in mitigating future hazard events. Subsequent amendments to the Stafford Act have further encouraged predisaster mitigation programs. Most notable is the Disaster Mitigation Act (DMA) of 2000, which set the requirement that local and tribal governments as well as states must develop and submit predisaster mitigation plans. To assist with this, a national Predisaster Mitigation (PDM) Fund offers both technical and financial assistance for the implementation of predisaster hazard mitigation measures.

“PDM funds are awarded through a competitive grant process,” says Deegan, who assists the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in evaluating projects for grant awards. “Recipients are selected based on their identification and illustration of a cost-effective project, documentation of their project’s engineering feasibility, and demonstration of how their project meets National Environmental Policy Act requirements. During 2003, the first year that the funds were available, approximately $150 million were allocated.”

With local and tribal governments required to develop plans, the goal of truly mitigating disaster where it happens—at the community level—seems within reach. Yet even with some federal monies available, funding this effort is a challenge for governments that are already financially strapped.

“So what we’re beginning to see is greater interaction between state and local governments in the planning process and the creation of multijurisdictional entities that take advantage of funding incentives and address the issue of hazard mitigation more efficiently,” Deegan observes.

New Tools for Evaluating Risk and Vulnerability

Facilitating predisaster mitigation are new tools that have been developed based on both hard-earned experience and the increased ability of computer-based modeling to accurately forecast the likely extent of damage and the ultimate cost of disaster events.

Chief among the software tools available is HAZUS-MH, a risk assessment and loss estimation system that enables communities to proactively address potential disasters and meet the standards of the DMA requirements for mitigation and recovery funds.

The forerunner of the system was HAZUS (short for Hazards in the U.S.), which was developed in the early 1990s by FEMA in conjunction with the National Institute of Building Sciences to estimate potential losses from earthquakes. Since then, HAZUS has grown in complexity and sophistication along with the evolution of risk-management strategies. The latest version of the program, HAZUS-MH (the MH stands for Multihazards), uses state-of-the-art geographic information system software to map and display hazard data and predict the extent of damage and economic loss for buildings and infrastructure.

It also allows users to estimate the impacts of hurricane winds, floods, and earthquakes on populations. Although HAZUS-MH is primarily intended to be used before a disaster occurs, it is also designed to be fast-running to support post-disaster response and recovery activity in real time.

HAZUS-MH draws from three essential sets of data. The first depicts the likely effects of the event based on a set of characteristics, such as the event’s intensity and duration, and combines that with the known history of occurrence in a specific region. Second is a vast array of nationally gathered databases that provide a statistical analysis of local populations, building inventories, critical facilities, transportation lifelines, and essential utility networks.

The third data set allows HAZUS-MH to estimate the various impacts of a hazard event, such as physical damage to residential and commercial buildings, schools, and other critical facilities. The functionality of transportation systems and utilities can be forecast, and economic loss in terms of lost jobs, business interruptions, and repair and reconstruction costs can be measured. Potential social impacts including the need for shelters and medical aid can also be assessed.

A New Class of Hazards

Traditionally, disaster mitigation planning has focused on natural hazards, but events like the September 11, 2001, attacks and the 2001 Baltimore hazardous material train derailment have reinforced the need for communities to reduce their vulnerability to future terrorist acts and technological disasters. In response, risk management professionals have begun to develop predictive models to better address the risks and consequences associated with this new class of hazards.

“Clearly HAZUS-MH has capabilities that go well beyond the demands of a basic community vulnerability profile,” says Scott Lawson, Ph.D., P.E., vice president and senior manager of PBS&J’s Risk and Emergency Management Division. According to Lawson, who has been closely involved in the development of HAZUS since its inception, “The current edition allows city and county managers to use computer-based disaster modeling to support all kinds of programs directed toward community readiness, response, and recovery. HAZUS-MH will have links to computer modeling that will support the assessment of human-caused disasters.”

Antiterrorism and force protection is the concern of PBS&J Senior Program Manager Michael Chipley Ph.D., of PBS&J’s Risk and Emergency Management Division. Chipley coauthored the FEMA 426 –Reference Manual to Mitigate Terrorist Attacks Against Buildings, the lead document in a series of FEMA risk management publications that focus on the needs of public, commercial, and industrial facilities. He is currently developing a FEMA course to teach FEMA 426 to universities and FEMA regions.

“The 426 manual is a tool. It compiles a number of agencies’ threat and risk assessment processes and design documents for antiterrorism and force protection,” Chipley explains. “These methods and documents have historically been restricted to government agencies, but, with this publication, we are providing the public at large with the fundamental concepts of analysis for manmade disaster.”

Released in January 2004, FEMA 426 details a number of how-to methods for mitigating potential terrorist attacks, including a threat assessment methodology and a checklist for assessing building vulnerability. Also included are architectural and engineering design recommendations that begin at the perimeter of the property line, encompass interior layout and building systems, and extend to the orientation of the building on the site and landscaping.

“The manual provides vital strategies for reducing human casualties and building damage from bomb, chemical, biological, and radiological attacks,” Chipley elaborates. “Building owners, design professionals, and public works agencies must become as familiar with designing for manmade disasters and terrorism as they are with using building codes for normal loads and natural disasters.”

Sustainability

Ideally the goal in disaster mitigation is to decrease the need for response. “By doing so successfully, we can save lives and reduce post-disaster expenditures across all levels of government,” believes PBS&J Risk Emergency Management Division Program Manager Gavin Smith, Ph.D.

Smith, who is formerly assistant director of the North Carolina Division of Emergency Management, also points out that hazard mitigation is integral to the concept of sustainable communities.

“Sustainability is basically respecting, protecting, and restoring the natural environment upon which the people and economy of a community depend in order to maintain or enhance economic opportunity and quality of life,” Smith says. “By approaching hazard mitigation with the concept of sustainability in mind, activities that we undertake now should enhance life of future generations. One example would be using hazard mitigation funds to acquire and move structures out of a floodplain and to add floodwalls. The result is that you have added to the greenbelt and expanded parkland, and you have reduced pollution and enhanced the economy.”