THE NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES Dam and Levee Safety and Community Resilience: A Vision for Future Practice A presentation on behalf

THE NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES

Dam and Levee Safety and Community Resilience:

A Vision for Future PracticeA presentation on behalf of the Committee on

Dam and Levee Safety and Community Resilience

For the Workshop

Cascadia Subduction Zone Earthquakes &Critical Infrastructure

Martin W. McCann

Study sponsored by the

U.S. Bureau of Reclamation

July 18, 2012

Since its formation in 1979 FEMA has evolved in terms of what its mission is and how it approaches it.

In 2001 FEMA published its strategic plan for 2011-2014 with four initiatives:

1. Foster a Whole Community Approach to Emergency Management Nationally

2. Build the Nation’s Capacity to Stabilize and Recover From a Catastrophic Event

3. Build Unity of Effort and Common Strategic Understanding Among the Emergency Management Team

4. Enhance FEMA’s Ability to Learn and Innovate as an Organization

Background

THE NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES2

Background (cont.)


Throughout the strategic plan there are statements like: …….. build preparedness and resilience.

A Whole Community model that works to strengthen local collective action, public engagement, and neighborhood institutions offers an effective path not only to building resilience, but to helping local communities become integral member of the emergency management team.

Consider how to broaden dam and levee safety programs to include community- and regional-level preparation, response, mitigation, and recovery from potential failures.

•How doing so can enhance long-term community and regional resilience.

•Practices for identifying stakeholders and collecting and disseminating information.

•How safety data, stakeholder input, and impacts data are used for decision making for infrastructure management and improving community resilience

Identify tools and guidance for development at the federal level.

Provide conclusions to assist in developing more comprehensive and effective dam and levee safety programs.

Statement of Task Key Elements


John Boland, Chair, Johns Hopkins University

Tony Bennett, Ontario Power Generation

Raymond J. Burby, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill

Stephen J. Burges, University of Washington

Rita E. Cestti, The World Bank

Ross B. Corotis, University of Colorado at Boulder

Clive Q. Goodwin, FM Global Insurance Company

Roger E. Kasperson, Clark University

Shirley Laska, University of New Orleans

Lewis E. Link, University of Maryland

Martin W. McCann, Jr., Jack R. Benjamin and Associates & Stanford University

Hillman Mitchell, King County (WA) Office of Emergency Management

Sammantha Magsino, NRC Staff Director

Committee


Safety does NOT equal Resilience

Resilience“the capacity of a system to absorb change and disturbances, and still retain its basic structure and

function—its identity” (Walker and Salt, 2006)


“Safety”Has not evolved much beyond reducing likelihood of

failure

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All-hazards approach to comprehensive emergency management:

•Build community resilience to all types of disruptive events, including dam and levee failures (and other events involving uncontrolled releases).

•Consider challenges across the full hazards cycle.

Community

Conclusion 1. The dam and levee community comprises…individuals, groups, and institutions that benefit from the continued and safe functioning of dam and levee infrastructure—whether or not those benefits are recognized by the individual community members.

• dam and levee professionals

• social–ecological systems

• persons and property owners at direct risk

• members of the wider economy


Community and Resilience

Conclusion 2. Community resilience is a community effort, and dam and levee safety professionals are part of the community.

• Resilience dependents on interactive functioning of community system components.

• The expertise and practice of dam and levee professionals is critical in developing community resilience.

• Safety programs can benefit from a knowledge of community flood risk.


Community and Resilience

Conclusion 3. Those subject to the direct or indirect impacts of dam or levee failure are also those with the opportunity to reduce the consequences of failure . . . and develop the capacity to adapt to change.

Enhancing community resilience begins with understanding:

• individual and organizational roles and responsibilities

• personal, financial, and other types of risk

• potential failure scenarios



Information Access

Conclusion 4. Current policy and practices restrict access to information critical to public risk awareness, mitigation, preparedness, response, recovery, and community capacity for adaptation.

Dam and levee safety processes and products . . . are intended to support decision making and enhanced community resilience, but are not readily available to all community members and stakeholders who make those decisions.• FEMA flood maps do not depict dam and levee

failure inundation.

• No common understanding of hazard scenarios, risks, and consequences.

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Collaborative Risk Management

Conclusion 5. Enhancing resilience will be most successful when dam and levee safety professionals and other community members and stakeholders identify and manage risk collaboratively in ways that increase understanding and communication of risks, shared needs, and opportunities.

• More interaction needed between dam and levee owners and communities

• Use social, physical, and lifeline infrastructure systems to effectively communicate and coordinate

Result: Increase in social capital (community connections useful to meet societal objectives); benefits for owners and regulators9


Risk-Informed Approaches

Conclusion 6. Risk-informed approaches allow dam and levee professionals to improve their understanding of infrastructure-system operations, performance, vulnerabilities, and the consequences of potential failures, and allow them and the broader community to make better decisions related to dam and levee infrastructure and resilience.

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A “New Norm” for Safety PracticeConclusion 7. Improving dam and levee safety programs to emphasize processes that enhance community resilience requires a culture shift among dam and levee professionals.

This new emphasis requires embracing the responsibilities—and the benefits—associated with developing and implementing collaborative risk-management processes that facilitate enhanced community resilience.

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• Move practice beyond mere regulatory compliance.

• Expand practices incrementally. Start in your organization!

• Expand existing networks. Don’t start from scratch!

Conceptual Framework for Collaboration


•Community dam & levee safety education and awareness

• Information dis-semination (e.g., maps)

•Dam and levee hazard mitigation

•Funding infrastructure O&R

•Financial response and recovery planning and preparedness.

•Risk-informed land-use planning

•Emergency response and recovery planning and preparedness.

•Stakeholder assessment

•Lifecycle hazard and risk assessment

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Community participation, feedback,

and evaluation essential!

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Based on NRC (2011) model for private-public collaboration for community resilience




Role of Federal Government

Conclusion 8. The federal government can aid resilience-enhancing efforts by identifying, cataloging, further developing, communicating, and facilitating the use of tools and guidance that already exist in the published literature and in federal and state guidelines.

Many existing tools may need little or no modification to be useful for enhancing community resilience for specific situations.

Cataloging existing tools is a first step in identifying and setting priorities for developing necessary new tools.

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Sustaining Resilience Efforts

Conclusion 9. Collaborative efforts that become a normal part of community functioning will enhance resilience more successfully in the long term.

Continuous improvements in community resilience are more likely if such processes as community and stakeholder engagement assessment are institutionalized by dam and levee safety programs and the broader community.

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… In Safety Programs

• Sustainable only with widespread expectation that efforts are operationally necessary

• Incremental integration of activities of multiple community networks

• Regular assessment and transformation of community engagement

• Informs long-term management of safety programs

• Improves social capital

• Benchmarks processes

• Identifies opportunities to improve resilience

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… In the Community

• Institutionalize non-partisan engagement with safety professionals in community functions (e.g., as part of existing community resilience strategies) to address, for example

• Resource and floodplain management• Operational risk communication• Safety and resilience education and

awareness

• Widely communicate and act on long-term plans that consider life-cycle benefits and costs of dam and levee infrastructure

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Assessing Progress

Conclusion 10. Enhancing resilience requires frequent and collective evaluation of risk, safety, and collaborative processes.

The proposed Maturity Matrix for Assessing Community Engagement can be used . . . at all levels to benchmark and manage the progress of industry and community processes related to safety and engagement. Details of assessment are necessarily unique for each community.

The federal government can assist communities by providing an initial framework for the assessment tool, and providing information and training for its development and continued use at the community level.

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Maturity Matrix for Assessing Community Engagement ELEMENTS LEVEL I LEVEL II LEVEL III LEVEL IV LEVEL V

EXAMPLES OF POSSIBLE OUTCOMES

DAM or LEVEE SAFETY REVIEWS

No activity Standards-based only

Introduction of additional review criteria (e.g., failure mode analysis)

Application of quantitative risk assessment by using criteria developed by owner or regulator with input from community members and stakeholders

Application of quantitative risk assessment by using criteria that reflect the community’s societal values

Community is fully apprised of current level of risk

(Other programs related to conventional dam/levee safety activities)

[Each tool is defined at different levels to show progression from minimum activity (Level I) through best industry practice to full community member and stakeholder engagement and collaboration (Level V)]

EMERGENCY ACTION PLANS No activity EAPs developed internally by owner

EAPs developed with input from emergency-management agency

EAPs developed with input from community members and stakeholders and emergency-management agency and shared with selected community representatives

Community collaboration with owners or operators to develop integrated EAPs that reflect community values

Community collaboration results in EAPs that minimize consequences of defined emergencies by incorporating community values and the potential for community resilience

[Specific tools related to emergency planning response, including development of community preparedness measures, warning and evacuation procedures and recovery plans]

[Each tool is defined at different levels showing progression from minimum activity (Level I) through best industry practice to community member and full stakeholder engagement and collaboration (Level V)]

FLOODPLAIN MANAGEMENT No floodplain management plans

Floodplain management plans in place

Floodplain management plans accommodate shadow floodplain associated with catastrophic dam or levee failure

Floodplain management plans integrated into community comprehensive or general plans

Floodplain management plans fully integrated into dam and levee owners’ planning processes

Full participation by both community and dam and levee owners in floodplain management facilitates adoption of complementary resilience-enhancing measures

[Specific tools such as those related to land-use planning and floodplain management, including initiatives for financial incentives and zoning reform]

[Each tool is defined at different levels showing progression from minimum activity (Level I) through best industry practice to community member and full stakeholder engagement and collaboration (Level V)]4


Sample Maturity Matrix Content

LEVEL I LEVEL II LEVEL III LEVEL IV LEVEL VEXAMPLES OF POSSIBLE OUTCOMES

No Activity

Standards-based only

Introduction of additional review criteria (e.g., failure mode analysis)

Application of quantitative risk assessment by using criteria developed by owner or regulator with input from community members and stakeholders

Application of quantitative risk assessment by using criteria that reflect the community’s societal values

Community is fully apprised of current level of risk

DAM OR LEVEE SAFETY REVIEWS

Increasing maturity

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Safety and Resilience Mutually Beneficial

Resilience is not a substitute for improved infrastructure integrity, technical decision making, or adequate resources.

The resilience model allows understanding impacts of events and choices beyond the local community.Resilience-focused collaboration informs technical decisions and a community's influence on policies.Conclusions in this report applicable to other types of critical infrastructure.

Increasing community resilience decreases liability and increases profit.



Dam and Levee Safety and Community Resilience:

A Vision for Future PracticePDFs of this report can be obtained

at the National Academies Press Website

http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=13393

PDFs of Building Community Disaster Resilience

through Private Public Collaboration can be obtained at

http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=13028

For more information, contact:Sammantha Magsino, NRC study director202.334.3091 [email protected]

Documents

THE NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES Dam and Levee Safety and Community Resilience: A Vision for Future Practice A presentation on behalf