The PEOPLES framework dimensions are:
- Population and Demographics
- Environmental/Ecosystems
- Organized governamental services
- Physical infrastructures
- Lifestyle and Community competence
- Economic development
- Social Cultural Capital
Brief descriptions of the above research topics follow:
POPULATION AND DEMOGRAPHICS
Population and
demographic data that describe and differentiate a focal community provide a
context for understanding the remaining PEOPLES dimensions.
Knowing, for example, the median income and age distribution for a community is
critical to understanding its economic health and potential resilience.
Communities tend to differ on key demographics; to the extent that two or more
communities may be similar, Community A and Community B, we can predict
Community B’s hypothetical response to a disaster based on Community A’s actual
response to a disaster.
1) POPULATION AND DEMOGRAPHICS
a) Distribution/Density
i) Urban
ii) Suburban
iii) Rural
iv) Wildland
b) Composition
i) Age
ii) Gender
iii) Immigrant Status
iv) Race/Ethnicity
c) Socio-Economic Status
i) Educational Attainment
ii) Income
iii) Poverty
iv) Home Ownership
v) Housing Vacancies
vi) Occupation
One measure of functionality of population and demographics (Qp)
within a given community can be quantified by using the social
vulnerability index (SoVI) proposed by Cutter (1996). Social
vulnerability (a counterpart of social resilience) is defined as the
inability of people, organizations, and societies to withstand adverse
impacts from multiple stressors to which they are exposed. These
impacts are due in part to characteristics inherent in social
interactions, institutions, and systems of cultural values. Social
vulnerability is a pre-existing condition of the community that affects
the society’s ability to prepare for and recover from a
disruptive event.
Resilience focuses on the quality of life of the people at risk and
develops opportunities to enhance a better outcome, while vulnerability
places stress on the production of nature (Smith and O’Keefe,
1996) to resist the natural hazard. Manyena (2006) evaluates all
the possible definitions provided from the 90’s up until the
present, and compares the concept of resilience as the opposite of
vulnerability. This dimension of vulnerability can be measured using a
social index that describes the socioeconomic status, the composition
of the population (elderly and children), development density, rural
agriculture, race, gender, ethnicity, infrastructure employment, and
county debt/revenue. The social index described is based on
Cutter’s Hazards-of-Place Model of Vulnerability framework that
integrates exposure to hazards with the social conditions that make
people vulnerable to them (Cutter, 1996; Cutter et al., 2000).
Research Leader: Prof Lucy Arendt (arendtl@uwgb.edu).
ENVIRONMENTAL/ECOSYSTEMS
While resilience is a critical element of resource management and is necessary to sustain desirable ecosystem states in the face of unknown futures and variable environments (Elmqvist et al., 2003), it is not easily assessed (Adger, 2000). Resilience of a system depends on various factors such as time scale, the actual disturbance, the structure of the system, and control measures or polices that are available to be implemented (Ludwig et al., 2002). Ecological or ecosystem resilience is typically measured by the amount of disturbance an ecosystem can absorb without drastically altering its functions, processes, and structures (Gunderson, 2000), or by the ability of an ecosystem to cope with disturbance.
1) ENVIRONMENTAL/ ECOSYSTEM
a) Water Quality/Quantity
b) Air Quality
c) Soil Quality
d) Biodiversity
e) Biomass (Vegetation)
f) Other Natural Resources
In the context of the PEOPLES Resilience Framework, environmental and ecosystem resources serve as indicators for measuring the ability of the ecological system to return to or near its pre-event state (Table 4). One such indicator is the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), which is calculated from satellite-derived remote sensing imagery that analyzes the density of green vegetation across a region. NDVI can be used in the framework as a proxy for ecosystem productivity and is calculated using the red (Red) and near infrared (NIR) absorption bands.
Research Leader: Prof Chris Renschler (rensch@buffalo.edu).
ORGANIZED GOVERNAMENTAL SERVICES
In contrast to the more or less spontaneous individual and neighborhood responses to extreme events, organized governmental services are designed to allow an orderly response.
1) ORGANIZED GOVERNMENTAL SERVICES
a) Executive/Administrative
i) Emergency Response and Rescue
ii) Health and Hygiene
b) Judicial
c) Legal/Security
Organized governmental services include traditional
legal and security services such as police, emergency, and fire
departments and increasingly, the military. In this dimension, we also
include the services provided by public health and hygiene departments
as well as cultural heritage departments. Each of these organized
government services plays a key role in sustaining communities both
before and after extreme events. A good example of the necessity of a
well-functioning government may be seen in the devastating January 12,
2010 earthquake in Haiti. In the aftermath, the news media reported a
lack of government services and orderly control, and a general
perception that the government is not in a position to help its people
(Schwartz, 2010). In contrast, the Darfield earthquake in New Zealand
was followed by quick response on the part of local, territorial, and
national government services.
Spontaneous helping behavior, convergence, mass volunteering, and
emergent groups are sources of resilience, in that they infuse
resources and creativity into disaster response activities (Stallings
and Quarantelli, 1985; Drabek and McEntire, 2002). At the level of
organizations and networks, organizational responses during crisis are
most likely to be effective—and resilient—when they
successfully blend discipline and agility (Harrald, 2006). Pre-existing
plans, training, exercises, mutual aid agreements, and other concepts
of operations help ensure disciplined and appropriate responses, but
they do so not because they encourage the playing out of pre-determined
scripts but rather because they facilitate collective sense-making and
inspire action toward shared goals (Weick, 1995; Weick et al.,
2005). Flexibility, adaptability, and improvisation among
responding entities make their own distinctive contributions to
resilience. Organizational expansion, extension, and emergence are key
bases of resilient disaster responses (Sutton and Tierney, 2006).
The concept of collaborative emergency management seeks to engage all
critical community sectors in preparing for and responding to
disasters, including local elected and appointed officials; subject
matter experts; community-based, faith based and other non-governmental
organizations, the general public, including both community members
that belong to groups such as community emergency response teams and
volunteers; the private sector and business networks; and the mass
media (Patton, 2007). Collaborative management, as opposed to
top-down direction, is another characteristic of resilient systems.
Hierarchies tend to stand in the way of upward information flow, the
form of communication that is most essential during disasters. Less
hierarchical forms of organization work best in all types of turbulent
environments, including disasters, in part because they encourage a
free flow of ideas, but also because flatter organizations and
decentralized networks are more nimble in responding to those
environments (Burns and Stalker, 1961; Waugh and Streib, 2006).
Key indicators for this dimension include the number of available
response units and their capacity. Population and demographic numbers
would be used to normalize the number and capacity of these services.
In addition to assessing the availability of government services in
terms of personnel and equipment, this dimension also includes an
evaluation of emergency preparedness planning. For example, surveys may
reveal the extent to which organized government services have developed
memoranda of understanding (MOUs) and other types of mutual aid
agreements, and the extent to which various organized government
services participate in emergency and evacuation drills and table-top
exercises (Tierney, 2009).
Research Leader: Prof Lucy Arendt (arendtl@uwgb.edu).
PHYSICAL INFRASTRUCTURES
The physical infrastructure dimension focuses on a community’s
built environment. It incorporates both facilities and lifelines.
Within the category of facilities, we include housing, commercial
facilities, and cultural facilities. Within the category of lifelines,
we include food supply, health care, utilities, transportation, and
communication networks. Lifelines are those essential utility and
transportation systems that serve communities across all jurisdictions
and locales. Lifelines are thus components of the nation’s
critical infrastructure, which also includes medical, financial, and
other infrastructure systems that create the fabric of modern society.
For clarity, lifeline infrastructures are simply called in short
lifelines in this report. Lifelines include: (a) energy utilities and
companies (electric power and natural gas and liquid fuel pipelines);
(b) transportation systems (roads and highways, railroads, airports,
and seaports); (c) water, storm-water, and sewerage; (d) communication
systems; and (e) health care facilities (hospitals, cliniques,
emergency facilities, etc), most distributed in well linked networks.
Next to impacts on people, the physical infrastructure is often the
most compelling “story” in the immediate aftermath of a
disaster, as organized government services work to restore needed
utilities and clear roadways of structural and other debris. After
people had been evacuated from New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in
2005, people focused on the physical infrastructure. Everywhere one
looked, one saw destroyed houses, commercial buildings, and cultural
and other critical facilities such as churches, schools, and hospitals.
Photographs of destruction are used to communicate the devastating
effects of the hurricane and subsequent flooding to the world outside
New Orleans.
Without water and electricity, critical facilities such as hospitals
cannot perform effectively their primary functions. Inaccessible roads
make surface transportation impossible, creating an obstacle for supply
chain management and efficient movement. When streets and buildings are
cordoned off because of damage, businesses may be open, but will not be
“in business.” Even when businesses relocate for the
short-term due to damage to facilities, customers may not find the
businesses. Damaged schools shake a community’s confidence in
itself to overcome disasters and recover.
.
1) PHYSICAL INFRASTRUCTURE
a) Facilities
i) Residential
(1) Housing Units
(2) Shelters
ii) Commercial
(1) Distribution Facilities
(2) Hotels - Accommodations
(3) Manufacturing Facilities
(4) Office Buildings
iii) Cultural
(1) Entertainment Venues
(2) Museums
(3) Religious Institutions
(4) Schools
(5) Sports/Recreation Venues
b) Lifelines
i) Communications
(1) Internet
(2) Phones
(3) TV
(4) Radio
(5) Postal
ii) Health Care
(1) Acute Care
(2) Long-Term Acute Care
(3) Primary Care
(4) Psychiatric
(5) Specialty
iii) Food Supply
iv) Utilities
(1) Electrical
(2) Fuel/Gas/Energy
(3) Waste
(4) Water
v) Transportation
(1) Aviation
(2) Bridges
(3) Highways
(4) Railways
(5) Transit
(6) Vehicles
(7) Waterways
In terms of housing, key indicators may include proportion of
housing stock not rated as substandard or hazardous and vacancy rates
for rental housing (Tierney, 2009). In terms of communication networks,
key indicators may include adequacy (or sufficiency) of procedures for
communicating with the public and addressing the public’s need
for accurate information following disasters, adequacy of linkages
between official and unofficial information sources, and adequacy of
ties between emergency management entities and mass media serving
diverse populations (Tierney, 2009).
In the aftermath of a disaster, the restoration and recovery of
physical infrastructure remain by-and-large technical issues, however
those are tightly related and often driven by organizations, economics
and socio-political events. The resilience must consider these
interactive dimensions in order to be relevant to the system.
Research Leader: Prof Gian Paolo Cimellaro (gianpaolo.cimellaro@polito.it).
LIFESTYLE AND COMMUNITY COMPETENCE
As suggested by Harrald (cited in Micale, 2010, para. 5), "Resilience … requires the building of collaborative relationships that will enable communities and businesses to better absorb, adapt, survive, and thrive when confronted with extreme events.” Norris et al. (2008) describe community resilience as “a metaphor, theory, set of capabilities and strategy for disaster readiness” (p. 127). One of the capabilities they discuss is community competence. Community competence is essential to community resilience in the same way that individual competence is essential to personal hardiness. Community competence deals with community action, critical reflection and problem solving skills, flexibility and creativity, collective efficacy, empowerment, and political partnerships (Norris et al., 2008).
1) LIFESTYLE AND COMMUNITY COMPETENCE
a) Collective Action and Decision Making
i) Conflict Resolution
ii) Self-Organization
b.) Collective Efficacy and Empowerment
c.) Quality of Life
This dimension reflects the reality that community resilience is not
simply a passive “bouncing back” to pre-disaster conditions
(Brown and Kulig, 1996/97) but rather a concerted and active effort
that relies on peoples’ ability to creatively imagine a new
future and then take the requisite steps to achieve that desired
future. It captures both the raw abilities of the community (e.g.,
ability to develop multifaceted solutions to complex problems, ability
to engage in meaningful political networks) and the community’s
perceptions of its ability to effect positive change. Communities that
collectively believe that they can rebuild, restructure, and revive
themselves are more likely to be persistent in the face of
environmental, governmental, and other obstacles.
Quality of life surveys often reveal whether members of a given
community are committed to that community and willing to engage in the
activities necessary to sustain the community, regardless of whether a
disaster strikes. Less soft general indicators of community competence
may include measures of migration, measures of citizen involvement in
politics, and others. Disaster-specific indicators may include the
comprehensiveness of community warning plans and procedures, and the
extensiveness of citizen and organizational disaster training programs
(Tierney, 2009).
Research Leader: Prof Lucy Arendt (arendtl@uwgb.edu).
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
According to Radloff (2006), “A community needs to have access
to resources to grow and react to changes. The difference between
resilient and non-resilient resources is that the former focus on
addressing local needs and are often locally based sources of
employment, skills, and finances” (p. 16). There are six points
to this dimension of resilience:
1. Employment in the community is diversified beyond a single employer or employment sector;
2. Major employers in the community are locally owned;
3. The community has a strategy for increasing independent local ownership;
4. There is openness to alternative ways of earning a living and economic activity.
5. The community looks outside itself to seek and
secure resources (skills, expertise, finance) to address areas of
identified weakness;
6. The community is aware of its competitive position
in the broader economy (The Centre for Community Enterprise, 2000:
15-16).
Economic development includes both the static assessment of a
community’s current economy (economic activity) and the dynamic
assessment of a community’s ability to continuously sustain
economic growth (economic development) (see Table 8).
As described in the RICSA Poverty Project (2010), economic activity
takes into account the supply of labor for the production of economic
goods and services, which includes:
“All production and processing of primary products whether
for market, for barter or for own consumption, the production of all
other goods for the market and, in the case of households which produce
such goods and services for the market, the corresponding production
for own consumption.”
Economic development addresses the future and growth. It addresses a community’s efforts to increase its:
“productive capacities ..., in terms of technologies (more
efficient tools and machines), technical cultures (knowledge of nature,
research and capacity to develop improved technologies), and the
physical, technical and organizational capacities and skills of those
engaged in production.”
1) ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
a) Financial Services
i) Asset Base of Financial Institutions
ii) Checking Account Balances (Personal and Commercial)
iii) Consumer Price Index
iv) Insurance
v) Number and Average Amount of Loans
vi) Number of Bank and Credit Union Members
vii) Number of Banks and Credit Unions
viii) Savings Account Balances (Personal and Commercial)
ix) Stock Market
b) Industry – Employment - Services
i) Agriculture
ii) Construction
iii) Education and Health Services
iv) Finance, Insurance and Real Estate
v) Fortune 1000
vi) Fortune 500
vii) Information, Professional Business, Other
viii) Leisure and Hospitality
ix) Manufacturing
x) Number of Corporate Headquarters
xi) Other Business Services
xii) Professional and Business Services
(1) Employment Services
(a) Flexibilities
(b) Opportunities
(c) Placement
(2) Transport and Utilities
(3) Wholesale and Retail
c) Industry – Production
i) Food Supply
ii) Manufacturing
.Resilient communities are characterized by their involvement in a
diverse array of products and services that are both produced in and
available to the community. Diversity in production and employment is
linked to a community’s ability to substitute goods and services
and shift employment patterns as the situation demands. The PEOPLES
Resilience Framework incorporates three illustrative subcategories
within this dimension: Industry – Production, Industry –
Employment Distribution, and Financial Services. Primary indicators of
this dimension include the proportion of the population that is
employed within the various industries, and the variability that might
characterize a community’s industrial employment distribution.
This dimension is closely interconnected with the Population and
Demographics dimension. For example, key indicators of economic
development beyond employment and industry distribution include
literacy rates, life expectancy, and poverty rates. Disaster-specific
indicators related to economic development include extent of evacuation
plans and drills for high-occupancy structures, adequacy of plans for
inspecting damaged buildings following disasters, and adequacy of plans
for post-disaster commercial reconstruction (Tierney, 2009).
Research Leader: Prof Gian Paolo Cimellaro (gianpaolo.cimellaro@polito.it).
SOCIAL-CULTURAL CAPITAL
Similar to the Norris et al. (2008) conceptualization of social
support, the Community Resilience Model’s first dimension is
“Resilient People,” which consists of nine points:
1. Leadership is diversified and representative of age, gender, and community cultural composition;
2. Elected community leadership is visionary, shares power, and builds consensus;
3. Community members are involved in significant community decisions;
4. The community feels a sense of pride;
5. People feel optimistic about their community’s future;
6. There is a spirit of mutual assistance and co-operation in the community;
7. People feel a sense of attachment to their community;
8. The community is self-reliant and looks to itself and its own resources to address major issues; and
9. There is a strong belief in and support for
education at all levels (The Centre for Community Enterprise, 2000:
13-15).
According to Norris and her colleagues (2008), “individuals
invest, access, and use resources embedded in social networks to gain
returns” (p. 137). For our purposes, social/cultural capital
incorporates several subcategories, including education service, child
and elderly services, cultural and heritage services, and community
participation (see Table 9). Social/cultural capital is prerequisite to
community competence (Norris et al., 2008) in that it incorporates the
array of services that the community has chosen to provide for itself,
understanding that community health requires more than good jobs and
infrastructure. It also includes several intangible
“goods,” such as social support, sense of community, place
attachment, and citizen participation (Norris et al. 2008).
1) SOCIAL/CULTURAL CAPITAL
a) Child and Elderly Services
b) Commercial Centers
c) Community Participation
d) Cultural and Heritage
Services
e) Education Services
f) Non-Profit Organizations
g) Place Attachment
For example, social support underlies many of the services
associated with social/cultural capital. It includes both the
“helping behaviors within family and friendship networks”
and the “relationships between individuals and their larger
neighborhoods and communities” (Norris et al., 2008, p. 139).
People choose to provide social and cultural services that manifest and
extend their sense of community, defined as an attitude of bonding with
other members of one’s group or locale (Perkins et al., 2002,
cited in Norris et al., 2008). They may feel an emotional connection to
their neighborhood or city, which may or may not relate to the people
who inhabit those places (Manzo and Perkins, 2006). For example, after
Hurricane Katrina, many displaced residents of New Orleans expressed a
strong desire to return home, irrespective of the people they knew or
the jobs they once had. It seems likely that people with a strong
“place attachment” would be more willing to act in order to
help their community bounce back after a disaster, assuming that other
essential factors such as employment and housing were available.
Citizen participation takes into account the “engagement of
community members in formal organizations, including religious
congregations, school and resident associations, neighborhood watches,
and self-help groups” (Norris et al., 2008, p. 139).
Participation in community organizations is a means of demonstrating
one’s care for one’s community. Pragmatically,
participation in community organizations is a means for meeting and
understanding one’s fellow citizens. It increases
individuals’ circle of influence and perception of control.
Measuring social/cultural capital requires acquisition of tallies, such
as the number of members belonging to various civil and community
organizations. It also requires surveys of community leaders and their
perceptions (e.g., quality of life surveys). Disaster-specific
indicators include existence of community plans targeting
transportation-disadvantaged populations, adequacy of post-disaster
sheltering plans, adequacy of plans for incorporating volunteers and
others into official response activities, adequacy of donations
management plans, and the community’s plans to coordinate across
diverse community networks (Tierney, 2009).
Research Leader: Prof Lucy Arendt (arendtl@uwgb.edu).