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A “Whole
Community” Approach
to Emergency Management
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The Reality of Today’s Crises
As the effects of natural and man-made
disasters become more rapid, far-reaching, and wide-spread, government
at all levels must grapple with the limitations of its capabilities.
The simple reality is that in small and medium sized disasters,
government can expand its reach and deliver services more efficiently
and cost effectively by partnering with institutions, groups, and
individuals already active in the impacted communities. And in large
scale disasters, the needs of survivors will outweigh the collective
resources and capabilities that government at all levels can bring to
bear. Government can no longer assume that it can solve disaster
management challenges on its own, and how effectively government at
every level engages with and leverages the resources of other segments
of society will determine how successful the nation’s response is, as
a whole.
At the same time, experience has taught
us that we must do a better job of providing services for the entire
community, regardless of their background, demographics, or
challenges. This means planning for the actual makeup of a community,
making sure we meet the needs of every disaster survivor regardless of
age, economics, or accessibility requirements.
Addressing these related concerns
cannot be achieved by simply improving on what we have always done —
we must fundamentally change how we go about disaster preparedness,
response, recovery and mitigation, involving the communities we serve
directly in these efforts. We must look beyond the traditional,
“government-centric” approach to emergency management and embrace a
philosophy and operational posture that leverages, and serves, the
Whole Community.
FEMA’s Approach
FEMA recognizes that it takes all
aspects of a community (volunteer, faith and community-based
organizations, the private sector, and the public, including survivors
themselves) — not just the government — to effectively prepare for,
protect against, respond to, recover from, and mitigate against any
disaster. It is critical that we work together to enable communities
to develop collective, mutually supporting local capabilities to
withstand the potential initial impacts of these events, respond
quickly, and recover in a way that sustains or improves the
community’s overall well-being. How communities achieve this
collective capacity calls for innovative approaches from across the
full spectrum of community actors to expand and enhance existing
practices, institutions, and organizations that help make local
communities successful every day, under normal conditions, and
leverage this social infrastructure to help meet community needs when
an incident occurs.
Building community resilience in this
manner requires emergency managers to engage effectively with and
holistically plan for the needs of the whole community, realign
emergency management practices to support local needs, and work to
strengthen the institutions, assets, and networks that work well in
communities on a daily basis. We can do this by greatly expanding the
traditional emergency management team to include the full fabric of
the community, increasing the capacity of all team members, broadening
participation in all aspects of emergency management, and
strengthening underlying economic, social, and environmental
conditions. A Whole Community approach to emergency management
encompasses three key concepts:
• Understanding and
meeting the true needs of the entire affected community.
• Engaging all aspects of
the community (public, private, and civic) in both defining those
needs and devising ways to meet them.
• Strengthening the
assets, institutions, and social processes that work well in
communities on a daily basis to improve resilience and emergency
management outcomes.
Creating a National Dialogue
As a key part of its approach, FEMA is
conducting an outreach campaign with communities around the country to
solicit input, and ideas on how to encourage sustained community
participation and involvement in preparedness and resilience
activities — both at the local and national levels. This effort
involves workshops and listening sessions in which discussions are
focused on how communities are motivated and engaged, how they
understand risk, and their experiences with resilience following a
disaster.
Working with New Partners to Better Prepare
Central to the Whole Community approach
is the idea of expanding the Emergency Management team, working with
groups outside of the federal family to better understand and plan for
the needs of a community before, during, and after a disaster strikes.
To accomplish this goal, FEMA has been aggressively increasing its
overall outreach efforts, establishing relationships with new partners
and reinvigorating and reframing relationships with the more
traditional members ofthe team.
Reshaping Planning and Preparedness
Being prepared as a nation means moving
beyond a federal or government-centric approach to emergency
management. As a team, we need to implement solutions that serve the
entire community while also leveraging the resources that the entire
community brings to the table. But how do we implement this Whole
Community concept into the work that FEMA and our partners do every
day? FEMA has begun driving this concept into its operations, starting
with a catastrophic planning initiative known as the Maximum of
Maximums: planning and preparing for a catastrophe where extraordinary
levels of mass casualties, damage, and disruption overwhelm our
traditional, and well established, response and recovery plans and
procedures. Though the Whole Community approach will eventually be
applied to all of our core missions, this Maximum of Maximums effort
is an important first step in making concrete changes in the way we
conduct our operations.
Getting Involved
Through the activities discussed above,
FEMA seeks to spark dramatic expansion and transformation of current
community engagement strategies to promote approaches that position
local residents in leadership roles in planning, organizing, and
sharing accountability for the success of local disaster management
efforts. We believe that Whole Community Emergency Management is a
philosophy that should be applied to everything we do, as an agency,
and as a field of practice. To that end, FEMA will support the
development of guidance, tools, training, and educational programs
that effectively engage and integrate the entire community into local
emergency management activities to strengthen resilience and improve
outcomes.
As one of our partners, we would
appreciate your insight and guidance on the following:
1. How do we most
effectively engage the whole community in emergency management to
include a wide breadth of community members (e.g. local and state
community representatives, academia, faith-based and community-based
organizations, private sector, etc.)?
2. How might we solicit
creative assistance in broadening the team to include new partners and
develop innovative solutions?
3. How else might we
continue to refine this whole community approach?
4. Have you seen greater
resilience in places where communities have been engaged in emergency
management activities? Please share examples, practices, and
strategies.
Please send your thoughts and feedback to: FEMA-Community-Engagement@dhs.gov
February 24, 2011
Download the
original FEMA document here |
