Watershed Texas

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Communities have many ways to guide future development to minimize hazard vulnerability – building codes, comprehensive plans, zoning regulations, etc., however, the degree to which different local plans and policies support one another in reducing risk often varies greatly.

In the recently published Evaluation of Networks of Plans and Vulnerability to Hazards and Climate Change, Berke et al. (2015) present their development of a resiliency scorecard which can be used to assess how well local plans are integrated and if they reduce, or perhaps inadvertently increase, long term physical and social vulnerability to hazards.

The article references a number of studies which indicate that hazard mitigation planning, centered on strong land use practices, is extraordinarily more effective in reducing the impacts of hazards than reactive emergency response.

This paradigm shift in emergency management has required that long term community planning play a critical role in the disaster resilient community, however, this requires that various municipal officials, such as those involved with public works, urban planning, emergency management, etc., are aware of how they can work together to ensure that their community’s plans, policies, and practices are well integrated to reduce disaster vulnerability. 

To test their resiliency scorecard, the authors use the FEMA 100-year floodplain and USACE sea level rise projections to determine a community’s flood hazard vulnerability zones. Then, parcel level improvement valuation data is used as a proxy for physical vulnerability, while the CDC’s Social Vulnerability Index for Disaster Management (SVI) is used as a proxy for social vulnerability. With this in hand, the authors then evaluate local plans to determine if these plans hinder or support risk reduction efforts.

The utility of the tool lies in its ability to identify conflict between local plans and growth policies and to assess if plans target areas with a high degree of vulnerability. Using the city of Washington, North Carolina as a test community, the authors were able to use the resiliency scorecard to show the dynamic interaction of many of the city’s plans and planning mechanisms as they relate to risk reduction. While the scorecard indicated certain municipal plans and policies may encourage development in hazardous areas, the scorecard also revealed ways that the city might better integrate its plans to achieve multiple long term development goals and objectives.

To learn more about disaster resiliency or how your community can reduce vulnerability through improved plan integration, visit cerc.tamu.edu.