Please Note: The content you will see is the actual work product of the QHSR study groups and participants, it is not final, vetted DHS policy.

Preparing for, Responding to, and Recovering from Disasters Backgrounder

Goals and Objectives

Goal 1: The American people continuously strive to make themselves, their communities and the Nation resilient.

  • Develop and Implement a National Strategy for Resilience: Develop a National Strategy for Resilience that links individuals, communities, local, state, tribal, and Federal government, the private sector, and nongovernmental organizations to a common goal and approach.
  • Enable Resilience Activities: Enable individuals, communities, governments at all levels, the private sector, and nongovernmental organizations to build resilience.
  • Change our Focus from Response to Resilience. Change our focus on response to a culture of resilience.
  • Establish Resilience Metrics: Identify indicators of resilience that can be measured to gauge the effectiveness of resilience-building efforts.

Goal 2: A nationwide, integrated network of emergency management systems that is prepared to deal effectively with all threats, hazards, and risks.

  • Develop Supporting Frameworks: Develop interlocking frameworks for prevention, protection, recovery, and mitigation to complement the National Response Framework and support the National Strategy for Resilience.
  • Synchronize Nationwide Planning: Synchronize local, state, tribal, and Federal emergency planning.
  • Measure, Track, and Report on Preparedness: Develop and implement a process to measure, track, and report on preparedness at all levels from individual jurisdictions to a nationwide assessment.
  • Prepare for Catastrophic Incidents: Recognize the unique characteristics of catastrophic disasters, the requirements those characteristics place on emergency management systems, and the gaps between requirements and capacity.
  • Ensure Interoperable Response Operations: Ensure interoperability of incident response operations nationwide.
  • Enhance Professional Development Programs: Enhance professional development programs for emergency management personnel.

Goal 3: Individuals, as stakeholders, prepare for disasters and emergencies and are partners in community emergency management efforts.

  • Understand Issues that Affect Individual Preparedness: Collaborate with stakeholders to determine and address the issues that affect individuals’ ability and motivation to be prepared.
  • Foster Individual and Family Preparedness: Encourage individuals and families to be prepared to safely sustain themselves for a reasonable period of time in the aftermath of a disaster.
  • Enable Individuals to Assist Neighbors: Enable individuals to assist others in the aftermath of a disaster.
  • Encourage Individuals to Support their Communities: Encourage individuals to actively support their communities' efforts to protect against, prepare for, respond to, recover from, and mitigate against disasters.
  • Foster Community Partnership with Individuals: Encourage local officials and community organizations to routinely integrate individuals/volunteers into community emergency management efforts.

 

The study group examining disaster preparedness, response and recovery envisions success for the United States as being a nation that understands the risks and hazards we face and that has achieved a level of preparedness that will allow it to recover quickly from the effects of disasters that cannot be prevented and readily adapt to the changes caused by the disaster. This they refer to as resilience.

The Goals the study group sees as leading to this resilient nation include the following:

  • First, changing the prism through which we look at disaster preparedness from the traditional view that emphasizes response and recovery to a more holistic approach that balances investment in protection, mitigation, and long-term recovery with response and short-term recovery planning in order to build a more resilient society. This is a process that must involve all stakeholders from the Federal Government to the individual citizen and from tribal nations to the entire private sector including voluntary and faith-based organizations.
  • Secondly, strengthening emergency management systems across the board by efforts such as clarifying and quantifying risk, exploiting new technologies, enhancing unity of effort among all disaster stakeholders, improving planning, finding ways to measure preparedness, and addressing the special challenges posed by catastrophic incidents.
  • And finally, by refocusing attention on the role and responsibility of the individual in disaster preparedness to re-emphasize the individual’s role as the first-first responder and the entity that is ultimately responsibility for her/his safety and that of his/her family; and by encouraging individuals to be prepared to assist their neighbors in emergencies and to become active partners in supporting community preparedness efforts.

The study group has drafted specific Objectives that describe the activities essential to achieving each of the Goals.

At this point in the process, realizing that there are an unlimited number of ways to categorize, prioritize, and generally arrange the issues, the study group needs answers to the following question:

Are there essential issues regarding disaster preparedness, response, and recovery that the draft Vision, Goals, and Objectives miss?