On Vulnerability Planning
Planning for the connection between pre-disaster conditions and post-disaster outcomes.
Consider the following: Emergency and disaster management organizations should connect with vulnerable populations.
Sounds nice, right?
As a general statement, there isn’t much to disagree with, but does it really say anything? What constitutes a disaster management organization? How does one register a connection? Who, specifically, are vulnerable populations and what about their situation makes them vulnerable?
Entire scientific communities dedicate themselves to answering questions like these. Central to these communities’ agendas is the relationship between vulnerability and disaster. While individual definitions may vary, emergency and disaster management communities generally accept the definition of vulnerability as the aspects of a community that affect potential negative impacts from disasters.
Vulnerability can exist within a community long before a hazard is present or before a disaster occurs. Insufficient personal protective equipment contributed to vulnerability before COVID-19 was declared a pandemic. Logistical challenges present in the archipelagic nation of The Bahamas contributed to vulnerability before Hurricane Dorian ever made landfall. Limited access to information and a poor understanding of hazards contributed to vulnerability before the 1900 Galveston Hurricane killed as many as 8,000 people. Indeed, as far back as disasters have been recorded and studied, pre-disaster conditions can be linked to post-disaster outcomes through the concept of vulnerability.
As a category of pre-disaster conditions, vulnerability is not the product of any one thing. It is instead the sum of many complex factors that are specific to each society, community, or group. For that reason, measures designed to reduce vulnerability rarely address vulnerability in its entirety, but instead address contributing factors. Improving access to healthcare, protecting critical infrastructure, and strengthening social networks are all examples of agendas that can reduce vulnerability, even if the intent is not explicitly vulnerability-centric.
There’s no way around it. Vulnerability is complicated. It’s no less complicated when it’s used as a descriptor. When a population is described as vulnerable without any added context, what’s being said is that a population is, for some reason, potentially susceptible to the impacts of a disaster. This could apply to the homeless, adults with autism, elderly shut-ins, children with special needs, or any other group of people whose pre-disaster needs might negatively influence their post-disaster outcomes. Although no emergency manager would suggest that the needs of the mentioned groups be treated with one approach, emergency management plans occasionally group them all together. When the term “vulnerable populations” is used as an umbrella meant to describe many different groups of people without added context, it fails to capture the point of accounting for vulnerability in the first place.
Practically speaking, what does that look like in the United States? As a matter of national strategy, Objective 3.1 of the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s 2018–2022 Strategic Plan is to “streamline and integrate existing disaster assistance programs and processes, creating innovative and efficient solutions to provide the most effective survivor support. This starts with understanding barriers that limit or prevent access to programs, especially for vulnerable populations.” Following the guidance provided by FEMA, planning for barriers that prevent access to disaster assistance, especially for vulnerable populations, should become more specific as this strategy is brought to a local level and provided the appropriate local context.
Based on the national-level strategy, further guidance is issued from either the State, Federally Recognized Tribe, and regional or local emergency management organizations. In the most recent update to the Northern Virginia Hazard Mitigation Plan, counties in Northern Virginia detailed their intent to “research possible vulnerable population registration systems to better identify and serve at risk citizens.” While this intent falls in line with FEMA’s Objective 3.1, nothing relating to or stemming from that documented intent has been reflected in any planning documents in the years since. As an outcome of planning, no detailed vulnerability assessments are conducted, much less acted upon at the regional level. Instead, this intent is passed down as supplemental guidance for local emergency management organizations to take further action based on appropriate local context.
At the local jurisdiction in this example, Arlington County’s Office of Emergency Management represents the local governmental body responsible for the population of Arlington County. With guidance from regional, state, and federal planning documents, the county’s take on vulnerability assessments and planning should be the most specific and most actionable. This approach is represented in Arlington County’s Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan and supplemental Emergency Operations Plan, where vulnerability is addressed as follows: “The Department of Human Services, and the multiple departments within, who support the vulnerable in Arlington on a day-to-day basis serve as the lead agency for ESF (Emergency Support Function) 6, Mass Care and ESF 8, Health and Medical Services. Both ESFs hold central responsibility for the coordination of support services for the vulnerable during emergency response and disaster.”
From the Arlington County Department of Human Services, programs and resources are made available for children, the elderly, adults with disabilities, homeless, and others. While these programs (and the populations they serve) aren’t explicitly named in any local emergency management plans, it is assumed that the appropriate subject matter experts are available to support emergency management with whatever vulnerability-related information might be relevant to any particular pre- or post-disaster scenario, based on the scope of the programs and services provided by the County’s Department of Human Services.
For better or worse, this is how the concept of vulnerability is approached in the United States, from a planning perspective. Vulnerability is discussed in general terms, because being specific about vulnerability is complicated. While every stakeholder at every level in the planning process can speak to the need to address vulnerability, very few accept the problem as theirs to solve. Starting with the Federal Government and working toward local jurisdictions, general guidance with uncontextualized terms like “vulnerable populations” is passed down until the local-most organization is left to deal with the issue on their own. Of course, the argument exists that larger bodies of government are ill-equipped to do anything about localized vulnerability, and in fairness, it’s not a bad argument. Again, vulnerability is complicated. However, for an issue as complex as vulnerability and with the understanding that it is singularly present nation-wide as a local driver of negative disaster outcomes, is it too much to ask that strategies and plans approach the topic differently?
Perhaps not.
On the chance that you suspect the above points were made with support from cherry-picked examples, you are correct. Emergency management planners from Arlington County, Northern Virginia, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency each issued plans which use the terms “vulnerability” and “vulnerable populations” generally and in a way that doesn’t account for the specific needs of specific groups. With that said, each plan mentioned above makes an attempt to account for vulnerability, which is more than can be said for the host of federal, state, and local emergency management plans that fail to address the issue at all. In other words, the examples above show what it looks like when planners try to get it right. Many local and regional jurisdictions avoid talking about vulnerability in general terms by avoiding it entirely.
Thankfully, there are no shortage of vulnerability experts prepared to contribute to the conversation at every level of emergency management. One such expert is Ms. Shanyn Silinski, the program manager for the SARA Project, which focuses on the development and deployment of education and training resources for emergency management professionals on the subject of planning for neurodiverse populations. Prior to joining the SARA Project, Silinski spent several years working on joint research and development projects with the Canadian Department of Defense and Public Safety Canada as a Senior Advisor heading an international working group with a focus on emergency planning and vulnerable populations.
On the subject of emergency planning for autistic individuals, Silinski says, “This is a group that has specific needs when preparing for a disaster. Having a pre-disaster communication strategy, offering resources, and building understanding of this group’s specific needs within the planning and response community is critical for the outcomes for everyone. Autistics have a very high risk of negative outcomes stemming from tendencies to wander, bolt and secondary incidents of fleeing from what are presumed to be ‘safe spaces’ by planners. These vulnerabilities combine with a lack of training around what autism is, who it impacts and how to support those who are autistic in situations, like disasters, where a world that can be hard to navigate can suddenly become terrifyingly overwhelming. We approach the concept of vulnerability from a different angle — we are looking for better outcomes for autistics, for responders and for the community at large.”
This approach starts from understanding the specific needs of a specific group. By training planners and responders about what autism is, the SARA Project also trains them in understanding how to support the autistic community in pre-disaster planning, during an event and throughout post-disaster recovery. Silinski suggests that “By taking a specific group like autistics, deaf, or disabled, and using their names during planning, we avoid taking a very large label (vulnerable) and attaching it to disparate groups of people. We let each have their voice. We allow for each to have their needs understood. Vulnerable populations is a useful header for a list, but it shouldn’t be the only way we identify our community members.”
Silinski finds that there’s a real desire within every level of emergency management planning communities to learn about and engage with subject matter experts on developing better plans for vulnerable populations. On the main takeaway from her experience engaging with planners, Silinski says “Talk to me! Our objective is to get people to think about autism and disaster planning in a different way.” The subject matter experts exist and the benefit to emergency planners is real. What is the role of the planner if it’s not to integrate subject matter expertise into potential scenarios where that added context may prove beneficial?
Instead, when vulnerability lacks context in emergency plans or during the planning process, those who are meant to follow the plans aren’t prepared to maximize their effectiveness. The concept of vulnerability connects pre-disaster conditions to post-disaster outcomes and they are hazard independent, which is to say the need for emergency management attention may not be concentrated in areas with the greatest physical impact of a hazard. In the aftermath of a hurricane, earthquake, or tornado, vulnerability helps responders better understand who, specifically, needs help and what kind of help they might need. The first step towards applying that understanding, in an operational sense, starts with identifying and understanding the specific needs of specific groups rather than categorizing them all as “vulnerable.”
Planners who attempt to understand the needs of post-disaster populations need not wait for an earthquake or tornado to occur before identifying contributing factors of vulnerability and developing plans to address them. To that end, the inclusion of the words “vulnerability” or “vulnerable populations” in an emergency management plan is little more than an empty gesture if that’s as far as the planning process goes. Having a plan is not as valuable as the process of planning. A commitment to the latter throughout emergency management planning communities represents a commitment to ensuring the plans can support who they’re meant to.
Sources:
- Tierney, Kathleen. Disasters: A Sociological Approach. Polity Press, 2019.
- World Health Organization. “Shortage of Personal Protective Equipment Endangering Health Workers Worldwide.” World Health Organization, 3 Mar. 2020, www.who.int/news-room/detail/03-03-2020-shortage-of-personal-protective-equipment-endangering-health-workers-worldwide.
- Milliken, B. (2019, September). ‘Disaster Tourists’ Get in the Way More Than They Help at Disasters.
- Larson, Erik, and Isaac Monroe Cline. Isaac’s Storm: a Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History. Vintage Books, 1999.
- Federal Emergency Management Agency. (2018). 2018–2022 FEMA Strategic Plan.
- Virginia Department of Emergency Management. Northern Virginia Hazard Mitigation Plan, 2017.
- Arlington County Office of Emergency Management. (2017). Emergency Operations Plan
- Department of Human Services. Departments & Offices. (2020, March 27). https://departments.arlingtonva.us/dhs/.
- Wolkin, A., Patterson, J. R., Harris, S., Soler, E., Burrer, S., McGeehin, M., & Greene, S. (2015). Reducing Public Health Risk During Disasters: Identifying Social Vulnerabilities. Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, 12(4), 809–822.
- Silinski, S. (2020). Personal Interview.
