FEMA releases video on community resilience planning

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), in partnership with other emergency management organizations, released a new PrepTalks video presentation — Dr. Philip Berke’s Land Use Planning for Community Resilience.

Professor Berke, Land Use and Environmental Planning Director for the Institute of Sustainable Coastal Communities at Texas A&M University, explains how effective land use planning strengthens community resilience, through sharing research that shows preventative land use policies have the highest benefit-cost ratios and Community Rating System incentives, yet are the least used actions to reduce vulnerability and promote mitigation.

“Land-use planning is, in my mind and in my students’ minds, something that affects every aspect of how we live,” said Dr. Berke. “Where do we put the homes that we live in? Where do we put the shopping centers, the businesses that we work in? What about the health care clinics, the grocery stores, the schools, the highways, the water utilities? It’s all a matter of how we design our communities.”

“If we think about it, the losses have been growing geometrically faster than population, faster than growth, faster than the economy from hazards and disasters,” Berke continued. “And it’s not climate change that has been kicking in, but more for the history of time, it’s been where we design, how we design and locate where we live and we’re not doing a very good job at it. We don’t pay much attention to it, so what I wanted to do is talk about mainly why planning for resilience is important and learning to build back better.”

“In terms of the science and technology, plans should also have land use policies. They guide action, right where we’re going to build, how we’re going to build. A good plan also should be deeply embedded in the community. It’s not something that a planner or an architect or an engineer thinks up back in the department and lays on the community. It must be rooted in the people that are being affected.”

Click here to view Dr. Berke’s entire presentation.

PrepTalks presentations by subject-matter experts and national and international thought leaders are designed to spread new ideas, spark conversation and promote innovative leadership for the issues confronting emergency managers now and over the next 20 years.