Emergency Management: Whole Community Approach

Naim Kapucu
School of Public Administration, University of Central Florida, Orlando, Florida, U.S.A.

Abstract
Disasters provide unfortunate reminders of vulnerability of communities. Disasters illustrate how disasters
harm communities and individuals, and disrupt social–technical systems and community functions. Disasters
also provide opportunities to change the practice of emergency management, new resources to support those
changes, and incentives to become more resilient and sustainable. This entry focuses on whole community
approach in managing emergencies and disasters. Whole community approach builds on mapping commu-
nity assets and recovery-related capacities. The perspective includes hazards, vulnerabilities, the local econ-
omy, nonprofits, and government capacity. Engagement of the stakeholders in the “whole community,” as
well as having effective public sector leadership, can make a significant difference ineffectiveness of disaster
recovery and response.

INTRODUCTION efforts, issues arise of how to successfully prepare a

Disasters, such as four hurricanes in six weeks in Florida in
2004, Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and Super Storm Sandy in
2012, provide unfortunate reminders of vulnerability of
communities. These disasters, like many others, illustrated
how disasters harm communities and individuals, and dis-
rupt social–technical systems and community functions.
Disasters also provide opportunities to change the practice
of emergency management, new resources to support those
changes, and incentives to become more resilient and sus-
tainable. Whole community approach builds on mapping
community assets and recovery-related capacities. The per-
spective includes hazards, vulnerabilities, the local econ-
omy, nonprofits, and government capacity. Engagement
of the stakeholders in the “whole community,” as well as
having effective public sector leadership, can make a signif-
icant difference in effectiveness of disaster recovery and
response.
Emergency management is a quintessential role of pub-
lic administration. The goal of government is to create a sys-
temic framework focused on equality of basic human rights
for its citizenry. Within these attempts, policies and proce-
dures surface to guide societal conflicts and promote a
cooperative environment for positive growth. However,
there is one over-arching area where the response of govern-
ment and citizens can generate, or further, negative impacts:
emergency management. Disasters are situations that can-
not always be predicted and prepared for. Furthermore,
there is never a case where just one individual is affected.
The impact is seen in neighboring communities.
When disasters strike, it becomes the role of federal,
state, and local officials to mitigate and respond to the situa-
tion while also providing guidance for their respective citi-
zens.[1] Moreover, these administrators become responsible
for helping a community increase their resiliency and
decrease vulnerabilities for future disasters. Within these
Encyclopedia of Public Administration and Public Policy, Third Edition DOI: 10.1081/E-EPAP3-120053158
Copyright © 2015 by Taylor & Francis. All rights reserved.
community when each area can differ drastically from the
next one.
Each community requires a certain level of attention to
structural and organizational methods and resources[1] as
disasters provide uncertain situations, which can affect a
community’s make-up in different ways. It becomes an
imperative for local leaders and members of the community
to engage in dialog, “because citizens can explore alterna-
tive futures” (p. 352).[1] By engaging in a new whole com-
munity approach, a community can more effectively and
productively prepare for disasters while increasing the abil-
ity to reduce vulnerability and increase resiliency.
WHOLE COMMUNITY APPROACH
The field of emergency management slowly came to the
surface as government officials found themselves respond-
ing to reoccurring events and catastrophic disasters.[2] As
awareness of this situation began, especially “during the
Cold War civil defense agencies in the U.S. conducted com-
munity-wide risk assessments to determine commonalities
among their various disaster plans, leading to single func-
tional plans” (p. 22).[3] There has been a marked increase
in the sheer number of disaster declarations and a reduction
in the budget for federal, state and local offices to prepare
and recover from the events. As with many institutions,
emergency management was, and continues to be, asked
to do more with less.[4] Experts began to dialogue more
intentionally on how to combine resources and reduce
issues related to role confusion in response and resource
allocation. The whole community approach, beginning in
the health sector of emergency management when there
was a need for a standardized approach to all hazards,
slowly spread among the field. I use Federal Emergency
Management Agency (FEMA)’s definition of the whole
1
2 Emergency Management: Whole Community Approach
community. The whole community approach is defined by
FEMA as “residents, emergency management practitioners,
organizational and community leaders, and government
officials can collectively understand and asses the needs
of their respective communities and determine the best
ways to organize and strengthen their assets, capacities,
and interests. By doing so, a more effective path to societal
security and resilience is built” (p. 3).[5]
Resilience is seen as the ability to prepare, mitigate,
respond, and recover to a disaster with limited to no funding
from the federal government.[6] Community resiliency is
one a different level by incorporating the shared experi-
ences by all community members in being able to respond
and recover to a disaster.[3] By increasing resilience, a com-
munity increases their response and recovery capabilities,
and there is a better chance at decreasing community vul-
nerabilities. Interdependence in this sense of emergency
management connects to the real possibility of an area being
isolated during a disaster and responses by local, state, and
federal officials can be delayed.
Coastal areas in Florida can be a good example of the
need for interdependence as some rural communities may
be connected to more urban areas through one road. Should
this road become blocked or closed, then the community is
essentially cut off from any emergency response teams. The
members of the community need to depend upon them-
selves to come together during these times and their capa-
bility to respond can greatly increase with the more
independence they gain.[6] The whole community approach
allows for these communities to dialog about “the chal-
lenges of politics, power, and economic condition[s] by cre-
ating a safe space for all the sectors of the community to
work together on their common hazards … and offer every-
one in the community the common tools that will allow
them to recover the sense of place that they value” (p. 28).[3]
The whole community approach has become a desirable
response for several reasons. The first is its obvious connec-
tion between communication and coordination efforts
across all levels of stakeholders.[7] For example, FEMA
became painfully aware of communication and coordina-
tion gaps when Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans,
Louisiana.[8] The event caused massive backlash from the
community and media due to delay in helping affected areas
and for obvious disconnects between the federal, state, and
local administrators.[9]
In conjunction with the response, or lack thereof, to Hur-
ricane Katrina, FEMA experts saw similar whole commu-
nity initiatives in the United Kingdom and found them to
be creating positive change and increasing resiliency.[10]
Therefore, a document was created to guide the process of
creating a comprehensive plan for each community. Experts
in the field assisted in narrowing down major themes of the
approach, such as understanding the complexity of com-
munities, recognizing the capabilities and needs, fostering
relationships, building and deepening partnerships, empow-
ering the local leaders, and strengthening social networks
and infrastructure,(8,10) along with generating the following
guiding principles: “understand and meet the actual needs
of the whole community, engage and empower all parts
of the community, and strengthen what works well in the
community on a daily basis” (pp. 4–5).[5]
Along with increasing coordination and communication
efforts and assist in building a community’s capacity for
resiliency, the whole community approach allows for fede-
ral, state, and local governments to continue proactive
approaches to disasters.[6] When reviewing the history of
emergency management, there is an overarching theme of
administrators responding to disasters and then implement-
ing policies and procedures to mitigate the impact. Within
the past few decades, there has been a subtle transition to
predictive modeling and trying to anticipate the impact of
disasters. Although a proactive perspective has begun, there
is still yet to be a complete transition to every community
being on board with preparation efforts.
Although the planning process may appear simplistic,
there are issues with creating a common picture for each
community that can affect the overall outcomes. For
instance, each area is innately complex, and dynamic in
its make-up while often not being united.[11] Researchers
have noted a tendency for each area to come together for
a common cause, yet separate once a goal has been
achieved. For instance, the United Nations has incorporated
a comprehensive approach to their planning efforts, which
relies on community engagement cooperating with opera-
tive administrators.[6] However, there is still a gap between
the planning efforts and the actual implementation. More-
over, these communities do not exist in isolation and
depend on networks and social support to which can alter
at a moment’s notice. The social capital of a community
can be a major indicator in the ability to recover from a dis-
aster as social networks provide a sense of insurance.[6,12]
Volunteers have always been a pivotal piece to disaster
response and the number of available, or willing, members
increases when there is a belief of being able to positively
impact their neighbors.
Starting the process can be a little tricky. Federal
Emergency Management Agency[5] incorporated a list of
helpful questions (see Fig. 1) along with core themes (see
Table 1) in their guiding document to help administrators
articulate the nuances of their communities and capture
a realistic overview of the strengths and weaknesses to
their respective areas. Creating a common operating pic-
ture for the whole community allows “stakeholders to: (a)
develop working public/private/non-profit partnerships;
and (b) conduct collective and coordinated hazard analyses,
risk and capabilities assessments, educational workshops,
and various model and simulation exercises” (p. 10).[13]
Moreover, a holistic approach increases the community’s
resiliency in five thematic areas of governance, risk assess-
ment, knowledge and education, risk management and
vulnerability reduction, and disaster preparedness and
response.[11] Within each thematic area, Twigg[11] provides
Emergency Management: Whole Community Approach 3

How can we beer
understand the actual needs
of the communies we
serve?
What partnerships might we
need in order to develop an
understanding of a
community’s needs?
How do we effecvely
engage the whole
community in emergency
management to include a
wide breadth of community
members?

How do we generate public What acvies can

How can we tap into what
interest in disaster emergency managers
communies are interested
preparedness to get a seat change or create to help
in to engage in discussions
at the table with community strengthen what already
about increasing resilience?
organizaons? works in communies?

Fig. 1 Components of resilience based on thematic areas.

Source: From Twigg.[11]

a potential list of components to further define roles and
responsibilities.
This framework assists in an emerging goal of a whole
community approach to disaster response[14] and expands
across multiple levels “both the National Response Frame-
work, our current federal plan for managing disaster events,
and FEMA’s ‘whole community’ approach to disaster loss
reduction, explicitly acknowledge that the private and
nonprofit sectors are integral players in emergency manage-
ment activities. So our current approach to disaster manage-
ment is one that is based on the concept of public-private
partnerships, not on a government monopoly over disaster
management tasks.”[15] To combat a natural tendency
toward a hierarchical, exclusive approach, FEMA included
more detail in the phases of emergency management to
emphasize collaborative efforts[3,15,16] along with providing
funding opportunities and training to assist communities in
their efforts.[7,15]
Elaborating on a crucial element of emergency manage-
ment, the level of coordination, which exists before, during,
and after a disaster, is a necessity for positive preparation,
mitigation, response, and recovery. As stated by Naim
Kapucu “the major function of community coordination at
this stage is to communicate messages related to public pre-
paredness as well as to educate members of the public in
effective preparations for a potential disaster and to encour-
age them to take part” (p. 244).[14] These efforts can be seen
in the four phases of emergency management where pre-
paration, mitigation, response and recovery efforts hinge
upon shared information across jurisdictional and organiza-
tional partners.[3,17]
Through a coordinated approach, administrators are able
to increase their community’s capacity to handle a disaster.
Lack of collaboration can result in several issues, which can
snowball out of control. These include: a) communities
being unaware of the impending disaster and, therefore,
unable to prepare; b) incorrect information may be dissem-
inated or the community becomes unresponsive owing to
inconsistency; c) complacency can occur owing to negative
experiences from the past; and d) lack of cooperation from
community members as they lack belief in being able to
positively affect and help.[14] With the whole community
approach, it is important to acknowledge the voluntary
aspect of its design. Federal Emergency Management
Agency has been a major promoter of the plan; however,
there is no mandate to incorporate a holistic outlook to any
emergency management policy, procedure, or dialogue.[10]
By understanding the community’s capacity, emergency
management officials can better analyze the strengths and
weaknesses of their respective areas and create variables
for research[6,18] such as injuries, financial tally of building
damage, economic losses due to closed down businesses,
etc.[6] These plans are action-oriented and can establish roles
and responsibilities of participating actors through detailed
breakdowns such as connections between emergency sup-
port functions and public, private, and nonprofit entities.[18]
Furthermore, plans allow for unique aspects of an area that
may require extra attention. If the majority of a community’s
demographics include low-income individuals, then there
may be issues in preparing for disasters when funds are
needed to update buildings or construct new roadways.
In conjunction with FEMA’s guiding document, the
National Disaster Recovery Framework (NRDF) can be a
useful tool to guide, conceptually, the planning process
through application of principles related to individual
empowerment, inclusiveness, and partnerships.[19] By
incorporating a human element, research and analysis
moves behind economically driven, quantitative variables
and allows for a more multi-dimensional lens of cooperative
behaviors. Beth Gazley[19] bridges the systematic frame-
work and human element into cohesion factors aimed at a
holistic outlook of disaster response and recovery.
The creation and implementation of whole community
approaches and their resulting frameworks and plans help
to create a culture of resilience.[20] The best way to respond
and recover from a disaster is to prepare and mitigate the sit-
uation as best as possible. The more information and
empowerment a community has, the smoother the process
4 Emergency Management: Whole Community Approach

Table 1 Questions to create common operating picture

Thematic areas Components of resilience

1 Governance ∙ Policy, planning, priorities, and political commitment
∙ Legal and regulatory systems
∙ Integration with development policies and planning
∙ Integration with emergency response and recovery
∙ Institutional mechanisms, capacities and structures, allocation of responsibilities
∙ Partnerships
∙ Accountability and community participation

2 Risk assessment ∙ Hazards=risk data and assessment

∙ Vulnerability=capacity and impact data and assessment
∙ Scientific and technical capacities and innovation

3 Knowledge and education ∙ Public awareness, knowledge, and skills

∙ Information management and sharing
∙ Education and training
∙ Cultures, attitudes, and motivation
∙ Learning and research

4 Risk management and vulnerability reduction
∙ Environmental and natural resource management
∙ Health and well being
∙ Sustainable livelihoods
∙ Societal problems
∙ Financial instruments
∙ Physical protection, structural and technical measures
∙ Planning regimes

5 Disaster preparedness and response ∙ Organizational capacities and coordination

∙ Early warning systems
∙ Preparedness and contingency planning
∙ Emergency resources and infrastructures
∙ Emergency response and recovery
∙ Participation, volunteerism, accountability
Source: Federal Emergency Management Agency.[5]

can evolve. Through this development, the intricacies of a ∙ Disability services

community can be acknowledged and communicated to ∙ School boards
necessary stakeholders.[5] ∙ Higher education institutions
Some of the stakeholders to be included in the whole ∙ Local Cooperative Extension System offices
community approach are the following (p. 12)[5]: ∙ Animal control agencies and animal welfare organi-
zations
∙ Surplus stores
PARTNERS TO CONSIDER ENGAGING ∙ Hardware stores
∙ Big-box stores
∙ Community councils ∙ Small, local retailers
∙ Volunteer organizations (e.g., local Voluntary Organi- ∙ Supply chain components, such as manufacturers, dis-
zations Active in Disaster, Community Emergency tributors, suppliers, and logistics providers
Response Team programs, volunteer centers, State and ∙ Home care services
County Animal Response Teams, etc.) ∙ Medical facilities
∙ Faith-based organizations ∙ Government agencies (all levels and disciplines)
∙ Individual citizens ∙ Embassies
∙ Community leaders (e.g., representatives from specific ∙ Local Planning Councils (e.g., Citizen Corps Councils,
segments of the community, including seniors, minority Local Emergency Planning Committees)
populations, and non-English speakers) ∙ Chambers of commerce
Emergency Management: Whole Community Approach
∙ Nonprofit organizations
∙ Advocacy groups
∙ Media outlets
∙ Airports
∙ Public transportation systems
∙ Utility providers
An example of implementing a whole community approach
occurred in 2011 when Miami-Dade County performed a
pilot effort of their plan. Stakeholders included FEMA,
South Florida Region of the American Red Cross, Commu-
nities United Coalition of Churches, the Islamic Schools of
South Florida and more. Miami-Dade made the following
developments from the results:
∙ A network of 25 newly affiliated groups now partnering
with emergency management and the Red Cross;
∙ Identification of 65 houses of worship, community
groups, and religious broadcasters who can support dis-
aster communications and language translation;
∙ New capacity to serve 8000 survivors;
∙ Nine facilities already in the community identified as
potential new sites for feeding and sheltering; and
∙ Five existing facilities identified as new points of distri-
bution for commodities (p. 13).[5]
Noting the positive impact of proactive approaches, it is
a recommendation for FEMA along with state and local
officials to mandate the creation of whole community
approach plans for disaster response while also requiring
mock exercises. Like many emergency operations centers,
performing pilot studies can assist in recognizing where fur-
ther development of a plan needs to occur. Preparation is
key each phase of emergency management and needs to
be given appropriate attention.
CONCLUSION
The future of emergency management is difficult to deter-
mine due to its reliance on uncertain situations. Disasters
are unpredictable in their impact on communities, yet it
has become more apparent that the whole community
must be involved in the mitigation, preparation, response,
and recovery efforts. Federal, local and state partners
must coordinate their efforts for positive collaboration.
One way to create these effective efforts is to create a com-
mon operating picture, which allows for development,
adaptation, and assessment by the whole community.
It becomes the role of emergency managers to provide a
space for critical dialogue and to maintain the overarching
goal of government in providing a framework focused on
engaging and protecting their respective citizenry. Federal
Emergency Management Agency acknowledges successful
creation and implementation of these whole community
approaches requires a major overhaul in how emergency
5
managers views, thinks about and speaks to community
resilience; however, they have confidence in each commu-
nity being able to create positive, proactive change.
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