Human Resilience Needed Too

Video capture of line up for gasoline from WSB Television in Atlanta.

Resilience is increasingly accepted as a fundamental objective of Homeland Security. It is most often applied to technological and infrastructure issues. Psychological and social resilience is also an important goal for Homeland Security planning and preparedness.

Last Wednesday the Reform Institute released a new report (pdf) focused on resilience.

Regardless of our best efforts, we cannot prevent the unpreventable. Natural disasters, industrial accidents, labor disputes and the vile acts of determined terrorist organizations represent ongoing threats that possess the potential to inflict great harm and severely damage our economy and global leadership. The simple fact is that not all these hazards can be averted. Certainly we can reduce the likelihood of terrorist attacks through the use of competent intelligence systems and reasonable security measures. Likewise we can decrease the incidence of industrial accidents and labor disputes through sound management practices. Nevertheless, devastating incidents will occur. What is within our power, however, is to better prepare our nation and its critical infrastructure to absorb the blows of catastrophes in order to prevent them from seriously disrupting critical activities and destabilizing the Nation. Adopting a national mindset of resilience must be become a priority.

The Reform Institute outlines how resilience can be advanced through preparedness, protection, response, and recovery. The report also offers this definition of resilience: "A truly resilient nation can take a punch and can bounce back to a state of near normalcy in a relatively brief period of time. It faces up to the fact that catastrophes are inevitable and that its national focus should be on putting in place or reinforcing systems and programs that will help to ensure that its critical infrastructure can endure the worst of what nature and mankind have to offer."

Many studies have pointed to the lack of resiliency - even the brittle nature - of US critical infrastructure. In 1997 the General Accountability Office listed the nation's critical infrastructure as a high risk issue (pdf). In a May, 2008 report the GAO found, "The nation faces a host of serious infrastructure challenges. Demand has outpaced the capacity of our nation's surface transportation and aviation systems, resulting in decreased performance and reliability. In addition, water utilities are facing pressure to upgrade the nation's aging and deteriorating water infrastructure to improve security, serve growing demands, and meet new regulatory requirements. Given these types of challenges and the federal government's fiscal outlook, it is clear that the federal government cannot continue with business as usual. Rather, a fundamental reexamination of government programs, policies, and activities is needed."

A recently updated study by the American Society of Civil Engineers found that that that status of American physical infrastructure is close to failing. One example: "27.1 percent of bridges are structurally deficient or functionally obsolete."

The current gasoline shortage in the Southeastern United States resulted, in part, from a vulnerability caused by the geographic concentration of critical infrastructure. The shut down of 15 gulf coast refineries by Hurricane Ike reduced regional fuel supplies by approximately 30 percent.

Many suggest this reduction should not have produced significant public inconvenience, but television pictures of long lines at gas stations and empty fuel pumps certainly created the impression of a significant shortage. A story in yesterday's (Sunday) Atlanta Journal Constitution explains,

"...panic buying, fed by continuous news coverage, created the shortage. “We’ll have a shortage as long as people believe we have a shortage,” Tudor said. “As soon as people believe there is going to be gas tomorrow, they won’t feel the necessity of trying to fill up today.”

Just as oil prices spiked, Atlanta television stations began “trumpeting short supplies of gasoline and empty tanks at stations,” said former WAGA-TV reporter Doug Richards, who critiques local television news on the blog Live Apartment Fire (a wry reference to a commonly overplayed story). Most reporters, Richards said in an interview, pleaded for calm, urging motorists not to buy unneeded gas. But those pleas, Richards said, may have backfired.

“I’m reluctant to say TV helped contribute to the panic,” he said. “However, certainly a lot of those consumers of gasoline watched TV and put two and two together” and headed out to buy gas. The shortage was a natural television story, Richards said, combining human drama – angry, anxious motorists – with strong visuals of cars lined up for gas.

Public reaction to the shortage, as framed by the media, made the situation - at the very least - much worse than it needed to be. Rather than being resilient - rather than bouncing back - the public reaction became a heavy drag on the system.

Visual evidence - on television and from seeing long-lines - overcame any words of reassurance, no matter how credible. The immediate visual evidence was especially powerful because very little had been done to prepare either the physical supply chain or the public psyche for a predictable fuel shortage.

Writing in the Australian Journal of Emergency Management (pdf) Brigit Macquire and Patrick Hagan argue that, "research into human reactions to disaster has overwhelmingly recognised that resilience in response to disaster is much more common than suggested by the media, and “mass trauma may not necessarily be a given” (Almedom, 2005, p. 254). In the immediate aftermath of a disaster, communities tend to come together, with more prosocial behaviour being demonstrated by most individuals (Auf der Heide, 2004; Barsky, Trainor, & Torres, 2006). To be effective, emergency management plans need to build on the capacities arising from naturally emergent social resilience."

But fundamental to effective resilience is accurate information communicated effectively and credibly. Too often in trying to avoid - unlikely - social panic leaders can inadvertently prompt the public to counter-productive behavior by failing to communicate in a way that reinforces resilience. Many elected leaders are especially reluctant to discuss catastrophic possibilities and as a result fail to cultivate the psychological readiness that is essential to social resilience.

Writing in Foreign Affairs (and other publications), Stephen Flynn has suggested four keys to reinforcing resilience:

First, there is robustness, the ability to keep operating or to stay standing in the face of disaster. In some cases, it translates into designing structures or systems (such as buildings and bridges) strong enough to take a foreseeable punch. In others (such as developing transportation, energy, and communications networks), robustness requires devising substitutable or redundant systems that can be brought to bear should something important break or stop working. Robustness also entails investing in and maintaining elements of critical infrastructure, such as dams and levees, so that they can withstand low-probability but high-consequence events.

Second is resourcefulness, which involves skillfully managing a disaster once it unfolds. It includes identifying options, prioritizing what should be done both to control damage and to begin mitigating it, and communicating decisions to the people who will implement them. Resourcefulness depends primarily on people, not technology...

The third element of resilience is rapid recovery, which is the capacity to get things back to normal as quickly as possible after a disaster. Carefully drafted contingency plans, competent emergency operations, and the means to get the right people and resources to the right places are crucial...

Finally, resilience means having the means to absorb the new lessons that can be drawn from a catastrophe.

The Southeastern fuel shortage has been less than a catastrophe, but it offers important lessons-to-be-learned. We depend on robust and resourceful citizens, as well as robust and resourceful systems. Fundamental to real resilience is public understanding. Resilience is an outcome of the public being meaningfully aware of risks and being prepared psychologically and practically to engage the risks.