Susan Gibbons
Case Western Reserve University - Weatherhead School of Management
David Cooperrider
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The Disaster Resilience Scorecard (DRS) is a collaborative, pro bono effort between AECOM and IBM to help cities and businesses respond to the risks they face from natural disasters which have steadily increased over the last 30 years. It recognizes that true resilience lies in social cohesion.
In 2010, AECOM held a day-long workshop in San Francisco with representatives from the private and public sectors to discuss how to improve disaster resilience as a public and private sector responsibility. The discussions started with the United Nations ‘Ten Essentials for Making Cities Resilient’ framework and evolved during the course of the day. The breakthrough occurred when it became clear all participants wanted resilience in their community but were unclear how to measure it. It was that awareness that triggered AECOM and IBM to collaborate to create the Disaster Resilience Scorecard. Since then, the Scorecard has been utilized by dozens of cities around the world to evaluate their preparedness for a natural disaster and to develop a multi-year action plan to prepare for and recover from natural disasters.
The first step to addressing resilience is to understand the risks a community faces: what is the most severe-most probable acute shock event that may occur. The acute shocks vary greatly with geographic setting – coastal cities have different risks than cities in the Midwest. For example, San Francisco would need to consider earthquakes, sea level rise, and flooding. New Orleans would need to consider hurricanes and the impact of flooding. Joplin, MO would need to prepare for tornadoes.
The Disaster Resilience Scorecard includes key performance indicators (KPI) for each of the Ten Essentials, nearly 100 KPIs in total. This knowledge is the building block to develop multi-year plans to improve resilience. As Dale Sands described it, “The Ten Essentials was like a picture frame to work within.” It is a good framework, but measurement of resilience was necessary. Shortly thereafter, Dale and his team, working with IBM, created the Disaster Resilience Scorecard.
AECOM and IBM applied the Disaster Resilience Scorecard in Indonesia, The Philippines, India, Angola, the United States and across Europe.
The Disaster Resilience Scorecard was issued to the public domain in March, 2014. It was reviewed and revised in 2015. The plan is to update the Scorecard on a yearly basis with input from applications across the world.
Within the DRS, many aspects of a community are considered, including condition of existing infrastructure, proximity of vulnerable populations to nature disasters and the extent of social cohesion that exists today. The resilience action plan concerns the ‘built environment’ as well as the ‘operating environment’ of the community.
In addition AECOM and IBM have collaborated to create other tools that are derivatives of the Disaster Resilience Scorecard, including the Small- to Mid-Size Business Enterprise (SME) Disaster Resilience Survey instrument and the “Utility Disaster Resilience Scorecard." The Utility Scorecard has 60 KPI’s to assist utilities improve their preparedness, address response actions and set foundation for a rapid recovery after an event. The Utility Scorecard will be beta tested later this year with the Miami-Dade Water and Sewer District.
Key developers include Dale Sands (AECOM), Michael Nolan (AECOM now employed by the United Nations), and Dr. Peter Williams, Distinguished Engineer, Chief Technical Officer for Big Green Innovations within IBM.
According to Dale Sands, the DRS filled an important gap in the climate adaptation field: “We recognized that there was an incredible need for this due to capital losses skyrocketing and people dying needlessly. And, we did it in a way for the world to have access to it by not patenting or copyrighting the scorecard. AECOM felt very good about this, too.” The Disaster Resilience Scorecard has not been copyrighted or patented but released to the public domain for others to access and use.
In 2010, after the Asian Pacific Economic Cooperative (APEC) meetings, which started in San Francisco and finished in Honolulu, Dale Sands presented a paper with a representative from the United Nations that highlighted the need for cities to improve their resilience given the increase in urbanization and increasing frequency and intensity of natural disasters. It was after that presentation to APEC that the public-private sector meeting was convened in San Francisco which ultimately led to the development of the Disaster Resilience Scorecard.
After recognizing that there was a significant knowledge gap in the emerging field of resilience, AECOM recognized they had the engineering expertise and global footprint to develop a tool like the Disaster Resilience Scorecard.
Dale Sands and Michael Nolan wanted to put something in the public domain for everyone to use. AECOM and IBM did not patent or copyright the Disaster Resilience Scorecard.
The data is conclusive that natural disasters are increasing in frequency and intensity. For example, over 30 years from 1985 - 2015, natural disasters/loss events have increased from an average of 670 events to an average of 870 events from 2005 - 2014, to 980 events in 2014 and 1060 events in 2015. While the loss of life was declined the capital losses from natural disasters has skyrocketed.
Natural disasters bring about loss of life, loss of infrastructure and loss of economic stability for cities, countries and businesses. There is significant loss of life during these events. For example, 220,000 fatalities from the 2004 Sri Lanka earthquake/tsunami, 140,000 fatalities due to Cyclone Nargis that hit Bangladesh in 2008, and 70,000 fatalities in Europe due to the 2003 heatwave. Regarding capital losses, , only a small percentage of capital losses, are covered by insurance. In North America 56% of the losses incurred in 2015 were insured. In contrast, only 1% of the losses in Africa were covered by Insurance. The notion that, ‘insurance will take care of me’ is not true. The economic, social and environmental impacts of natural disasters/loss events can be mitigated by fully understanding and defining what a city or business needs to do in order be more resilient and then designing to meet the resilience KPI’s in the scorecard. When disaster does strike, many times communities either struggle for years to rebound or never fully recover from the event. Consider New Orleans, which was the beneficiary of over $60B in recovery grants, the population 11 years after Katrina is 84% of its’ pre-Katrina size. When cities and businesses utilize the scorecard, they realize the mitigating the risk to be resilient far outweighs not taking action.
Cities and businesses need to take action together. The need is so great that only by aligning public and private resources together can the changes be made to avert coming natural disasters. Consider that 60-80% of investment in a city is from private sector.. For example, in Joplin MO, when the tornado’s hit this town few of the shelters were usable because they had not been maintained. The intensity of these tornado’s were not anticipated. The loss of life impacts the human capital required to run businesses effectively and to also utilize businesses products and services. This ultimately impacts communities and society. Companies also need to look at and understand their supply chains. For example, the 2014 floods in Thailand cost Toyota company over $1billion in lost sales because a Thai factory that made a part for all Toyota cars flooded and could not get back up and running for many months. This lack of understanding of the importance of resilience crippled Toyota’s ability to produce cars. The factory was not resilient to flooding and Toyota did not have a contingency plan.
Estimates for infrastructure spending indicate that within the next 15 years, approximately $90 trillion in infrastructure will be built around the world. Consider the urbanization trend in China: two cities the size of Chicago are being created every year. India is constructing one city the size of Chicago every year. Globally, 100 years ago, 10% of the population lived in a city or urban environment. Today, 50% of the population lives in a city. In 25 years, 70% of the world’s population will live in a city. Living in cities concentrates vulnerability. Therefore, cities need to be designed and built to be more resilient in response to climate change.
The DRS is about risk mitigation for losses in life, infrastructure and capital losses. By mitigating for these losses, AECOM is developing more sustainable communities.
The Disaster Resilience Scorecard received global recognition when it was selected to receive the Climate Adaptation Index 2015 prize from ND GAIN.
AECOM is a fully integrated professional and technical service firm that applies its expertise to design, build, finance, and operate infrastructure assets. The DRS positions AECOM to be a leader in the emerging field of designing for resilience.
The DRS shows a deeply rooted understanding of the trends and issues global climate change and natural disasters present. The DRS positions AECOM to maintain a leadership position in engineering and design with its customer base now and well into the future. The Rockefeller Foundation established the 100RC program that selects 100 Cities to receive grants to hire a Chief Resilience Officer and prepare a resilience plan. AECOM is working with 20 of the first 66 global Cities to receive grants as a measure of market position and anticipates to be engaged for many of the remaining 34 cities which were just announced in June, 2016.
The historic natural disaster data proves not being ‘resilient’ is a huge risk to Communities around the world. Costs are skyrocketing due to both urbanization and the increasing number of loss incidents occurring each year. Over the past 30 years, loss events have increased significantly. No one knows when or where the next natural disaster/loss event will occur, but not being prepared can significantly impact or wipe out a city as well as the businesses in those cities and neither may not be able to rebound from the catastrophe. The data is conclusive that utilizing the DRS can help to identify the risks and enable a cities and business to strategically plan and prioritize the steps required to be resilient to disasters.
When overall losses to a society are in the $billions, businesses are impacted significantly by loss of lives, infrastructure by not having running water, electric or gas services as well as capital losses. The increase in frequency of disasters means that a disaster event will most likely happen at some point in the future. Insurance only covers a small percentage of these losses. Therefore, designing for buildings and infrastructure to be more resilient will significantly mitigate losses in life, infrastructure and capital losses that businesses rely on to run efficiently and effectively.
The UNISDR has a toolkit for the DRS available on the website for cities to use:
http://www.unisdr.org/search?cx=014932112152556794315%3Aev9g2xr_5ni&cof=FORID%3A11&ie=UTF-8&q=disaster+resilience+toolkit&sa.x=13&sa.y=15
AECOM Documents demonstrating business commitment and value:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B3u3gqWRhllpREFneTF4bUpZR00
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B3u3gqWRhllpN0JMd3dOUHFrMjg
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B3u3gqWRhllpaGVobEVjR0RNdzA
Natural disasters significantly impact society. For example, the Nepal earthquake caused 9,000 deaths and totaled over $4.8 billion in infrastructure and capital losses. The lax building codes were not enforced and consequently many facilities and buildings were severely damaged or destroyed. It is important as they rebuild, that they adopt the ‘build back better’ resilience strategy. Resilience planning leads to a dramatic reduction in overall losses and faster rebounds.
Utilizing the Disaster Resilience Scorecard will help a community identify the potential disaster risks that they will be able to strategically mitigate with resiliency planning.
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Dale Sands, Senior Vice President and Global Director Metro & Climate Adaptation Services
