How can hazard mitigation enhance community resilience and sustainability?

Hazards, threats, and incidents are identified based on the likelihood of impact. A hurricane in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean is a hazard; when a hurricane forecast model shows a hurricane will likely strike a populated area it becomes a threat,l; and when it makes landfall, causes damage, and response and recovery action occur it is an incident. Human-caused incidents are those that imply intent, such as an act of terrorism or an active shooter incident. Technological disasters are those that occur at infrastructure created by humans where an emergency incident is created due to system malfunction or human error.

Great article. Informative. Mitigation is the “actions” taken to reduce the severity of an incident. The process starts long before this, however. It takes many eyes looking at many different intersections of society, both as they are now and where they are going. In order To be efficient and cost-effective in the actions that we take, we must plan accordingly. You must be precise and targeted so your actions pay dividends down stream. This is where intellectual diversity is needed for outside the box thinking. Plan, prevent, mitigate, then respond.

Great reminder. I would encourage anyone in healthcare preparedness to think of the "community" mentioned in this article as their healthcare organization. The principles are the same, we just need to apply them to our specific community. Identifying hazards / risks / vulnerabilities for our organizations and working to mitigate them will create a more resilient healthcare organization.

The hazard mitigation process also makes you better at risk identification, risk management and emergency response to name a few. It adds to your skill, experience and knowledge for all of the other phases of emergency preparation: prevention/mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery.

A culture of Safety should be promoted among the community. There is no better community, outreach than having programs that that engage, educates, and informs the public. It’s not only increases public readiness, it creates a sense of belonging and community. Businesses gravitate towards areas with proper emergency safety, plans, public services, and response capabilities. Safety is a team sport.

I spent a number of years in the 911 system in a very busy city. And often times the emergency often overlooked are those already frail due to whatever disease process they deal with. Often times the stress of turbulent news (weather/economic/political) can be the straw that breaks the camels back. This heightened stress exasperates any chronic disease process- especially if one isnt fully informed. Great impact could be with a community messaging board to reach these patients through whatever digital media to reassure them. Data could be collected at the public safety level, call lists could be assembled.