CRR: Before the Implementing the Five E's, Focus on the Five U's

Community Risk Reduction (CRR) has replaced what we once called fire prevention and code enforcement. Some may think this moniker is simply new buzzwords for an old idea. Other less charitable folks may consider the new emphasis misplaced or the efforts misdirected. Wherever you stand, the movement is real. And it's happening beyond the United States as emergency services realize their focus has shifted from fighting fires to managing risks of all sorts and embracing all segments of their communities.

CRR advocates speak of the Five E's as a way of explaining the expanded focus of this movement beyond the traditional focus on fire prevention:

• Education -- efforts to increase awareness of hazards and individual and collective capabilities to deal with them through avoidance, prevention, mitigation, response, or recovery.
• Engineering -- designing and maintaining systems to reduce the likelihood or consequences when hazards strike.
• Enforcement -- compelling compliance with legal mandates in the form of codes, standards, and recommended practices.
• Economic incentives -- encouraging and sustaining a safety culture by rewarding investments in risk reduction.
• Emergency response -- the last line of defense, a system of first responders, including community members, who are trained to take appropriate action to reduce harm.

How then should we target these programs? I prefer to think of the answer to this question in terms of five U's:

• Unaware -- people who lack the information or insight necessary to assess and address risks.
• Unable -- those who appreciate the risks they face but lack the resources -- financial, technical, or social to take appropriate action.
• Uncertain -- anyone eager and able to act but unsure about which option to choose or confused about how to proceed.
• Unwilling -- those who consider action to reduce risk unnecessary or inappropriate due to ideological or economic circumstances.
• Unavailable -- those responsible parties who cannot be identified or are simply inaccessible to influence.

All too often, we assume which camp the audience for a particular CRR intervention falls into largely based on the type of effort involved. In other words, if you work in public education and outreach, every person you meet is an opportunity to raise awareness. If you're an enforcer, everyone needs to be convinced to comply. And if you're an engineer you are always looking for ways to improve systems and processes.

I've found it more helpful not to assume which disposition someone possesses beforehand. This is actually the Sixth U -- Understanding.

Asking questions and really listening to the answers can lead to much more effective CRR interventions. Targeting efforts to where people actually are and not just where you want them to be makes a big difference in the effectiveness of any CRR intervention.

I discovered this when I worked in emergency management. The staff in my office responsible for planning and training expressed endless frustration that their efforts weren't producing a higher level of community preparedness. Why, they wondered, do people find it so difficult to do something as simple as stocking up with at least three-days' of food, water, medicines, and other supplies before a disaster strikes? How will we ever convince them that they need two-weeks' worth or more?

The answer was even simpler: People heard that message differently than those who delivered it. When you asked people about their personal and household preparedness you learned that many had taken steps that would hold them in good stead when disaster strikes. They just didn't do things the way we asked them to. Instead, they took small steps that aligned with their interests and daily actions in other aspects of their lives. The most important of these, we learned, were planting home gardens and cycling or walking to work a couple of days a week instead of driving.

When we started asking more questions, we found the answers we had been providing weren't wrong. They just weren't oriented toward the audience we wanted to reach. Many of the people we reached actually felt turned off by our message, because it seemed we wanted them to do something else besides the small steps they were already taking to improve their resilience.

This became clearest when we looked at how community members were engaging one another. When we looked beyond the 'usual suspects' we found lots of community-based organizations -- formal and informal -- that were well-placed to render aid and facilitate response and recovery operations when disasters occurred. They just didn't fall under the Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) banner. They were more likely to have names like book club, soccer team, tool library, or knitting circle.

By making our message more accessible, we encouraged many more people to take part in disaster risk reduction and resilience activities. The most notable of these were a bicycle rodeo where participants practiced skills that might come in handy after a disaster and an increase in amateur radio licensing classes and informal nets for newly licensed Hams.

The Five U's gave us a different way of thinking about what people needed and how we could meet them where they were. Understanding how people heard our message helped us craft it and deliver it more effectively and efficiently.

So, the next time you look at your community, ask citizens "what do you most need to make yourself and your neighbors more ready, resilient, and responsible for seeing yourselves through whatever comes next?" And "what are you already doing that I can help you do better or more of?"

N.B.: This article was updated on June 3, 2021 to add "uncertain" as the Fifth U. This just goes to show. sometimes even the best listeners need to calm their inner voice before summarizing o sharing their thoughts with others. Thanks to everyone who provided feedback on this piece.