Recovery, Renewal, Resilience

Such as ISO22301 'Business continuity management systems' from The British Standards Institution (BSI).

Guidance such as this addresses 'financial, legal, regulatory, environmental, reputational and emotional consequences arising from a risk or actual incident, and the consequences of activities associated with organizational recovery'. It also acknowledges the importance of flexible and scalable recovery in times of uncertainty.

Impact Assessments can inform evolving governance during recovery, and incorporate the views of multiple stakeholders.

Reference: Chief Resilience Officer, USA

In this briefing, we present an initial framework to assess the impact of COVID-19, building upon the UK Government’s National Recovery Guidance and Emergency Response and Recovery Guidance. This framework provides the structure to document national/international early recovery lessons for COVID-19 in The Manchester Briefing.

The framework asks you to consider types of impact, and how you can address each to enable recovery to take place. To view this framework, follow the source link below to TMB Issue 1 (p.7).

Local government should analyse the impact of Covid-19 on all aspects of their cities. These should be formed as impact assessments that analyse:

• Local Community Impacts (from national guidance)
• Humanitarian Impact Assessment (from ERF Humanitarian Assistance Plan)
• Equality Impact Assessments
• Multi-agency impact analysis

Local government should assign appropriate senior officers and other knowledgeable parties to the Recovery Coordination Group. These staff will plan recovery by designing and implementing aspects of recovery and decide how this can be done more effectively for the recovery of all of society. Key roles in the Recovery Coordination Group includes:

• Strategic Lead
• Tactical Lead
• Secretariat/Programme Management Officer
• Functional representatives: Appropriate staff from relevant sectors

Reference: Essex County Council-Emergency Planning & Resilience, UK

Local government should ask the Recovery Co-ordination Group to develop a wide-ranging recovery strategy and action plan, focussing on short, medium and long term activities. This group should include governance arrangements and sub-groups to address particular aspects of recovery and should plan for the transition between response and recovery phases of Covid-19.

Reference: Essex County Council-Emergency Planning & Resilience, UK

Local government should assess the continuity of recovery strategies across national boundaries to ensure all areas understand the strategic objectives of their neighbours. This should consider how the control of population movement could minimise risk of resurgence of Covid-19, and how the simultaneous opening of services could support national economy but compromise other aspects of recovery including the prevention of subsequent waves of infection.

Reference: State Volunteer Coordinator, USA

Local government should think about impact assessment in its widest form including assessing the impact of Covid-19 on following categories:

• Business and economy
• Environment and infrastructure
• Finance and legal
• Health and welfare
• Communications
• Community recovery
• Science and technology

Reference: Essex County Council-Emergency Planning & Resilience, UK

Local government should collect stakeholder and community feedback on actions and their delivery. This will monitor and evaluate strategies to ensure stakeholders' needs are being met and that actions are having the desired impacts.

Reference: Essex County Council-Emergency Planning & Resilience

Local government should evaluate the needs of their communities. This should agree a framework to collect and prioritise needs. To support this, local government could consider the following frameworks to ensure their evaluation of need is rigorous and consistent:

• Maslow's hierarchy of needs
• Principles of resilience
• Kubler Ross Grief Cycle
• Walt Disney Method (vision, logic, action)

References:

Chief Resilience Officer, Netherlands

Essex County Council-Emergency Planning & Resilience, UK

Local government should assess the 'Disaster Resilience Scorecard for Public Health' and whether it is helpful to their recovery planning for Covid-19. The assessment should consider its attributes for providing holistic needs assessments through its multi-sectoral rapid assessments for recovery.

Local government should assess whether the 'Disaster Resilience Scorecard for Public Health' can inform its thinking about aspects of recovery. This scorecard is described in Topic 1 of this briefing in terms of how is provides attributes for rapid assessment to support holistic approaches to thinking about recovery.

Local government should strengthen and support public health systems by ensuring representation of all sectors on the Recovery Coordination Group. The Recovery Coordination Group should take multiple actions simultaneously to ensure swift progress on recovery is made.

This briefing explores the UNDRR’s Disaster Resilience Scorecard (DRS) and its Public Health Addendum (PHA) guidance to assess response and recovery. Both frameworks can also be used to assess potential secondary emergencies during e.g. COVID-19 (e.g. a flood) and their impacts on the healthcare system.

To read this briefing in full, follow the source link below to TMB Issue 1 (p.1-6).

Local government should identify lessons learned and update their DRR plans, procedures and practices with knowledge gained during the Covid-19 response. This should integrate lessons from all sectors to improve DRR practices with information about epidemics that effect all aspects of society, commerce and life. Covid-19 has change thinking that pandemics were limited to the health sector and has moved its prominence into all sectors and to all stakeholder. Cities are now epidemic aware and this social and institutional memory should be recorded and used to inform plans.

Reference: American Red Cross

Local government should ensure empathy is prominent in the Recovery Coordination Group including in all strategic decision making and activities and the application of 'Principles of Resilience' to provide an all-of-society approach that considers need and their circumstance.

Reference: Essex County Council-Emergency Planning & Resilience, UK

Local government should create a Recovery and Humanitarian Advisory Group to specifically address the multifaceted needs of vulnerable people during the recovery. This group should provide strategic overview, co-ordination, and direction of work being done across the response and within local governments which is relevant to 'humanitarian assistance' and 'recovery'. This group would aim to minimise duplication of efforts and gaps and reduces the risk that people assume that widespread help is being delivered when actually more targeted is being done - leaving gaps.

The Recovery and Humanitarian Advisory Group should:

• appoint a Chair and identify members
• provide advice during the response phase
• encourage empathy in strategic decision making as well as a people-focused approach
• appoint a co-ordinator to help administer the group

The RHAG will provide specific humanitarian assistance information into the Recovery Coordination Group (and may eventually be subsumed into that group).

Reference: Essex County Council-Emergency Planning & Resilience

Local government should create a Recovery Co-ordination Group to co-ordinate a wide ranging, county-wide approach to recovery. This group should provide strategic leadership and coordination to all partners across the city as it seeks to recover from Covid-19. This group has a broad remit, and thereby differs to the narrow remit of the Recovery and Humanitarian Advisory Group which will provide reports into the Recovery Co-ordination Group.

Reference: Essex County Council-Emergency Planning & Resilience, UK

Local government should develop recovery plans that include potential for cascading, simultaneous disasters which may require emergency responses activities e.g. evacuation of homes during a flood, amid the epidemic.

Local government should initiate a Recovery Coordination Group to begin planning the recovery of the effects of Covid-19. At a strategic level, the Corporate Leadership Team should appoint a lead strategic officer to provide strategic oversight and decision making for the recovery.

Reference: Essex County Council-Emergency Planning & Resilience, UK