Basic Terminology

Preparedness

Preparedness refers to the actions taken to plan, organize, equip, train, and exercise to build and sustain the capabilities necessary to prevent, protect against, mitigate the effects of, respond to, and recover from those threats that pose the greatest risk to the security of your community. Preparedness is a continuous process.

Preparedness activity includes developing a comprehensive damage assessment plan and training based on the predetermined priorities identified in the risk assessment and/or vulnerability assessment. For example: If there is flooding in your community, how will this affect bridges in low lying areas? As part of your community’s preparedness, you need to determine what actions need to be taken to be prepared for this event.

Response

Response refers to those capabilities necessary to save lives, protect property and the environment, and meet basic human needs after an incident has occurred.

Generally speaking, effective planning (including practice through training and exercise) leads to an effective response.

Throughout the response activity, even after the initial damage assessment, additional damages can continue to be identified, the value of damages can still be determined, and mitigation opportunities can be identified. Keep in mind that some response activity continues as recovery begins.

Recovery

Recovery refers to those capabilities necessary to assist communities affected by an incident to recover effectively, including, but not limited to:

• Rebuilding infrastructure systems;

• Providing adequate interim and long-term housing for survivors;

• Restoring health, social, and community services;

• Promoting economic development;

• Restoring natural and cultural resources.

The community actually begins the recovery process simultaneously with response efforts. In addition, the ongoing activities of preparedness, protection, prevention, and mitigation also occur during the recovery period. Keep in mind that this can be an ideal time to identify mitigation opportunities because of grant funding that can become available following a hazard event.

During recovery activities, evaluate repairs and reconstruction. Then update plans based on improvements to infrastructure or other facilities.

Risk Assessment

Risk assessments identify and characterize all hazards that are likely to occur, and answer the question, "What could happen to adversely impact the community?"

Hazard Vulnerability Assessment

Hazard vulnerability assessments provide information about how the hazards could affect the community, and answer the question, "How and where could each hazard affect the community?" 

Hazard

A hazard is something that is potentially dangerous or harmful. It is often the root cause of an unwanted outcome. Hazards may be categorized as natural or as adversarial/human-caused.

• Natural hazards are caused by natural events that pose a threat to lives, property, and other assets. Examples include hurricanes, earthquakes, and tornadoes.

• Adversarial or human-caused hazards include technological hazards (caused by the tools, machines, and substances used in everyday life) and intentional acts (caused by people attacking or damaging what is valuable in a society). Examples include hazardous materials releases, major computer system failures (e.g., 911 system), terrorist attacks, and riots.

Vulnerability

Vulnerability is a description of how exposed or susceptible an asset is to damage. Vulnerability depends on an asset’s construction, contents, the economic value of its functions or services, and replacement/repair costs.

The vulnerability of one element of the community is often related to the vulnerability of another, and a hazard may cause indirect damages in addition to the damages that are caused by the direct impact. For example, many businesses depend on uninterrupted electrical power – if an electric substation is flooded, it will affect not only the substation itself, but a number of businesses as well. A refrigerated warehouse may lose its entire inventory and suffer severe economic losses as a result of the power failure. Often, indirect effects can be much more widespread and damaging than direct ones.

Risk

Risk is the possibility of loss or injury. More specifically, it is an estimated impact that a hazard would have on people, services, facilities, and structures in a community. It is the likelihood of a hazard event resulting in an adverse condition that causes injury or damage.

Risk is often expressed in relative terms such as a high, moderate, or low likelihood of sustaining damage above a particular threshold due to a specific type of hazard event. It also can be expressed in terms of potential monetary losses associated with the intensity of the hazard.

Individual Assistance (IA)

Individual Assistance (IA) is funding or direct assistance to individuals, families and businesses in an area whose property has been damaged or destroyed and whose losses are not covered by insurance. It is meant to help with critical expenses that cannot be covered in other ways. This assistance is intended to assist a community in restoring damaged property to as near its condition before the disaster as possible. Whenever feasible, efforts should be made to rebuild in a way that makes the community more disaster resistant, through mitigation activities.

While some housing assistance funds are available through FEMA’s Individuals and Households Program, most disaster assistance to individuals from the Federal government is in the form of loans administered by the Small Business Administration (SBA).