How to prepare for what you're not prepared for
The checklist we ended up with
Participants and questions
- Crisis counselor
- How to convince colleagues to consider crisis management
- Figure out how to step up when things happen. Find ways to do so efficiently.
- Time management during a crisis
- Framework for response
- Emergency communications - what are the channels if cellphone towers go down?
- Personal/family/community preparation to reduce social unrest
- Local knowledge interface with specialists
- Volunteer recruitment and management
Disaster Cycle
Prepare -> Respond -> Recover -> Mitigation
- Prepare (stockpile food, etc)
- Response (immediately after)
- Recover (rebuilding)
- Mitigation (refactoring strategically to reduce harm next time)
- Affected population needs to be better off after than they were before. (e.g. Rwanda channeled resources into improving the country). Sometimes big entities (e.g. google, government) quash smaller community-driven efforts.
- Official response agencies need to improve. Digital response has to be in service to the real needs of the community.
It's hard to convince folks to be prepared for a disaster unless they have personally been in one. Self-care and community care is the key to that resilience.
Urgent vs. Important - How to communicate to large organizations "How can we help?" What will change if we do X for you? Why aren't you already doing that? How to sift through urgency patterns. Is there a formal name for triage for processes or information requests during a crisis situation?
It's OK to say no! Take care of yourself, and triage to make sure that what is asked needs to be done and is important.
How do you prepare for crises?
- DDOS/hack
- Electronic invasion/hacking
- Personal/health crisis
- Natural disaster
- Social unrest
- War zone
- Registration/Deportation/internment
- Bankruptcy
- Domestic violence
- Threat modeling
- Conflict
- Personal care
- Natural disaster
Matching area of influence vs area of concern
- How can we realistically map areas of concern, and concentrate on what you can do
Exceeded Capacity - what happens?
- Muddle through, have health crisis afterwards
- Be in denial
- Say 'No'
- Delegate
- Ask for help
- Panic
What are some guiding principles for smaller groups to have?
- Identify the biggest concerns / thread modeling with political & personal included
- Reaching out to other places with crisis experience, seeing what they did.
- Identify and support the different individuals respond
- Think about difficult things (e.g. waste, bodies) that need dealing with
- Think about dependencies or systems - could you survive 3-7 days?
- Consider contingency plans
- Identify community resources (e.g. skill sets, food supplies)
- Prepare resources (e.g. large laminated maps of the area)
- Identify potential burnout roles and patterns, offer interventions
- Perform ongoing personal and community care to increase resilience
Daniel Homesy - Works for the SFO city government
NERT - neighborhood emergency response team - first round of support who
CERT - community/city
VOAD - Volunteer Organisations Active in Disaster (churches, HS groups) - groups who are active anyway but can be activated (by e.g. FEMA). Certified by the formal sector. You can register with one of them.
Digital Response List
Rebecca Solnit - A Paradise Made in Hell
scifiaction.club
Keep track of the response of the formal sector. Hold them responsible.