EUGENE, Ore. -- (April 4, 2011) -The Oregon Partnership for Disaster Resilience, a program of the University of Oregon, has recently helped communities along the state's southwest coast to adopt recovery plans that would reduce the human toll and economic impacts of disasters such as the earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan last month.

OPDR is wrapping up its recovery planning effort in Douglas, Lane, Coos and Curry counties. In 2008, OPDR assisted Douglas County in obtaining a $250,000 grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to fund the planning processes in the four counties. That followed a 2006 pilot project in Cannon Beach.

The emphasis of the current effort is to have communities develop a framework for how they would rebuild after an event such as the Japanese disaster. In 2009 and 2010, two community meetings were held in each county, and residents were asked to think about strategies for long-term recovery.

"We asked people to think about five main topic areas: health and human services, critical infrastructure and facilities, economy, government structure, and land use and development," says Stephanie Scafa, a graduate student in the UO's Department of Planning, Public Policy and Management and graduate research fellow for OPDR.

Scafa is currently organizing tabletop simulations in which city and county leaders can practice making decisions after a massive earthquake and tsunami. One simulation will be set a month after the disaster, when communities transition from response to recovery. The second simulation will be set one year after the disaster so that leaders can practice how they would allocate all of the federal and state recovery aid, along with donations from around the world.

The OPDR is part of the UO's Community Service Center, a research office affiliated with the Department of Planning, Public Policy and Management. The center assists Oregon communities by providing planning and technical assistance to solve local issues and improve the quality of life for residents. For OPDR, that means helping communities plan to reduce the impacts of a natural disaster and recover from a disaster after it happens.

Hazard recovery planning at the local level is unique in the United States. The need for recovery planning became obvious with the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami in 2004 and especially Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Despite those disasters, "there hasn't been a lot of progress on the federal level for federal recovery planning," says Josh Bruce, assistant director of OPDR.

States such as Florida that are regularly hit by hurricanes had hazard plans in place prior to Hurricane Katrina. In Florida, the plans are mandated by the state. But in Oregon, the recovery planning efforts have come from the grassroots at the local level, supported by the work at OPDR.

"Local communities in Oregon are ahead of the game," Bruce says.

About the University of Oregon
The University of Oregon is among the 108 institutions chosen from 4,633 U.S. universities for top-tier designation of "Very High Research Activity" in the 2010 Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. The UO also is one of two Pacific Northwest members of the Association of American Universities.

Contact: Karen Johnson, AAA communications, 541-346-3603, karenjj@uoregon.edu

Source: Josh Bruce, assistant director of OPDR, 541-346-7326, jdbruce@uoregon.edu

Links: http://opdr.uoregon.edu