Working Group Recommendations

Following the expert presentations, workshop participants broke into working groups to discuss concrete recommendations that could help the disaster resilience ecosystem better use technology to build resilience, particularly in vulnerable communities. Each working group discussed the applications of one specific technology—ranging from ride sharing apps to neighborhood messaging to mapping—and how such technologies might be deployed to improve disaster resilience.

The groups identified challenges and avenues for exploration that intersected across five major themes: the establishment of a common language and lexicon around resilience and vulnerability; the effective gathering, use, and sharing of data; the opportunities and challenges of public-private partnerships; the need to convene across sectors and silos to improve research and development; and the need for improved physical and virtual infrastructure to maintain systems and improve access to services. While participants made most of the following recommendations with national and federal government leaders in mind, many of these recommendations can apply to regional, state, and local actors as well. A few also pertain to the private sector.

Establish a Common Lexicon around Resilience and Vulnerability

A number of working groups detailed the importance of having a shared vocabulary and understanding of what it means to be resilient and what it means for a community to be vulnerable. Participants proposed the following measures:

• With input from agencies, sectors, and affected communities, develop a state and/or federal Resilience Index to determine readiness in communities. Use the index as a common frame when discussing resilience, preparedness, and vulnerability.
• Private and public leaders must leverage the advantages of mapping technologies to visualize disaster vulnerability and structural vulnerabilities (like race and poverty) to generate insights into uniquely vulnerable communities.
• Include perspectives of residents in vulnerable communities in the development and rollout of the Resilience Index.

Develop Standards for Gathering, Using, and Sharing Data

All working groups mentioned the importance of actionable data in both mitigation and response scenarios. To collect, use, and share data effectively, groups identified a number of action steps:

• Increase access to government, historical, and environmental data by making sure they are available to the public and machine readable.
• Ensure that public and private data shows up in systems that are interoperable across the public, private, and non-profit sectors, and that different kinds of data (satellite imagery, flood data, crowdsourced data, etc.) can be aggregated across platforms.
• Create intentional pathways for citizen-scientists to provide community-based data in mitigation and adaptation scenarios, especially in communities that are identified as vulnerable.
• Develop protocols in both public and private sectors to use and verify crowdsourced or citizen-provided data in real-time response scenarios.
• Develop legal frameworks to allow for the sharing of personally identifiable information (PII) in tightly defined response contexts.
• Identify filters to sift through volumes of data for generating actionable real-time information and intelligence.

Expand and Regulate Public-Private Partnerships

Event participants acknowledged the promise of public-private partnerships and suggested a number of guidelines for building these kinds of partnerships in the disaster response field:

• Protect vulnerable populations through regulations, disincentives, or incentives to enable private companies to provide services without regard to the profitability of those services.
• Enable private companies to offer disaster services (such as ridesharing or flood map modeling) by writing broad agreements that allow a range of companies to engage as government partners.
• Anticipate liability and insurance questions when considering the use of private resources in response scenarios.
• Establish a pilot, such as for ridesharing services during a disaster, in a controlled environment, such as a military base.

Convene for Better Research and Development

The importance of convening actors from different sectors to spark innovation, research, and technology development featured in a number of working groups. Recommendations included:

• Build “sandbox spaces” to bring together experts from public, private, and non-profit sectors, as well as academia, and, crucially, technology users themselves, to develop better technologies.
• Break down silos by hosting events such as hackathons and building incubators or accelerators that work with government to deliver on disaster resilience needs.
• Learn lessons about the use and deployment of technology in disaster response from the international context.

Improve Physical Infrastructure for Readiness and in Response

The working groups identified a number of physical infrastructure needs as crucial to the continued use of technology in developing disaster resilience, especially in vulnerable communities. Groups proposed the following:

• Improve broadband access, particularly in rural areas.
• Build and improve on existing systems of ground sensors and other data collection devices that monitor the environmental conditions that serve as indicators for disasters.
• Supplement technological sensors and satellite data with a repository of community-provided data.
• Build redundancies into the power grid, since electricity is essential to run many of the technologies.
• Update housing codes and building standards to meet community needs when rebuilding after a disaster.