TISP Surveys Regional Disaster Resilience Guide In 2006, The Infrastructure Security Partnership (TISP) published a guide to provide a much-needed strategy to develop the level of preparedness necessary for communities to adequately deal with major disasters in today’s complex and interdependent world. The Regional Disaster Resilience Guide (RDR Guide) has been widely distributed to assist agencies with managing collaborative actions throughout the planning process. The RDR Guide led many organizations in the direction of establishing their own regional disaster resilience programs. Now that the RDR Guide matured and resiliency concepts are taking hold, TISP looks to improve its resources and services for facilitating the development of policy and practice advancing infrastructure security and resilience. At the TISP Annual Infrastructure and Regional Resilience Conference in December 2009, Paula Scalingi, Director of the PNWER Center for Regional Disaster Resilience, announced plans for TISP to revise the RDR Guide and to write a compendium Critical Infrastructure Resilience Guide (CIR Guide). TISP is conducting a survey of the uses and advises of the Regional Disaster Resilience: A Guide for Developing an Action Plan. The survey is being conducted through Zoomerang until April 8, 2010 (http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/WEB22A5GUN6A6U). Responders should be able to complete the survey in 15 – 20 minutes. The information gathered in this survey is confidential and will only be used to validate developing resources supporting RDR Guide and CIR Guide program initiatives. TISP intends to aggregate survey responses and share the results with members of the Critical Infrastructure Resilience Committee (CIRC). Responders should take a few moments to refresh their knowledge of the RDR Guide. The guide can be downloaded on the TISP Web Site (http://tisp.org/index.cfm?cdid=10962&pid=10261). The RDR Guide provides key definitions and a set of common assumptions that underpin regional disaster resilience. Using a simple, practical how-to approach, the guide lists 12 categories of typical “needs” gleaned from lessons learned from previous disasters—natural and man-made. The guide recommends short-term, medium-term, and long-term activities to address these respective shortfalls. The aim is to provide users of the guide with the ability to examine and customize approaches, tools, and technologies already developed to foster standardization across interdependent infrastructures and regions and to avoid reinventing the wheel. The RDR Guide is meant for use by government, private-sector, and other organizations with specific missions or vested interests in assuring that the regions in which they reside can withstand the effects of multihazards and respond and recover rapidly when disasters strike. The CIR Guide will draw upon protection and resilience planning for the recovery and continued functioning of the infrastructure even if elements of the infrastructure do not survive. Resilience takes some of the pressure off protection. Resilience allows for recovery even when total protection is not feasible. Resilience considers how you are prepared and protected, whether you can take advantage of advanced warnings, and whether you have alternative plans for continued operation. Resilience considers whether those whom you depend on survive and recover also. To learn more about how you can participate in either the RDR Guide Working Group or the CIR Guide Working Group, contact Bill Anderson, Director of The Infrastructure Security Partnership at wanderson@tisp.org or at 703-549-3800, ext. 170. |
