Focused on whole community disaster preparedness, HHF aligns related work with FEMA’s national preparedness framework and farther reaching Coastal Community Resilience objectives. Coastal Resilience refers to a community’s ability to withstand, recover from, and learn from individual natural hazard events as well as potential climate change impacts. HHF is engaged in emergency management and natural hazard resilience planning for communities throughout the Pacific and uses these principles to guide its comprehensive planning process.
HHF’s coastal resilience planning experience encompasses several areas:
- Regulatory planning guidelines for climate change management
- Water and food security amidst global climate change
- Land use and structural design policies and practices
- Critical infrastructure mapping and protection
- Warning and evacuation and emergency response capabilities
- Economic vulnerabilities to major disasters
- Hazard awareness education
- Governance in coordinating preparedness, response and recovery measures
Across related projects, HHF has collective experience working with a range of agencies including:
- Federal Emergency Management Agency
- Natural Disaster Preparedness Training Center in Hawai‘i
- International Tsunami Information Center
- Pacific Tsunami Warning Center
- Pacific Risk Management ‘Ohana
- Community Resilience Networks (CRest) Program
- A host of related local, state, and Federal agencies across the Pacific Rim.
HHF employees, with graduate level educational backgrounds in planning for post-disaster long-range community redevelopment and adaptive shoreline management as well as specialized training in Resilient Building Design for Coastal Communities, are using the vast resources available and experienced stakeholder engagement to compile, share, and collaborate on the latest and ever-growing hazard related data to better prepare communities for natural hazards through land use planning, facility design, and infrastructure investment decisions.
