A disaster recovery framework outlines your community’s plans for long-term resilience in the wake of an emergency such as a fire, flood, severe weather, or chemical spill. Disasters disrupt many interconnected parts of a community—from infrastructure to essential services and housing as well as community members’ psychological well-being and sense of security.

Using a framework provides a holistic view of disaster recovery and outlines how to tackle every phase of the post-disaster process across all affected areas. It allows leaders and emergency managers to meet the needs of the community in the short term and build back better for long-term risk mitigation.

• What a disaster recovery framework is and how to use it
• The difference between disaster recovery and emergency management
• Why you need a post-disaster recovery framework
• The core components of an effective framework

Disaster Recovery vs. Emergency Management

Climate change and human activity have made disasters far more common across Canada. Leaders need to plan ahead for disasters and implement proactive strategies to keep their communities safe. The current approach to dealing with disasters is reactive. Communities typically plan for emergency management, which might include the coordination of emergency services, temporary housing, funding for immediate aid, and infrastructure repairs right after a disaster happens.

However, emergency management is just one aspect of a disaster recovery framework. Disaster recovery is a long-term, multi-pronged process. It includes how leaders and aid providers respond in the days and weeks after a disaster, but it also encompasses strategies that support community resilience—which unfolds in the months and even years after a severe disaster. A post-disaster recovery framework helps leaders understand and tackle a broader scope of recovery work so that their community is strengthened by disaster, not destroyed by it.

One important difference between emergency management planning and disaster recovery planning is funding. Creating a robust plan that goes beyond short-term response to medium- and long-term recovery helps communities to secure more funding for disaster recovery services and programs at each phase.

Why You Need Post-Disaster Recovery Framework

Core Components of a Disaster Recovery Framework

A framework creates a clearly defined structure for all recovery efforts. It can serve as a North Star that enables all teams, groups, and individuals involved in recovery to stay on the same page about their goals and activities. Disaster recovery planning should be tailored to meet the needs of your unique community and there is no universal framework that will fit every community. Here are four core components that every framework should include:

1. Establish a Vision for Recovery

Like any goal-setting process, establishing a vision for recovery helps you understand exactly what you’re working toward. This provides a clear direction for the disaster recovery framework.

It’s essential that this vision reflects what recovery and resilience looks like for the entire community. Leaders and emergency managers need to take time to liaise with community members to understand their needs and concerns.

Community members can provide invaluable insights about potential vulnerabilities and highlight what aspects of recovery will make the most meaningful difference. They can also illuminate ways that leaders can address systemic disparities such as poverty or failing infrastructure that contribute to increased risk in the community.

2. Identify the Phases of Recovery

Disaster recovery planning requires leaders and emergency managers to think about the phases of recovery far beyond response. Identifying the phases of recovery helps teams extend their perspective and begin to think about the positive impacts that implementing recovery strategies will have well into the future. Effective planning can leave a lasting legacy of stability and risk mitigation in the community.

Generally, the three phases of recovery are:

• Transitioning from response to short- and medium-term recovery
• Long-term recovery
• Sustainable development and resilience

The timelines for each of these phases may differ depending on your community and the type of disaster you’ve experienced. This part of the framework will help you assess what realistic timelines look like for each phase.

3. Create a Recovery Coordination Centre

A disaster recovery framework enables emergency management teams to set up a temporary organization that will execute recovery strategy beyond response. Typically, communities set up an Incident Command Post (ICP) on the ground to coordinate response efforts and an Emergency Coordination or Operations Centre (ECC/EOC) to oversee the ICP and orchestrate all post-disaster recovery work. Response is psychologically and physically demanding for those involved. Once response is over, these parties may be burnt out and unable or unprepared to support the first phase of recovery.

Recovery requires collaboration and involves the expertise of many different people across different sectors, not just emergency managers and first responders. These groups include:

• Engineering and infrastructure
• Social services and housing coordination
• Environmental recovery
• Community and cultural leadership
• Disaster recovery services

A Recovery Coordination Centre is made up of teams whose responsibility it is to do the work of recovery. In setting up this centre, leaders take into account who will be available and capable of participating in each stage of recovery. This part of the framework details which parties should be involved and what their roles and responsibilities should be.

4. Outline Your Disaster Preparedness and Recovery Plans

Once you have established a vision for recovery, created a timeline and goals for each recovery phase, and laid the groundwork for your Recovery Coordination Centre, you can outline disaster preparedness and recovery action plans. While you will create this outline before a disaster happens, it’s important to note that it must be adapted to the specific situations your community faces.

This part of the framework outlines when and how to conduct and post-disaster needs assessment (PDNA) and also gives you the opportunity to create another framework to guide the PDNA itself. The outline should also involve setting priorities for disaster recovery, creating individual plans for every phase, determining how you will evaluate success, and detail what monitoring and continuous improvement looks like going forward.