Q&A: Interagency Committee says Communication and Coordination are Key Components of Hurricane Resilience | Article

Katherine Chambers

As the 2020 hurricane season--the most active on record--came to a close at the end of November, EESI’s policy team connected with Katherine Chambers, a research scientist at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and co-lead of the U.S. Committee on the Marine Transportation System’s Resilience Integrated Action Team, to discuss how the federal government is studying and addressing resilience to hurricanes in the maritime sector. Read our conversation with Katherine below, where we discussed what the Resilience Integrated Action Team is working on currently and the challenges of taking agency resilience work to the next level.

Q: Can you give us an introduction to the U.S. Committee on the Maritime Transportation System (CMTS) and the Resilience Integrated Action Team team that you co-lead?

Chambers: T he Committee on the Marine Transportation System is a coordinating body of over 25 federal agencies that own, operate, or have a stake in the marine transportation system. It is chaired by the Secretary of Transportation, but most of the policy coordination and work plan establishment happens through agency heads or office directors. These leaders are a part of the CMTS Coordinating Board and convene quarterly to talk about emerging issues and report out on new strategies or updates.

The Coordinating Board recognized the need to address resilience in the marine transportation system, specifically, to determine how agencies were thinking about resilience principles, what actions were being taken to incorporate them into the work that they do, and where some of the gaps are in understanding and action. This conversation led to the establishment of the Resilience Integrated Action Team in 2014--a group of about 12 federal agencies that are a part of the CMTS, who are interested in sharing and working together to produce products and recommendations for how we can make the marine transportation system more resilient.

Q: Can you tell us about the Resilience Integrated Action Team’s report, The 2017 Hurricane Season: Recommendations for a Resilient Path Forward for the Marine Transportation System, and the forthcoming 2018 and 2019 report updates?

Coordinating Board Meeting

Chambers: During one of the Coordinating Board meetings--after the 2017 Hurricane Season, in which we had Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria hit the United States in quick succession--there was conversation among Coordinating Board members about the need to identify the takeaways. It was a devastating storm season, but it was also really important that we did not let this just pass us by. We had to work together to share what happened within our individual agencies and determine ways for us to work together better in the future.

The Resilience Integrated Action Team stepped up to do this analysis for marine transportation system agencies. In 2018, the Resilience Integrated Action Team put together a report on the 2017 hurricane season to make recommendations for improving resilience. Often, when we talk about disasters, we think about how we were able to respond, how quickly we were able to recover, and whether or not our preparations did any good. Each agency does this on their own, and there is a very limited amount of sharing between agencies about how it all went. One goal of this report was to serve as a platform to bring people together to talk about hurricane seasons and interagency coordination.

After we published the 2017 Hurricane Season report, we realized that adaptation was something we could really capitalize on, especially because we also experienced major hurricanes in 2018 and 2019. Here was an opportunity for the Resilience Integrated Action Team to step up and be that coordinating body and to take a good hard look at what is happening between these hurricane seasons and if, or how, we are making any improvements.

Q: What are some of the successful adaptation actions described in the reports?

C: Across our 2017, 2018, and 2019 analysis, we see an emphasis on annual trainings, ensuring people have the right skills and credentials, establishing staging areas for response and recovery equipment, prioritizing recovery of infrastructure systems, creating a plan for cargo, and increasing interagency communication.

For example, to recover a port, you cannot just focus on certain infrastructure, like navigation channels or jetties, you also have to think about multi-modal access. Establishing a plan to address movement in and out of the port is critical because you cannot have a successful recovery if all of your stuff is sitting in a parking lot or your employees cannot return to work. You have to rely on other transportation modes, like roads and rail. You have to make sure that you have power and communications networks going. Hurricane Maria (2017) and Hurricane Florence (2018) both had generally quick recovery of the ports, but the significant impacts to roads and electrical infrastructure made it difficult to move cargo where it needed to go.

Being able to co-locate with other agencies during a response was really important for facilitating communication. They are finding that face-to-face coordination is something that is happening more and more across the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), Coast Guard, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), etc. It has been helping in cutting down transfers of information from hours to minutes.

Most of the recommendations that we are making here are recommendations related to coordination and communication, not just between federal agencies, but between people working in the field at the state, local, and industry level. We are making sure that we are sharing the information that we need to share at the right time and with the right people. This is a really important part of building resilience and an effective recovery.

Q: Through the lens of one hurricane event, can you describe what preparation, response, and recovery steps seemed to have worked on the infrastructure, communication, and personnel sides?

C: Hurricane Dorian (2019) stopped for days over the Bahamas and caused widespread devastation, so people in the U.S. were on very high alert for the arrival of this hurricane. There was some uncertainty with its direction and area of impact, so there was a need for widespread planning. Everyone in Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Georgia was thinking about what they were going to do if Dorian arrived. Lucky, it really did not make a direct hit on the east coast until it was much farther north and substantially weakened.

But, it provided an opportunity to test out some of the coordination and communication efforts that were being planned and improved based on the previous hurricane seasons. Our information shows that 45 ports had reduced their operating statues according to the Coast Guard conditions. In Wilmington, North Carolina, and Miami, Florida, coordinating bodies like the Marine Transportation System Recovery Unit and agencies, including the USACE, NOAA, and the Coast Guard, were able to act quickly and co-locate allowing for a lot of face-to-face coordination meetings prior to the arrival of the storm. NOAA pre-staged equipment on US Maritime Administration (MARAD) vessels in Charleston, the USACE coordinated with the Navy and the Department of Energy (DOE) to make sure everything was in place in case help was needed. Additionally, the private sector stepped in and aided with surveying, dredging, and clearing channels after Dorian passed.

Q: What federal policy changes are needed to help you and those on the Resilience Integrated Action Team to make sure that resilience and adaptation are well-integrated into the overall work of the agencies?

C: Our resiliency work is very focused on response and recovery, which is a different problem than long-term adaptive management issues and usually depends on different funding sources, policies, and governance. For example, after a storm, ports receive money to rebuild, but they must rebuild to the way it was before the storm passed. There is a lot of work out there trying to figure out how to use the limited amount of money to rebuild, what changes we can make to rebuild better, and what policy recommendations would allow us to do that.

Additionally, it is important that we find ways to allow flexibility for trying new ideas that integrate adaptive capacity into infrastructure.

The relationships and collaboration that is so successful in increasing resilience does not come without significant work and investment. These training efforts, conversations, and coordination need to be well funded and emphasized.

Finally, we have an abundance of available data that helps us make decisions about how to improve our infrastructure and how to adapt. There are a lot of platforms being launched by federal agencies that allow for a common operating picture within an agency that helps leadership to make fast and informed decisions. Instead of having to thumb through a powerpoint, they can see the real-time information on a dashboard. With all of this, there is a huge challenge in making sure that we are able to share this data between agencies and with partners outside of the federal government. Working through data operability is a big challenge.

To learn more about the Resilience Integrated Action Team’s work, keep an eye out for the 2018 and 2019 hurricane season analysis coming out in January 2021.

Author: Emma Walker