Emergency Management and Disasters: Comprehensive Course Review

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering local public budgeting, hazard mitigation, social capital, recovery frameworks, crisis leadership, research paradigms, and organizational response typologies.

Public Budget

An official document prepared before a fiscal year begins that lists how a government plans to spend money, connecting financial resources to government priorities and promoting transparency and accountability.

Government Revenue

Money that a government collects or receives to finance public operations and public services, primarily obtained through taxes, user fees, and intergovernmental transfers.

User Fees and Charges

Payments made directly by individuals to local governments in exchange for specific services or access to public facilities, such as a one-time entry charge to a city recreation facility.

Government Expenditures

The funds spent by a government to deliver public services and discharge statutory responsibilities, encompassing public safety, transportation infrastructure, parks, and general administration.

Balanced Budget

A financial status achieved when planned public expenditures do not exceed expected revenues and other available financial resources (for example, revenues of $\$20\text{M}$ equal spending of $\$20\text{M}$).

Budget Shortfall

A fiscal gap that occurs when planned expenditures exceed expected revenues in a given fiscal year (for example, when planned spending of $\$22\text{M}$ exceeds expected revenue of $\$20\text{M}$, leaving a $\$2\text{M}$ deficit).

Budget Reserves

Accumulated public funds saved from previous budget years that can be drawn upon to manage unexpected deficits or future financial contingencies.

Recurring Features

Revenues or expenditures that occur regularly and predictably each fiscal year, such as annual property tax collections and civil servant payroll salaries.

Non-Recurring Features

Revenues or expenditures that happen only once or on an irregular basis, such as a one-time federal capital grant or the purchase of a new fire engine.

Four Steps in Mitigation Planning

A systematic mitigation framework consisting of: 1) organizing resources, 2) assessing risks, 3) developing the mitigation plan with clear priorities, and 4) implementing the plan with assigned responsibilities, funding, and timelines.

Inclusive Mitigation Planning

A planning practice that directly engages populations at risk—including renters, homeowners, local business owners, and marginalized groups—to identify localized vulnerabilities and shape community risk-reduction priorities.

Home Buyout Program

A nonstructural mitigation initiative that purchases flood-prone properties and permanently changes their land use to open space, eliminating repeated hazard exposure and structural flood losses.

Climate Adaptation

Actions and policy adjustments designed to reduce harm or exploit beneficial opportunities arising from actual or anticipated climate-driven impacts, such as modifying water storage systems during recurring droughts.

Hazard Mitigation

Sustained actions taken to lessen or eliminate long-term risks and losses to life and property from hazards, such as enforcing structural wind-resistant building codes or curbing greenhouse gas emissions.

100-Year Flood

A statistical benchmark describing flood probability, defined as a flood event that has an estimated $1\%$ probability of being equaled or exceeded in any given single year.

Hazard Identification

The foundational assessment phase that answers what threats could occur within a jurisdiction and evaluates the historical likelihood and frequency of those events.

Risk Assessment

An analytical evaluation that links an identified hazard to its specific potential consequences for people, the built environment, properties, and essential community functions.

Capability Assessment

An appraisal of a local jurisdiction's internal staffing, technical expertise, legal authorities, and financial resources to determine what mitigation or response tasks can be executed internally and where outside assistance is required.

Structural Mitigation

Hazard reduction strategies that rely on physical engineering, construction, or structural modifications, such as reinforced tornado safe rooms and protective flood levees.

Nonstructural Mitigation

Risk reduction achieved through policies, regulatory frameworks, natural area preservation, and financial mechanisms, such as comprehensive land-use planning, zoning rules, building codes, and insurance.

May 11, 1970 Lubbock Tornado

A catastrophic F5 tornado in Lubbock that caused 26 fatalities, revealed critical construction vulnerabilities, and motivated extensive Texas Tech research into wind-resistant engineering design and safe rooms.

Pre-Disaster Recovery Planning

A proactive planning effort conducted prior to hazard impacts that establishes institutional roles, public participation protocols, and post-event redevelopment strategies before urgent crises arise.

Post-Disaster Recovery Planning

The process of updating priorities, formulating specific redevelopment projects, and distributing available capital resources in direct response to documented damage and emergent community needs under post-event uncertainty.

Environmental Recovery

A vital recovery function that manages ecological remediation, containment of hazardous contaminants spread by debris or floodwaters, and proper waste sorting, recycling, and disposal.

City of Greensburg SunChips Business Incubator

A sustainable, energy-efficient commercial redevelopment facility established after Greensburg was destroyed by a tornado, exemplifying economic revitalization paired with green structural recovery.

People-Centered Recovery

An operational approach that actively engages impacted community members in defining recovery priorities, leveraging local neighborhood insights and overcoming barriers related to language, mobility, or financial resources.

Social Capital

The aggregate of information, mutual trust, tangible assistance, and cooperative resources available to individuals and groups through their personal relationships and social networks.

Bonding Social Capital

Close ties and inward-looking connections between family members, close friends, or demographic peers that provide immediate emotional support, volunteer labor, and informal shelter during disaster recovery.

Bridging Social Capital

Horizontal ties connecting diverse social, ethnic, or socioeconomic groups, enabling communities to access different perspectives, external skills, and broader community collaboration.

Linking Social Capital

Vertical relationships between community residents and external individuals or organizations holding political authority, statutory power, or financial resources (such as FEMA officials).

Structural Social Capital

The formal networks, established community positions, and professional roles that individuals occupy, enabling them to contribute specialized expertise (such as architectural design or childcare provision) during recovery.

Cognitive Social Capital

Shared community values, mutual trust, and reciprocal attitudes that influence whether residents can work cohesively and agree upon collective post-disaster rebuilding goals.

Emergency Shelter

Immediate, often improvised physical protection sought by individuals during or immediately following a hazard impact, such as sheltering in a basement or an interior corridor.

Temporary Shelter

Managed, short-term collective accommodations that deliver basic life-support services and sleeping quarters during initial displacement, such as cots set up in a gymnasium.

Temporary Housing

Interim residential arrangements (such as rented apartments or modular units) that allow displaced households to re-establish everyday routines, cooking, and privacy while their permanent homes undergo repairs.

Permanent Housing

The long-term, stable housing arrangement achieved when households return to rebuilt or repaired private dwellings or secure permanent replacement residential leases.

Disaster Recovery

An ongoing, non-linear process dedicated to restoring community functioning, rebuilding damaged infrastructure, and empowering households and businesses to reconstruct their daily lives and livelihoods.

Reconstruction

The physical rebuilding, engineering, and structural replacement of destroyed residential, commercial, or public facilities following a disaster.

Restoration

The recovery activity centered on returning historic, cultural, or architecturally significant structures, spaces, or artifacts back to their authentic former character and functionality.

Rehabilitation

The process of repairing damaged structures while implementing structural upgrades, enhanced hazard resistance, or accessibility improvements.

Restitution

The payment of legal or financial compensation and redress by a liable entity to victims who sustained physical losses or lost livelihood due to a disaster.

Short-Term Recovery

Phase of recovery focused on immediately stabilizing community operations, reopening lifelines, performing damage assessments, and providing interim shelter so everyday routines can restart.

Long-Term Recovery

Multi-year redevelopment work aimed at permanently replacing housing, revitalizing regional commerce, and implementing mitigation measures to decrease future hazard vulnerability.

Preliminary Damage Assessment (PDA)

A structured, rapid inspection process undertaken by officials and volunteers to record the location, scope, and engineering severity of disaster destruction across homes, businesses, and public assets.

Needs Assessment

A comprehensive evaluation identifying the specific human services, transportation options, financial resources, and emotional supports required by residents to regain self-sufficiency.

Citizen and Volunteer Response

Spontaneous actions and resources supplied by ordinary residents, civic associations, and local businesses that complement and expand formal professional emergency operations during a disaster.

Business Continuity Planning

A systematic planning discipline used by public and private organizations to anticipate operational interruptions and ensure that critical business functions can continue during and after disasters.

Natech Disaster

A technological accident or hazardous chemical release directly triggered by a natural hazard impact, such as floodwaters entering a plant and releasing toxic substances into adjacent neighborhoods.

Cascading Effects

The secondary, interdependent failures that ripple across connected lifelines when a breakdown in one system causes consecutive outages in others, such as power failures disabling water distribution pumps.

Compounding Disasters

Situations in which distinct disaster events overlap in time or occur before full recovery has taken place, compounding community impacts (such as a major hurricane striking amidst a pandemic).

Sense Making

The critical early phase of crisis management wherein leaders collect information to diagnose what is occurring, recognize who is in danger, and forecast how conditions will evolve.

Meaning Making

The crisis communication function through which leaders formulate and convey an authoritative public explanation of what has occurred, government actions, and what citizens should anticipate.

Hazards Tradition (White 1994)

A disaster research perspective focused primarily on how geographical settlement choices, land-use patterns, and human environmental adjustments dictate physical exposure and disaster losses.

Disaster Tradition (Webb 2007)

A sociological disaster research tradition analyzing how social inequalities, structural relationships, community institutions, and organizational behaviors dictate hazard consequences and vulnerability.

Risk Perspective (Slovic 1987)

A research perspective analyzing how psychological biases, cognitive heuristics, and personal values influence how residents, workers, and public officials interpret and rank risk threats.

Crisis Approach (Boin and 't Hart 2006)

A research perspective investigating how public leadership and institutions navigate high-stakes decision-making, inter-agency operational coordination, and official communication under urgent deadlines.

Convergence

The sudden, heavy influx of individuals (people convergence), unsolicited physical goods and supplies (material convergence), and communications or inquiries (informational convergence) into an affected disaster zone.

The Help Paradox

The administrative dilemma wherein unsolicited supplies, unstructured donations, and spontaneous volunteers overburden staging sites and divert emergency managers from urgent life-safety priorities.

Type I: Established Organization (DRC Typology)

An organized response body maintaining its pre-existing organizational structure while carrying out its normal, regular operational assignments (e.g., a municipal fire department conducting search and rescue).

Type II: Expanding Organization (DRC Typology)

An existing organizational body that maintains its regular core functions but drastically expands its operational footprint and staffing by integrating large numbers of outside volunteers (e.g., the American Red Cross).

Type III: Extending Organization (DRC Typology)

An established organization that preserves its pre-disaster internal structural hierarchy but takes on entirely nonregular, new operational assignments (e.g., a commercial construction contractor redirecting equipment to clear road debris).

Type IV: Emergent Organization (DRC Typology)

A new, previously nonexistent organizational group formed during a disaster that possesses a newly organized structure and performs nonregular, novel tasks (e.g., the Joplin Tornado Info group).

Comprehensive Emergency Management (CEM)

An emergency management framework emphasizing that emergency managers must account for all hazards, address all four phases of emergency management, and coordinate multiple institutional actors.

Integrated Emergency Management

An operational principle centered on establishing inter-organizational communication, resource-sharing protocols, and functional partnerships among government agencies, non-profits, private businesses, and voluntary networks.

Disaster Response

Actions taken immediately before, during, and right after hazard impacts to protect lives and property, meet essential human needs, prevent cascading damages, and facilitate the transition into recovery.

Disaster-Induced Demands

The direct operational requirements generated by the physical consequences of the disaster itself, such as treating casualties, extinguishing structural fires, and sheltering displaced residents.

Response-Induced Demands

The management, administrative, and logistical challenges created by organizing the response effort itself, including inter-agency communications, transportation coordination, and donation staging.

Disaster Warning Process

A multi-stage cognitive and behavioral process required for warning compliance: 1) receiving the warning, 2) understanding its meaning, 3) assessing its credibility, 4) personalizing the threat, and 5) deciding protective action is necessary and feasible.

Evacuation

A protective action requiring the physical movement and relocation of people away from a hazardous or designated threat zone to a safer geographic area.

Sheltering in Place

A protective action in which individuals stay inside or move into a fortified interior space of a sturdy structure rather than traveling into severe outdoor hazards.

Public Sheltering

The protective option of relocating displaced individuals to an officially organized collective facility (such as the George R. Brown Convention Center) equipped to supply interim lodging and basic needs.