Baltimore Disaster and Hazard Management Portfolio Essay Samle

Baltimore Disaster and Hazard Management Portfolio
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BALTIMORE DISASTER AND HAZARD MANAGEMENT PORTFOLIO
Preamble
Disasters and hazards are increasingly destructive and constitute a threat to humanity in Baltimore, the U.S, and the rest of the world. Some parts of the world are prone to hazards and disasters, including flooding, wildfires, windstorms, and hurricanes, among many more! Baltimore is no exception. Baltimore equally faces various disasters. these risks act as a blueprint for Baltimore to designs local hazard and disaster preparedness and response plan, which underpins the overall resilience against hazard shocks. Baltimore has a specific hazard management plan or design called Baltimore's Disaster Preparedness and Planning Project (DP3), upon which disaster portfolio comprising core strategies and approaches to managing disasters are drawn. While Baltimore is "localizing" understanding and developing specific solutions tailored to its local communities and resources, it must visualize the concepts of disasters and hazards from global perspectives.
All communities are at risk of emergencies and hazards. More often, natural disasters, infectious disease outbreaks, conflicts, technological and other hazards are continuously posing a substantial threat to people's lives and socio-economic stabilities across different parts of the world.  The ever-increasing urbanization, coupled with climate change, impacts hazard severity, frequency, severity. Global happenings and phenomena such as climate changes can cause local hazards and disasters in given communities. Thus, disaster portfolios must embrace both local and international tailored solutions in addressing hazard-related challenges. The paper encapsulates Baltimore's plan in terms of DP3, chief resilience officer recruitment, hazard research and assessment, issue of first responders, and briefing memo.
About Baltimore
The City of Baltimore, founded in 1979, is in Maryland and is one of the primary seaports in the U.S. It is specifically near the Mid-Atlantic region where natural harbor exists, with remarkable features such as Patapsco River, watershed, and the Chesapeake Bay. Baltimore's harbor is a great resource allowing effective sea transport due to its depth. The most recent statistics show that Baltimore's population figures stand at 2,333,000, representing a 0.34% rise from 2020 to 2021 (Macrotrends,2021).
Contextualization of Baltimore Exposures to Hazards
. The wide range of disasters, catastrophes are not often ubiquitous. Instead, these hazards are often region-specific based on the risk scale. It is critical to understand the specific risks at the community level, where the impact is profound. Such understanding permits the development and implementation of policies tailored to community needs and matching available resources, knowledge, and skills.
It is crucial to understand the challenges and hazards that the Baltimore community Faces. Baltimore demonstrates increased vulnerability and exposure risks to various threats, including coastal storms, flooding, reducing air quality, heatwaves, and extreme winds. Baltimore is a historic port city, with most of its locals living near the waterfront. Thus, they constantly face a threat of sea-level rise and storm surges. While the risks posed by climate change are eminent to Baltimore's residents, coastal hazards are significant in these coastal communities. Other disasters, but with low occurrence risk, exist, such as earthquakes, lightning, and hail, tsunamis. These hazards vary in frequency and intensity. The general climate change is compounding most of the risk exposures in Baltimore. The potential risk of natural hazards, exacerbated by climatic change, leads to far-reaching effects, including impacting Baltimore's residence lives and substantiation destructions of the city's business, buildings, overall infrastructures, and natural systems.
Recruitment of Resilience Officer
What is resilience, and why do we need City's Chief Resilience Officer (CRO) at Baltimore
CRO will often oversee issues associated with disaster and emergency management within Baltimore and its surrounding
Urban resilience is the capacity of individuals, communities, organizations, and systems to adapt and grow and develop irrespective of matter what stresses and shocks that can occur.
The primary role of Chief Resilience Officer (CRO)
The CRO oversees the City's Office of Emergency Management, including its public safety dispatch center around the clock
CRO prepares Baltimore for weather crises beyond natural disasters, including climate change and other potential threats.
CRO will lead and coordinate leading Baltimore's efforts in integrating emergency preparedness planning with core resilience initiatives.
Thus, someone with training, education, knowledge, and skills in emergency operations management is highly desired for the position of CRO. 
Baltimore needs a chief resilience officer, who is expected to lead citywide efforts in helping Baltimore prepare for, withstand, and restores itself from any disaster setbacks.
The shocks arising out of disasters include a range of catastrophic events such as floods, infrastructural damages, and terrorist events.
CRO does not only focus on the straightforward consequence of disasters and hazards but also extent his/her responsibility in mitigating racial and economic inequality, inadequate access to affordable housing, and rising unemployment
Racial inequities, rising cases of unemployment, and insufficient access to essential services exacerbate disaster adversities.
CRO Connecting with Baltimore's Disaster Preparedness and Planning Project (DP3)
Baltimore's Disaster Preparedness and Planning Project (DP3) was developed to address existing hazards while simultaneously preparing for predicted threats due to climate change.
This plan acted as floodplain mapping and climate adaptation planning.
DP3 is a comprehensive plan that captures the interest communities surrounding Baltimore city.
CRO will leverage on DP3 institute community resilience
Building Baltimore's Resilience Against Hazards
Community resilience represents the sustained community's ability and competence to withstand and recover from adversities (Chandra et al.,2011: Islam & Ryan, 2015). The concept of community resilience is highlighted and permeates through different levels of disaster preparedness and responses, including the federal government, White House, Department of Homeland Security [DHS], state and local authorities (Chandra et al.,2011). The concept of resilience is a broader concept defining the state, authorities, and local community competence and capacity to prepare for, prevent, respond to, and recover from far-reaching disaster adversities or outcomes. Thus, resilience is a universally understood concept that needs to be put into active practice by embedding in the traditions of disaster mitigation and response plans.
Local communities such as Baltimore must develop population-centered solutions to address the long-term management and control of hazards. Community resilience is a crucial concept that the community must build by developing robust systems, values, and practices to strengthen disaster responses and preparedness. Local disaster mitigation plans must deploy resilience officers who will comprehensively develop collaborative efforts and nurture mutual partnership amongst different stakeholders and the community. The Hazard management resilience officer is tasked with developing and implementing programs and interventions that revamp the community's competence and capacity to prepare for, prevent, respond to, and recover from far-reaching disaster consequences.
The Baltimore community resilience officer (CRO) will utilize DP3 in synthesizing sustainable community resilience solutions for implementation. The overall resilience plan addresses the core components enshrined in DP3. Thus, as drawn by the community in conjunction with CRO and other relevant stakeholders, the community resilience program should be proactive and deploys a collaborative and partnership approach in protecting the Baltimore community, assets, environment, and infrastructure.
The Baltimore community resilience portfolio, derived from core elements of DP3, targets five fundamental areas of interest. First, health and well-being Baltimore residents constitute one of the epicenters of focus in hazard mitigation portfolio. The Baltimore community can build its health and well-being resilience through preparedness and strengthening response systems and interventions. The resilience programs should anticipate, address and prime the systems for futuristic potential health hazards emanating from weather and climate-related changes. The resources, skills, knowledge, and systems must be availed and built to facilitate critical emergency healthcare services to victims of disasters. The CRO will be focusing on optimal approaches to frame preparedness in terms of health and wellness communication to the community, leaders, and partners.
Second, developing more robust infrastructural systems is a critical approach to boosting the Baltimore community's resilience to disasters. The core infrastructural systems and resources such as energy and transport must be accessible and fully functional. The designs of structures such as buildings and infrastructural development such as transport systems should be designed and developed to withstand climatic change consequences.
Third, focusing on the environment is centric on community resilience against a range of disasters, especially in the Baltimore community. Resilience can be enhanced by enhancing the stronger interconnectivity of green spaces and natural features. This interconnectivity or mutual relationships with natural systems or environment enhances biodiversity, thereby mitigating and preventing various hazards. Increasing the levels of biodiversity provides a buffer against the impact of climate and environmental-related risks. A green infrastructure is an effective approach to tackling climate and weather-related hazards, yet it is often ignored (Tyler, 2016). Green infrastructure facilitates biodiversity and provides long-lasting and sustainable solutions to climate-related hazards.
Fourth, the community's resilience must be anchored on the economy and overall well-being of society. The resilience portfolio must be designed to apportion responsibility to the community and its leaders in responding to the crisis. The portfolio must actively engage, partner, and support various stakeholders in providing safe and affordable housing. Equally, all efforts geared towards economic growth and property should be supported. All these centers and support and attention can be leveraged while managing and preventing all types of hazards.
Various questions can guide CRO in developing a community resilience portfolio. How can a relationship develop amongst persons, families, and community? How can improved hazard communication and education enhance community resilience against disasters? how can emerging technologies such as social media be used to established connections with the community and communicate?
Finally, the portfolio must be integrated with leadership and policy development. Since most of Baltimore's disasters are weather and climate-related hazards, it is vital to incorporate climate change into overall management and operations plans that deal with such disasters. Such programs should be captured in policies that provide a blueprint for implementation. CRO must develop identity policies and partnerships that can work.
The hazard mitigation portfolio in terms of development and implementations should be evaluated. Areas of focus in the disaster portfolio include quality and efficiency. CRO should identify the best metrics for monitoring and evaluating resilience-building activities.
The portfolio ...