Local damage assessment plays a critical role in your community's response and recovery following a hazard event.

The information gathered by the damage assessment response team provides a snapshot of the situation detailing the extent and location of damages.

This information is evaluated to determine the needs of the survivors and the community as a whole. Thus, the damage assessment sets the tone for the entire response operation and drives the recovery process.

Damage assessment helps your community set priorities for response activities such as search and rescue, as well as for recovery operations such as removal of storm debris and rebuilding or repair of infrastructure.

It also helps identify needs for additional resources from local, State, and Federal agencies and provides some of the documentation necessary for applying for these avenues of assistance.

Damage assessment can also help you identify mitigation opportunities and create a mitigation plan that will make your community more disaster-resistant for the next hazard event.

When a disaster or major emergency occurs, damage assessment must be done quickly and accurately, to reduce the impact on people and identify resource needs. This information enables the direction of emergency response personnel and resources to the most appropriate areas and helps identify the need for additional resources.

The purpose of this course is to build local capacity for damage assessment by enabling you to develop or refine a damage assessment program for your community. In this course, you will acquire the knowledge and skills you need to be able to conduct rapid and effective damage assessments in order to save lives, to protect property and the environment, and to begin the process of recovery and mitigation.

In this lesson, you will learn about the importance of local damage assessment. Information gathered during damage assessment identifies needs, helps set priorities, and drives response and recovery actions.

This snapshot of the extent and location of damage provides information for the public as well as documentation necessary for the pursuit of additional resources from contracts and mutual aid and/or from State and Federal agencies. The thoroughness and efficiency of the damage assessment process sets the tone for the entire response/recovery operation because it provides information about the impact of the event on the entire community.

Upon completion of this lesson, you will be able to:

• Define the purpose of damage assessment.
• Define basic terms related to damage assessment.
• List critical infrastructure in a community.

Damage assessment is a process to determine the severity and magnitude of a disaster or other emergency on the public and private sectors in your community. It helps provide information to the community about the extent of the damage. Before developing a plan for your community, consult any damage assessment plans or guidelines that your State or other governing bodies may have already developed.

Damage assessment response teams are dispatched throughout the community to efficiently and accurately quantify the damage and estimate repair costs and impact on the community with a focus on degree of damage in terms of habitability and property value, as well as the impact on critical infrastructure and key resources (CIKR).

Teams may have to go out more than once if an area is not accessible during the initial assessment or if the need for further assessment arises due to additional impacts to the area. The information collected during damage assessment is used to determine not only where to direct resources, but also to determine if local resources will be sufficient to respond to and recover from the event or if contracts and mutual aid agreements will need to be activated and/or if State or Federal assistance will be needed. Click this link to access the information presented on this page in a new window.

Magnitude is a measure of the strength of a hazard event. The magnitude of a hazard is usually determined using technical measures specific to the hazard. For example, the Enhanced Fujita Scale is used to measure the magnitude of tornadoes so that there is a common language, such as when someone refers to a tornado as EF-3. The magnitude of hurricanes is measured by the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale which provides consistency; thus, a category 3 hurricane is the same regardless of location. Earthquake magnitude is measured with the Richter Scale, and intensity is measured with the Modified Mercalli Intensity (MMI) Scale. All of these scales are damage severity measurements based upon analysis of previous catastrophic events.

Additional information about magnitude scales is available in the Toolkit.

Critical infrastructure and key resources are the components that are necessary for the health and welfare of the population of your community.

These components include public safety services, health care, utilities, transportation systems, lifelines, and facilities that, if impacted by a hazard event, could result in high potential loss or release of hazardous materials.

It is important for all those involved in damage assessment to use a common vocabulary. Some basic terms you should know are:

• Hazard
• Vulnerability
• Risk
• Individual Assistance (IA)
• Public Assistance (PA)

Remember, you can refer to the glossary at any time during the course for these and additional terms.

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A hazard is something that is potentially dangerous or harmful. It is often the root cause of an unwanted outcome. Hazards may be categorized as natural or as adversarial/human-caused.

• Natural hazards are caused by natural events that pose a threat to lives, property, and other assets. Examples include hurricanes, earthquakes, and tornadoes.
• Adversarial or human-caused hazards include technological hazards (caused by the tools, machines, and substances used in everyday life) and intentional acts (caused by people attacking or damaging what is valuable in a society). Examples include hazardous materials releases, major computer system failures (e.g., 911 system), terrorist attacks, and riots.

Vulnerability is a description of how exposed or susceptible an asset is to damage. Vulnerability depends on an asset’s construction, contents, the economic value of its functions or services, and replacement/repair costs.

The vulnerability of one element of the community is often related to the vulnerability of another, and a hazard may cause indirect damages in addition to the damages that are caused by the direct impact. For example, many businesses depend on uninterrupted electrical power – if an electric substation is flooded, it will affect not only the substation itself, but a number of businesses as well. A refrigerated warehouse may lose its entire inventory and suffer severe economic losses as a result of the power failure. Often, indirect effects can be much more widespread and damaging than direct ones.

Risk is the possibility of loss or injury. More specifically, it is an estimated impact that a hazard would have on people, services, facilities, and structures in a community. It is the likelihood of a hazard event resulting in an adverse condition that causes injury or damage.

Risk is often expressed in relative terms such as a high, moderate, or low likelihood of sustaining damage above a particular threshold due to a specific type of hazard event. It also can be expressed in terms of potential monetary losses associated with the intensity of the hazard.

Individual Assistance (IA) is funding or direct assistance to individuals, families and businesses in an area whose property has been damaged or destroyed and whose losses are not covered by insurance. It is meant to help with critical expenses that cannot be covered in other ways. This assistance is intended to assist a community in restoring damaged property to as near its condition before the disaster as possible. Whenever feasible, efforts should be made to rebuild in a way that makes the community more disaster resistant, through mitigation activities.

While some housing assistance funds are available through FEMA’s Individuals and Households Program, most disaster assistance to individuals from the Federal government is in the form of loans administered by the Small Business Administration (SBA).

Public Assistance (PA) is reimbursement and emergency assistance provided to State, Tribal, and local governments and certain types of private non-profit (PNP) entities from the Federal government.

Through the PA Program, FEMA provides supplemental Federal disaster grant assistance for debris removal, emergency protective measures, and the repair, replacement, or restoration of disaster-damaged, publicly owned facilities and the facilities of certain PNP organizations.

The reason behind emergency management is quite simple: assure the Continuity of Government (COG) and Continuity of Operations (COOP). Government and community services need to function uninterrupted as much as possible. This should be a priority for restoration during and after an event. It is also important for those involved in damage assessment to understand the continuous process of emergency management. While the process outlined is quite generic, the actions taken are specific to the threats and vulnerabilities identified in each community.

• Preparedness
• Protection
• Prevention
• Mitigation
• Response
• Recovery

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Preparedness refers to the actions taken to plan, organize, equip, train, and exercise to build and sustain the capabilities necessary to prevent, protect against, mitigate the effects of, respond to, and recover from those threats that pose the greatest risk to the security of your community. Preparedness is a continuous process.

Preparedness activity includes developing a comprehensive damage assessment plan and training based on the predetermined priorities identified in the risk assessment and/or vulnerability assessment. For example: If there is flooding in your community, how will this affect bridges in low lying areas? As part of your community’s preparedness, you need to determine what actions need to be taken to be prepared for this event.

Protection refers to capabilities necessary to secure critical infrastructure or key resources against acts of terrorism and manmade or natural disasters. It requires coordinated action on the part of Federal, State, and local governments, the private sector, and concerned citizens across the country.

Protection capabilities include, but are not limited to:

• Critical infrastructure protection
• Defense against WMD threats
• Defense of agriculture and food
• Protection of key leadership and events
• Border security
• Maritime security
• Transportation security
• Immigration security
• Cybersecurity

Protection is an elevation of awareness and understanding of threats and vulnerabilities to your community’s critical infrastructure and key resources.

Damage assessment planning contributes to the protection of the community and its assets, particularly through effective coordination among multiple agencies and jurisdictions.

Prevention refers to those capabilities necessary to avoid, prevent, or stop a threatened or actual act of terrorism. Prevention capabilities include, but are not limited to:

• Information sharing and warning
• Domestic counterterrorism
• Preventing the acquisition or use of weapons of mass destruction (WMD)

An example of prevention activity that the damage assessment planning team will be involved in is identifying vulnerabilities in the community, such as an unsecured water treatment facility.

Mitigation refers to those capabilities necessary to reduce loss of life and property by lessening the impact of disasters. Mitigation capabilities include, but are not limited to:

• Community-wide risk reduction projects
• Efforts to improve the resilience of critical infrastructure and key resource lifelines
• Risk reduction for specific vulnerabilities from natural hazards or acts of terrorism
• Initiatives to reduce future risks after a disaster has occurred

Although you should continually be evaluating ways to make your community more disaster-resistant, the period after a hazard event provides opportunities for mitigation actions to be implemented. Funding may become available, and it may be easier during this time to get buy-in from decision-makers to conduct mitigation activities.

The damage assessment response team can identify opportunities for mitigation following a hazard event. When you’re conducting damage assessment, consider what your community can do to make vulnerable critical infrastructure and key resources more damage-resistant. For example, power lines can be buried or the height of bridges can be raised.

Response refers to those capabilities necessary to save lives, protect property and the environment, and meet basic human needs after an incident has occurred.

Generally speaking, effective planning (including practice through training and exercise) leads to an effective response.

Throughout the response activity, even after the initial damage assessment, additional damages can continue to be identified, the value of damages can still be determined, and mitigation opportunities can be identified. Keep in mind that some response activity continues as recovery begins.

Recovery refers to those capabilities necessary to assist communities affected by an incident to recover effectively, including, but not limited to:

• Rebuilding infrastructure systems;
• Providing adequate interim and long-term housing for survivors;
• Restoring health, social, and community services;
• Promoting economic development;
• Restoring natural and cultural resources.

The community actually begins the recovery process simultaneously with response efforts. In addition, the ongoing activities of preparedness, protection, prevention, and mitigation also occur during the recovery period. Keep in mind that this can be an ideal time to identify mitigation opportunities because of grant funding that can become available following a hazard event.

During recovery activities, evaluate repairs and reconstruction. Then update plans based on improvements to infrastructure or other facilities.

The value of critical infrastructure and key resources (CIKR) is based on the essential functions and services they provide, particularly following a hazard.

• Public Services
• Transportation Systems
• Lifeline Systems
• High Risk Facilities

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• Hospitals/medical centers
• Police and fire stations (public safety)
• Emergency Operations Centers
• Evacuation shelters
• Schools
• Community centers

• Airways/airports
• Highways and bridges
• Railways
• Waterways
• Mass transit

• Potable water
• Wastewater
• Oil/natural gas
• Electric power
• Communication

• Nuclear power plants
• Dams
• Military installations
• Chemical plants
• Industries

In this lesson, you learned how important it is for a community to conduct a thorough and accurate local damage assessment, in order to identify needs, determine priorities, and set the tone for the entire response and recovery. Remember, before developing a plan for your community, consult any damage assessment plans or guidelines that your State or other governing bodies may have already developed. You learned some basic terminology that is used for damage assessment, including the definition of critical infrastructure and key resources. Being able to identify the critical infrastructure in your community is important for planning an effective damage assessment program.

Click this link to view a list of all items provided in the Toolkit for this lesson.