Using FEMA’s lifelines to benefit the public safety community

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) created Community Lifelines to assist in restoring services to communities in the wake of disasters. These lifelines offer a real-time graphical representation of current conditions.

Public safety agencies can leverage lifelines to develop a comprehensive understanding of their community’s needs, delineate roles and responsibilities within and beyond public safety, and collaborate with other agencies to establish strategies for overall community improvement.

The components of lifelines are fixed, but the subcomponents are flexible and can be tailored to reflect the realities within your sector, precinct, fire station, division, fire district, county, or city:

1. Safety and Security: Law Enforcement/Security, Fire Service, Search and Rescue, Government Service, Community Safety
2. Food, Hydration, Shelter: Food, Hydration, Shelter, Agriculture
3. Health and Medical: Medical Care, Public Health, Patient Movement, Medical Supply Chain, Fatality Management
4. Energy: Power Grid, Fuel
5. Communications: Infrastructure, Responder Communications, Alerts Warnings and Messages, Finance, 911 and Dispatch
6. Transportation: Highway/Roadway/Motor Vehicle, Mass Transit, Railway, Aviation, Maritime
7. Hazardous Materials: Facilities, HAZMAT, Pollutants, Contaminants
8. Water Systems - Potable Water Infrastructure, Wastewater Management

Once an assessment has been carried out, a color is assigned to each category. This color system allows for a quick understanding of the status: green indicates good, red denotes bad, while yellow and grey carry other implications.

The domain encompassing law enforcement, fire, and emergency medical services falls squarely under the Safety and Security category. Upon examining these categories, it becomes apparent how public safety is interconnected with the others. In today’s climate, public safety often takes the lead in resolving issues that actually fall under other categories. Understanding these categories and their associated icons helps delineate when and where public safety should not assume a leading role. Instead, public safety should either refrain from interfering in the activities of other categories or offer support to those responsible for those categories.

These primary categories and icons are utilized at local, state, and national levels. The overarching goal is to transition all icons to green. When communities operate in the green, society is stable and the role of public safety is maintenance.

FEMA subdivides each category and icon into subcategories and sub-icons. Every locality, whether rural, suburban, or urban, is unique and confronts its own contentions and challenges. These subcategories are flexible and assigned in a way that accurately represents your locality. They should include a realistic situational awareness of community needs, resources and methods to bridge the gaps between problems and solutions. At the macro community level, an accurate categorization and assignment of roles can serve as a catalyst to not only stabilize your community but also rejuvenate areas.

For instance, consider a community in which residents are economically disadvantaged due to higher-wage jobs being located outside their immediate area. Juvenile crime rates are high because local youths lack access to recreational activities. Neither of these issues – economic instability or lack of recreational activities – falls under the purview of law enforcement. A traditional model would see public safety taking measures to prevent crime and apprehend culprits. However, public safety can also support initiatives in transportation and critical infrastructure, which can help residents secure higher wages and provide recreational opportunities for youths. Communities with higher average wages tend to experience fewer crime issues, and engaging children in recreational activities can deter them from causing community disturbances. Thus, supporting lifelines not typically associated with public safety can have secondary and tertiary effects, contributing to a safer community.

Numerous agencies representing law enforcement, fire and emergency services in Central Virginia have shown interest in this concept. At the micro level, individual organizations and agencies can customize the icons to aid in their own analysis. A captain from a neighboring agency suggested the addition of an orange subcategory icon to represent critical but still functioning items.

In Central Virginia, there is a daily morning call among public safety organizations. This brief meeting covers the status of specialized equipment and any events that could impact the region. The status of any icon not represented in green could be discussed for regional situational awareness.

I’ve been employing the lifelines approach in my sector. By adapting the FEMA toolkit for my decision-making matrix, I began by crafting a flow chart to determine which subcategories to include and identify the stakeholders responsible. I then invited citizens, stakeholders, businesses and my assigned police personnel to share their insights and perspectives. These discussions revealed the need to expand the subcategories I initially planned to use.

To achieve situational awareness, I sought to answer three key questions before developing my decision-making matrix:

• What is currently happening in the environment?
• Is it crucial and in need of stabilization?
• If so, how can the issue be stabilized?

Next, I started to construct a decision-making matrix to enhance the community:

• Lifeline: Does the issue fall under a lifeline category or subcategory? If so, which one?
• Who is responsible for this lifeline?
• Objectives, operations and desired outcomes: What is the intended outcome?
• Strategies and tactics: What is your strategy to resolve the issue? If it’s not a public safety problem but still affects public safety, how can we lend support to address the root cause?
• Lines of effort: What are the specific efforts that need to be undertaken? Who is accountable for these tasks? Will the actions of one Life Line have a positive impact on any other Life Lines?
• Cooperative groups: Which groups can you collaborate with to implement the program?
• Pros/cons & monetary/time constraints: What are the advantages and disadvantages of this lifeline? What limiting factors could potentially slow or halt activities?
• Mitigating efforts: What immediate actions can be taken to alleviate the situation and start making progress?
• Cascading impacts: If this problem is resolved, will there be secondary or tertiary impacts?

After collecting data and feedback, I categorize the issues under the appropriate icon. I establish my threshold values for the colored icons: green, yellow, orange, or red. Finally, I note the creation date of the matrix and when it will need to be revalidated. I then share my assessment with my department and stakeholders. The ultimate goal is to maintain the status of the green icons and gradually shift the red icons through orange and yellow to green.

In 2018, I collaborated with the Police Executive Research Forum on a project aimed at building trust in Latino communities. Our actions and outcomes are detailed in the article, “Building Police-Community Trust in the Latino Community of Southwood in Richmond, Virginia.” The lifeline concept could have been invaluable in creating a comprehensive map of the community. A unique set of icons could have been used to chart the community and the status of each lifeline. The article could have presented the status of the icons before the project, highlighted the steps taken during the project, and listed the icons and their status at the project’s conclusion.

FEMA devised the lifelines as a strategy to stabilize and subsequently help rebuild communities after disasters. Public safety organizations can adopt the lifeline concept to foster safer communities. The icons offer an immediate visual representation of a lifeline’s status. However, the true differentiator of lifelines is the holistic examination of a community, identifying the root causes of successes and failures, and following a proven path to create lines of effort. Life;ines provide a comprehensive view of our communities and guide public safety in effectively supporting community efforts to stabilize and grow. It’s a concept worth exploring further.