GAO issues new disaster resilience guidelines

Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued last week new disaster resilience guidelines to help entities refine responses to the growing threat posed by natural disasters.

Disaster Resilience Framework: Principles for Analyzing Federal Efforts to Facilitate and Promote Resilience to Natural Disasters would assist in reducing rising costs associated with the federal response to climate and weather disasters.

“This important new tool is designed to help federal agencies and others refine their response to the growing threat posed by natural disasters,” Gene L. Dodaro, Comptroller General of the United States and head of the GAO, said. “Investments in disaster resilience are a promising way to reduce the overall impact of future disasters and minimize the federal government’s fiscal exposure.”

The guidelines focus on three approaches or principles those managing disaster response efforts may find useful in strengthening national disaster resilience – accessing information that is authoritative and understandable to help decision makers identify current and future risk and the impact of risk reduction strategies; integrating analysis and planning to help decision makers take coherent and coordinated resilience actions; and providing incentives to help make long-term, forward-looking risk-reduction investments more viable and attractive among competing priorities.

The need to enhance the federal government’s management of fiscal exposure to climate change has been on GAO’s High Risk List since 2013.