The most important elements of recovery and mitigation preparedness include mitigation goals, actions, and the action plan. These elements offer an outline to ascertain, categorize, and implement actions to minimize the risk to vulnerabilities. Mitigation goals refer to the overall procedures, which describe the things the community desires to accomplish with the plan. The goals are usually a general policy type of accounts, which are long-term and exemplify visions for minimizing or preventing losses from recognized risks. Mitigation actions refer to definite activities and projects, which assist in the accomplishment of the goals. The action plan defines how the mitigation actions should be implemented such as prioritizing actions, administration, and integration of the existing planning strategies of the community (Houston, Schraedley, Worley, Reed & Saidi, 2019). The concept of preparedness is affirmed in the Bible in Genesis 21:6 where God asks Noah to prepare for the coming floods. “As for you, take for yourself some of all food which is edible, and gather it to yourself, and it shall be for food for you and them” (Genesis 21:6, The New King James Version ). The obstacles that are the most significant challenge to achieving a comprehensive and effective preparedness plan include lack of political willingness and commitment to be part of the decision making. Most politicians are reluctant in spending resources for disaster recovery and preparedness activities, which in turn hinders the accomplishment of the desired goals. Another significant challenge includes a lack of coordination between the various actors of the recovery and preparedness programs. According to the survey conducted by Taylor and Birkland (2019), it was found that most donors prefer to visit and work on areas that are easy to access with high visibility thereby end up neglecting areas that need more attention. Furthermore, another obstacle includes inconsistency in the recovery and preparedness interventions as well as a lack of standardized strategy. Research reveals that different organizations are utilizing differing modules of training and referencing materials to improve the sizes of community recovery and preparedness activities. This results in differences in the community’s capacity improvement (Taylor & Birkland, 2019).
References
Houston, J. B., Schraedley, M. K., Worley, M. E., Reed, K., & Saidi, J. (2019). Disaster journalism: fostering citizen and community disaster mitigation, preparedness, response, recovery, and resilience across the disaster cycle. Disasters , 43 (3), 591-611. https://doi.org/10.1111/disa.12352
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Taylor, K., & Birkland, T. (2019). The politics and governance of mitigation. The Routledge handbook of urban disaster resilience: Mitigation, preparedness, and recovery planning. Abingdon, UK: Taylor & Francis/Routledge.