Developing a Resiliency Index for CSU Campuses

Sustainability and resilience have become intrinsic to good planning and are particularly important to Cal Poly\u27s Master Plan. Professor William Siembieda discusses his interdisciplinary elective Hazard Mitigation Planning and Design, and describes the students\u27 efforts in developing an index to measure campus resiliency

A WUI-based Plan Integration for Resilience Scorecard

The problem at hand. Between 2003 and 2021, the top 10 costliest wildland fires in the United States all occurred in California. One in four Californians live in an area considered high risk for wildfires. Given the impact of catastrophic fires in western states, the need exists for increasing Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) fire resilience through assessing and managing local land use, mitigation and adaptation plans. Most California jurisdictions produce and follow many different types of plans (e.g., General Plan with required Safety Element; Hazard Mitigation Plan, Community Wildfire Protection Plan), each with its own set of policies and implementation scheme; generally, these are “siloed” and lack integration. This is especially true with regard to hazards, and in particularly the WUI fire hazard that is addressed by several agencies and plans, but without sufficient collaboration and spatial understanding of the heterogeneous effects of policy across a community. A proposed solution. To address the many-plan-little-integration dilemma, this project focuses on applying the Plan Integration for Resilience Scorecard™ (PIRS) method to California jurisdictions that are subject to the Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) fire hazard. This a method that spatially evaluates networks of plans to strengthen a jurisdiction’s resilience and reduce vulnerability to hazards. It provides a pathway to systematically evaluate and then adjust multiple policies to improve the focus and coordination of plans on building resilience in the most vulnerable locations. The process aims to harmonize a jurisdiction’s network of plans to support community priorities that lower risk from hazards. With support from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and an initial focus on flood hazards, the PIRS™ method was first applied in several East and Gulf Coast cities and in the Netherlands. FEMA later used the process to conduct vulnerability analysis in the Southern U.S., and the American Planning Association (APA) has adopted it and developed an online course to teach PIRS™ to its members. NOAA recently provided support for urban heat island hazard analysis using the PIRS™ method for a pilot in several cities. WUI fire presents a special challenge in that the hazard itself stems from the dynamics of fuel variables (natural and built) interacting with climate and human variables. Through building a scorecard supported by a spatial framework, policies that support risk reduction are made visible, while that those are in conflict with a risk reduction strategy are called out. . This network is unique to a jurisdiction, in that it spans departmental objectives. Finally, physical and social vulnerability are determined for each of the districts and compared to the policy scores. Conceptualizing how WUI fire, as a hazard, becomes part of the land use planning process will be of this project’s main contributions. The project team will work with four California jurisdictions over a two-year period, using a multidisciplinary team of faculty associated with the Cal Poly-San Luis Obispo WUI Fire Institute and the Texas A&M Hazard Reduction and Recovery Center. The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation provides support for this effort

Analysis of Potential Application of California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) Exemptions to Investor-Owned Utility Wildfire Mitigation Plans to Accelerate Fire Prevention and Mitigation Efforts

Wildfire poses an existential threat for California. Five of the six largest wildfires in California’s history occurred in 2020 and 2021 including the first fire to ever impact over 1 million acres. Between 2014-2018, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE) identified electrical power generation as igniting more fires than lightning strikes. In response to electrical utility assets igniting wildfires, the State of California has mandated that investor-owned utilities (IOU) develop Wildfire Mitigation Plans (WMP) that include a spectrum of mitigation and prevention efforts including undergrounding of utilities, hardening of electrical assets (e.g., converting wooden poles to steel or other non-flammable materials) and vegetation management. The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) provides mechanisms for accelerating regulatory approval in implementation of critical emergency prevention in response to wildfires. Relying on regulatory texts, legislative history and case law, this report reviews the creation and use of the CEQA statutory emergency exemption and several categorical exemptions (existing facilities, replacement and reconstruction, and minor alterations to land use). This report concludes that, depending on the nature and location of the wildfire risk mitigation, all of these exemptions are available to accelerate WMP prevention and mitigation work and should be employed by agencies with jurisdiction to ensure that existing risks posed by utility hardware and lines are promptly addressed to avoid loss or damage from IOU-ignited wildfires. This report further concludes that it would be advisable for the legislature to adopt a new specific CEQA statutory exemption to ensure rapid implementation of existing WMPs where there are identified known IOU ignition risks

Ritual and the Public Realm in Japan: Jizo Temples in Neighborhoods

The local display of Jizo statues and temples, a centuries old cultural Japanese ritual in which an individual or family builds a public temple to house the deity in remembrance of a deceased child, woman, or traveler, is produced, maintained, and protected by neighborhood residents without government or design-professional oversight. Its value lies in the desire of local people for a physical object through which they make personal linkages to devotional practices. This essay examines two propositions about the construction and use of the public realm as expressed through the Japanese practice of neighborhood Jizo statues and temples,: 1) do Jizo assist in making streets safer in cities; and 2) can these temples be considered part of the public realm that strengthens the neighborhood? An historical basis for the Jizo ritual is established, followed by a description of how Jizo are located in neighborhoods, who maintains them, and how they are utilized on an every day basis. Visual depictions of various Jizo installations also are presented. The article concludes that Jizo is an example of community-based practice that works because it meets people’s needs. Jizo statues and temples do serve as informal public realm creating agents

Contemporary Master Planned Community Practice

The authors discuss an on-going research on the planning and implementing of master planned communities in different countries, and their implications for contemporary planning practice. They show that the developers´ goal is for the MPC to become the place “of choice” for residents and employers over the long term, and that success is directly linked to the ability to adapt implementation processes and strategies that meet market and social needs

Post-Disaster Assessment of the Performance of Hazard Mitigation Projects: The California SMART Approach

California\u27s SMART (State Mitigation Assessment Review Team) program for assessing natural hazard mitigation project performance after a disaster is a method of integrating multiple state agencies\u27 expertise into a working tool for assessing the value of public investments in risk reduction. The intent of the SMART program is to provide the California Emergency Management Agency with information about the performance of publicly financed mitigation projects so that it can better allocate future funding and improve the overall safety of California. A key aspect of the program is the mobilization of California State University faculty and staff from across the state after a disaster in order to conduct rapid performance assessments while field data is available. In order to test the SMART system, a pilot study was conducted using the Yountville Flood Barrier Wall Project performance during a 2005 flood on the Napa River. The case validated the idea that for a flood project, a rapid evaluation could be conducted using field observations that establish the height and extent of flooding and include the project\u27s original cost-benefit analysis. The data produced from this type of evaluation program will be valuable to state emergency management agencies trying to allocate program grants in the most efficient manner and to government agencies who want to make sure that federal dollars are being spent wisely