The Oregon Partnership for Disaster Resilience (Partnership) is a coalition of public, private, and professional organizations working collectively toward the mission of creating a disaster resilient and sustainable state. The Partnership is recognized by the Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS) as a Showcase State for Disaster Resilience.  Developed and coordinated by the Community Service Center (CSC) at the University of Oregon the Partnership employs a service learning model to increase community capacity and enhance disaster safety and resilience statewide. Below are brief summaries of the Partnership’s current programs.

Oregon Pre-Disaster Mitigation Planning (PDM):

Partnership's current planning Initiatives cover over 2/3 of the geographic area of Oregon. We are working with Central Oregon,  Southeast Oregon, Northeast Oregon, and Oregon Coast  through Pre-Disaster Mitigation Planning Grants to support staff in developing local natural hazard mitigation plans. CSC staff  serve as the lead project coordinator providing plan development support, technical resources, and a proven planning process / framework for each county. The photo above features some of the regional partners at a Pre-Disaster Mitigation training. 

Pre-Disaster Mitigation Downloads:

• Establishing Mitigation as the Cornerstone for Community Resilience

• Building Local Capacity for Risk Reduction
  

The Partnership is working with the University of Oregon (UO) to develop a comprehensive emergency management program for campus. The program will use an integrated systems approach to emergency management. The goal is to assure that the UO is not only prepared to respond to crises and disasters but able to identify opportunities to mitigate risk and prevent loss and establish recovery and continuity strategies for all types of events. Achieving disaster resilience on a campus is an exceedingly complex problem that requires coordination, cooperation, and a focused effort from the entire University and many partners – city, county and state government, neighboring citizens, and the private and non-profit sectors. The Partnership hopes UO emergency management program can serve as a national model on how to efficiently integrate service learning and applied research into all facets of campus emergency management. Effectively turning one of the campus’ greatest concerns, the safety and wellbeing of it students, faculty, and staff into its strongest asset for disaster resilience.

Post-Disaster Recovery Planning for Catastrophic Disasters:

The events of the 2004 Sumatra earthquake and tsunami as well as Hurricane Katrina in 2005 have proven that most communities are ill prepared to undertake the long-term post-disaster recovery and reconstruction efforts necessary to bring a community back following a catastrophic disaster. Recognizing the importance of these issues, the Partnership, Cascadia Region Earthquake Workgroup(CREW), the US Geological Survey(USGS), Oregon Emergency Management, and the City of Cannon Beach partnered in an effort to better prepare coastal communities in the Cascadia Region for the short-term recovery and long-term reconstruction efforts communities may face as a result of a catastrophic Cascadia Subduction Zone event. The Partnership continues to build off of this pilot project and is working with partners to develop a post-disaster recovery Program Area.

The partnership is coordinated by: Community Service Center at the University of Oregon