Rising Wisely

Service design and public policy have been getting closer and closer to each other in recent years – at least among leading design thinkers and strategists. Part of this turn has been driven by the need to ensure more participation among policy makers and members of civil society. The currency of this participation and engagement has historically been developed by designers – designers whose aim has been to create successful communication strategies, product lines, and service offerings. Another facet to this confluence of design and policy has been the slow unfolding among policy makers, designers, scientists, and other knowledge producers that the facts needed to drive good decision making made in ways we are only beginning to get a full picture of.

Many facts that were once assumed to be self-evident, such as the existence of gravity or of gasses in the atmosphere, have been shown, while fundamentally true, to have also been the acute products of their time and cultures that developed them. This doesn’t mean that they are invalid. It simply means that we could just have easily arrived at different conventions for the length of a year, the weight of a kilogram, or the names and properties of each element in the periodic table.

From a policy perspective, this has obvious implications for the validity of different alternatives. From a design perspective, it validates the processes that have come in tow with so-called design thinking – processes that place users at the forefront of questions about the role of policy, infrastructure, bureaucracy, and governance in the social century.

Recently, the Glen Cove Conference on Strategic Design and Public Policy was held in Glen Cove, NY, on 9-11 June, 2010. Initiated by Derek Miller and Lisa Rudnick of the UN Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR), and co-organized by Lucy Kimbell (based at Said Business School) and Gerry Philipsen (Center for Local Strategies Research, University of Washington), the event was conceived of as a small workshop which would bring together – for the first time, as far as they were aware – three groups:

• policymakers concerned with security in intrastate contexts and post-conflict situations, whose work is typically structured by intergovernmental and national policy goals;
• social science researchers, in particular ethnographers of communication who pay special attention to the construction of local knowledge, for example, how “security” is understood in communities in which the UN has a mandate to do increase it and having decided to help disarm ex-combatants; and
• designers and managers involved in designing services shaped by policy concerns about politics, exclusion and access.

Two participants blogged about their experiences: Lucy Kimbell a designer at the Said Business School and Aditya Dev Sood, one of India’s own and founder of CKS, a design consultancy based in Delhi and Bangalore. Links to their impressions and accounts follow below.

Lucy Kimbell: http://designleadership.blogspot.com/2010/07/glen-cove-conference-on-strategic.html

Aditya Dev Sood: http://www.cks.in/leedbackfoop/#section13

Thanks to experientia: putting people first for the find

Disaggregation among natural and social scientific communities can lead to misunderstandings about the different components of disaster management and socio-ecological systems. Terms like resilient, adaptive, robust are often used to describe systems and their processes and come up in the literature, policy, and the media very frequently. They have catch my attention because they have different use patterns in the field I know a little about: biology.

Adaptation, coping, resilience, and robustness have similar definitions, but they sometimes have different technical definitions across disciplines. Their different meanings contribute to their value, and they highlight the differences in perspectives that each scientific community contributes. However, the details matter for distinguishing important components of systems and what aspects might be suggestive for new insights or that might be responsive to intervention or assessment. It’s also important to establish common ground meanings when communities get together and work towards common goals.

There is a benchmark article Resilience, Adaptability and Transformability in Social–Ecological Systems that does a much better job at pulling together the literature than I do here, and I came across it after writing much of what is in this article. It is also the narrative used by the Resilience Alliance for their activities.

The following represents some of my notes and thinking as I try to sort out the definitions on my own. For me, it means asking how different perspectives contribute to the ways in which we interact in socio-ecological systems.

Adaptation
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 4th Assessment Report defines adaptation as:

Initiatives and measures to reduce the vulnerability of natural and human systems against actual or expected climate change effects. Various types of adaptation exist, e.g. anticipatory and reactive, private and public, and autonomous and planned. Examples are raising river or coastal dikes, the substitution of more temperature-shock resistant plants for sensitive ones, etc.

This definition takes its function from the ability of humans to manipulate their environment, making it better suited to human-identified goals and interests, even if acting on behalf of other organisms. Some synonyms include alteration, modification, redesign, remodeling, revamping, reworking, reconstruction, conversion, adjustment, acclimatization, acclimation, accommodations, habituation, acculturation, assimilation, and integration.

Adaptation is also used to describe genetically-accumulated evolutionary change over time in organisms as a response to natural selection. This is different from the case where manipulating the environment substitutes in the short-term replaces the pressure of genetic adaptation over the long term.

So I suppose this is why it calls to mind a version of evolution based on characters acquired in its lifetime (commonly known as Lamarckian inheritance)–if only for the appropriation of the term adaptation to refer to intra (within) generational processes and not inter (between) generational processes.

Adaptation for evolutionary biologists typically means processes through which a population becomes better suited to its environment over the course of many generations, often through natural selection. A great deal of debate and research has been directed at how we recognize adaptation in hindsight. This is because it can be difficult to state the causes for the evolution of a trait when we do not have direct observation and only historical signatures to learn from. Most notably this was discussed in “The Spandrels of San Marco”, a paper by Stephen Gould and Richard Lewontin (1979) that uses an analogy from architecture for the evolution of organismal form and function.

I agree that changing the environment in the ways mentioned in the IPCC definition will likely limit vulnerabilities for humans and other populations. However, there is an implicit assumption here that the goal should be for humans NOT to have to adapt over a course of generations–despite the inevitability of genetic change over time. It presupposes an assumption of stasis – and a very western one when compared to eastern notions of change and mutability. Richard Nisbett catalogs how some of these assumptions about change and stasis in his book The Geography of Thought. For me, it depends on what time scale one is looking to understand if stasis or change is more relevant. Still, I think its difficult to argue anymore that stasis is more relevant than change.

The necessary question should not be IF we should adapt (genetically or by manipulating the environment). Instead we should ask, “What are we adapting to and how are we getting there?” Will humans and other populations be adapting to artificially-supported ‘vulnerability balloons’ as we are almost surely doing now through our uses of technology and fossil fuels?

This question of adaptive goal is important because the IPCC definitions include definitions of costs and benefits with its description of adaptation. To what goal are these costs and benefits applied? Within the frame of a generation or an organism’s lifetime, explicating goals may make sense, but ascribing goals to a ecosystem – much less whole populations – gets very very slippery. You start to need some way to implicate who or what is writing that mission statement.

Similarly the IPCC includes adaptive capacity in its glossary as the ability, institutions, and resources that can be used to implement adaptation measures.

I think this is all a bit confusing, and I feel it makes more sense to reserve the definition of adaptation for genetic, phenotypic, and behavioral attenuation of organisms or systems to their environment across generations. To describe the processes that organisms and systems use during their lifetimes I think we need a term that encompasses more variability, one that is less blatantly anthropocentric and functionalist in its approach to socio-ecological co-evolution. We also need a long view on systems not ones that are limited to single generations only – something that the biological definition of adaptation retains but that the socio-technical one does not.

Borrowing from the literature of evolutionary biology, behavior, and developmental biology, plasticity seems far better suited to the processes of environmental manipulation being described by the IPCC. This is because it references a material (plastic) that maintains its basic molecular structure while having variable capacity to take on any number of manipulations or forms.

Coping and Plasticity
The terms coping and adaptation are sometimes used interchangeably leading to confusion. Here I think there is some opportunity to disentangle the two. A compilation of brainstorming sessions by groups of development practitioners in Ghana, Niger and Nepal described some differences which were then documented in the Climate Vulnerability and Capacity Analysis Handbook (table 1). The results of the group’s sessions were pointing to what I think was a difference between 1) consistent and conscious actions to reduce vulnerability (adaptation) versus 2) ad hoc solutions (coping).

It’s worthwhile to differentiate coping and adaptation as within and between generation processes, respectively. Biologists use plasticity to describe the ability of an organism or group to adjust within its lifetime via behavioral or developmental responses to the environment. This may indeed include manipulation of the environment to decrease vulnerability. Phenotypic plasticity is a description that could easily encompass artifacts, behaviors, institutions, and aggregations of resources as extensions of an organism’s phenotype. It invokes important concepts from evolutionary biology including the role of cooperation in building and maintaining extended phenotypes (such as aggregations of useful materials like insurance, band-aids, and water) or how phenotypic reaction norms can change in response to different environments–shedding light on why a strategy in one environment may not be as successful in another. There is further correspondence here with plasticity and the concept of developmental canalization (that organismal systems can get locked in to specific trajectories) and with the concept of path dependence in the development of economic and institutional systems.

So a better definition of plasticity might re-appropriate the IPCC’s definition of adaptation and rework it as:

An adjustment in natural or human systems in response to actual or expected climatic stimuli or their effects, which moderates harm or exploits beneficial opportunities. Plasticity operates through cognitive (sensing), social (interactional), physiological, and other mechanisms that can adjust to a wide range of variability. Plasticity is the ability to respond to variability and a range of realized and possible futures continuously and in a sustained approach. Plasticity or coping strategies attenuate the use of resources to local needs and involve planning that hybridizes old and new knowledge and strategies in an exploratory process.

Here I think this definition makes it much easier to bridge what may be happening at a physiological level (cellular temperature variation, sweating) with responses at an artifact level (clothing, ventilation) and an institutional (e.g. policies towards what it means to be cool).

This is because the term plasticity explicitly invokes a connotation of variability, while adaptation feels more like a description of how well two things (in this case organism or population and environment) fit together. Clearly, if the environment is highly variable we need variability in our systems, not assumptions and values of how well we already fit and work within it.

Coping, on the other hand, seems pretty straightforward. Survive. It makes sense to leave a lot of variability open for this one, because when it comes time for coping strategies, any and all tactics may be appropriate. But then again, there can be ways to cope that are more responsive than others. But I think this starts to dig into a definition of resilience or robustness, where the system properties begin to matter more than than how they manifest themselves in practice. What I mean by this is that as people, organisms, and ecosystems attempt to cope with change, their ability to draw on networks or strategies for coping is itself embedded in the system. Some systems, as a function of their structure, cope better than others. Consequently the adapt better than other too.

Resilience
The Climate Vulnerability and Capacity Analysis Handbook adapts its definition from UNISDR (2009) defining resilience as “the ability of a system to resist, absorb, and recover from the effects of hazards in a timely and efficient manner, preserving or restoring its essential basic structures, functions, and identity.”

The IPCC defines resilience as “the ability of a social or ecological system to absorb disturbances while retaining the same basic structure and ways of functioning, the capacity for self-organisation, and the capacity to adapt to stress and change.”

While Walker et al (2004) define resilience as “the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and reorganize while undergoing change so as to still retain essentially the same function, structure, identity, and feedbacks.”

In these cases resilience emphasizes a system’s ability to maintain or return to specific structural or functional features–i.e. to maintain its identity, its durability, its persistence. But as noted by Erica Jen in her article “Stable or Robust? What’s the Difference?” (2005), the choices of features or structural elements that we attend to are important for assessing both the capacity and quality of that responsiveness to change.

So what is the function, what is functional, and for whom? Definitions matter.

One way to think about resilience is to imagine a couple of different water balloons. One balloon is filled halfway full. Another is filled so that the latex rubber that composes its surface and membrane is stretched tightly to hold the water in. Now you can throw both balloons back and forth between each other, and neither may pop. But what do you think will happen when the balloons are stretched, twisted, or allowed to drop on the ground where a twig might be a hazard to the already tense surface of the overfilled balloon? It will probably pop and spill the water out.

A system’s resilience is a lot like a water balloon, and the degree of resilience is determined by how much water is forced into the balloon, the size of the balloon, and how much it is pushed to its limits. We might think of the balloons shape, its ‘throwability’ or the thickness of its membrane as examples of functional or structural elements. In most cases, we are looking at how well the balloon is able to maintain it shape and its continuity despite being stressed – i.e. it is functionally a ‘water balloon’, it has a round shape, and responds to the exterior and interior pressures of air and water.

Rarely do we think that a water balloon might reconfigure itself, rearranging the organization of its functions, structural elements, or features to be able to accomplish the same task differently. What would happen if the water and the balloon separated or if the water balloon system was able to draw on other systems (e.g. refrigeration) to change the relationships between its functional elements? What if we no longer simply considered only the water inside of the balloon as the system responding to the task of throwing? What if the throwing and catching movements were also included? Would we still think of a resilient system, or would we start to walk a path of robustness–of being able to adjust the definitions and constraints of the systems themselves in pursuit of coevolutionary relationships between them?

Robustness
Robustness is a different beast altogether – literally. While resilience is focused on maintaining a system, we can describe robustness as the ability of a system to change and in doing so to respond to environment and to develop entirely new functions as a result.

Some argue that robustness describes the ability of a system to withstand mutations and maintain its phenotype or “shape” as a result (Wagner, 2005). Instead I think there is a greater correspondence of robustness with transformation as used by Walker et al (2004). Transformability is “the capacity to create a fundamentally new system when ecological, economic, or social (including political) conditions make the existing system untenable.” I’m less sure about the “untenable” part of Walker et al’s definition.

Robustness is the ability of a system to evolve system functions, not simply maintain those that already exist. In this way, an analogy can be drawn between adaptation/robustness and plasticity/resilience. Similarly, I think robustness has a quality of being parametric. Parametric architecture has the quality of being built from common construction principles, but by varying the parameter values of those rules of construction, endless forms become possible.

References

Walker, B., C. S. Holling, S. R. Carpenter, and A. Kinzig. 2004. Resilience, adaptability and transformability in social–ecological systems. Ecology and Society 9(2): 5. [online] URL: http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol9/iss2/art5

UNISDR, 2009. Terminology: Basic terms of disaster risk reduction and IISD et al, 2007. Community-based Risk Screening – Adaptation and Livelihoods (CRiSTAL) User’s Manual, Version 3.0.

Climate Vulnerability and Capacity Analysis Handbook

http://www.careclimatechange.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=25&Itemid=30

IPCC, 2007: Climate Change 2007: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Annex I., M.L. Parry, O.F. Canziani, J.P. Palutikof, P.J. van der Linden and C.E. Hanson, Eds., Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 976pp.

Stephen Jay Gould and Richard C. Lewontin. “The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm: A Critique of the Adaptationist Programme” Proc. Roy. Soc. London B 205 (1979) pp. 581-598

Wagner, Andreas. 2005. Robustness and Evolvability in Living Systems (Princeton Studies in Complexity). Princeton University Press.

It’s not often that unfunded proposals make their way into disinfecting daylight. Sometimes you try again, and sometimes you just let them waste away among the dusty electrons of your hard drive.

I don’t know which category this one falls into, but I do feel it’s worth sharing and making public. Perhaps someone will even comment with improvements. I can only hope.

In any case, this proposal was dependent on a constellation of partnerships (and funding) to make the project move forward–at least from my perspective. Sometime a little cash can help develop needed projects and spur collaboration. This was a submission to the Knight News Challenge which is supposed to announce its winners sometime in mid-June. Since I know I’m already out of the running, there isn’t really a compelling reason not to share—but please tell me if there is!!!

Anyhow, here is most of it—-minus some names to protect the innocent—–except one: this logo was created by Zack Denfeld, and we’ve used it on a variety of projects. For more, you should visit his launchpad.

Describe your project:
Envirocasting adapts global weather information to the cultural and operational needs of local [international disaster preparedness organization] branch offices and communities, supporting their risk assessment and preparedness needs. A wealth of information exists to support disaster preparedness, but a gap exists between the design of information services and their local use-contexts, limiting widespread use and effectiveness. The benefits of these information services are clear to local decision makers, and they are anxious to put the tools and news sources into practice.

However, exposure to digital news platforms is low, and the capacity to use them in decision making contexts is minimal as a result of this disconnect between design and use.

Envirocasting takes a design anthropology approach to inform the design, distribution, and acquisition of digital weather information services to local decision makers. Design anthropology seeks to understand the role of design artifacts and processes in defining what it means to be human. Using this approach, local patterns of information consumption and culture related to futures, information design, and technological metaphors can be identified, allowing for the design of appropriate services. Design principles as well as specific, local use-applications will aid in the distribution and assessment of weather forecast efficacy. Thus, weather news for risk assessment can flow more precipitously to decision makers, allowing them to coordinate the disaster preparedness efforts more quickly and strategically.

Simulation games for local communities will support learning and the application of information services in context. This provides use-case memories of the future and practice in managing uncertainty with minimal risk.

How will your project improve the way news and information are delivered to geographic communities?

Envirocasting aims to localize climate information by making it simple, non-technical, clear, easy to use, and as meaningful as possible. Maps are relevant when their colors, numbers, icons, and scales are relevant and supported by culture and context. Information that connects with specific actions can be used confidently in planning and decision making. Specific use-cases communicated by local communities will drive the development process and will help weave the digital media fabric with aesthetics, narratives, and metaphors. Games support critical thinking and social play to help decision makers and communities explore the dynamics of news and information-based decisions for climate-related disaster preparedness.

How is your idea innovative? (new or different from what already exists)

Envirocasting innovates by translating connections between design and use. When local conditions refract the design and dissemination of information from distant or multiple sources, innovation is an inherent byproduct. Envirocasting is designed with the mind in mind, understanding cultural legacies that influence the recognition of uncertainty and metaphors. It bridges experience, play, and interactions, creating memories of the future. The project identifies appropriate implementations of open-source digital information services and defines a set of prescriptive resources for innovating across disaster risk contexts and cultural processes based on abstractions and lessons from six local communities in three countries.

What unmet need does your proposal answer?

A fact-finding mission conducted surveys, interviews, meetings and workshops over two-month periods in 2008 and 2009.

Explicit unmet needs include:

1. An Increase in the Accessibility and User-Friendliness of Climate Information Products
2. New Products to Fill Information Gaps for Needs–Starting with Improved Flood Forecasting Tools
3. Training in the Use of Climate Tools and How Climate Information Could Trigger Action Such as:
   • Learning to access and interpret climate information tools.
   • Learning how to monitor seasonal forecasts in conjunction with medium and short-term forecasts.
   • Understanding how to take gradated actions.
   • Channels of communication and decision-making to receive and take action based on time-sensitive climate information.

And don’t take my word for it:

What will you have changed by the end of your project?

More-Measurable outcomes:

• Prototypes that adapt weather information services to local use-contexts.
• Documents that communicate design processes for cross-cultural communication.
• Heuristics or ‘rules-of-thumb’ for the design of climate information services for risk assessment.
• Country and local use-context reports that document specific patterns of information acquisition and behavior.
• Relevance of climate information for local decision-makers.
• Ability to align information with decision and action.
• A folktaxonomy of climate information and categories for creating a cultural consensus model (CCM) to realize translations in cognition and practice among cultural contexts.
• An index of context-specific actions and the values associated with them.

Less-measurable outcomes:

• Perception of the design process and innovation pathways for news and information about climate-driven risks.
• The relationship between information providers, researchers, designers, policy makers, and implementing offices providing the opportunity for continued support, training and dialogue necessary to realize the potential benefits of using climate information.
• Channels of communication between information providers and decision makers and between decision makers and community constituents (incl. digital information services).
• The scope of the implementing organizations to conduct cross-cultural research and information adaptation projects.

How will you measure progress and ultimately success?
The uses of weather and hazard preparedness information can be measured using surveys, interviews, meetings and workshops and compared to current estimates of use and use cases, but those data are useful differently for different people including the decision-makers, their constituents, their supporting agencies, and funders of this project. Thus, we intend to cast progress in varied terms for the different stakeholders and partners.

Some of these guiding questions include:

• What are the iterations, changes, and improvements to existing systems?
• What does the trajectory of individual decision-maker’s tasks or questioning look like?
• How do other elements of the media ecology change and what stakeholders are invoked or leveraged in the process?

Success, on the other hand, is more elusive. Disasters are sporadic and may not always afford a direct link between information effectiveness and risk reduction. However, existing case studies show that these types of information, when combined with specific actions, can lead to significant reductions in both the vulnerability and negative effects of a disaster such as flooding. The key to assessment it to engage in a continual processes where we value choices and transitions in practice. The design of this project take into account the high-stakes involved in the decision-making and information uses by providing opportunities for both high stakes (post-hazard) and low stakes (simulation-games) assessment.

Do you see any risk in the development of your project?

The biggest risk at present is that the organizations listed do not have a history of working together (this is indicated by the generic names rather than their proper ones), but this is also where the opportunity exists. The leadership (particularly of the larger orgs) is wary of their participation in the project without first-hand knowledge of all partners and/or certain funding. This conversation is ongoing at the time of this application and continues to develop. If the proposal moves through to the next round, we should at that point be able to name each of the partners in more specific terms.

Supply-side risks (design-mediated)

• Inability to generate meaning either through lack of empathy or translation of needs to designers
• Research products are not absorbed and implemented during the design processes because they are non-normative, unclear for direct application, left uncommunicated, or other
• Partner coalition denatures from lack of shared goals or mental models
• Emphasis on technological development or information diversification over use-context and user needs
• Existing insights, stakeholders, and methods are unknown or unengaged
• Irrelevance, inability, or non-linkage of digital mediums and meaningful information services
• Cultural heterogenetiy too great for scaling of appropriate information services
• Ability and capacity of project managers to recognize and adapt to other sources of risk
• Expertise of project partners is missing or unleveraged
• Translation of local use-contexts into primary research is distorted or biased

Demand-side risks (user-mediated)

• Low frequency acquisition of technology platforms, information services, and/or symbolic systems
• Scripting of use and application to local decision making is unclear
• Appropriation for local use-cases is nonexistent
• Assembly does not fit into the local context of everyday life
• Cannot be integrated into normal practices, culture, and concerns
• Practice with information and platform is sparse

What is your marketing plan? How will people learn about what you are doing?

The conduits for marketing are, in many respects, already in place. The organizational structure and extent of [intl. disaster preparedness agency] branch offices will facilitate branding and distribution using existing networks of community organization, tactical planning, and response offices. Though the value of the services should be self-evident in the design and cognitive acquisition of the services, the goal is to help users to practice using and applying these information services. We also recognize that aesthetic values can elevate the recognition of value and the maintenance of that value through everyday use. Thus, arriving at these values will be a principle objective for all participants.

In order to increase domain knowledge, the outcomes can be shared among the participants, their centers, and via professional and interest networks including the design research community which actively engages with similar project goals. Because some of the project partners include university centers, schools and research organizations, the outcomes will be shared with emerging professionals including graduate students and visiting fellows.

Tactically, the marketing plan for simulation game-based training is slightly more difficult because it requires additional preparation, training, and presentation. Nonetheless, with a bit of effort, these games will reinforce the marketing strategy for the primary goal of adapting weather information using the same local community branch office network structure. We also expect to develop videos that demonstrate our process as well as the use and value of the informations service under construction. But ultimately, the best marketing will be the effectiveness of the adaptation process.

Is this a one-time experiment or do you think it will continue after the grant? If it is to be self-sustainable, what’s the plan for making that happen?

Envirocasting is the application of a process to translate meaning across cultural contexts with relevance for local concerns. We do not view it as an experimental process so much and an underutilized one. Luckily, there are many resources, case studies, and additional expertise to draw from in the process. Our goal is to assemble them and to draw the pieces together into relevant platforms and prototypes for weather information services.

The project will accomplish this goal as a one-time research project that will publicly document its methods and outcomes as guides so that they can be applied in new use-contexts and for wider information arrays. We fully expect that the different project partners will continue to apply the work and experience in varied ways after the initial project, although they may carry it out to their own ends.

Our method for fostering rhizomatic-like dissemination of the results (and thus, sustainability) is to link with additional strategic partners whose networks span varied social groups, languages, use-contexts, and concerns. Furthermore, the acquisition and integration of the research (as well as the information services it supports) can be broadly advocated from a policy perspective because successes arise from its application and benefit in specific, local communities. The overall plan for sustainability is to demonstrate that these information service platforms reduce risk by enabling decisive action before pending hazards become disasters. If this is demonstrated, sustainability will ensue, even if not in the form described in this proposal.

These are notes from a critical thinking session we did yesterday where we looked at the positives and negatives of the India-UNDP Institutional Strengthening and Capacity Building strategy for Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR; SI#12). The project is being implemented by the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) in relation tothe National Policy on Disaster Management which was approved in October, 2009.

We will be working on a more detailed analysis, but in the meantime here are our initial interpretations. Note: these have not been verified with the implementing agencies, and only come from our reading of the documents themselves.

Implementation Strategy	Positives	Negatives
Agency Roles for State Disaster management Agency (SDMA) and State Executive Committee (SEC)	SDMA serves as a dedicated agency for planning. SEC works as a broker, coordinating SDMA’s efforts with State and District Actors.	SDMA lacks authority and/or may not be in a position to receive critical feedback. SEC may have authority but may miss opportunities and/or have little contribution to policy (e.g. how coordinate intersects with planning).
Capacity of SDMA and SEC to carry out roles effectively.	Opportunity for Synthesis Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) responsibility is decentralized by default	Human resources and technical assistance is absent or lacking Mixed and overlapping responsibilities between SDMA and SEC. (e.g. HR resources are listed for SDMA but not SEC; work requirements are not allocated appropriately)
Scale of Project (3-6 Districts/State)	Tractable. Value in Experiment	May not include Bangalore. But we need scale NOW! Existing models not taken into account SDMA vs State and potential for political preferences or interference
National Steering Committee and the Identity of “Relevant” Departments at the State Level	Flexibility to choose different departments or to determine relevance	Relevant State Department are not known, nor are there planned criteria for inclusion Might miss relevant actors
Provision of Dedicated Human Resources from National Level to Fill State Interim Needs	Immediate Expertise Flexible Top in Class Diversity	Lagged Capacity as New People are Trained Possible Gaps in Capacity or Even a ‘One Off’ Presence of Expertise = Unsustainable Unfamiliar with Local Conditions
Distribution of Support Roles	Interdisciplinary	Too Many Responsibilities. SDMA is Missing a ‘networker’ = Someone to Connect SDMA Outputs Strategically with Agencies and Local Actors (provided in part by SEC)
Hazard and Vulnerability Analysis	Can be Multi-Sectoral Can be Interdisciplinary Based on and Developing from Existing Processes	Scale and Resource Limited Needs to Connect Macro and Micro Key Institutes and Experts Not Specified nor are Criteria for Inclusion Given
Entire DRR Process (whole strategy)	Relevant and Realistic	Based on Response not Preparation
Standard Methodology for Post-Disaster Need Assessment	Bangalore as a Center of Expertise Sector-Specific Modular	Feedback Mechanisms Missing
Recovery and Reconstruction	Sector-Specific Modular Validation Community Focus Capacity Building at Community Level Learning from Past	No Funding or Enabling of NGOs
Mainstreaming DRR	Forward Looking Disaster Management Perspective Anti-Corruption Focus Curriculum Development Pilot Efforts	Lack of Appropriate Tools and Methods Narrow Disciplinary Focus (engineering)
Capacity for Preparedness, Response, Mitigation, and Planning	Sector Relevance Mitigation Responsibility Placed with Department Officials to be Achieved through Zoning, Regulations, and other Instruments	Almost All Training is Aimed at Response Mitigation Effectiveness is Limited
Awareness Building	State Can Access Widespread Communication Channels	Not at an Appropriate Scale (i.e. taluk) Responsibility at State Level
Knowledge Networking	Knowledge Hubs Integrative Focused Scale-Free	Hubs May Not be Networked Narrow Disciplines Not for Public Consumption Values are Not Prescribed