Urban Forestry Incident Command Engagement Model
The UFICEM is an effective tool for establishing collaboration among persons with tree related responsibilities and Emergency Managers (including Fire, Law Enforcement, and other related stakeholder entities) that will improve the “culture of preparedness” in the whole community.
When municipal professionals with tree responsibilities are able to relate and integrate the value of trees with other municipal priorities, (specifically storm related emergency management), into a cohesive, compelling value proposition they can then ask policy makers to commit to increasing ongoing urban forestry program investments. To validate the UFICEM a Storm Resilient Communities Summit was created to engage stakeholder groups.
Storm Resilient Communities Summit
Presenters Colleen Carroll and Teresa Trueman-Madriaga.
The Storm Resilient Communities Summit was the accumulation of two years of thought provoking nationwide interviews gleaning valuable insight into the urban forestry – emergency management dilemma, corralling creative energy from a host of pro bono expertise, and using agile progressions.
The Summit was held on August 3, 2015 in Los Angeles, CA at the California Endowment Center.
The Summit attempted to bridge the gap between an urban forester who may lack knowledge of Incident Command, has program funding issues, lacks the understanding of what their program has to offer and doesn’t understand what emergency managers could use.
Critical to the success of the Summit was reaching out to a cross-section of municipal, county, state, nonprofit, corporate, urban forestry and urban greening, emergency management, and other dimensions of professional and community diversity.
There was significant participation from the City of Los Angeles, including the Chief Resilience Officer, and several representatives from the City of Los Angeles Emergency Management Department. Urban Forestry and Urban Greening professionals in the municipal, for-profit, and nonprofit sectors were also well represented which included Los Amigos De Los Rio, Koreatown Youth and Community Center, and City Plants.
This project was funded entirely or in part by a grant from the USDA Forest Service Pacific Southwest Region in 2013.
Additional funding and supported was secured from Cal Fire Urban and Community Forestry Program, and Davey Trees. Additional support was generously donated by New York City Parks, California Urban Forestry Council, California Resilience Alliance, California Emergency Services Association, the University of Washington College of the Environment, and the University of Wisconsin – Stevens Point College of Natural Resources.
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