Namibia Resilient System

What is the
"Resilience System"? 

Is a system that enables, to
measure the sustainable ability of a community to utilize available resources
to respond to, withstand, and recover from adverse situations.

 

The Namibian Resilient System

The Namibian
Resilience System (NRS) is a nested sub-system of the Global Resilience System
(GRS); The NRS is a society-wide initiative with the goal of improving the
health, well-being, and prosperity of Namibian citizens and their communities
by fostering a resilient response to change. Based upon an open data / open
source platform that enables collaboration at all levels of society, over great
distances, the NRS will utilizes a multi sector approach enabling citizens,
communities, NGOs, business and government to collaborate in identifying risks,
preparing for unexpected events, reducing vulnerability, and responding to
change events with a collective effort to improve circumstances. The NRS is to
focus on creative options to adapt to adversity (also called "adaptive
capacity building"), information sharing environments, networking, and
collective action. The NRS, and its nested sub-systems (still to be
indentified) will be flexible hyper-local response to create and maintain
prosperous economic and social systems embedded in healthy ecological systems,
upon whose services we depend for our health, wealth, and security. 

 

Why is the Namibian
Resilience System Important?

The essence of
the system is to create a platform where valuable information will be shared
that builds a Namibian community that is self reliance.

 

Complex System   Namibian society, -- under the
conditions of the second decade of the 21st Century -- is subject to massive
and costly systems challenges and discontinuities in our food, water, housing,
health care, security, energy, forests, soil, and other natural resources, as
well as financial and economic systems. The Namibia Resilience System is
designed as an arena for collaboration and integrative management and
governance, allowing for learning and flexibility to build adaptive capacity
through all levels of society. Resilience Networks access local situational
awareness and management of localized social-ecological systems, while working
hand in hand with all levels of government, the private sector, and the social
sector based upon the community’s need for capacity building. Weaving local and
national value chains in with awareness that humans and nature are entwined,
both human-built environments and natural systems provide essential components
for stimulating adaptation and appropriate development that enhances
resilience. 

Enables Agile and
Adaptable Response:   We
live in a world of constantly changing socio-ecological systems, rather than
attempting to deny or control change, the Namibian Resilience System applies a
breakthrough in integrative management and governance systems.  “Focus,
Agility, and Convergence (FAC)” teams (sometimes called "smart
swarms" are used to supplement, and eventually replace, many hierarchical,
control systems with more efficient complex adaptive systems, which are
self-synchronizing to emerging conditions. These non-hierarchical,
non-controlled systems operate with the qualities of distributed collective
learning, evidence-based decision-making and agile response, similar to market
economies and the internet, rather than 20th Century Soviet-style centralized
economies or traditional American command and control systems. Although Namibia
has benefited significantly from non-hierarchical, non-controlled systems,
(such as culture, cell phone communication, and the internet) the advances in
systems science have yet to be widely applied to the Namibia health sector,
energy sector, and disaster management communities.  Resilience Systems
are bridging this gap.

 

Reducing
Vulnerability in an Epoch of Finite National Resources

Ecosystem services per capita are rapidly declining
globally.  They have been extremely impacted
in many parts of Namibia. Namibia forests are gone as deforestation is evident
more in the northern part and eastern parts of the country.  Many of its trees have been destroyed
watersheds have been degraded.  In many
areas, Namibia soils are being lost and fire during winter/dry season is a
burning issue.

 Localized Resilience Networks, built upon the
inherent human and natural resources, skill sets, and capacities in a
community, can reverse these negative trends, while minimizing the need for
dependency aid from external resources, which often lead to the plundering of
local resources. Currently, the predominant response and disaster management
systems in Namibia, like in most nations operate through costly hierarchical
control systems, when these systems exist. All too often, Namibia communities
are left with no assistance, except for what they can muster themselves with
little training under difficult conditions.

The limitations of hierarchical
control systems to quickly, economically, and efficiently respond to the wide
variety of localized needs, has been revealed by the complexity and extent of
large-scale disasters such as the yearly floods in the Northern part of Namibia
and the recently occurring draught. Unfortunately, with climate change draught
and the disappearances of soils are having more frequent and intense impact on
Namibian’s population.

Despite the reality of budget
constraints, lack of government infrastructure, and disaster resources, Namibia
can have the ability to improve their resilience in the face of emergencies,
but it must start to plan for better emergency management at the regional and
local levels now.  Efforts must be made
through Resilience Networks and Resilience Capacity Zones to proactively
acknowledge and address vulnerabilities, so that the Namibian people are
prepared to have disasters bring communities together like never before. Through
the Resilience System components, communities, neighborhoods, families, and
individuals are able to collaborate and share information to identify and
actively participate in risk reduction, disaster response, relief and resilient
capacity building to meet the long-term problems within increasingly
resilient Namibian communities.

 

Components of the Namibia
Resilience System to be build

1) Resilience
Networks (RN)

Resilience
Networks provide a collaboration platform and information sharing environment for
all levels of local and regional society, primarily through linking horizontal
(local and community-based) organizations and the public. The RN Web 3.0 intelligent
networking approach enables citizens, community-based organizations, NGOs,
small business, and government to work in partnership toward more resilient
responses to the impact and process of change. Identification of resources and
adaptive capacities of individuals, neighborhoods, communities and regions are
recognized, and built upon. Resilience Networks enable healthy, more
sustainable communities capable of responding to adversity by actively
preparing for change events, which might include economic, social, and
environmental impacts.

This includes
changes brought up by natural disaster events. In times of aggressive,
sometimes unanticipated change, a resilient community will need to draw upon
all resources that contribute to its' health and well-being. A Resilience
Network enhances the social capital of a community through encouraging informed
and active networks focused upon evidence-based communications, idea sharing,
and access to a wide scope of resources before, during and after a crisis.
These RN intelligent social networks embrace the dynamic aspects of
socio-ecological interdependencies, while looking for innovative and
appropriate solutions for a resilient response to challenges and change at the
local (department / city / commune / section levels) and hyperlocal (community
/ village / neighborhood) levels. Namibian’s emerging Resilience Networks dynamically
enhance the level of community capacity to respond to and recover from a
disaster through multiple pathways, including localized Resilience Networks
actively engaging individuals and communities in risk / resilience assessment
and asset mapping within Health/Resilience Capacity Zones.

Health/Resilience
Capacity Zone assessments performed at the household and organizational level
provide open data (within a common core dataset independent of personal
identifiers) for building situational awareness of mission critical functions
at the neighborhood, community, and broader societal levels in order to develop
community resilience plans with an evidence-based understanding of the local
and regional social ecology and ecosystem services. From the identified risks
and assets within Health/Resilience Capacity Zones, individuals, neighborhoods,
community groups, and whole communities are brought together in a unity of
effort with business, and government through the Haiti Resilience System to actively
build upon the tools and methods of local and regional area resilience. 

Within
Resilience Networks, geo-spatial visualizations and visual analytics of local
concerns are engaged in scenarios planning. 
Inclusive planning processes are performed with customization and
localization for direct application to regions and their communities.  Emerging mobile apps, intelligent social
networking technology, as well as face-to-face community meetings, active work
parties, and social events, are coordinated through Resilience Networks.  In communities that lack access to the
internet through their homes and businesses, Resilience Networks provide
Health/Resilience Capacity Zone collaborating centers with access to computers
and the internet, as well as analog access to Mission Critical Function and
Asset/Gap maps and community resource guides in paper form.

Within a
Resilience Network, its integrative management and governance process build and
support resilience by nurturing and/or conserving the many elements which are
necessary to adapt to new, unexpected and transformative situations.
 Through this type of adaptation prosperous and responsive development can
be created and maintained within the complexity of social and economic systems
dependent upon the ecosystem services of local, regional, national and global
socio-biotic systems.

 

 

2) FAC Teams

Focus Agility
and Convergence (FAC) Teams are rapidly-enabled teams comprised of pre-vetted
individuals with expertise, who collectively act through Hastily Formed
Networks to meet the immediate health, communications, infrastructure,
ecosystem, and humanitarian needs of an area in crisis. Members of FAC Teams
may already be working or living in the impacted area.  FAC team members
collaborate and contribute from far or near through web 3.0 intelligent social
networks. Typically they will respond quickly in alignment with, but before
large organized metropolitan, state, or federal response organizations and
large NGOs are able to organize themselves to effectively respond in the early
stages of a disaster.  They identify and empower local smart swarms that
have more persistence within communities.

 

3) Trust Networks

Trust Networks
are intelligent social networks of individuals and groups with deep local and
hyper-local knowledge, conflict resolution skills, tools, methodologies,
cross-cultural knowledge and other characteristics that make them uniquely
prepared to identify the underlying precursors and emerging indicators of
social crises, conflict and violence.  

Trust
Networks are used to anticipate and dissipate trends leading to conflict.

 

4) ALADINs

Adaptive
Logistics And Distributed Intelligent Networks (ALADIN) are a new generation of
environmentally-friendly, flexible logistics and distribution systems (like
those associated with Occupy to Transform or STAR-TIDES, originating from
advancements in the DoD) to address non-commercial demand for health- and
life-sustaining products, shelters and services in distressed populations,
generally in response to large-scale disasters (such as Superstorm Sandy or
where traditional value chains are failing, for example in Cite Soleil and many
rural areas of Haiti). Where formal hierarchical supply chains bog down or fail
to rapidly meet essential requirements, ALADINs can often provide life-critical
and health-essential solutions. ALADINs, such as emerged in the Rockaways
after Hurricane Sandy’s landfall in Haiti can be crucial to maintaining the
basics of survival for impacted populations.  In some emergencies they
serve the needs of hundreds of thousands of people in disaster areas with
disrupted value chains and markets.  ALADINs are designed to function with
agility, speed and financial transparency.

 

5) Resilience
LTROs, Roundtables & Summits

LTROs (Long
Term Recovery Organizations) bring together stakeholders at the hyper-local
level to examine problems, assets, and establish programs of value to
neighborhoods and communities based upon community and local organization
engagement.  Resilience Roundtables bring
together key stakeholders from multiple LTROs and other organizations to plan
and bring interested parties up to date with problems and opportunities that
affect many communities in similar ways. Resilience Summits advance plans and
policies from the LTROs and Roundtables with key representatives of
hierarchical institutions that can respond with various resources to solve
problems and improve opportunities across multiple jurisdictions.

 

6) MPHISE (Medical
& Public Health Information Sharing Environment)

The Medical and
Public Health Information Sharing Environments (MPHISE) is often the first
component of the Resilience System built up after an emergency or after a
crisis. MPHISE uses crowd-sourcing and intelligent social networks for building
collaboration and sharing information on health issues within communities and
between communities, NGOs, the private sector, and government.  MPHISE may be the initially developed aspect
of a Resilience Network, because of the core values of health and human
security that are essential in all areas.

 

 

Key Concepts

Resilience
Systems Approach - Resilience Systems identify and build
upon the inherent resources and adaptive capacities of a community or region -
rather than depending upon broad and sweeping, external interventions - to
overcome challenges and problems.  The
goal is to reduce dependency aid that increases vulnerabilities over time, by
enhancing community locus of control, community capacity building, and
local/hyper-local value chains that increase agile adaption to change and
crisis.

Critical
Infrastructure Resilience is a step in the right direction, but it isn’t enough
to mitigate, prepare, respond, and recover from complex crisis or exponential
change.  Concepts of Resilience that are
built on simple command and control systems -- rather than complex systems --
all to often fail in preventing and managing large-scale social crises and in
adaptation to rapid, change.  Resilience
Systems and Resilience Network have the capabilities to transform communities,
when it is not possible to return to the pre-existing state, but to do so in a
manner that honors community self-determination and its ability to evolve based
upon its own culture. 

Fundamental to
the Resilience System and Resilience Networks is the understanding that
socio-ecological systems – whether neighborhoods, villages, communities, or
societies -- are interdependent and constantly changing. The socio-cultural
units can often respond to gradual change smoothly. However, sometimes there
are drastic and abrupt shifts that are expensive, or impossible, to reverse.
For the most resilient response to crisis or catastrophic change, an impacted
area benefit significantly from working with components established for
response and relief prior to the change event. In other words, social systems
and ecosystems impacted by disaster or rapid change must be able to cope, adapt
or reorganize drawing systematically on the best knowledge, tools, and methods
available for a resilient response.

Useful tools
for building resilience in socio-ecological systems are: risk and threat
indicators at the local level, health capacity zone assessments, and
participation in structured scenarios planning sessions at multiple levels to
envision possible alternative futures and solutions to challenges presented.
The work of building and sustaining resilience, must involve its fundamental
building blocks of any society: citizens, family and neighborhoods. Businesses,
the social sector, and government are able to significantly improve the integrative
management and governance through Resilience Systems and Resilience Networks
that are fully engaging citizens at the most granular level, with flexible,
innovative and open collaboration.  Crowd-sourcing and intelligent social
networks within Resilience Networks are becoming essential tools for creating
this type of unity of effort.

Elemental to
social systems, governance and business within the Resilience Networks is the
recognition that human society relies on ecosystem services. We must manage our
environmental assets locally, regionally, nationally and globally, in order to
support and maintain our options for sustainability and prosperity into the
future.

Risks
& Threats - Identified events or situations which have in the past, or may
in the future, result in mortality or changes in health, and/or destruction to
property, infrastructure and systems must be tracked and risks and threats
mitigated. 

Vulnerabilities
- The
sensitivity and degree of exposure of an individual, family, neighborhood, community
or region needs to be managed in highly vulnerable populations. Resilience
Networks identify and measure vulnerability by assessing the status of mission
critical functions (e.g., food security, water quality, housing, sanitation,
health services) and identifying gaps  
Vulnerabilities are generally considered the attributes which may weaken
a community's ability for a resilient response to change. Vulnerability can be
viewed in terms of a natural hazard where frequency, intensity, timing and
magnitude are factors of impact. Vulnerability can also be related to states of
being such as those related to socio-economic factors including poverty,
housing quality, access to health services, community cohesiveness and social
connectedness. Vulnerabilities are often related to the capacity for
maintaining and improving the health, wellness, and security of the
individuals, communities, institutions, and ecosystems.

Adaptive Capacity - The ability of a community (or system) to modify or change its
characteristics or behaviors to cope with an actual, or anticipated, change
event. Adaptation is generally thought of as a response to a stressor.

Mitigation - Steps taken to pre-empt or avoid a risk or threat.

Community - In speaking of resilient response to change, communities can be
divided into:

a) Communities
of Place are defined as entities in a geographic
region such as a neighborhood, a town, or county.

b) Communities
of Interest are defined as those who come together
due to having a common interest or belief such as a faith-based group, those
who play sports, families, students of a school, those who work for a
corporation, and those who use the resources of the same watershed.

c) Communities
of Emergence are those who come together over a
particular event or issue such as a natural disaster or specific social needs
to better achieve a desired outcome.

 

LET US WORK TOGETHER FOR A
BETTER STRONGER                                    NAMIBIAN NATION!