NFPA Journal - May/June 2019 - 69

NFPACONFERENCE&EXPO
SANANTONIO2019
strategies are focused on a community's
true risks. The data-informed approach
of CRR provides municipal leaders
with appropriate evaluation measures,
accountability, and transparency across
agencies.
CRR also brings safety into community conversations. Business owners,
employees, residents, and even visitors
contribute to the prevention culture.
Everyone plays a role, whether it is
working to identify risks, donating
resources to educate targeted groups
about specific safety behaviors, encouraging friends and neighbors to make
changes, or celebrating successful outcomes. A rescue-oriented public puts
its first responders at risk; by contrast,
a CRR plan promotes an active prevention-focused public and ensures that
efforts provide the highest possible
impact. When the fire department in
Cedar Rapids, Iowa, noticed a spike in
cooking fires among older adults in the
community, for example, fire officials
added the NFPA Remembering When®
program to their CRR plan. They
currently have a robust program that
has expanded beyond the fire department-resident relationship to include
a variety of local agencies, including
meal-delivery programs, faith-based
organizations, local businesses, and
academics from a local university. This
level of engagement allows the team to
cast a wider net of buy-in and has led
to additional prevention initiatives.
NFPA has assumed a leading role in
CRR development and communication.
Teams throughout NFPA, including
public education and our ever-growing
data and analytics group, are working on projects to support CRR. The
association appointed two community
risk reduction strategists-Chelsea
Rubadou, an NFPA engineer, and
myself-and tasked us with developing
a roadmap to guide NFPA's CRR efforts.
We embarked on a lengthy nationwide
listening tour and met with CRR professionals, supporters, and antagonists
to get an honest sense of what CRR is,
where it could go, and how innovation
could help more communities benefit
from the process. A white paper outlining our findings will be published
soon at nfpa.org/CRR and will include

practical information for teams interested in the CRR process. In June, the
association will release NFPA 1300,
Standard on Community Risk Assessment and Community Risk Reduction
Plan Development, which will drive
new conversations about risk reduction
plans, strategic partnerships, and the
need for a comprehensive community
risk assessment.
CRR will be front and center at the
upcoming NFPA Conference & Expo
in San Antonio. In addition to an
array of education sessions, a half-day
workshop, "CRR at NFPA: Something
for Everyone," will help CRR teams
improve their programs. In preparation
for those activities, it's worth taking a
look at some of the key components of
CRR-data collection, partnerships, and
conducting a community risk assessment-to get a better understanding of
the concept, its capabilities, and where
it can go from here.

Learning to love data
collection

critical step in that process is the
completion of a community risk assessment, or CRA, and the richer and more
comprehensive the data included in
the CRA, the more accurately risks will
be identified and the more effective
the overall risk reduction program will
be. (For more on the community risk
assessment, see "First Step," page 68.)
To complete a CRA, teams must
get a clear picture of a community's
characteristics, its unique risks, and
its capabilities-all of which are most
accurately described by data. CRR
teams need to analyze local demographics to understand the people who
might be impacted by a problem. They
should have data about the built environment, including building materials,
occupancies, and abandonments, as
well as a clear view of the local geography including waterways, highways,
wildland interfaces, and landforms.
The CRA should incorporate past loss
and event history with information
about deaths, injuries, causation, and
dollar loss. Data about community
service organizations and public safety
response agencies provide input on
capabilities to prevent and respond to
emergencies. Together, this information will help the CRR team identify
and prioritize the true risks in the

CRR has been developing in fire
departments throughout the United
States for about 20 years, with roots in
the integrated risk management model
practiced in the United Kingdom. As
the concept matured, it generated
excitement as an innovative method to address
risk reduction in commuCONFERENCE SESSIONS
nities, but few people were
Is it time to P.A.N.I.C.? Shifting Community
truly knowledgeable on
Risk Reduction from Concept to Reality
the process. This led to a
Monday, June 17, 8-9 a.m.
bit of an identity crisis,
Karen Berard-Reed and Chelsea Rubadou,
as many fire department
NFPA
prevention divisions
rebranded themselves
Community Risk Assessment: The Unsung
Hero of the Zombie Apocalypse
as CRR without making
Tuesday, June 18, 2-3:30 p.m.
the changes necessary to
Karen Berard-Reed and Chelsea Rubadou,
reflect the process. NFPA's
NFPA
work in this area has been
going on for more than
Creating a Community Risk Reduction
Program Using Regional Partners
a decade and grew out
Tuesday, June 18, 3:45-4:45 p.m.
of its efforts to develop
Aaron Harwell and Rudy Ruiz, Perrysburg
safety strategies for urban
Fire Division
communities.
Throughout its evoluCRR at NFPA: Something for Everyone
tion, data collection has
Wednesday, June 19, 8 a.m.-noon
Karen Berard-Reed and Chelsea Rubadou,
been one of the most
NFPA
daunting aspects of the
CRR process. The first
N F PA . O R G / J O U R N A L * NFPA JOURNAL

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NFPA Journal - May/June 2019

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