Resilience is more than an individual personal trait, it’s a collective community asset, one that must be learned, taught and handed down through the generations. That’s especially true in a far-flung island state like Hawaii, paradisical in some respects, but also prone to all manner of natural disasters.

Karl Kim, an urban and regional planning professor at the University of Hawaii-Manoa who is the executive director of the National Disaster Preparedness Training Center (NDPTC), says Hawaii can be an international model for how to plan for, withstand and bounce back stronger from natural disasters. Recently elected chairman of the National Domestic Preparedness Consortium, which includes the UH-affiliated NDPTC as one of seven centers across the country that together address a full spectrum of natural and manmade threats, Kim says that being prepared starts with being aware, and involving the whole community in the effort. The center periodically offers a range of courses, on topics such as Volcanic Crises Awareness, Tsunami Awareness and Natural Disaster Awareness for Caregivers of Senior Citizens; find details at http://ndptc.hawaii.edu.

"That is really our core mission, to do training and capacity building. We also really believe in this Whole Community Initiative, that it’s not just about training first responders and emergency managers, but it really is about engaging a whole society … to work together to understand what the risks and hazards are and to prepare for them," said Kim. "Sometimes it can seem somewhat mundane — the exercises and drills and evacuation plans and other types of activities — but the way that we look at it is that these are all types of activities that reinforce awareness and reinforce commitment to preparedness and building resilient communities. A lot of this is understanding that we all have a part to play."

Kim, 57, who holds a doctorate in urban planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is married to a Honolulu dentist, with whom he has two grown children. He travels a lot, mostly for work, and to further his research into how to adapt coastal cities in the era of climate change. That’s a hot topic locally, too, especially regarding redevelopment in Waikiki and new construction in Kakaako.

"For me, in particular as an urban planner, it’s very interesting to look at how different places attack the common problems of transport, of land use, of managing the balance between the natural environment and the built environment."

QUESTION: Hawaii has the image of paradise, but we have so many risks for natural disasters. Is that why the national center is here?

ANSWER: Yes. We have many different hazards. We have active volcanoes. We have earthquakes. We have cities that have been destroyed by tsunami. We have hurricanes and tropical storms. And we have other hazards such as climate change and sea-level rise, which are more long term in nature. … We also have some critical vulnerabilities. We are the most isolated place on the planet. We’re not connected to other cities by highways or railways … We’re really dependent on shipping and air transport to provide for all of the resources that come from outside. Our fossil fuel comes from outside. Most of the goods that we consume, food, for example, comes from outside. So … not only are there these multiple hazards, there are also really critical vulnerabilities that make this a really important topic for us to address.

Q: One thing that I’ve heard you say about responding to disasters, that what you’ve learned and all of your trainers and staff and researchers have learned … relates to the power of community. … We talk about aloha spirit a lot in Hawaii … How important is that as an element of that community response?

A: I think social capital is really critical. We can think about economic resources. We can also think about natural resources that we have, that form the basis of, for example, our visitor economy and also the quality of life that we have here. I think something else that is really important — and it’s highlighted when bad things happen — is the community bond that exists; the different types of relationships that allow for support in hard times as well as good times are really critical. So one of the things that we are developing is a training course on social capital, what it means and what are the types of things that you can do to strengthen … the social bonds, the trust relationships, the extent to which people will help and serve others in need.

Q: That’s important in both planning and recovery? 

A:  Yes. I think that’s really an important part of living in any community, but especially in an island community that’s so remote and isolated. I’ve been to many disaster sites all across the world and you really see that social capital is very important … especially during the recovery process. People have to work together to understand their risks and to develop strategies for building back better … That involves things like building practices, it involves building sturdier homes, it involves site planning and locating homes and businesses in areas that won’t be exposed to flooding, say. …

Q: Part of what you do here is teach disaster preparedness training courses, right? … 

A: … Yes. We believe that the way that you build resilience is through training and education, and applying research, knowledge and technology to understanding our risks and responding appropriately … That is our core mission, to do training and capacity building. We also really believe in this Whole Community Initiative, that it’s not just about training first responders and emergency managers, but it really is about engaging a whole society …  Sometimes it can seem somewhat mundane — the exercises and drills and evacuation plans and other types of activities — but the way that we look at it is that these are all types of activities that reinforce awareness and reinforce commitment to preparedness and building resilient communities. A lot of this is understanding that we all have a part to play.

Q: Who do you train?

A: Our principal segment, because we’re a national center, is training state and local governments, but we also train other groups as well. … In the past three years, we’ve trained more than 13,000 people across more than 200 cities in the U.S. 

Q: So this center in Honolulu is focused on natural disasters. What about other threats? Infectious diseases, for instance, such as ebola. Is that part of your purview?

A: Yes, in my role as the chairman of the consortium. … The other centers (in the consortium) are doing a lot of really critical work. LSU, (site of the National Center for Biomedical Research and Training), for example, is training the first-responders in West Africa on quarantine and isolation practices. CDP (the Center for Domestic Preparedness in Anniston, Ala.) is training with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on training the thousands of health-care workers that are going to be sent to West Africa. Because of our isolation (in Hawaii), we’re working to develop some training courses on ebola as well. It’s one of the things that we need to be prepared for, with air travel, with the large military population that we have here. … If it gets out of Africa and into Asia, then there would be a heightened risk. 

Q: Overall, what do you think the biggest risks are for Hawaii? Not just in terms of natural disasters and ecological factors, but also in the human response? …

A: The biggest risk I think is apathy. Then, I would also say that the biggest risk is bad planning. That we haven’t sited buildings properly, for example. …

Q: Is there any area where you just sort of bang your head against the wall and say, ‘Hawaii should really be doing something differently and we haven’t adapted, we haven’t learned from others’ experiences or our own experiences?’ Anything that jumps to mind?

A: What really jumps out in terms of what we need to be doing … is land-use planning. It really does come down to thinking forward in terms of what our risks are, and how we manage growth and development in coastal areas and in areas prone to not just volcanoes, but flooding and landslides and so forth. To me that’s the biggest challenge. How we adjust to climate change, how we adjust to sea-level rise, how we adjust to more extreme weather events. I believe that we have this critical opportunity to do this and become this model of resilience.

Q: How do you define resilience?

A: What we say is that there are three different elements to it. First there’s the capacity to absorb a shock. And we can absorb it through a lot of different ways. You can build sturdy buildings. You can build buildings that are safe to fail; it’s OK if it floods, for example … The second element … is that you can recover quickly. Even though the power goes down, other backup generation kicks in, or you have solar panels that offset some of the demand. The third element, and this is really central to our center, to what we’re about, involves learning; learning that occurs constantly. Learning is about how you adjust to hazards and threats, how you take the knowledge and experience that occurs from one hazard and then apply it to rebuild stronger communities.

Q: … You mentioned a critical opportunity?

A: Right now we have these two very interesting places to focus on. On the one hand we have Waikiki. It’s really about retrofitting Waikiki for the next 50, 100 years and thinking about the impacts of coastal hazards. We also have Kakaako, which is an opportunity to design something new that captures not just energy efficiency, which, by the way, if you lose power, it’s really critical to have designed those systems that take advantage of sunlight, that take advantage of kind of passive technologies. That’s part of my current research: How we design buildings, how we site them, how we design communities so that they’re more resilient. … What I predict is that if we look back over the past 20 years, there was a big emphasis on sustainability. I think as we look forward, the big emphasis is going to be on resilience. To the extent that we can innovate and think about the technologies, the hardware, the design of resilient structures, neighborhoods and communities. I think that’s where the future lies.