Community Planning.net is an organization which promotes community planning not only for, but by communities. From their “about” page.

All over the world there is increasing demand from all sides for more local involvement in the planning and management of the environment. It is widely recognised that this is the only way that people will get the surroundings they want. And it is now seen as the best way of ensuring that communities become safer, stronger, wealthier and more sustainable.

But how should it be done? How can local people – wherever they live – best involve themselves in the complexities of architecture, planning and urban design? How can professionals best build on local knowledge and resources?

Over the past few decades, a wide range of methods has been pioneered in different countries. They include new ways of people interacting, new types of event, new types of organisation, new services and new support frameworks.

This website provides an overview of these new methods of community planning. It is aimed at everyone concerned with the built environment. Jargon is avoided and material is presented in a universally applicable, how-to-do-it style. Whether you are a resident wanting to improve the place where you live, a policy maker interested in improving general practice, or a development professional working on a specific project, you should quickly be able to find what you need.

We don’t know yet whether they view, as we do, environmental planning as the flip side of disaster risk reduction and mitigation, or how far outside of Europe they plan to operate. But they certainly seem to be an excellent resource.

Flowing Data: 40 visualisation tools for Power users – that’s our description of their post 40 Essential Tools and Resources to Visualize Data

As S.L.A. Marshall observed shortly after the Second World War, minimizing the “soldier’s load” (literally what each individual soldier must carry) is a military technique which was learned – and sometimes forgotten and painfully re-learned as far back as the Roman Empire. From Army Field Manual 7-92, THE INFANTRY RECONNAISSANCE PLATOON AND SQUAD (AIRBORNE, AIR ASSAULT, LIGHT INFANTRY

), archived at  GlobalSecurity.org

, Section 8-8, Soldier’s Load:

8-8. SOLDIER’S LOAD

The soldier’s load is a crucial concern of the reconnaissance platoon leader. How much is carried, how far, and in what configuration are important mission considerations. The platoon leader should require soldiers to carry only mission-essential equipment. The reconnaissance platoon cannot be overloaded with equipment that covers all possible contingencies. The battalion supply system must be able to deliver contingency supplies. (For more information on load planning, calculating, and management, see FM 21-18.) (Techniques used to assist leaders and soldiers in organizing tactical loads to ensure safety and combat effective are discussed in Appendix D

.)

In other words, only so much can go in a go-bag. If you’re going to need more than that in a disaster, you need to plan further than the go-bag.

Mapz: a gis librarian  – a mysterious and anonymous GIS librarian, to boot – has a post which may well answer the question – what do underfunded and non-funded community-based groups do about their GIS needs.

In this post,  My Powerful Geospatial Suite of Free GIS , Mr. Mapz has a pretty impressive list of applications, about which he says:

These are the freely available applications and services that make up my own personal free GIS. Individually, many freely available applications do not of themselves constitute a full geographic information system, but when these are all pulled together within one suite of tools…Well, it is remarkable what someone can do without spending a cent. (And without needing to spend an enormous amount of time developing your own applications out of open source components or needing to learn, or install, complex applications, such as GRASS GIS.)

– snip –

For a more comprehensive freeware software list, see FreeGIS.org.

Mapz also points to a more exhaustive list of resources of desktop GIS applications, including not-free software, at this link on Very Spatial.

The GIS/map piece of the planning function is, without question, critical. There are two barriers, I think – cost and learning curve – that prevent community-based groups from doing more. This is especially true in communities where local government isn’t supporting community planning and response: it’s hard to get to thinking about a steep learning curve when you’re worried that your municipality is slacking on basic safety issues and you’re trying to persuade your neighbors to buy flashlights.

Hospitals have the Joint Commission on Accreditation on Hospital Organizations

; and there are many othes that certify other things: MAGNET certification , which means that the nurses are well-cared for, well-trained and well-equipped (inside tip: if nurse moral is bad – that’s not a hospital you want to be in.

NB: as of this writing, the JCAHO (Joint Commission) website is entirely down. Not even a 404 error. 

So who sets standards for evaluating preparedness? Nobody. But, as the NIUSR has pointed out -last year, Reader’s Digest took a shot. From the NIUSR Blog:

Jamie Imus, writing on the NIUSR blog, makes this case:

How is Reader’s Digest qualified to measure the preparedness of our urban areas?

The answer is simple. They aren’t, but no one else was doing it, so they took it upon themselves.

This reveals three opportunities for NIUSR:

1. Support RD for their initiative and recognition of the issues, and use this as an opportunity to critically review their work, offer our expertise, endorse the study (if appropriate) and potentially join them in this effort (they may want us to lead, as experts).
2. RD is about to give this issue a spotlight and I think NIUSR should take advantage of that to talk about our “imperatives” and our progress, to date.
3. Standards! What are they? Where are they? RD suggests that they don’t exist, so they did their best to come up with some. This is a gap that NIUSR needs to fill, until someone with more authority, expertise or resources wants to fill it.

Not only is this critical for the general public – and for professionals – but exceptionally important for the planners in citizen-response groups and NGO’s – especially those with less money – because accurately knowing weaknesses and strengths will make for better resource-allocation decisions.

This is a post-Katrina take on why the system didn’t work – so it’s not new – but no less relevant – from a blog, Marginal Revolution, which we’ve only recently discovered.

Link to post here.