SY040-03
Lessons from Small Businesses for Natural Disaster Resilience Planning and Recovery During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Friday, 11 December 2020: 04:21
Virtual
Ariela Zycherman, NOAA, Climate Program Office, Silver Spring, MD, United States, Jennifer Helgeson, National Institute of Standards and Technology Gaithersburg, Engineering Lab, Gaithersburg, MD, United States, Claudia Nierenberg, NOAA, Climate Program Office, Silver Spring, DC, United States and Juan Fung, National Institute of Standards and Technology Gaithersburg, Gaithersburg, United States
Abstract:
Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) make up 44% of U.S. economic activities and are the lifeline for many local economies, employing 59 million people in 2018 (SBA 2018, 2019). In the wake of COVID-19, SMEs are greatly impacted through supply and demand-side difficulties, such as limiting customer interactions, employee availability, as well as larger supply chain issues. The numbers are quickly evolving, but early predictions estimate 15,000 retail store closures and 3 million jobs lost (Bivens, 2020; Thomas, 2020) with minority and immigrant-owned businesses disproportionately affected (Fairlie, 2020). As COVID-19 conditions persist, the chances are high that populations around the US and the world will experience heat waves, floods, hurricanes, fire, and drought during the period of virus transmission and into the period of recovery (e.g., Phillips et al., 2020). SMEs in areas vulnerable to natural hazards and disasters are particularly noteworthy in the context of COVID-19.
In this presentation, a team from agencies across the Department of Commerce, including the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), will discuss the initial results from a survey they recently deployed documenting SME responses to and recovery from COVID-19 in an environment defined by concurrent risks, including climate and weather events. This project documents: (1) the novel resilience-based mitigation actions employed during the COVID-19 pandemic by small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) by sector, (2) challenges in implementing resilience-based mitigation actions, (3) utilization of past strategies and approaches to provide assistance to the current situation, and (4) planned resilience actions and strategies. Additionally, differences across SME type by sector and ownership will be explored in detail. In doing so this presentation highlights the importance of social science in understanding complex, cascading and compound events, and pathways for improved planning.
