2023-2024 NET Program Realignment

Hello! Jeremy Van Keuren here This page is composed in the first person so I can type and edit faster.

Summary

This page presents a proposal for realigning elements of PBEM's volunteer programming (which includes NETs, BEECN, and ATVs). The objectives of these changes would be to:

• Address the fall-off of meeting attendance at routine NET Team Meetings;
• Prepare PBEM volunteer programming to meet and weather through many changes coming to the City of Portland's government and structural changes at PBEM;
• Ensure programming is ready to meet the challenges of both climate change/extreme weather events, and the threat of a Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake;
• Encourage the growth and development of block-scale neighborhood teams.

Two other important notes about this proposal:

• The ideas here are reflected in what NETs are already doing and what NETs have asked PBEM to do;
• We're not attempting to take options away, but to add options for NETs to organize.

My recommended program of realignment includes:

• Decentralizing training opportunities away from individual teams and broadening the availability of training/exercise curriculum;
• Block/street/floor scale teams of prepared neighbors led by active NET volunteers;
• A "gamified" process of neighborhood preparedness, such as has been done with the BEECN program;
• Development of key Volunteer Support Functions (VSFs).

The notion of realignment is important for this proposal. There is no intention to radically restructure PBEM volunteer programming. Instead, the intention is to better coordinate disparate parts of what we have and assemble them into a program that opens more doors to participating, from full NET volunteers to untrained neighbors.

What is Driving Realignment?

I am proposing program realignments both in response to long-term, known issues in NET as well as some emerging realizations:

Climate change

Actual photo of a PBEM intern before and after he found out Jeremy stole his lunch out of the fridge. Also, a fair illustration of climate extremes.

Since NET's founding in 1994, the threat of a Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake drove urgency behind disaster preparedness and response programming. That threat remains. But a new fighter has entered the ring: extreme weather events caused by climate change. Extreme weather, such as heat domes and snow storms, have (and will continue to) take lives and result directly in more NET volunteers deployed for more hours.

In the immediate post-COVID era, January 2022 to October 2023, NETs logged approximately 3,917 deployment hours. That includes planned deployments, such as serving as parade guides and first aid response at the Rose Festival or fire fuel mitigation..61% of those deployment hours were logged in response to events caused by extreme weather.. When I started at PBEM in 2012, that percentage was closer to 10%. And the percent attributable to extreme weather events is likely only to climb.

Organizational changes

The City of Portland is undergoing the most radical restructuring of its government in its history. Day 1 of the new government is January 1, 2025. But, organizational transformations and fluctuations will continue well beyond that date as city government settles into its new state of being. This is relevant to us as NET volunteers as all programs are more carefully scrutinized and evaluated by twelve new City Councilors.

NET should be ready for that scrutiny and seen as among the strongest community programs in the City (not just as a specialized emergency response program). We show that strength by demonstrating our connections to our neighborhoods, as opposed to being a program of insular disaster responders.

As the City government changes, PBEM is simultaneously changing. PBEM is undertaking an important reconstruction of our Operations Section. As NET volunteers have worked hard to grow the credibility of the NET program, volunteers have become an increasingly important part of our routine emergency management response. For example, NET volunteers are called into the ECC/EOC to help when we have an activation. I am not aware of another CERT program that does that.

Any organizational restructuring should imply a restructuring of resources as well. Though nothing is set in stone, we should prepare ourselves to have less access to resources in the immediate future, and also prop up the Friends of Portland NET for fundraising more if, for no other reason, than a fiscal backstop. We must be ants, not grasshoppers. However, few teams are cozy enough with their neighbors to fundraise for their teams, and PBEM/NET needs to encourage a higher level of direct engagement with neighbors at the block-scale level.

Revisiting the purpose of a NET team

Among the most significant change drivers, however, is a simple epiphany or two about NET and why we meet as teams.

1.) Centralized deployments and self deployments

In its history, NETs have never self deployed. To review: a NET self deployment happens when two key conditions are met: 1.) a citywide disaster is taking place; and 2.) regular communication systems are not functional. With those conditions met, NETs check themselves/family/immediate neighbors to make sure they're not injured. If so, they deploy to their staging areas and put their Team Operations Plans into action.

But only an earthquake, therefore, would ever prompt NETs to self deploy. All other NET deployments have always been, and ever envisioned as, centralized through PBEM. In other words, when there is an emergency, PBEM decides:

• Whether to deploy volunteers;
• Where they will deploy from or to;
• What responsibilities volunteers will take on;
• When the response period(s) will be;
• How volunteers will be kept reasonably safe.

In a self deployment, NETs propose answers to all of the above in their Operations Plans. But if NETs only self deploy for an earthquake, Operations Plans are, in fact, earthquake response plans.

So: one reason NETs meet as a team is to plan their earthquake response and forward their Operations Plans earthquake response plans to PBEM.

2.) Training and socializing

NETs playing the Disasterville board game earlier in 2023.

But earthquake response planning is not the only reason teams organize and meet with each other. They also meet to:

• Train together. This is done on different scales...everywhere from tabletop exercises to full blown comprehensive search and rescue at Scenario Village. Training together as a team is important because team members should build relationships and working routines before they need to work together in an intense response situation.
• Socialize. The basic act of gathering as a team, even if for no other purpose than to get to know one another, is the most important part of community resilience. The number one best thing you can do to prepare for a disaster is get to know your neighbors. PBEM staff have also heard consistently from NETs that they want to connect more with the community on their street/floor/block level, but they don't feel entirely sure how to do that or how to keep those non-NET neighbors engaged.

If we accept that the primary reasons for meeting as a team are earthquake response planning and training/socializing, then we should structure NET to facilitate those activities.

A few of the NET program's known issues

I believe that some of the NET program's "known issues" are caused by a MIS-alignment in what we're doing, and I believe a RE-alignment can resolve those issues. Those include:

• NET meeting attendance is low. Ever since the COVID pandemic, NET leaders report low meeting attendance at regular meetings. At the same time, a few exceptions aside, NET volunteers fill the deployment requests that PBEM makes. This leads me to conclude that low meeting attendance is not due to volunteers not feeling engaged. I admit that I'm not entirely sure the reason for the drop off in meetings. Anecdotes and my own educated guesswork suggests it is because teams lack a mission and arc...a clear path that goes from "a group of loosely associated people who live in the same large geographic area" to "a prepared and knowledgeable team of confident volunteer disaster responders".
• Operations Plans are good but need to develop. PBEM began asking teams for Ops Plans in 2013. Since then, we've received some really good ones. But they need to move to the next stage. First, there is no template for Operations Plans. A template is needed; both to bring clarity to NET volunteers, and to better inform PBEM of team capabilities and to help PBEM staff know what NETs will be doing when self-deployed. Second, I believe all Ops Plans received by PBEM have only included trained NET volunteers. They should be inclusive of neighbors and ATVs as well; it is a glaring and troubling omission.
• Team Service Area boundaries are not logical. For over 20 years, teams have organized by neighborhood association boundaries. But if we decide that a team's response area is for earthquake response, we cannot expect even a well organized and highly trained group of NETs to take on the area encompassed by even a small neighborhood association. The average Portland neighborhood is 2.5 square miles and has 16,000 people living in it. A robust NET of 30 highly trained volunteers would immediately spread themselves too thin.
• NETs want to engage with the neighbors who live around them. Related to the Service Area issue, Glenn and I hear consistently from NETs that they want to help get their immediate neighborhoods prepared. That is, the level of the block, the street, or (in the case of apartment/condo buildings) the floor. But PBEM has not provided clear and engaging paths to doing that.

Program Realignment Proposals

My vision for a realignment would have teams that:

1. Are organized at an appropriate geographic level (i.e. appropriately sized service area boundaries);
2. Are generally led by fully trained NET volunteers, but are made up mostly of prepared neighbors and ATVs;
3. Have regular, well attended meetings that all members find engaging for purposes of training, socializing, or both;
4. Maintain earthquake response frameworks that guide teams from goal to goal.

This vision also includes a program of training opportunities for NET volunteers on multitudes of topics, and on a regularly occurring schedule.

Here's how I suggest we do it:

Let's break the functions of PBEM volunteers into four volunteer touchpoints. They are:

1. Centralized Deployments
2. BEECN
3. Training Centers
4. Neighborhood earthquake response

I'll take these one at a time...

Centralized Deployments

Nothing changes here. This is when the city has some kind of emergency or event that fully trained/active NETs can help at. PBEM organizes and leads the deployment.

BEECN

Nothing changes here either, at least for now. BEECN program goes on as it has. BEECN volunteers continue to operate independently of NET.

Training Centers

This might confuse folks a bit because a Training Center is a role for a person, not a place. Calling this role a "training center" puts the parlance in line with organizations such as HSI. Glenn, for example, is an HSI Training Center. In that role, he can schedule HSI classes, assign instructors, and certify trainees. It's the same idea here, but for Portland NET. The role would be available to any active NET volunteer in good standing.

A Training Center would be responsible for coordinating (not necessarily instructing) multiple training events every year for NET, BEECN, and ATV volunteers. Dates/times/locations/frequency/event size of training events would be entirely up to them. Whatever a Training Center decides, PBEM publishes their training events to a training calendar accessible through MIP for signup. Optimally, a Training Center would put on training events that any volunteer can attend. In other words, a Training Center is "at large" and not defined by a neighborhood. But we can explore assigning a Training Center to a specific area of the City if NETs want that.

My model for this (though he may not know it) is Woodstock TL Mark Ginsberg. Mark puts on training events for his team, but also invites volunteers from other neighborhoods to participate as well. Not only does Mark bring volunteers together for learning new things or refreshing training, but it’s a chance for NETs to network together.

What we would need to make NET Training Centers work:

1. A training/exercise cookbook: We would use the Wiki as a reference platform to present "recipes" for trainings and exercises that Training Centers could coordinate. Like what I did for the Scenario Village page, but on a smaller scale. For example, a Training Center could get onto the Wiki and read over how-to instructions on putting NETs through a knots training, or a small-scale triage exercise, or a quick refresher on using FRS/GMRS radios, or a scenario for a tabletop exercise. Now that we're getting CERT Coordinators all over Oregon working together, they are also interested in contributing to a team-scale training/exercise "cookbook".
2. A database of instructors: Again, Training Centers can instruct, but their primary responsibility is setting up training events. Some training events might need specialized knowledge. For this reason, we would create a database of qualified instructors. Only Training Centers would have access to it. Through it, Training Centers could request an instructor for a training in a specific topic. For example, the database might have a list of qualified Stop the Bleed (StB) instructors. If a Training Center wanted to put on a StB training, they could access the database and request an instructor.
3. A list of NET volunteers who want to be Training Centers: Glenn and I would need to put out a formal request for NET volunteers to become Training Centers. Our intention would be to get several, at least, in every geographic segment of Portland (North, Northwest, South/Southwest, Southeast, and East).
4. Internal work on MIP signups: Glenn would need to program MIP to include this new volunteer role, and we would need an intake process for training events to put them on the calendar.

Block-scale earthquake response teams

As the designated coordinator at PBEM, I was looking forward to changing my title to "NERF Herder" if the NERF acronym stuck. Alas, not everyone likes it. Yes, this is a nerdy in-joke. Also, I was tempted to paste Glenn's face on Princess Leia's, but even I have limits. But you know...that would have been funny.

In the presentation, I refer to these as Neighborhood Earthquake Response Frameworks (NERFs), but that only somewhat belabored acronym is proving unpopular. We need to workshop it a little, it seems. But the ideas behind it haven't changed: As the section title implies, this is a curriculum where NET volunteers have the option of organizing their block scale communities.

Under this proposal, an Active NET volunteer does not have to be part of an earthquake response team; nor do they need to coordinate one. If a NET volunteer so wishes, they can earn their required twelve hours of volunteer service each year by deploying incidents and going to training events held by Training Centers.

But if a NET volunteer chooses to (independently or with other volunteers), they could opt to take the following steps in the indicated order:

1. Decide what their Service Area boundaries will be and publish them;
2. Undertake a process of community engagement inside that service area to gather neighbors together;
3. Conduct a Capacity Assessment of their community;
4. Turn that Capacity Assessment into a Capacity Plan and an Earthquake Response Framework.

I'll take this apart step by step:

1.) Team decides on a Team Service Area

I've already drafted the policies that would govern how Team Service Area boundaries would be formed; you can read them at the Team Service Areas wiki page.

But, the gist here is that a team elects to respond to an area of the City they feel their team can handle after a major earthquake. A team can decide to stay with the boundaries of a neighborhood association, as we do now, but they will be challenged to explain how they plan to effectively respond inside such a large area.

It's important to note, also, that Service Areas are not permanent. A team can start small and grow over the years as their capacity improves and increases.

To make this idea work, we would need:

• A contract in place to manage online mapping. We already have a GIS tech in mind, and he's the same person who designed all of these NET maps.
• A date on the calendar by which all NETs who plan to develop a block scale earthquake response framework turn in their maps for review by PBEM and publication.

2.) Initial community outreach

With boundaries decided, it's time to get all the neighbors together. PBEM will suggest an initial community meeting which we will offer technical assistance for (e.g. "how to" pages in the Wiki and helping with flyering or doing postcard drops, etc).

We'll recommend a series of progressive curriculum for NETs to use with their neighbors. The first meeting, for example, might be getting to know everyone and doing a brief preparedness presentation. The next couple meetings might be on specific preparedness topics, such as getting pets ready or storing water, and leading into curriculum like the Community Resilience Workbook. From there, the NET leader might begin assigning willing neighbors to VSF roles (such as medical or radio communications), and even getting a few into basic NET training.

Over the years, PBEM has been through and processed a LOT of preparedness materials for neighbors (seriously, check this out that I'm working on). The Wiki is going to make it easier to evaluate which materials make the most sense for your community, how to order it from us, and how to instruct it to your neighbors.

To make this idea work, we would need:

• To further develop the Wiki pages so that NETs can look up and evaluate the different community curriculum options they have access to;
• Develop the Wiki so NETs have access to "how to"s on making initial contact with neighbors and doing a neighborhood block party;
• Get the Speakers Bureau running, which will allow NETs to request a preparedness instructor for a neighborhood meeting;

3.) Conduct a Capacity Assessment of the neighborhood

This is where we begin gettin' a little more technical.

When the NET leader decides the neighborhood is ready for it, their community moves into a Capacity Assessment for their earthquake response framework. Most likely, not every household in Service Area will participate, and that's OK. These next two phases move past "earthquake preparedness" and into "earthquake response".

The Capacity Assessment phase is where the NET leader works with their team to assess how ready the neighborhood is to respond to an earthquake. Critical to this will be an electronic worksheet which will prompt the team to explore questions such as: : How sturdy is the construction of the properties in our area? How many, and what severity, of injury should we prepare for? Should we be prepared to shelter pets? Do we know how we will communicate with the nearest BEECN if we need to? And so on. The overarching question here is: how much and what kind of damage do we expect an earthquake to cause in our service area, what resources do we ALREADY have to mitigate that impact?

Completing the Capacity Assessment does two things. First, it defines your community's baseline for mitigating the impact of an earthquake. Second, it points where your team needs to go next...

To make these ideas work, we would need:

• To decide what the content of a Capacity Assessment worksheet is and deciding what planning steps are relevant enough to go on it;
• To design the Capacity Assessment worksheet and guidance for NETs on how to use it.

From the Capacity Assessment comes two products:

4a.) Capacity Plan

...and that place your team is going next is Capacity Planning. The Capacity Assessment gives you the data needed to determine your baseline. But no neighborhood will be "100% ready to mitigate the impact of an earthquake". Being 100% ready is an aspirational goal. The Capacity Plan is the map that takes a team from their baseline assessment to their goal.

Let's do a simple example with emergency water storage. Imagine your Service Area has 32 humans and eight dogs living in it. That many people and pets need 464 gallons of water stored to get them through two weeks safely. During the Capacity Assessment, the neighborhood found out they have 300 gallons already stored. Their Capacity Plan sets up their goal of storing another 164 gallons, so they can get to "100% ready on water storage".

Over the past year, we've published the BEECN Dashboard, which you should have a look at here: https://app.smartsheet.com/b/publish?EQBCT=9094103decb2475885daa0b03ac13496. Just as important is the math that goes into the BEECN Dashboard, which you can read about here: BEECN Readiness Score#BEECN Score Aggregates. The BEECN Dashboard, aside from being important for the BEECN program, was always intended as a pilot concept and proof of feasibility for neighborhood-based resilience scoring.

When PBEM receives a Capacity Plan, it will be scored and go on a dashboard similar to the one designed for BEECN. Teams will receive anonymous designations so that a score is not publicly tied to a specific team. But with an online dashboard, neighborhood members will be able to check their score and come together around the steps needed to increase it. This also leverages the concept of "gamification". Gamifying neighborhood resilience will generally result in greater community participation. For more on gamification, visit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamification.

To make these ideas work, we would need:

• To design an input system that would extract Capacity Planning data and post it as a dashboard;
• The dashboard, designed similarly to the BEECN dashboard.

4b.) Neighborhood Earthquake Response Frameworks (not NERFs?)

Finally, we get to what I have been calling "Neighborhood Earthquake Response Frameworks", but we'll vote on that name in the survey (I'll use "NERF" as a placeholder for now). These NERFs replace the NET Operations Plans. But they have essentially the same function: they designate response roles, specify the staging areas and communication channels, define prospective resources and vulnerabilities, and prospective response priorities. That information would be extracted from the Capacity Plan and then the NET leader would receive a NERF on a template for distribution in the neighborhood.

To make these ideas work, we would need:

• Automate linking Capacity Plans to a Response Framework template (should be easy to do with the software PBEM has access to).

A Two Year Cycle

I envision this process of Assessment and Planning on a two year cycle. Over the course of two years, a neighborhood assesses, plans, and meets goals. At the end of two years, they re-assess, consider expanding or retracting their Service Area boundaries, set new goals, and move forward.

How do ATVs and VSFs fit into this plan?

To recap, an ATV is an Affiliated Team Volunteer. These are volunteers who are not NET trained and are not indemnified by the City of Portland. But under this plan, they are MOST of the volunteers making up a Neighborhood Earthquake Response Framework. Most of the people who participate in a NERF will not be NET trained. And that is perfectly OK; in fact, that's part of the idea.

An ATV is who they are. But a VSF is what they do. A VSF describes an area of volunteer specialization, such as communications or medical response.

When a team does Capacity Assessment, the team will realize they need volunteers assigned to specific VSF areas. Maybe, for an example, they need two volunteers assigned as radio communicators.

I want to point out that VSFs are important not just for organizing your team, but in maintaining a balance with ATVs between what they put in to participating and what they get out of it. For example: you say to an ATV that “if you help us get ready for an earthquake, we’ll arrange for you to be trained and licensed as a HAM operator”. VSFs are how NET leaders are going to build and solidify relationships with their ATVs.

To make these ideas work, we would need:

• To finalize policies governing ATVs and ATV status;
• Volunteer position descriptions for key VSFs, such as medical response, communications, and search and rescue.

Q&A from NET Volunteers

The following questions appeared in the chat during the online meeting, or were asked in the surveying process.

Q: Are there ATV/VSF training curricula we can access now?

A: There is not, yet. That would be part of what PBEM prioritizes building up if NETs want us to move forward with these realignment proposals.

Q: If this NERF plan is adopted, how do we tell our neighborhood that we are no longer going to be their first responders?

(Since teams may cover a smaller area)

A: This proposal does not require that a person leading a NERF be an active NET volunteer. They do not need to be. As a non-NET, they can contact PBEM and say they're starting their own NERF. PBEM will support it. They will have access to the curricula, since it will all be published online.

Q: There are no other active NETs within a reasonable walking distance of my house. How could I set up a NERF?

A: I cannot emphasize enough that a NERF is designed to accept participation from non-NET volunteers. The majority of individuals in a NERF will be non-NETs. You don't need NETs to have a NERF; you don't even need a NET volunteer to lead one.

Q: Would NERFs work towards having their own ARO (and thereby increase ECC radio traffic)?

One of the benefits(?) of NA service areas was that comms to PBEM went through the team’s ARO. …or lean harder on BEECNs or decide on their own?

A: We don't have a solid plan for this yet. A solution might look like an intervening level of radio comms that kicks up from NERF level to Neighborhood Coalition level or the fire station or fire battalion level. On the other hand, I would say, we don't really have a solid answer to this now, either. In the aftermath of an earthquake, the ECC will not receive ANY radio traffic except scene stabilization and life safety traffic. Even that won't reach the ECC for up to 24 hours after an earthquake because it will take about that long to activate the ECC radio room.

So if anything, this proposal puts neighborhoods in a neutral comms situation compared to now. If a NERF has an ARO and needs to send scene stabilization/life safety traffic to the ECC, nothing will stop them from doing that. If the traffic doesn't meet that level, the ECC doesn't want it. Non-NERFs can use the BEECN system to communicate that level of traffic, because that level and urgency of traffic is the only traffic we'll accept from BEECN, as well.

Days following the immediate aftermath, the expectation is that NERFs use the DAMM to communicate with the ECC once some kind of cell service is restored.

Q: How do you envision NETs and fire stations working together under this model?

A: No real changes. The point for a fire station and NETs to know each other is to facilitate working together in the field after an earthquake. PBEM would work with PF&R to create a program where Fire Captains know who the NERF leaders in their Fire Management Areas are. It would be to the discretion of the Captain and their officers to work with the local volunteers. This is no different than what we do now.

Q: Can a NET volunteer associate with more than one NERF, such as a federation of NERFs?

A: I can't see any reason why not. Although, I'm not sure why someone would want to since Service Areas will not overlap.

Q: The NERF model appears not to have any role for a NET who does not want to take on the leadership task of organizing a NERF(?)

A: That is not correct. Under this proposal, NET volunteers can still participate as NETs in centralized deployments, as BEECN volunteers, and in training. If the question is about NERFs specifically, it is true that someone has to lead the effort in a neighborhood for it to work. But that person doesn't necessarily have to be a certified NET volunteer.

Q: Is there a model that you are basing this on that we can look at/learn about to see how the implementation went?

A: No, these proposals are not based on a model from elsewhere. No identification with other programs (living or deceased), places, buildings, and products is intended or should be inferred.

Q: How does this model overlap with powerline and other non-earthquake deployments?

A: That's what the centralized deployments are for (see above).