

About Continuity, Recovery and Resilience Planning
Continuity, recovery and resilience planning are the triple bottom line of successful emergency management. Intertwined, their planning is critical and tackles all state planning development, implementation, and maintenance related to emergency management areas. Established by the State Emergency Operations Plan but not explicitly included in it, they are critical parts that ensure operational redundancy and functionality of the state's overall emergency operations before, during and in the aftermath of a disastrous event. IDHS planning in these areas includes:
- Continuity capability epitomized by:
- Continuity of Government Plan (COG Plan)
- Continuity of Operations Plan (COOP)
- Enduring constitutional government
- Recovery Plan, which establishes critical paths to achieve state recovery goals through deployment of six recovery support functions (RSFs):
- Community assistance
- Economic
- Health, education and human services
- Housing
- Infrastructure systems
- Natural and cultural resources
- Resilience Plan, which lays out the state's resilience goals and vision. It exhibits a holistic and proactive approach to tackling the occurrence and impact of both local and external disastrous shocks and stresses to Hoosiers. Embracing the "whole community" philosophy, the plan highlights hazards vulnerability to a complex range of social, technological and environmental community systems across neighbor, municipality, county and state levels.
Highlights
Continuity, recovery and resilience planning covers a wide scope of work. Learn about these areas more below.
- Continuity
For the state of Indiana, "continuity" encompasses the policies and efforts to maintain capabilities before, during and after catastrophic emergencies that cause disruption to social, economic, environmental, physical infrastructure or government functions.
Pursuant to the Presidential Policy Directive–40 (PPD–40), in accordance with the Federal Continuity Directive 1 (FCD 1) and Indiana Executive Order 17-02, IDHS establishes, administers, implements and maintains a comprehensive set of effective continuity plans through the following three programs to ensure the preservation of government structure and functionality under all kinds of adversities.
Continuity planning is an important element of preparedness and an integral part of the National Preparedness System. No level of government can perform essential functions and provide critical services without the support of the rest of the community, so private sector entities, critical infrastructure, organizations, communities, families and individuals all play vital roles. Enduring constitutional government, continuity of government and continuity of operations are dependent upon their joint foundation of preparedness.
Continuity of Government (COG)
"Continuity of Government," or "COG," pertains to a coordinated interagency effort between the three branches of government (executive, legislative and judicial) and makes sure that governance and essential functions continue to be performed before, during and after a catastrophic emergency. The COG Plan is a well-thought-out, strategic document that exhibits ways to preserve essential functions, deliver critical services and maintain the statutory authority of Indiana's government branches.
Continuity of Operations (COOP)
"Continuity of Operations," or "COOP," pertains to an operational policy plan that allows an agency to perform its essential functions, provide essential services and deliver core capabilities before, during and after a disruption to routine operations caused by hazardous events. Hazardous events can be localized acts of nature, accidents, technological incidents or adversarial acts, so identification, development and implementation of essential functions requires an all-hazards approach. State departments and agencies, local and tribal governments, non-governmental organizations and private-sector entities are encouraged to adopt continuity doctrine and maintain functional COOP programs of their own.
Enduring Constitutional Government (ECG)
"Enduring Constitutional Government," or "ECG," is both a process and the outcome of the coordinated efforts between Indiana's executive, legislative and judicial branches to execute constitutional responsibilities, provide for orderly succession and appropriate transition of leadership, and support essential functions during an emergency.
- Recovery
FEMA Recovery Continuum
FEMA Recovery ContinuumIDHS delivers plans that not only restore the state’s critical infrastructure and key resources (CIKR) but also build them back better, revitalize livelihoods and the social well-being of disaster-affected communities, and facilitate adjustment to future hazard risks. The state recovery planning framework describes ways agencies operate to minimize disruption and suffering and to promote a return to "new normal" operations as quickly as possible. The framework considers:
- Time frames (immediate, intermediate and long term)
- Space (state, local and tribal jurisdictions)
- Scope (CIKR, community lifelines)
For a community to recover better and stronger than before a disaster event, IDHS designs and implements a plan that establishes a set of typical recovery programs and activities (e.g., debris removal, rebuilding damaged facilities and providing essential support to affected populations).
When a hazardous event overwhelms the local capacity to recover properly, deploying state and federal resources may become necessary.
State Recovery Assistance Programs
- Individual Assistance: Provides resources to assist residents, such as temporary housing, unemployment aid, food stamps, grants, and loans
- Public Assistance: Provides technical and financial assistance to public agencies and certain private nonprofit organizations for the repair or replacement of damaged facilities
- Mitigation: Provides technical and financial resources to reduce susceptibility to damage from future disasters
Federal Recovery Resources
- U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) loans may be made available to repair or replace homes, personal property or businesses sustaining damage not covered by insurance. It comes in three forms:
- Home Disaster Loans: Provide homeowners and renters the means to repair or replace disaster-related damages to their home or personal property
- Business Physical Disaster Loans: Provide businesses the means to repair or replace disaster-damaged property, including inventory and supplies
- Economic Injury Disaster Loans (EIDL): Provide capital to small businesses and to small agricultural cooperatives to assist them through the disaster recovery period
- The National Flood Insurance Program provides flood insurance to property owners, renters and businesses. Having this coverage helps them recover faster when floodwaters recede.
- Resilience
IDHS strategizes, administers and endeavors to maintain and enhance the resilience of the whole community of Indiana to disasters. This is designed, described, implemented and sustained through the State Disaster Resilience Plan. The plan contains a state vulnerability analysis, a theory of change and a nested set of strategic interventions.
Enhancing Indiana's resilience means boosting the capacity of the community as a whole so it can absorb, cope with, adapt and recover from disasters. It also means helping the community change when hazardous shocks and stresses require it.
The term "whole community" refers to the various areas that form society:
- Government systems (state, local and tribal governments)
- Critical infrastructure and key resources (roads, hospitals, water treatment plants, etc.)
- Social systems (cultural institutions, schools, civic and religious organizations, etc.)
- Livelihood and production systems (agriculture, industry, energy, etc.)
- Economic and financial systems (financial institutions, trade, business, etc.)
- Environmental systems (nature, sustainability, preservation, etc.)
These systems are intimately linked in dynamic and multi-faceted ways to serve Hoosiers’ well-being. Disasters are hazardous events, whether they are natural (e.g., floods), human-induced (e.g., terrorist attacks), technological (e.g., toxic spills) or a combination of types. They can be shocks or stresses that partially impact one system of the whole community and have direct effects on other systems. For example, one hazard may cause a cross-sector impact that requires coordinated action across multiple entities and/or levels of government to resolve.
Resilience is the collection of behaviors of the whole community of Indiana, which is a complex set of adaptive systems. Because of this, IDHS plans the state’s resilience to disasters with delicacy and caution.
Did You Know?
Resources
General Continuity
- FEMA Guide to Continuity of Government for State, Local, Territorial, and Tribal Governments
- Continuity Guidance Circular
- Continuity Resource Toolkit
- Reconstitution Template
Note: Reconstitution is the plan for returning to normalcy or a new facility.