Identifying Organizations with Roles in Disaster Resiliency for Rural Areas and Agricultural Businesses in Oklahoma: a Delphi Study

Abstract

In an effort to increase resilience, the purpose of this study was to describe the perceptions of two groups of professionals, one agriculture-focused and the other disaster-focused, regarding organizations that should be involved in mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery after a disaster impacting rural areas and agricultural businesses. The target population included all 77 counties in Oklahoma with purposive sampling used to select the 40 counties throughout Oklahoma which had experienced four or more disaster declarations from 2010 to 2012. From within these counties, members of the local emergency planning committees (LEPCs) were recruited for participation as the disaster-focused panel, while alumni of the Oklahoma Agricultural Leadership Program (OALP) fulfilled the agriculture-focused panel. This research was implemented using a modified Delphi technique that collected data across three rounds of study. The disaster-focused panel provided between two and 20 years of experience in serving on local emergency planning committees with 53% of respondents having previous experience responding to disasters impacting agriculture. Likewise, the OALP panel contributed 24 to 55 years of service in agriculture with 66% having experience in response to disasters. Across three rounds of this study, the LEPC panel reached consensus on the involvement of 116 organizations across the four phases of disaster and 147 roles with the most being identified for the response phase of disaster. The OALP panel reached consensus on 79 organizations and 188 roles. While the panel agreed upon the most organizations for response, more roles were identified for mitigation. Comprehensively, 101 organizations across the four phases of disaster reached consensus with 335 roles. Organizations with roles identified across all phases of disaster, for the disaster-focused panel reached agreement on primarily governmental organizations while the agriculture-focused panel identified more with individuals and local groups. Eleven organizations with roles were identified and agreed upon by both panels. Identifying participants prior to a disaster that should be involved and what roles they should play is necessary to increase resilience. Consensus reached in this study provides this information in a comprehensive inventory.