Download or read book Disaster Resilience written by National Academies and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2012-12-29 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No person or place is immune from disasters or disaster-related losses. Infectious disease outbreaks, acts of terrorism, social unrest, or financial disasters in addition to natural hazards can all lead to large-scale consequences for the nation and its communities. Communities and the nation thus face difficult fiscal, social, cultural, and environmental choices about the best ways to ensure basic security and quality of life against hazards, deliberate attacks, and disasters. Beyond the unquantifiable costs of injury and loss of life from disasters, statistics for 2011 alone indicate economic damages from natural disasters in the United States exceeded $55 billion, with 14 events costing more than a billion dollars in damages each. One way to reduce the impacts of disasters on the nation and its communities is to invest in enhancing resilience-the ability to prepare and plan for, absorb, recover from and more successfully adapt to adverse events. Disaster Resilience: A National Imperative addresses the broad issue of increasing the nation's resilience to disasters. This book defines "national resilience", describes the state of knowledge about resilience to hazards and disasters, and frames the main issues related to increasing resilience in the United States. It also provide goals, baseline conditions, or performance metrics for national resilience and outlines additional information, data, gaps, and/or obstacles that need to be addressed to increase the nation's resilience to disasters. Additionally, the book's authoring committee makes recommendations about the necessary approaches to elevate national resilience to disasters in the United States. Enhanced resilience allows better anticipation of disasters and better planning to reduce disaster losses-rather than waiting for an event to occur and paying for it afterward. Disaster Resilience confronts the topic of how to increase the nation's resilience to disasters through a vision of the characteristics of a resilient nation in the year 2030. Increasing disaster resilience is an imperative that requires the collective will of the nation and its communities. Although disasters will continue to occur, actions that move the nation from reactive approaches to disasters to a proactive stance where communities actively engage in enhancing resilience will reduce many of the broad societal and economic burdens that disasters can cause.

Download or read book Healthy Resilient and Sustainable Communities After Disasters written by Institute of Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2015-09-10 with total page 532 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the devastation that follows a major disaster, there is a need for multiple sectors to unite and devote new resources to support the rebuilding of infrastructure, the provision of health and social services, the restoration of care delivery systems, and other critical recovery needs. In some cases, billions of dollars from public, private and charitable sources are invested to help communities recover. National rhetoric often characterizes these efforts as a "return to normal." But for many American communities, pre-disaster conditions are far from optimal. Large segments of the U.S. population suffer from preventable health problems, experience inequitable access to services, and rely on overburdened health systems. A return to pre-event conditions in such cases may be short-sighted given the high costs - both economic and social - of poor health. Instead, it is important to understand that the disaster recovery process offers a series of unique and valuable opportunities to improve on the status quo. Capitalizing on these opportunities can advance the long-term health, resilience, and sustainability of communities - thereby better preparing them for future challenges. Healthy, Resilient, and Sustainable Communities After Disasters identifies and recommends recovery practices and novel programs most likely to impact overall community public health and contribute to resiliency for future incidents. This book makes the case that disaster recovery should be guided by a healthy community vision, where health considerations are integrated into all aspects of recovery planning before and after a disaster, and funding streams are leveraged in a coordinated manner and applied to health improvement priorities in order to meet human recovery needs and create healthy built and natural environments. The conceptual framework presented in Healthy, Resilient, and Sustainable Communities After Disasters lays the groundwork to achieve this goal and provides operational guidance for multiple sectors involved in community planning and disaster recovery. Healthy, Resilient, and Sustainable Communities After Disasters calls for actions at multiple levels to facilitate recovery strategies that optimize community health. With a shared healthy community vision, strategic planning that prioritizes health, and coordinated implementation, disaster recovery can result in a communities that are healthier, more livable places for current and future generations to grow and thrive - communities that are better prepared for future adversities.

Download or read book Building Community Disaster Resilience Through Private Public Collaboration written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2011-03-17 with total page 142 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Natural disasters-including hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and floods-caused more than 220,000 deaths worldwide in the first half of 2010 and wreaked havoc on homes, buildings, and the environment. To withstand and recover from natural and human-caused disasters, it is essential that citizens and communities work together to anticipate threats, limit their effects, and rapidly restore functionality after a crisis. Increasing evidence indicates that collaboration between the private and public sectors could improve the ability of a community to prepare for, respond to, and recover from disasters. Several previous National Research Council reports have identified specific examples of the private and public sectors working cooperatively to reduce the effects of a disaster by implementing building codes, retrofitting buildings, improving community education, or issuing extreme-weather warnings. State and federal governments have acknowledged the importance of collaboration between private and public organizations to develop planning for disaster preparedness and response. Despite growing ad hoc experience across the country, there is currently no comprehensive framework to guide private-public collaboration focused on disaster preparedness, response, and recovery. Building Community Disaster Resilience through Private-Public Collaboration assesses the current state of private-public sector collaboration dedicated to strengthening community resilience, identifies gaps in knowledge and practice, and recommends research that could be targeted for investment. Specifically, the book finds that local-level private-public collaboration is essential to the development of community resilience. Sustainable and effective resilience-focused private-public collaboration is dependent on several basic principles that increase communication among all sectors of the community, incorporate flexibility into collaborative networks, and encourage regular reassessment of collaborative missions, goals, and practices.

Download or read book Global Water Security written by World Water Council and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-02-02 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book highlights the relationship between the water sector and various other sectors in order to establish an improved understanding of the importance of water resources as an essential cross-cutting vector of socio-economic development. The book is both policy and practice oriented and is not constrained by existing definitions on water security. It includes actual experiences of policy, management, development and governance decisions taken within the water sector, and examples on how these have affected the energy and agricultural sectors as well as impacted the environment, and vice versa, as appropriate. It also discusses trade-offs, short and long-term implications, lessons learnt, and the way forward. The book includes case studies on cities, countries and regions such as Australia, China, Singapore, Central Asia, Morocco, Southern Africa, France, Latin America, Brazil and California.

Download or read book Building and Measuring Community Resilience written by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2019-05-26 with total page 153 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The frequency and severity of disasters over the last few decades have presented unprecedented challenges for communities across the United States. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina exposed the complexity and breadth of a deadly combination of existing community stressors, aging infrastructure, and a powerful natural hazard. In many ways, the devastation of Hurricane Katrina was a turning point for understanding and managing disasters, as well as related plan making and policy formulation. It brought the phrase "community resilience" into the lexicon of disaster management. Building and Measuring Community Resilience: Actions for Communities and the Gulf Research Program summarizes the existing portfolio of relevant or related resilience measurement efforts and notes gaps and challenges associated with them. It describes how some communities build and measure resilience and offers four key actions that communities could take to build and measure their resilience in order to address gaps identified in current community resilience measurement efforts. This report also provides recommendations to the Gulf Research Program to build and measure resilience in the Gulf of Mexico region.

Download or read book After Sandy written by Urban Land Institute and published by Urban Land Institute. This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "New York City, Garden City, New York, Long Branch, New Jersey, July 14-19, 2013"--Cover.

Download or read book Building Community Resilience to Disasters written by Anita Chandra and published by Rand Corporation. This book was released on 2011 with total page 104 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Community resilience, or the sustained ability of a community to withstand and recover from adversity has become a key policy issue at federal, state, and local levels, including in the National Health Security Strategy. Because resources are limited in the wake of an emergency, it is increasingly recognized that resilience is critical to a community's ability to reduce long recovery periods after an emergency. This report provides a roadmap for federal, state, and local leaders who are developing plans to enhance community resilience for health security threats and describes options for building community resilience in key areas. Based on findings from a literature review and a series of community and regional focus groups, the authors provide a definition of community resilience in the context of national health security and a set of eight levers and five core components for building resilience. They then describe suggested activities that communities are pursuing and may want to strengthen for community resilience, and they identify challenges to implementation.

Download or read book Local Disaster Resilience written by Ashley D. Ross and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-11-12 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since 2000, the Gulf Coast states – Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida – have experienced a series of hurricanes, multiple floods and severe storms, and one oil spill. These disasters have not only been numerous but also devastating. Response to and recovery from these unprecedented disasters has been fraught with missteps in management. In efforts to avoid similar failures in the future, government agencies and policy practitioners have looked to recast emergency management, and community resilience has emerged as a way for to better prevent, manage, and recover from these disasters. How is disaster resilience perceived by local government officials and translated into their disaster response and recovery efforts? Ashley D. Ross systematically explores and measures disaster resilience across the Gulf Coast to gain a better understanding of how resilience in concept is translated into disaster management practices, particularly on the local government level. In doing so, she presents disaster resilience theory to the Gulf Coast using existing data to create county-level baseline indicators of Gulf Coast disaster resilience and an original survey of county emergency managers and elected municipal officials in 60 counties and 120 municipalities across the Gulf States. The findings of the original survey measure the disaster resilience perceptions held by local government officials, which are examined to identify commonalities and differences across the set of cases. Additional analyses compare these perceptions to objective baseline indicators of disaster resilience to assess how perceptions align with resilience realities. Local Disaster Resilience not only fills a critical gap in the literature by applying existing theories and models to a region that has experienced the worst disasters the United States has faced in the past decade, but it can also be used as a tool to advance our knowledge of disasters in an interdisciplinary manner.

Download or read book Improving Pandemic Preparedness written by Thomas Bollyky and published by Council on Foreign Relations Press. This book was released on 2020-10-08 with total page 154 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The United States and the world were unprepared for the COVID-19 pandemic, despite decades of warnings highlighting the inevitability of global pandemics and the need for international coordination. The failure to prioritize and adequately fund preparedness and effectively implement response plans has exacted a heavy human and economic price, and the crisis is not yet over. Emerging and reemerging infectious diseases are a threat to global and national security that neither the United States nor the world can afford to ignore. This Task Force proposes a comprehensive strategy that includes institutional reforms and policy innovations to help the United States and the multilateral system perform better in this crisis and when the next one emerges. Without increased U.S. leadership on and adequate investment in pandemic preparedness and response, the United States and the world will remain unnecessarily vulnerable to epidemic threats. The Council on Foreign Relations sponsors Independent Task Forces to assess issues of current and critical importance to U.S. foreign policy and provide policymakers with concrete judgments and recommendations. Diverse in backgrounds and perspectives, Task Force members aim to reach a meaningful consensus on policy through private deliberations. Once launched, Task Forces are independent of CFR and are solely responsible for the content of their reports. Task Force members are asked to join a consensus signifying that they endorse the general policy thrust and judgments reached by the group, though not necessarily every finding and recommendation. Each Task Force member also has the option of putting forward an additional or a dissenting view.

Download or read book Increasing National Resilience to Hazards and Disasters written by The National Academies and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2011-09-26 with total page 138 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Natural disasters are having an increasing effect on the lives of people in the United States and throughout the world. Every decade, property damage caused by natural disasters and hazards doubles or triples in the United States. More than half of the U.S. population lives within 50 miles of a coast, and all Americans are at risk from such hazards as fires, earthquakes, floods, and wind. The year 2010 saw 950 natural catastrophes around the world-the second highest annual total ever-with overall losses estimated at $130 billion. The increasing impact of natural disasters and hazards points to increasing importance of resilience, the ability to prepare and plan for, absorb, recover from, or more successfully adapt to actual or potential adverse events, at the individual , local, state, national, and global levels. Assessing National Resilience to Hazards and Disasters reviews the effects of Hurricane Katrina and other natural and human-induced disasters on the Gulf Coast of Louisiana and Mississippi and to learn more about the resilience of those areas to future disasters. Topics explored in the workshop range from insurance, building codes, and critical infrastructure to private-sector issues, public health, nongovernmental organizations and governance. This workshop summary provides a rich foundation of information to help increase the nation's resilience through actionable recommendations and guidance on the best approaches to reduce adverse impacts from hazards and disasters.

Download or read book Dam and Levee Safety and Community Resilience written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2012-10-11 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although advances in engineering can reduce the risk of dam and levee failure, some failures will still occur. Such events cause impacts on social and physical infrastructure that extend far beyond the flood zone. Broadening dam and levee safety programs to consider community- and regional-level priorities in decision making can help reduce the risk of, and increase community resilience to, potential dam and levee failures. Collaboration between dam and levee safety professionals at all levels, persons and property owners at direct risk, members of the wider economy, and the social and environmental networks in a community would allow all stakeholders to understand risks, shared needs, and opportunities, and make more informed decisions related to dam and levee infrastructure and community resilience. Dam and Levee Safety and Community Resilience: A Vision for Future Practice explains that fundamental shifts in safety culture will be necessary to integrate the concepts of resilience into dam and levee safety programs.

Download or read book Promoting Community Resilience in Disasters written by Kevin Ronan and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2005-08-15 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A myriad of models are available to guide practice before, during, and following disasters. As emphasized in this book, we value the role of research in informing our assessment, education, and intervention efforts in this area. Keeping an eye on those elements that have research backing certainly assists with quality control generally. However, more specifically, we also stress the idea that there is evidence to support a role for hope and positive expectations in the motivation and engagement process. In addition, the more that people, including youth and adults, actively participate in efforts designed to help, the more benefits they tend to receive. The role of research in providing that initial hope and inspiring more active engagement with internal and external resources before, during, and after a disaster is part of the foundation of our practice in this area. In fact, in the clinical psychology training program directed by the senior author, the idea that we attempt to inculcate with our trainees is the idea of “hope and engagement on an evidence-based foundation.” Consequently, we do advocate for models of practice that have identified “active ingredients” that are included: those particularly identified through controlled evaluation research. However, it is also the case that a number of risk and protective factors identified through a number of studies (e.g., see Chapter 2) have as yet to be systematically included.

Download or read book Changing Places written by John MacDonald and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2022-06-07 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How the science of urban planning can make our cities healthier, safer, and more livable The design of every aspect of the urban landscape—from streets and sidewalks to green spaces, mass transit, and housing—fundamentally influences the health and safety of the communities who live there. It can affect people's stress levels and determine whether they walk or drive, the quality of the air they breathe, and how free they are from crime. Changing Places provides a compelling look at the new science and art of urban planning, showing how scientists, planners, and citizens can work together to reshape city life in measurably positive ways. Drawing on the latest research in city planning, economics, criminology, public health, and other fields, Changing Places demonstrates how well-designed changes to place can significantly improve the well-being of large groups of people. The book argues that there is a disconnect between those who implement place-based changes, such as planners and developers, and the urban scientists who are now able to rigorously evaluate these changes through testing and experimentation. This compelling book covers a broad range of structural interventions, such as building and housing, land and open space, transportation and street environments, and entertainment and recreation centers. Science shows we can enhance people's health and safety by changing neighborhoods block-by-block. Changing Places explains why planners and developers need to recognize the value of scientific testing, and why scientists need to embrace the indispensable know-how of planners and developers. This book reveals how these professionals, working together and with urban residents, can create place-based interventions that are simple, affordable, and scalable to entire cities.

Download or read book Option B written by Sheryl Sandberg and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2017-04-24 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • From authors of Lean In and Originals: a powerful, inspiring, and practical book about building resilience and moving forward after life’s inevitable setbacks After the sudden death of her husband, Sheryl Sandberg felt certain that she and her children would never feel pure joy again. “I was in ‘the void,’” she writes, “a vast emptiness that fills your heart and lungs and restricts your ability to think or even breathe.” Her friend Adam Grant, a psychologist at Wharton, told her there are concrete steps people can take to recover and rebound from life-shattering experiences. We are not born with a fixed amount of resilience. It is a muscle that everyone can build. Option B combines Sheryl’s personal insights with Adam’s eye-opening research on finding strength in the face of adversity. Beginning with the gut-wrenching moment when she finds her husband, Dave Goldberg, collapsed on a gym floor, Sheryl opens up her heart—and her journal—to describe the acute grief and isolation she felt in the wake of his death. But Option B goes beyond Sheryl’s loss to explore how a broad range of people have overcome hardships including illness, job loss, sexual assault, natural disasters, and the violence of war. Their stories reveal the capacity of the human spirit to persevere . . . and to rediscover joy. Resilience comes from deep within us and from support outside us. Even after the most devastating events, it is possible to grow by finding deeper meaning and gaining greater appreciation in our lives. Option B illuminates how to help others in crisis, develop compassion for ourselves, raise strong children, and create resilient families, communities, and workplaces. Many of these lessons can be applied to everyday struggles, allowing us to brave whatever lies ahead. Two weeks after losing her husband, Sheryl was preparing for a father-child activity. “I want Dave,” she cried. Her friend replied, “Option A is not available,” and then promised to help her make the most of Option B. We all live some form of Option B. This book will help us all make the most of it.

Download or read book A Safer Future written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 1991-02-01 with total page 85 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Initial priorities for U.S. participation in the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction, declared by the United Nations, are contained in this volume. It focuses on seven issues: hazard and risk assessment; awareness and education; mitigation; preparedness for emergency response; recovery and reconstruction; prediction and warning; learning from disasters; and U.S. participation internationally. The committee presents its philosophy of calls for broad public and private participation to reduce the toll of disasters.

Download or read book After Great Disasters written by Laurie A. Johnson and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Great natural disasters are rare, but their aftermath can change the fortunes of a city or region forever. This book and its companion Policy Focus Report identify lessons from different parts of the world to help communities and government leaders better organize for recovery after future disasters. The authors consider the processes and outcomes of community recovery and reconstruction following major disasters in six countries: China, New Zealand, India, Indonesia, Japan, and the United States. Post-disaster reconstruction offers opportunities to improve construction and design standards, renew infrastructure, create new land use arrangements, reinvent economies, and improve governance. If done well, reconstruction can help break the cycle of disaster-related impacts and losses, and improve the resilience of a city or region.

Download or read book Engaged Research for Community Resilience to Climate Change written by Shannon Van Zandt and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2020-06-17 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Engaged Research for Community Resilience to Climate Change is a guide to successfully integrating science into urban, regional, and coastal planning activities to build truly sustainable communities that can withstand climate change. It calls for a shift in academic researchers' traditional thinking by working across disciplines to solve complex societal and environmental problems, focusing on the real-world human impacts of climate change, and providing an overview of how science can be used to advocate for institutional change. Engaged Research for Community Resilience to Climate Change appeals to a wide variety of audiences, including university administrators looking to create and sustain interdisciplinary research groups, community and state officials, non-profit and community advocates, and community organizers seeking guidance for generating and growing meaningful, productive relationships with university researchers to support change in their communities. - Focuses on the process of building a successful, active partnership between climate change researchers and climate resilience professionals - Provides case studies of university-community partnerships in building climate resilience - Includes interviews and contributors from a wide variety of disciplines engaged in climate resilience partnerships