When Hurricane Katrina swept across the Gulf Coast of the United States in 2005, it subjected communities to massive destruction and devastation. It destroyed homes, closed businesses, and left entire populations in need of food, water, shelter, medical care, and other basic requirements for survival. Nearly a decade later, some affected communities are still recovering from the impact of the storm. For example, although Southeast Louisiana has seen great economic improvements since Hurricane Katrina, it still struggles with population and land loss.1
While hurricanes continue to strike the Gulf Coast, several other types of natural disasters combine to threaten communities across the nation year-round. These disasters have increasingly affected the well-being of individuals and families and hampered the ability of businesses, government, and other organizations to continue operating and providing essential services. The increase in the frequency and magnitude of disasters has severely stressed the resources of communities and the ability of the nation as a whole to rebound from such devastation.
The resilience of communities determines the extent to which they can sustain themselves in the face of disasters. This report adopts the definition of resilience used by the federal government: “the ability to adapt to changing conditions and withstand and rapidly recover from disruption due to emergencies.”2 To achieve these objectives, stakeholders put efforts in place throughout the emergency management cycle, which runs through the five mission areas of protection, prevention, mitigation, response, and recovery.3
Responsibility for improving community resilience shifts among stakeholders over time, with private actors often assuming a greater burden once initial government recovery efforts conclude. For instance, since Hurricane Katrina, the number of arts and culture nonprofits serving the recovery needs of New Orleans has increased significantly.4 Given the increasing frequency and magnitude of disasters, the participation of each stakeholder in achieving resilience throughout each stage in the emergency management cycle has become vitally important. Additionally, as budgets continue to stagnate or shrink, finding efficient, cost-saving solutions has become a priority among all organizations involved. The development of multiple funding streams from the public and private sectors has emerged as an attractive and mutually beneficial option to ensure sustainability of efforts.
Promoting and ensuring cooperation among branches and levels of government and the private sector remains a significant challenge on the path forward. Since each group has separate responsibilities and, in many cases, particular priorities, finding common ground to enact positive change will require continued collaboration. This report looks at steps that could be taken by each group in order to improve their individual efforts and possible collective actions that could improve national-level efforts on community resilience.
This report, made possible by the generous support of the Irene W. and C.B. Pennington Foundation, is an expansion of a 2013 CSIS white paper5 that described thoughts, viewpoints, and findings gleaned from the CSIS-Pennington Family Foundation Series on Community Resilience. Cohosted by the CSIS Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Program and the Pennington Family Foundation, the series included several in-depth discussions involving government officials, subject matter experts, academics, philanthropists, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and business and community leaders, all focusing on how best to strengthen the resilience of U.S. communities in disaster-prone areas.
For this report, CSIS used open-source research and several one-on-one, not-for-attribution interviews with executive branch officials, congressional officials, and other key stakeholders drawn from corporations, NGOs, philanthropic organizations, and other nonprofits. While the CSIS study team recognizes the shortfall in input from state and local governments, it proved impractical to examine the laws, regulations, and policies of each of the nation’s 54 states and territories. That said, the team did explore the involvement of state and local governments in public-private partnerships (PPPs); the sections of the report on executive branch and congressional actions, by necessity, center largely on the federal level. The findings and recommendations from this report are intended to provide guidance to all individuals and groups interested in making informed decisions about improving disaster resilience.
Following the introduction, the second chapter of this report addresses recent trends in disasters, the consequences for different elements of the community, and the involvement of key stakeholders. The next three sections (chapters 3 through 5) focus on the specific issues and areas for improvement for the different stakeholders in light of the situation outlined in Chapter 2. These chapters discuss potential executive branch and congressional actions and explore the role that might be played by the private sector and PPPs. Finally, Chapter 6 contains conclusions and recommendations on improving community resilience to disasters.
1. George Hobor, Allison Plyer, and Ben Horwitz, “The Coastal Index: The Problem and Possibility of Our Coast,” The Data Center, April 20, 2014, http://www.datacenterresearch.org/reports_analysis/the-coastal-index/.
2. Barack Obama, “Presidential Policy Directive/PPD-8: National Preparedness,” March 30, 2011, http://www.dhs.gov/presidential-policy-directive-8-national-preparedness.
3. U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), “National Preparedness Goal,” September 2011, 1, http://www.fema.gov/media-library-data/20130726-1828-25045-9470/national_preparedness_goal_2011.pdf.
4. Allison Plyer, Elaine Ortiz, Ben Horwitz, and George Hobor, “The New Orleans Index at Eight,” Greater New Orleans Community Data Center, August 2013, 40, https://gnocdc.s3.amazonaws.com/reports/GNOCDC_NewOrleansIndexAtEight.pdf.
5. Stephanie Sanok Kostro, Ashley Nichols, and Abigail Temoshchuk, “White Paper on U.S. Disaster Preparedness and Resilience: Recommendations for Reform” (Washington, DC: CSIS, August 27, 2013), http://csis.org/publication/us-disaster-preparedness-and-resilience.