In the final chapter of the book, we tie together all we’ve learned about managing disasters and climate change in the United States by exploring the concept of disaster resilience. How can we build a culture of disaster prevention and ensure that, when disasters do occur, we are prepared for them and have a plan to recover and successfully rebound? What is the role of emergency managers in shaping disaster planning to lessen our communities’ long-term risk? When disasters do impact our communities, how can we embrace resilience and build back in a way that mitigates future disasters? These and other questions are the focus of Chapter 13: Disaster Resilience: Living with Our Environment.
A central goal of this textbook is to frame hazard mitigation and preparedness as an ongoing, iterative processes. The work of assessing and managing risk should evolve as the social, environmental, and economic realities of our communities change over time. In addition to describing how resilient communities use adaptive learning to plan for climate change, this chapter highlights key resources to aid emergency managers, planners, and others incorporate the best information and tools to reduce hazard vulnerability:
• U.S. Census Bureau (factfinder.census.gov)
• Hazus-MH (fema.gov/hazus-software)
• Disaster Data (disaster.data.gov)
• National Climate Assessment (nca2014.globalchange.gov)
• Climate Data Initiative (climate.data.gov)
• Digital Coast (coast.noaa.gov/digitalcoast)
• Beyond the Basic Mitigation Guide (mitigationguide.org)
• Ready.gov (ready.gov; listo.gov)
• State Hazard Mitigation Officers (fema.gov/state-hazard-mitigation-officers)
• State Climatologists (stateclimate.org)