A Conversation on Catastrophic Incentives

Flood waters cover Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska

Photo by Sarah McNair/U.S. Department of Defense

Event Details

Program

Despite the known dangers of earthquakes, infectious diseases, terrorist attacks, and many other kinds of disasters, we persistently witness a pattern of inadequate preparation and a failure to learn from experience. Insufficient attention to risk often precedes these events, and a hole-patching approach often follows. Examining twenty years of disasters from 9/11 to COVID-19, Jeff Schlegelmilch and Ellen Carlin have analyzed how flawed incentive structures make the world more vulnerable to disasters and catastrophes. They show how governments, the private sector, nonprofits, and academia behave before, during, and after crises, arguing that standard operational and business models have produced dysfunction. In this webinar, they will provide specific insights into the research sector. The discussion will explore how the institutional dynamics shaping academic research are contributing to a failure to build resilience. And further, how the research investment decisions of government and private sector actors are equally based on incentives that may drive disaster research in directions suboptimal for actually preventing disasters and enabling disaster resilience.

Speakers

• 

  Jeff Schlegelmilch

  Research Scholar and the Director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at the Columbia Climate School at Columbia University

• 

  Ellen Carlin

  Founder of Parapet Science & Policy Consulting, and veterinarian

Catastrophic Incentives: Why Our Approaches to Disasters Keep Falling Short

Examining twenty years of disasters from 9/11 to COVID-19, Jeff Schlegelmilch and Ellen Carlin show how flawed incentive structures make the world more vulnerable when catastrophe strikes. They explore how governments, the private sector, nonprofits, and academia behave before, during, and after crises, arguing that standard operational and business models have produced dysfunction. Catastrophic Incentives reveals troubling patterns about what does and does not matter to the institutions that are responsible for dealing with disasters.

Catastrophic Incentives from Columbia University Press »

Moderator

Register for This Program

Please register online to attend. Contact HSRD@rand.org with questions about the event.

This event is hosted by the Disaster Management and Resilience Program, part of the RAND Homeland Security Research Division (HSRD).