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Disaster Recovery Operations

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Recovery in the aftermath of natural or man-made disasters is directly related to the availability of local resources and the infrastructure and operational ability to deliver assistance from outside the affected region. RAND researchers have helped governments, militaries, and private organizations organize recovery operations during disasters, learn from past experience, and prepare for future disasters.

Report

Assessing Social Equity in Disaster Preparation, Response, and Recovery

Nov 16, 2021

In this webinar, senior social scientist Melissa Finucane reviews the complex nature of social equity—including contextual, procedural, and distributional equity dimensions—and how a robust, evidence-based approach is needed to measure progress toward equity in disaster contexts.
Commentary

New Thinking to Translate Infrastructure Dollars into Resilience

Jun 2, 2021

Infrastructure investments the United States makes today to recover from the pandemic can help boost resilience for the future. We will need to think beyond what we've done in the past to ensure that these investments can continue to protect the nation from shifting threats in the future.

Explore Disaster Recovery Operations

Blog

U.S. Labor Market, 988 Hotline, Firearm Homicides: RAND Weekly Recap

This weekly recap focuses on the U.S. economy’s uneven pandemic recovery, a new national mental health hotline, firearm homicides, and more.

Jul 22, 2022
Dissertation

Ovens and Tinderboxes in the Golden State: A Mixed-Methods Exploratory Analysis of Joint Heatwave Power Outage Events

Examines associations between hazards, outages, and health outcomes for California cities from 2008–2020.

Jul 21, 2022
Commentary

Rebuilding Ukraine for a Changing Climate

When the war in Ukraine ends, the country will in all likelihood undergo a massive reconstruction. Ukraine could rebuild in a way that would both lower its carbon footprint and construct infrastructure resilient to the effects of climate change.

Jul 8, 2022
Report

Streamlining Emergency Management: Issues, Impacts, and Options for Improvement

Researchers sought ways to streamline, simplify, and strengthen the U.S. emergency management system, assessing how overlap, duplication, and fragmentation could affect implementation and outcomes. They propose options and discuss trade-offs of each.

Jun 24, 2022
Report

Guidance on When to Estimate a Future Price Factor: Development of Criteria and Thresholds

A future price forecast can help the Federal Emergency Management Agency and communities seeking its Public Assistance estimate construction costs. Researchers created a framework for determining when such a forecast could be useful.

Jun 20, 2022
Report

Forecasting Public Recovery Expenditures' Effect on Construction Prices and the Demand for Construction Labor

Researchers developed cost-estimating tools and estimated future construction costs for Puerto Rico's recovery from Hurricane María. This report documents their approach, data, findings, and recommendations.

Jun 17, 2022
Research Brief

Future Price Forecasting in the Wake of Large-Scale Disasters: The Case of Puerto Rico After Hurricane María

Large-scale disaster recovery projects in isolated areas likely require unique future price forecasting. This brief describes an occupational analysis and model to estimate the effects of recovery on the price of labor, materials, and equipment.

Jun 17, 2022
Multimedia

Climate Change and Implications for Disasters in the United States

Climate change is contributing to more frequent and more severe disasters. In this video, three RAND researchers discuss climate change and risks for disasters in the United States, drawing on examples from the Arctic, the Caribbean, the Northeast, and the Gulf states.

Jun 10, 2022
Report

Developing a Community-Led Certification Process for Facility Power Outage Resilience: Findings from a Massachusetts Pilot Study

A research team articulated power outage resilience metrics via stakeholder interviews and a literature review, piloted a certification program, and used focus groups to assess the Massachusetts Clean Energy and Resiliency program's effectiveness.

Jun 8, 2022
Report

The Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities Mitigation Grant Program: Incorporating Hazard Risk and Social Equity into Decisionmaking Processes

The federal Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program can help develop community resilience through mitigation activities that emphasize equity goals alongside reduction of risk to physical assets, as described in this report.

Mar 23, 2022
Journal Article

Remote Sensing for Natural Disaster Recovery: Lessons Learned from Hurricanes Irma and Maria in Puerto Rico

We present how remote sensing data was incorporated into the assessment and planning process, focusing on the applications for Puerto Rico's natural resources in the months following the hurricanes.

Mar 23, 2022
Essay

Citizen Science Helps Communities Participate in, Understand, and Trust Science

Good citizen science brings a community together and helps it prepare for, respond to, and recover from disasters. A RAND guide takes non-expert investigators from the early stages of defining their questions and setting their goals, through building their teams, to planning for action.

Jan 4, 2022
Blog

RAND Commentary Highlights of 2021

Vaccine rollouts, an attack on the U.S. Capitol, massive ransomware attacks, the withdrawal from Afghanistan, record numbers of job openings and people quitting, and more. RAND researchers weighed in on all these topics and more.

Dec 21, 2021
Multimedia

The U.S. Army's Role in the Pacific Theater: A Panel Discussion with General Charles A. Flynn

Speaking at a RAND Corporation event, General Charles A. Flynn, head of the U.S. Army Pacific, said that the nation's land force provides two distinct values in a maritime region: (1) supporting allies and partners and (2) providing enabling capabilities to the Joint Force, including sustainment and logistics.

Dec 6, 2021
Journal Article

Lessons from Harvey: Improving Traditional Damage Estimates with Social Media Sourced Damage Estimates

Social media systems were incredibly active during disasters. Traditional sources such as the initial FEMA damage estimates can miss areas of heavy impact. This study provides a novel use case in crisis informatics.

Nov 16, 2021
Multimedia

Disaster Mitigation and Recovery: Preparing Communities Through Planning

RAND senior social and behavioral scientist Melissa Finucane discusses disaster planning, the importance of addressing the impacts of multiple overlapping disasters, and what equity in disaster planning means.

Oct 22, 2021
Report

Enhancing Defence's Contribution to Societal Resilience in the UK: Lessons from International Approaches

This study sought to understand other nations' approaches to societal resilience to enhance UK resilience. The study defined societal resilience and its importance, analysed other countries' practices, and identified lessons relevant to UK Defence.

Oct 21, 2021
Journal Article

Disaster Risk Creation and Cascading Disasters Within Large Technological Systems: COVID-19 and the 2021 Texas Blackouts

Here we describe the 2021 Texas blackouts during the COVID-19 pandemic through the lens of disaster risk creation and cascading disaster, showing how risk emerges and propagates across large technological systems.

Oct 15, 2021
Tool

Citizen Science for Disasters: A Guide for Community Groups

This toolkit provides guidance to community groups on engaging with disaster citizen science to support public health preparedness.

Sep 29, 2021

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RAND Topic:
Disaster Recovery Operations

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