Community Disaster Recovery
Moving from Vulnerability to Resilience

Crow and Albright outline if, what, and when communities learn from disasters to make them more resilient to future shocks.

Deserai A. Crow (Author), Elizabeth A. Albright (Author)

9781316511640, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 21 October 2021

225 pages
23.5 x 15.8 x 2.1 cm, 0.59 kg

'… timely, rigorous, and applicable to multiple disciplines … Highly recommended.' E. J. Delaney, Choice

Disasters can serve as focusing events that increase agenda attention related to issues of disaster response, recovery, and preparedness. Increased agenda attention can lead to policy changes and organisational learning. The degree and type of learning that occurs within a government organization after a disaster may matter to policy outcomes related to individual, household, and community-level risks and resilience. Local governments are the first line of disaster response but also bear the burden of performing long-term disaster recovery and planning for future events. Crow and Albright present the first framework for understanding if, how, and to what effect communities and local governments learn after a disaster strikes. Drawing from analyses conducted over a five-year period following extreme flooding in Colorado, USA, Community Disaster Recovery: Moving from Vulnerability to Resilience presents a framework of community-level learning after disaster and the factors that catalyse policy change towards resilience.

Section I. Introduction
1. Introduction to Disasters, Change, and Community-Level Resilience
2. Colorado's 2013 Floods: The Disaster that Primed Community-Level Learning
Section II. Damage and Resources
3. Disaster Damage, Severity, and Extent
4. Pre-Disaster Capacity and Post-Disaster Resources for Recovery
Section III. Individual Beliefs
5. Worldviews, Risk Perceptions, and Causal Beliefs: How Individuals Experience Disasters
6. Trust in Government and Support for Policy Action
Section IV. Individual & Group Engagement
7. Stakeholder Engagement and Community-Level Disaster Recovery towards Resilience
8. Intergovernmental Relationships and Successful Disaster Recovery and Learning
Section V. Connections, Conclusions and Recommendations
9. A Framework for Understanding Community-Level Learning in the Aftermath of Disaster
10. Examining Community-Scale Disaster Recovery and Resilience Beyond Colorado
11. Conclusions, Recommendations, and Future Directions.

Subject Areas: Business ethics & social responsibility [KJG], Environmental economics [KCN]