**June 23, 2006 FEMA Emergency Management Higher Education Project
Activity Report**

\(1\) CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS:

Bortin, Meg. \"Muslims and the West.\" International Herald Tribune,
June 23, 2006. Accessed at:
[[http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/06/22/news/pew2.php]{.underline}](http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/06/22/news/pew2.php)

\(2\) DISASTER/EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT:

Finished reading and recommend that others read the following, though
uneven book:

Daniels, Ronald J., Donald F. Kettl, and Howard Kunreuther (eds.). On
Risk and Disaster: Lessons From Hurricane Katrina. Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006.

\"Introduction,\" by Ronald J. Daniels, Donald F. Kettle, and Howard
Kunreuther.

\[Excerpt: \"Might we pour tens of billions of dollars into the city
{New Orleans} only to risk having it wiped out again?\" (p. 2)

\"Is the message from Katrina that there is little economic incentive in
reducing risk and limiting losses in advance of a disaster \-- what
experts in the field call mitigation \-- because the government will act
as the insurer of last resort? If that is the case, it is possible that
enough people will respond in ways that guarantee that the next event
will be even more catastrophic \-- that the victims will not have
insured themselves voluntarily against risk, that they will not have
done what they could to reduce their exposure and limit their losses,
and that taxpayers will incur an even bigger price tag than after
Katrina.\" (p.3)

\"\...just as individuals tend to ignore disasters until the costs are
all too clear \-- and then to overact \-- there are powerful incentives
for government to postpone action until crises hit and then to respond
with strong, but often not more than symbolic, action.\" (p.8)

Gosselin, Peter G. \"On Their Own in Battered New Orleans.\" \[Excerpt:

\"\...there also appears to be a sense among senior corps \[COE}
officials that local demands for greater protection, if indulged, would
be unceasing.\"\]

Winterfeldt, Detlof von. \"Using Risk and Decision Analysis to Protect
New Orleans Against Future Hurricanes.\" \[Excerpt: \"In summary, there
were several problems with the analysis and decisions regarding the
development of levees and flood walls in the New Orleans area: (1) the
probabilities and consequences of extreme hurricane events were
underestimated; (2) alternatives that provided higher levels of
protection were not explored; and (3) the preferred alternative was
implemented slowly and with many funding delays.\" (p.31) \"It is quite
obvious\...that the problems implementing the 1984 projects had a lot to
do with the reluctance of both the federal and the local funding
agencies to pay their share. This problem is unlikely to go away.\"

(p.37) \"In the past, both the probabilities and the consequences of a
Katrina-like hurricane were underestimated and, as a result, the
benefits of flood protection were underestimated. In years following
Katrina, major decisions about rebuilding New Orleans and its flood
protection system will be made. Risk and decision analysis can play an
important role in supporting these decisions. These tools have great
potential for improving decisions, but they also face fundamental
political complexities. One way to address these political complexities
is to embed the analyses in a carefully designed decision making process
that involves key stakeholders to assure that all concerns are
incorporated in the analyses, that opposing points of view are
considered, that experts with different perspectives of the issues are
included, and that the results are presented in an impartial way to
inform stakeholders and decision makers.\" (p. 38)

Foster, Kenneth R. and Robert Giegengack. \"Planning for a City on the
Brink.\" \[Excerpts:

\"We believe that the city \[New Orleans\] will ultimately be doomed by
the progressive deterioration of the complex environmental system of the
Mississippi River and its delta.\" (p. 41).

\"So we predict with confidence: the city can look forward to additional
Katrina-like tragedies, with a greater or lesser frequency depending on
the level of investment that is made in the flood-control systems. But
the idea that the city can be made \'safe\' by repairing construction
defects in the levees is an illusion based on a very short-term vision
and on a lack of understanding of the geologic processes at work.\"
(p.51)

\"None of this information is new. The acute vulnerability of New
Orleans to flooding, whether from tropical storms in the Gulf or from
upstream precipitation, has been documented persuasively and repeatedly
for at least 150 years. For several generations, the history of river
management in the Mississippi watershed has served as the basis of at
least one lecture in most introductory geology courses in the United
States as an iconic example of the exercise of human hubris in
undertaking to manage powerful natural processes for economic gain.\"
(p. 52)

\"It seems to us\...that a much worse outcome may be in store: that the
flood-control system will be patched up in an ad-hoc manner,
insufficient funds will be made available to bring the entire system up
to the design goal of withstanding a Category 3 hurricane \-- much less
the vastly greater funds needed to provide reliable protection against
more intense storms \-- and former residents will be invited to return
to the city\...\[which\] would set the stage for another Katrina-like
tragedy in the future. The possibility that the city by itself could
\'work this out,\' absent a strong commitment by the federal government,
seems remote to nonexistent.\" (p. 56)

\"\...cities have been lost repeatedly in the past\....As an
introspective society, we are fond of insisting that one of the
characteristics that elevates humans above the stature of the animals
with whom we share this planet is our ability to analyze the world
around us and make plans for our secure future. But one need not review
many such plans to reach the conclusion that humans do not plan for the
future any better than the groups of animals we choose to disparage as
responding only to instinctual cues. Major changes in human behavior do
not result from carefully considered plans, but, like changes in
behavior in animal societies, from human response to crises.\" (pp.
56-67)

Kousky, Carolyn, and Richard Zeckhauser. \"JARing Actions That Fuel the
Floods.\"

Fischhoff, Baruch. \"Behaviorally Realistic Risk Management,\" pp.
77-88.

\[Excerpts:

\"Sadly, although officials would not release a drug without premarket
testing, they are often comfortable disseminating risk communications
that \'look OK\' to them. During Hurricane Rita, many people evacuated
who should have stayed home, but apparently misunderstood official
advice\...A spokesman was quoted as saying that the Texas Department of
Transportation had no psychologists among its 15,000 employees\... That
excuse for not dealing with \'irrational\' citizens also explains why
TDOT\'s messages had not been evaluated to ensure that they would be
interpreted as intended.\" (p. 83)

\"One threat to the relevance of risk communications is having their
content driven by public affairs concerns (focused on the welfare of the

source) rather than public health concerns (focused on the welfare of
the audience).\" (p. 83)

\"\...in time of need, citizens want the unvarnished truth, regarding
the situations that they must manage\...Public affairs specialists
rarely have the substantive and analytical skills needed to identify
that information. Their predisposition to spin the facts may make their
organization look more capable than it actually is, setting the stage
for it to disappoint those who rely on it.\" (p. 83)

\"\...the model \[Fischoff proposes\] requires two-way communication at
each step. That is, citizens have a right to hear and to be heard from
the very beginning, when risk analysis are initially formulated, to the
very end, when risk management plans are set into action and monitored
for their success\....This is a striking departure from the one-way
communicating strategy, sometimes called \'decide-announce-defend\'.\"
(p. 85)

\"As the hurricanes of 2005 have shown, behaviorally realistic risk
management is essential as we face a future whose potential disasters
include hurricanes, pandemics, earthquakes, environmental collapses, and
terrorist attacks. It would be a shame, and even shameful, if the
indifference of risk managers or social scientists kept the relevant
social science from being created and used. Optimistically, one could
hope that the urgency of the problems will make this a turning point in
the demand and supply sectors, with both parties rolling up their
sleeves to work together, in order to overcome inertia and reduce the
risks of disaster. As a social scientist, though, I have to assume that
past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior. In the absence
of unusual leadership, institutional inertial will prevail.\" (p. 88)\]

Trebilcock, Michael J., and Ronald J. Daniels. \"Rationales and
Instruments for Government Intervention in Natural Disasters,\" pp.
89-107.

Tierney, Kathleen. \"Social Inequality, Hazards, and Disasters,\" pp.
109-128. \[Excerpts:

\"\...diverse patterns of vulnerability and resilience must be taken
into consideration both in programs that provide disaster aid and in
overall planning frameworks for disaster loss reduction.\" (p. 110)

\"\...a new multidisciplinary approach to hazards and disasters, known
as vulnerability science, has begun to systematically explore disaster
vulnerability as a function of both physical place and social conditions
that expose some social groups to the potential for greater harm and
that limit their ability to cope when disasters strike\.... The
vulnerability science perspective is equally concerned with analyzing
factors that help make different social units (such as households,
businesses, communities) more resilient \-- that is, able to avoid and
withstand disasters impacts and capable of rapidly recovering from
whatever events they experience.\" (P. 111)

\"Despite the plethora of new communications devices, vulnerable
populations who need accurate and timely information most during crises
may be the least likely to get it.\" (p. 118)

\"If current trends continue, disaster victims will increasingly be seen
as \'problem populations\' requiring strict social control, and
immigrants and minority group members will feel even more marginalized
and fearful.\" (p. 119)

\"\...in laying bare the destructive potential not only of nature but
also of a viciously inequitable social structure, Katrina foreshadows
catastrophes to come. Katrina has shown that without sustained programs
focusing on the transportation needs of the poor, U.S. urban centers
cannot be evacuated in a timely manner for any type of extreme event.

Katrina has revealed that intergovernmental institutions are wholly
incapable to responding to the needs of diverse publics during
disasters.\" (pp. 126-127)\]

Adler, Matthew D. \"Equity Analysis and Natural Hazards Policy,\" pp.

129-150. \[Excerpt:

\"Is the idea to equalize the distribution of income/risk/well-being
across the population, or rather to give priority to those who have
lower levels of income/risk/well-being? These questions are crucial to
the design of natural hazards policy. For example, if equity is not a
distinct consideration, then cost-benefit analysis should probably be
the exclusive policymaking tool here. If it is, then cost-benefit
analysis will need to be supplemented by an additional tool \-- an
\'equity analysis\' \-- which will rank possible policies in terms of
equity.\" (p. 129)

\"\...if the policy choice presented is whether to spend limited
mitigation funds in subsidizing building upgrades in poor or rich
neighborhoods, the welfare-maximizing choice might well be the former.\"
(p. 132)

\"The author \[B.H. Morrow, 1999 \"Disasters\" article\] suggests that
disaster planners in each community should maintain a \'community
vulnerability inventory\' showing where these vulnerable groups are
concentrated, and that preparedness, response, recovery and/or
mitigation activities should, to some extent, be targeted at them.\" (p.
133)

Meyer, Robert J. \"Why We Under-Prepare for Hazards,\" pp. 153-173.

\[Excerpts:

\"\...unless we become better students of our own psychologies, we have
little long-term hope of insuring that tragedies like Katrina do not
occur again.\" (p. 154)

\"The key lesson of this essay is that in many cases these failings \[to
take effective preventive action\] simply accrue to our own
psychological make-up; as human decision makers we are not well equipped
to make effective decisions in settings where feedback is rare,
ambiguous in its meaning, and where optimal decisions require astute
skills in foresight.

In particular, we are overly prone to succumb to three classes of
decision bias: an excessive tendency to learn by focusing on recent
outcomes, a tendency to see the future as a simple extrapolation of the
present, and an inability to see the value of long-term benefits when
compared to short-term costs\....If a criticism is to be leveled at past
governmental policies (both local and national) on mitigation it is that
they have tended to look far more to economics for guidance than
psychology. Yet it is the latter that will ultimately determine the
effectiveness of policies. Developing programs that offer individuals
economic incentives to engage in mitigation is but a first step.

Policies are also needed to assist people in overcoming psychological
barriers to adopting those measures. In this same spirit, policy makers
need to be made aware that they are no less subject to decision biases
than their constituents. In fact, a case can be made that most tragedies
are not the result of an aggregation of a large number of errors made by
individuals, but rather by a single error made by a policy maker that
impacts a whole population\.... It is clearly more critical that
governments learn.\" (p. 169)

\"When governments offer advice to residents about how to protect
against hazards it usually takes the form of generic catch-all lists
where only a subset of precautions would be seen as relevant to any one
decision maker\....the more personally relevant cues are lost among a
myriad of less relevant ones, the less persuasive becomes the overall
message\....personal estimates of risk are improved in programs that
customize communications to conform to the lifestyle characteristics of
decision makers.\" (p. 171)

\"\...research that has attempted to enhance compliance with mitigation
by encouraging people to anticipate their future \'emotional\' responses
to hazards \-- such as fear or dread \-- has proven less
successful\...\" (p.

171\) \"\...when communications are effective in triggering strong
emotional responses\...these emotions have the unintended by-product of
suppressing processing of the message itself\...extreme fear appeals
have repeatedly been found to be ineffective in inducing behavioral
change\....our natural response to a threatening stimulus is to flee
from it. Hence, when we are exposed to a communication that triggers
feelings of fear a common response is not to pay closer attention to the
content of the message\...but rather to turn away from it.\" (p. 172)

\"The fact that human decision makers are limited by cognitive biases is
sometimes taken to imply that the best remedy lies in placing
restrictions on the freedom of decisions; that is, improved benevolent
central planning that either legislates action by individuals (for
instance, imposed more rigid rules on evacuation behavior), or channels
public funds to provide financial incentives for specific actions. The
central limitation of such an argument, however, is that it has
legitimacy only to the degree that benevolent central planning is free
of the decision biases that it is meant to cure. Such an assertion could
not be further from the truth; in most cases the most far-reaching
decision errors we illustrated were those being made by policy makers
charged with responsibility of building safer societies. In our view, if
a resource emphasis should be placed, it is to develop policies that
encourage individuals to improve the quality of decisions they make for
themselves, not cede these choices to agents.\" (p.173)\]

\[BWB Note: This chapter alone makes the price of the book worthwhile
\-- should be read by anyone teaching an emergency management college
course.\]

Kunreuther, Howard. \"Has the Time Come for Comprehensive Natural
Disaster Insurance?\" Pp. 175-201. \[Excerpts:

\"The time appears ripe for formulating a comprehensive disaster
insurance program whereby all natural hazards are required to be part of
a standard homeowners policy. Under such a program rates should be based
on risk and residents in hazard-prone areas should be provided with
economic incentives or required to undertake cost-effective mitigation
measures.\" (p. 176)

\"If insurance is to play a central role in a hazard management program
then rates need to be based on risk so that those in disaster-prone
areas are responsible for the losses after a disaster occurs. A
limitation of any government insurance program is that premiums are not
likely to be risk-based given political pressure to make coverage
affordable to those residing in high-hazard areas.\" (p. 184.)\]

Harrington, Scott E. \"Rethinking Disaster Policy After Hurricane

Katrina,\" pp. 203-221. \[Excerpt:

\"\...the main features of private insurance that help promote efficient
risk management, including pricing that is closely tailored to perceived
risk of loss, generally do not characterize government insurance.

Subsidized rates and limits on underwriting and risk classification
under government insurance dull its ability to provide incentives for
risk mitigation.\" (p.214)

\"Even before Katrina, the U.S. government appeared incapable of
withholding disaster assistance to persons who fail to buy private or,
when available, government insurance. In the case of crop insurance, the
Congress has repeatedly provided disaster assistance to both insured and
uninsured farmers.\" (p. 215)\]

Ryland, Harvey. \"Providing Economic Incentives to Build
Disaster-Resistant Structures,\" pp. 223-228. \[Excerpts:

\"\...many consumers (homeowners and tenets, and business owners and

managers) will not spend money to take protective actions, except under
two conditions: 1. If their children come home from school and tell
their parents that the family has to take protective actions; 2. If they
will receive financial incentives for taking these actions.\" (p. 224)

\"\...our research {Institute for Business and Home Safety} shows that
25 percent of businesses go out of business after closing because of a
natural disaster\...\" (p. 227)\]

Strom, Brian. \"Role of Public Health and Clinical Medicine in Preparing
for Disasters,\" pp. 231-241.

Bier, Vicki. \"Hurricane Katrina as a Bureaucratic Nightmare,\" pp.

243-254. \[Excerpt:

\"My contention here\...is that many of the problems in the aftermath of
Katrina were not due to any one person or organization, but rather were
problems of coordination at the interfaces between multiple
organizations and multiple levels of government.\" (p. 253)

\"The experiences in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina made it clear
that New Orleans had prepared for the hurricane, but not the subsequent
flood. This is rather remarkable\...\" (p. 244)

\"Bureaucratic organizations\...typically fail because they have
neglected potential problems or have taken on tasks for which they do
not have the resources to do well.\" (p. 245, quoting Westrum, 2004).

\"Bureaucracies are widely noted in the literature on organizational
design (and especially contingency theory) as being inflexible and not
well suited to coping with rapidly changing situations.\" (p. 252)

\"Effective emergency response, life safety, would seem to call for
resilient and flexible organizations, since it is not possible to
anticipate all possible problems\... For example, high-reliability
organizations are noted as being able to \'quickly move from completely
centralized decision making and hierarchy during periods of relative
calm to completely decentralized and flat decision structures during
\'hot times\'.\" (p. 252)

\"Unfortunately, emergency response as currently implemented in the U.S.

is a complex interlocking network of bureaucratic organizations.\" (p.

253)\]

Walters, Jonathan, and Donald F. Kettl. \"The Katrina Breakdown,\" pp.

255-261. {Excerpts:

\"Some in the federal government clearly feel that if they\'re going to
be blamed for failures \-- failures that they ascribe at least in part
to state and local officials \-- then they\'d prefer a system where the
federal government has the option of being much more preemptive in
handling large-scale domestic disasters.\" (p. 255)

\(3\) FEMA:

Essex, David. \"Geospatial and Flood-Mapping Operations Are Helping To
Streamline Emergency Response.\" GCN Online, June 23, 2006. At:

[[http://www.gcn.com/print/25_16/41081-1.html]{.underline}](http://www.gcn.com/print/25_16/41081-1.html)

\(4\) NATIONAL FLOOD INSURANCE PROGRAM:

Elder, Laura. \"Are The Feds About To Rain on the Party?\" Galveston
County Daily News (TX), June 23, 2006. Accessed at:

[[http://news.galvestondailynews.com/story.lasso?ewcd=33e3e3469b4fa107]{.underline}](http://news.galvestondailynews.com/story.lasso?ewcd=33e3e3469b4fa107)

\(5\) PREPAREDNESS:

Associated Press. \"Feds Say W.Va. Least Prepared For Disasters.\" June
23, 2006. Accessed at:
<http://www.herald-dispatch.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060622/NEWS01/60622005/1001/NEWS>

\[Excerpt: \"State Military Affairs and Public Safety Secretary Jim
Spears said West Virginia received a poor rating because it told the
truth. \'Not all those other states told the truth. West Virginia, by
telling the truth, was painted in a negative way in the media\'\...\"\]

Pickoff-White, Lisa. \"Arctic Fault To Store Seeds In Case Of
Disaster.\" The National Academies, June 23, 2006. Accessed at:

[[http://www.nationalacademies.org/headlines/20060623.html]{.underline}](http://www.nationalacademies.org/headlines/20060623.html)

Smith, Leef. \"Regional Exercise Is a Rehearsal for a Terrorism
Crisis.\" Washington Post, June 23, 2006. At:
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/22/AR2006062201670.html?nav=rss_metro/va>

\(6\) TERRORISM:

Schneier, Bruce. \"The Scariest Terror Threat of All.\" Wired News, June
15, 2006. Accessed at:

[[http://www.wired.com/news/columns/1,71152-1.html]{.underline}](http://www.wired.com/news/columns/1,71152-1.html)

B. Wayne Blanchard, Ph.D., CEM

Higher Education Project Manager

Emergency Management Institute

National Emergency Training Center

Federal Emergency Management Agency

Department of Homeland Security

16825 S. Seton, N-430

Emmitsburg, MD 21727

\(301\) 447-1262, voice

\(301\) 447-1598, fax

wayne.blanchard@dhs.gov

[[http://training.fema.gov/EMIWeb/edu]{.underline}](http://training.fema.gov/EMIWeb/edu)

\* To subscribe to the Hi Ed Activity Reports go to the Higher Education
Project homepage at <http://training.fema.gov/emiweb/edu/>. Scroll to
the fourth paragraph and click on the link to send a blank e-mail to our
list server. You do not need to enter any information on the Subject
line or in the Message area. If you want to remove yourself from this
mailing list, you can send a blank email to
<leave-emi-hi-ed-reports-205686A@lyris.fema.gov> or visit:
[[http://training.fema.gov/emiweb/edu/]{.underline}](http://training.fema.gov/emiweb/edu/)

If you are unsubscribing from a different email address than the one you
originally subscribed with, send your email to <lyris@lyris.fema.gov>
and include the next line of text in the subject line of your message:

Unsubscribe emi-hi-ed-reports <Barbara.L.Johnson@dhs.gov>

.

**"Please note: Some of the Web sites linked to in this document are not
federal government Web sites, and may not necessarily operate under the
same laws, regulations, and policies as federal Web sites."**