Strategies for Improving Response and Recovery in the Future

Abstract

The United States has experienced a series of major disasters that have accumulated a total cost, measured in lives lost (or changed forever) and public/private expenditures of funds, of an overwhelming magnitude. With this magnitude of disasters, new ways of addressing disaster response, recovery, and mitigation are being aggressively pursued by every federal, state, and local agency charged with emergency management responsibilities. In the private sector, where disaster losses can mean the difference between success and failure, emergency management is becoming a vital new function in every successful corporate structure. The evolving science of hazard identification and risk assessment, along with remote sensing and other advanced information collection and analysis technologies are providing new tools for emergency managers to use in developing the mitigation, response, and recovery strategies of the future. In this paper we will address strategies being employed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to take advantage of evolving technologies and innovative uses of resources to meet the challenges of response and recovery in the twenty-first century.