Cambridge University Press Community Disaster Recovery: Moving from Vulnerability to Resilience (Organizations and the Natural Environment)

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. Review 'After a disaster, residents and local governments often struggle to figure out a way towards holistic recovery, policy change, and learning. Based on extensive qualitative and quantitative data and rooted in hope, Crow and Albright focus on the flood-hit Colorado areas of Denver, Larimer, and Weld, to analyze when communities actually learn lessons following a shock. A deeply researched, important guide for decision makers and students alike.' Daniel P. Aldrich, Professor, Northeastern University, and author of Building Resilience and Black Wave'Understanding community-level learning in the wake of disaster is essential to strengthen disaster resilience. In this authoritative book, Crow and Albright provides a rich and insightful framework for analyzing learning and dynamics of community resilience after major disaster events. This is an important reference for both scholars and practitioners with an interest in how communities use experience from disruptive disasters to build resilience for the future.' Daniel Nohrstedt, Professor in Political Science, Uppsala University Book Description Crow and Albright outline if, what, and when communities learn from disasters to make them more resilient to future shocks. About the Author Dr Deserai A. Crow is an Associate Professor and researches local and state-level environmental policy, often focusing on crisis and disaster recovery and risk mitigation in local communities and natural resource agencies. Deserai's crisis and disaster work includes National Science Foundation funded work on disaster recovery, COVID-19 risk perceptions and behaviors as influenced by state-level policies, and environmental justice outcomes associated with local control of oil and gas regulations.Dr. Elizabeth A. Albright, is an Associate Professor of the Practice at the Nicholas School of the Environment and engages in research around questions of local level resilience, and community learning in response to extreme events. Funded by the National Science Foundation, her work in Colorado was awarded the Paul A. Sabatier Award for Best Paper in Environmental Politics at the American Political Science Association annual meeting.