About Us

The sponsor of this project is the Public Entity Risk Institute of Fairfax, VA. The author and webmaster for this site is Claire B. Rubin. Ms Rubin has 30 years of experience as a disaster researcher; has had a long-term interest in the recovery phase of disasters; and has extensive contacts with the research community regarding recovery matters.

Ms Rubin is the editor of the recent book, published by PERI, titled Emergency Management; The American Experience, 1900-2005. For details go to the main PERI website shown above.

Purpose

The purpose of this project is to identify, collect, and share information, in various forms, that contributes to an understanding of the community recovery process after a major disaster. The aim is to collect, analyze and annotate (to the extent possible) the most relevant and useful information. Contributions from researchers, practitioners, and consultants are essential to the success of this effort.

Personal Comment

A recent study titled Information Seeking Behavior and Viewpoints of Emergency Preparedness and management Professional concerned with Health and Medicine, by Murray Turoff and Starr Roxanne Hiltz, N.J Insitute of Technology provided findings that are very helpful to this project.

Regarding the desired organization of information they said: "... respondents emphasized the need to obtain information that is relevant among an abundance of diverse and scattered resources. There is a general feeling that there is better information out there that they have not accessed-- information that would enable them to do better plans, improve training, and make better decisions. Tactics to find useful, relevant materials were reported, including restriction of inputs to limited sources with good filters; using material that has been vetted by trusted sources; relying on individual contacts; developing classification structures; and seeking specific types of information, such as after action reports, reports of best practices, and specific plans. Trust in sources and lack of collaboration between difference organizations or levels of government were reported as underlying problems. Many different sources are attempting to become the one sources that everyone should go to for disaster information, and some felt this was not a worthy goal given the diversity of topics and problems that are involved." ( p.251.)

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