Planning for Post-Disaster Recovery:
Next Generation

• A late-season Hurricane Sandy slams into the New Jersey shore, colliding with a winter storm to produce high-tide storm surges in Manhattan and Atlantic City, a blizzard in West Virginia, and massive power outages and evacuations throughout the Northeast (October 2012).
• An earthquake, followed by a tsunami, followed by a nuclear emergency, in northern Japan, with a death toll that continues to rise (March 2011).
• An earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand, that follows another tremor five months earlier (February 2011).
• An earthquake and tsunami in Chile (March 2010).
• An earthquake in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, that kills more than 200,000 people (February 2010).
• Hurricane Ike devastates Galveston, Texas, and nearby areas (September 2008).

What becomes of these communities and regions afterwards? How long does it take to rebuild? Is there anything communities can do to speed the process, to reduce the losses, to become more resilient?

The simple answer is yes. It is the details of how we achieve resilience that become considerably more complicated, but they are important to planners and to the futures of the communities they serve. It is also absolutely vital that planning research seek out the answers, identify the best practices, and make clear how they relate to the unique circumstances of each new community that experiences a disaster and faces the need for long-term reconstruction. We have much to learn, much to share. But the first goal of planning must be the public safety of the places where we choose to live.

APA first sought to meet that need with its 1998 PAS Report, Planning for Post-Disaster Recovery and Reconstruction (No. 483/484). But time and tragedy have made it increasingly urgent that we update the tools and concepts of that classic publication. APA has teamed up with the Federal Emergency Management Agency on a three-year project to accomplish that goal.

Our current project got under way in October 2010, with the aim not only of producing another PAS Report, but also of providing ready-to-use online information for practitioners.

The pages here, including the Recovery News blog, are intended to serve that purpose and keep users current on the status of this critical project.