Emergency and Disaster Management Commons^™

The New Orleans Criminal Legal System: A Flowing River, William C. Snowden

New England Journal of Public Policy

Ask anyone from New Orleans and they will tell you the city has not been the same since the storm. Although the city has persevered through many storms and hurricanes in its three-hundred-year history, this particular storm—Hurricane Katrina—is notorious for the transformation it brought to New Orleans in the years that followed.

The makeup, culture, and rhythm of New Orleans have changed, but so too have the various systems that give the city its tempo—particularly the criminal legal system. Hurricane Katrina was a disaster that revealed deficiencies, abnormalities, and injustices in the New Orleans criminal legal system. Some responses to …

Preventing Bankruptcy And Transforming City Finances After Hurricane Katrina, Andy Kopplin

New England Journal of Public Policy

In 2010, when the Landrieu administration took office in New Orleans, we inherited a financial situation that the mayor compared to the massive oil spill occurring at that very time in the Gulf, the worst in US history. The city was nearly bankrupt. Much of what we faced was the result of factors—Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the subsequent failure of the federal levees, the great recession—that were far from the prior administration of Mayor Ray Nagin’s control. Much was the result of a culture of ineffectiveness and inefficiency that predated his administration. But much was the result of gross mismanagement …

Special Issue Editor’S Introduction: Practical Wisdom And Institutional Transformation In An Urban Disaster, Michael A. Cowan

New England Journal of Public Policy

As I complete the editor’s introduction to these articles on institutional disruption and transformation in New Orleans triggered by Hurricane Katrina, Corona splashes her colors over maps of the earth. The hurricane pales in comparison with the pandemic, but one contrast between the two occurs to this participant/observer in both.

Prior to Katrina most institutions necessary to proper city functioning—including city administration, police department, and courts—were broken or stretched to the breaking point. As you will see in these articles, following the storm, business and civil society leaders, cooperating with government officials when possible, challenging them as necessary, led dramatic …

The Strange Case Of The Seven Assessors, Janet Howard, Shaun Rafferty

New England Journal of Public Policy

New Orleans was, before Katrina, the only parish (county) in Louisiana to have multiple assessors. There were seven. Each of them had his or her own district, and collectively they formed the Board of Assessors. The strange structure was the vestige of times past, with no rhyme or reason in modern times.

Community Demand For Change And Accountability: A History Of Court Watch Nola, New Orleans’ Community Courtwatching Program, Simone Levine

New England Journal of Public Policy

The criminal justice system, like any other system, is run by insiders: prosecutors, judges, deputy sheriffs, police, clerks, private defense, and public defenders. But system outsiders—victims, witnesses, criminal defendants, and the community in general—have the power to demand respect from that same system and to demand that the system work for them. System insiders have no monopoly on the knowledge and the power to shape the criminal justice system.

The Nutria That Roared: How Building Coalitions Can Empower The Small To Drive Great Change, Michael Hecht

New England Journal of Public Policy

Hurricane Katrina saved the New Orleans economy. To be clear, Hurricane Katrina was not “good”—it was a devastating event, the most destructive storm in American history, costing thousands of lives and billions of dollars in damage. But when the books are written, and the story is told, the conclusion will be inescapable: Hurricane Katrina marked a profoundly positive inflection point in the New Orleans economy.

Katrina And The Philanthropic Landscape In New Orleans, Ludovico Feoli

New England Journal of Public Policy

This article explores the impact of Hurricane Katrina on the philanthropic landscape in New Orleans, drawing on the perspective of participants in the field—staff and board members of community, local, and national foundations and key nonprofits—who were surveyed or interviewed for this purpose. It does not offer a definitive statement about the disaster as it pertains to philanthropy; nor does it consider the crucial leadership role of the many individuals involved in the recovery process, even though that role often intercepted with the philanthropic sector. Instead, it seeks to identify general trends that emerge from a qualitative assessment of the …

The New New Orleans, Gregory Rusovich

New England Journal of Public Policy

The Business Council of New Orleans and the River Region was formed in 1985 by the iconic chairman and CEO of Freeport McMoRan, Jim Bob Moffett. The core mission of the Business Council during its thirty-four years has been to improve the region’s business climate, enhancing the quality of life for the community, working to effect principled reform, and simply striving to make New Orleans a safer and better place to live, work, and raise a family. It consists of CEOs and owners of primarily the largest businesses and employers in the city and has ranged in total membership from …

Reinventing The New Orleans Public Education System, David Osborne

New England Journal of Public Policy

If we were creating a public education system from scratch, would we organize it as most of our public systems are now organized? Would our classrooms look just as they did before the advent of personal computers and the internet? Would we give teachers lifetime jobs after their second or third years? Would we let schools survive if, year after year, half their students dropped out? Would we send children to school for only eight and a half months a year and six hours a day? Would we assign them to schools by neighborhood, reinforcing racial and economic segregation?

Few …

Across Racial Lines: Three Accounts Of Transforming Urban Institutions After A Natural Disaster, James Carter, Nolan Rollins, Gregory Rusovich

New England Journal of Public Policy

At 1:30 p.m. on August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina grazed the mostly evacuated city of New Orleans, reserving its most devastating force for coastal Mississippi, just to the east. During the next two days, the federal levees protecting the city failed in multiple places. Sixteen hundred people died in the metropolitan area. Residences and businesses in 80 percent of the city went underwater. Public officials warned residents and business owners that they might not be able to return for two to three months. The scope of devastation in certain parts of the city made ever returning questionable for many residents. …

Rising From Katrina’S Ashes But Still In Crisis: Public Defense In New Orleans, Derwyn Bunton

New England Journal of Public Policy

New Orleans’ nickname “Big Easy” was based on the “anything goes” perception of the city. Feeding this perception was a sense of lawlessness, that New Orleans was a place where the rules changed depending on who you were and who you knew. So when Hurricane Katrina hit the city in August 2005 and tossed everything around—flooding mansions and missions, damaging the Superdome and supermarkets—the storm challenged old perceptions and presented unique challenges. Katrina made at least one thing clear: New Orleans could no longer wait for change, pretend nothing happened, or look back. The city’s survival depended on its ability …

How Data Became Part Of New Orleans’ Dna During The Katrina Recovery, Lamar Gardere, Allison Plyer, Denice Ross

New England Journal of Public Policy

Data intermediaries have a symbiotic relationship with government as the source of most of their information. The open-data movement in government and development of software-as-a-service technologies shaped the data landscape after Katrina. Through relationships and talent transfers with The Data Center, the City of New Orleans went from having its chief technology officer in federal prison and its data systems in shambles to being a nationally recognized leader in open and accountable government. To be effective during disasters, an intermediary should be (1) in place and widely respected before the event, (2) ready to respond immediately after the event and …

As Schools Close Due To The Coronavirus, Mental Health Care For Children Must Be Protected, Xiaoyan Zhang

Population Health Research Brief Series

This data slice highlights the expansive nation-wide school closings due to COVID-19 and encourages providers and government bodies to support the mental health needs of students across the country.

Odu To Conduct Tornado Preparedness And Emergency Notification System Drill On March 17, News @ Odu

News Items

No abstract provided.

Integrating Aviation Technology, Emergency Services, And Human Resilience: Considerations From Social Scientists, Chelsea A. Lenoble Ph.D., Joel M. Billings Ph.D., Allison A. Kwesell Ph.D., Ray H. Chang Ph.D.

National Training Aircraft Symposium (NTAS)

Unmanned aerial systems (UAS) have a range of applications within the field of disaster response. This presentation offers a novel framework of psychosocial considerations designed to advance UAS and disaster management integration. Social scientists highlight important challenges to the effective integration of three primary entities: UAS, the team of teams that responds to disasters, and populations affected by disasters.

The presentation adopts an emerging theoretical perspective on the intersection between UAS capabilities and disaster phases and extends it by bringing necessary attention to social science issues. Specifically, the framework outlines psychosocial considerations and areas of improvement for preparation (training), response …

Old Dominion University Partners With Hampton Roads Community Foundation To Speed Severe Weather Recovery, Joe Garvey

News Items

No abstract provided.

Harmonizing Climate Change Mitigation And Adaptation In Transportation And Land-Use Planning In California Cities, Serena E. Alexander, Asha Weinstein Agrawal, Ashley M. Hooper, Michael R. Boswell

Mineta Transportation Institute

Abstract: Recent extreme weather events in California—wildfires, drought, and flooding—make abundantly clear the need to plan effective responses to both the causes and the consequences of climate change. A central challenge for climate planning efforts has been identifying transportation and land-use (TLU) strategies that simultaneously reduce greenhouse gas emissions (“mitigation”) and adapt communities so that they will be less affected by the adverse impacts of climate change (“adaptation”). Sets of policies that collectively address both mitigation and adaptation are known as “integrated actions.” This study explores municipal climate planning in California to determine whether cities incorporate integrated actions into their …

A Skein Of Thought: The Ireland At Fordham Humanitiarian Lecture Series, Brendan Cahill, Johanna Lawton

International Affairs

No abstract provided.

Sorry Is Not Enough: Apology As A Crisis Management Tactic, Amiso M. George

International Crisis and Risk Communication Conference

Public admissions of personal or professional misdeeds, followed by apologies by high profile individuals and organizations are strategies and tactics of image restoration when a reputation is damaged. Although the ritual of an apology is an expected societal norm sometimes, they can make matters worse. Apology is effective depending on the offense, the place, time, language, tone of apology and if the recipient of the apology is willing to accept it. Another important element is the cultural factor. Apology that does not adhere to perceived cultural norms may not be received positively; thereby worsening the crisis situation. In 2018 and …

Mind The Gap: Understanding Stakeholder Reactions To Different Types Of Data Security, Audra Diers-Lawson, Amelia Symons

International Crisis and Risk Communication Conference

Data security breaches are an increasingly common problem for organizations, yet there are critical gaps in our understanding of how different stakeholders understand and evaluate organizations that have experienced these kinds of security breaches. While organizations have developed relatively standard approaches to responding to security breaches that: (1) acknowledge the situation; (2) highlight how much they value their stakeholders’ privacy and private information; and (3) focus on correcting and preventing the problem in the future, the effectiveness of this response strategy and factors influencing it have not been adequately explored. This experiment focuses on a 2 (type of organization) x …