Building a Resilient World by Preparing for Disasters

Dr. Judith Rodin, the President of the Rockefeller Foundation,  has a wonderful OpEd piece on cnn.com, To Prepare for Disasters, Have a Plan B.

The article notes the meeting that is being convened in Washington DC this week, Embracing Change: Building Social, Economic, and Environmental Resilience.

To alleviate and reduce the impacts of food shortages, financial contagion, natural disasters, as well as pandemics, the world needs to harness the power of networks and synergistic collaborations.

This semester, I have been teaching a new course, Humanitarian Logistics and Healthcare. In the course, we have learned about emergency preparedness, mitigation, disaster response and recovery as well as risk management,  vulnerability assessment, the importance of critical infrastructure robustness and resilience. We have even discussed fund raising for humanitarian relief organizations.

Our guest speakers have come from the Red Cross,  the National Guard,  and from industry, and we have learned about Disaster Communications, and how universities prepare for emergencies.



As a public service, I have now made my lectures notes, as well as several guest speaker talks, available online.

This course was inspired by the Humanitarian Logistics: Networks for Africa Workshop that I organized at the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Center on Lake Como, Italy.

The findings from the workshop as well as the presentations can be accessed here.

Thanks to the Rockefeller Foundation for sponsorship.

Our books on related topics can be found here.