Lessons of Disaster: How Can We Learn from Disaster Experience?

Tom Birkland, Associate Professor of Public Administration and Policy and Diirector of the Center for Policy Research, University at Albany, SUNY

Wednesday, March 14, 2007, 8:30 – 9:30 a.m.

In his recent book, Lessons of Disaster (Georgetown University Press) Dr. Birkland argues that “learning” “lessons” from disasters like Hurricane Katrina or the 9/11 attacks is unlikely, because of various institutional barriers to “learning” and because of the problem with the metaphor of “learning” itself. But, assuming that disasters and other “focusing events” do trigger events to take in information and make better decisions for the next disaster, what features of a political system, a policy domain, and an organization can enhance learning and improved performance? Tom will suggest some avenues of research, focusing in particular on gathering and managing information. He will also suggest fruitful funding sources, including NSF.

Tom Birkland is an associate professor of public administration and policy and is the director of the Center for Policy Research at the University at Albany. His expertise is in the public policy process, and in public policies dealing with natural and technological hazards and disasters. He is the author of After Disaster and Lessons of Disaster (both from Georgetown University Press) and of several scholarly articles in the field. In 2006, Tom was program officer for the Infrastructure Management and Hazard Response program in the Division of Civil, Mechanical, and Manufacturing Innovation (CMMI) in the National Science Foundation’s Directorate for Engineering.