Summit on Resilience

 
Summit on Resilience II: Lessons from Superstorm Sandy
Pace professors offer their perspectives on resilience and public-private partnerships, highlighting the need for an interdisciplinary approach to addressing this complex challenge. If you would like a hard copy of the booklet, please email jryan@pace.edu.
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In the wake of Sandy, William H. Hooke, a senior policy fellow at the American Meteorological Society, used the history of aviation safety and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) to describe what’s needed in disaster planning in a blog post:

The NTSB mantra is not,
“The wing fell off this airplane, but we’re going to rebuild it as before,” but rather, “What caused this accident? We have to make sure it never happens again.”

We need an analog to the NTSB for natural hazards. This meeting is an attempt to sketch out what that may look like.

Where Did Public-Private Partnerships Function or Fail, and What Can Improve?

For too long, even when history, science or security analysis reveals significant vulnerabilities, the societal and political response has been to discount the need to design both structures and policies with the worst in mind. Because there is also a tendency to forget lessons learned after the worst has happened, a kind of disaster amnesia sets in.

Conference Objective

In an intensive half-day session, leaders from key industries, divisions of government and research institutions will engage in a series of conversations focused on successes and failures in the wake of this historic storm and surge. The discussions will result in a short list of addressable steps or research opportunities that can build urban resilience through improved cooperation and communication between businesses, government and the public.

A broader outcome will be the development of a standardized post-mortem process for calamities of this sort, a template for convening an influential mix of executives, experts and officials who can efficiently find rational paths toward a more durable future.

Agenda Outline

  • Keynote speaker (New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie or New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg) to review the response to the storm

  • Private and public sector panel discussion from an insurance/risk management perspective on physical restoration, insurance claims for loss of records, interruption of business and what worked well during Superstorm Sandy. Panelists include insurance sector, FEMA, and NY/NJ Office of Emergency Management representatives

  • Panel drawn from utilities, agencies and experts on distributed power to identify policy shifts that could lead to better results next time. A key participant will be Thomas Bourgeois, deputy director of the Pace Energy and Climate Center, and expert on distributed generation

  • Guest speaker—Tom Ridge to discuss his assessment of the response to Superstorm Sandy