Disasters Roundtable Workshop 33: Coexisting with Risk from Natural DisastersDisasters Roundtable
The Pew D.C. Conference Center, Americas Room, 2nd Floor
901 E Street NW Washington DC 20004
No area is risk-free. All segments of society assume some level of risk and coexist with it. Often times, those living in high-natural disaster risk areas expect, explicitly or implicitly, that the government will provide assistance if and when a disaster event occurs. However, if the frequency or cost of natural disasters increases in the future, the inter-reliant relationships among federal, state and local officials; private industry; and community members become especially critical during each phase of the disaster cycle. The workshop, "Coexisting with Risk from Natural Disasters" aims to discuss questions that become particularly pressing during or after a disaster. These questions include:
1. How effective are the current practices and policies at the national and local scales in ensuring the distribution and assumption of risk in equitable ways?
2. If disasters trend towards greater frequency or greater costs, how would current policies ensure equitable assumption and distribution of increased risk?
3. How would current policies need to be changed to allow for equitable distribution or assumption of increased risk? What, if any, new policies would be needed to ensure equitable assumption and distribution of increased risk?
To prepare for the October workshop, the DR hosted two community conversations, one in Fort Worth, Texas and the other in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. These community conversations will contribute to the October 26th workshop by ensuring that local perspectives of risk are included in discussions at the national level. The questions discussed during these community conversations include:
1. Who bears the risks in local communities and are the risks distributed in an equitable way?
2. What are effective ways to communicate risk and hazard information in local communities?
3. What are communities doing to facilitate the local conversation about sharing risks? What has been successful? What has not been successful?
To join the online discussion or for more information about the workshop, please visit: coexistingwithrisks.ning.com.
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Keynote speaker Gerry Galloway offered some thoughts before the meeting on the importance of the topic and the work they would be doing at this workshop.
At the meeting, many of the participants spoke about their presentations and the key messages they wanted to convey.