0m 0s: Lenght

Welcome to the first of WREMO's online Emergency Management and Community Resilience presentations. In the near future, we will offer a range of presentations on a variety of topics relevant to this sector. In this episode, listen to Professor Daniel Aldrich discuss the findings from him book -- Building Resilience: Social Capital in Post-Disaster Recovery. A description of his book is included below. This presentation was a joint collaboration between Massey University's Joint Centre for Disaster Research and Victoria University's School of Economics. -- About Building Resilience: Social Capital in Post-Disaster Recovery Each year, natural disasters threaten the strength and stability of communities worldwide. Yet responses to the challenges of recovery vary greatly and in ways that aren't explained by the magnitude of the catastrophe or the amount of aid provided by national governments or the international community. The difference between resilience and disrepair, as Daniel P. Aldrich shows, lies in the depth of communities' social capital. Building Resilience highlights the critical role of social capital in the ability of a community to withstand disaster and rebuild both the infrastructure and the ties that are at the foundation of any community. Aldrich examines the post-disaster responses of four distinct communities—Tokyo following the 1923 earthquake, Kobe after the 1995 earthquake, Tamil Nadu after the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, and New Orleans post-Katrina—and finds that those with robust social networks were better able to coordinate recovery. In addition to quickly disseminating information and financial and physical assistance, communities with an abundance of social capital were able to minimize the migration of people and valuable resources out of the area. With governments increasingly overstretched and natural disasters likely to increase in frequency and intensity, a thorough understanding of what contributes to efficient reconstruction is more important than ever. Building Resilience underscores a critical component of an effective response. -- About Daniel Aldrich Daniel Aldrich was born in upstate New York and spent his childhood (and much of his adult life) traveling and living abroad. While living in Tokyo, he began to wonder how Japan - the only country to suffer the effects of atomic weaponry - could have built up such an advanced, commercial nuclear power program. After spending nearly two years carrying out research in rural communities in Japan and France, interviewing more than 100 citizens, bureaucrats, and activists, and summarizing nearly 800 existing studies of the subject, he wrote up his observations in the book SITE FIGHTS: Divisive Facilities and Civil Society in Japan and the West. Daniel completed his PhD in Political Science from Harvard University in 2005 where he was to begin his assistant professorship at Tulane University in New Orleans. That same year, he and his family had their home, car, and all of their material possessions in New Orleans destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. He soon began studying what makes communities and neighborhoods more resilient through more than a year of research in Japan, India, and the Gulf Coast of the United States. He published BUILDING RESILIENCE: Social Capital in Post-Disaster Recovery to share these insights on the role of friends, neighbors, and social resources after crisis. Daniel is an associate professor of political science at Purdue University who is on leave as a Fulbright research fellow at the University of Tokyo's Economics Department for the academic year 2012-2013 and who was an American Association for the Advancement of Science fellow at USAID during the 2011-2012 academic year. Follow Daniel on his Twitter site - twitter.com/DanielPAldrich