 Good afternoon and welcome to CSIS on what has to be the most dreary day that we've had here in November. So thank you for your fortitude and your, you know, sense of adventure in venturing out today. My name is Stephanie Sanicostro. Until recently, I was the acting director of the Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Program here at CSIS and I want to welcome you to our event today on Achieving Disaster Resilience in US communities. Hopefully several of you have picked up some of copies of the report that were available downstairs. If not, we can make them available to you. On your way out or online at CSIS.org. Just rules the road. If you wouldn't mind setting your personal devices to silent or stun, I would appreciate it. They do in fact disagree with our AV system here, so I would ask you to do that. So the issue of disaster resilience is one that we here at CSIS have taken a great interest in for the last few years. I know a number of you here today have attended some of our past events and discussions on the topic as part of our Disaster Resilience series generously sponsored by the Irene W. and CB Pennington Foundation of Baton Rouge. For any of you who are interested in the series, again, I reference you to the or refer you to the website CSIS.org for both videos and expert interviews. Over the last decade, we have witnessed the increased frequency and severity of natural disasters throughout the United States and around the world, the rising economic losses, the mounting costs of providing relief. With far-reaching consequences that range from loss of life, loss of property, psychological and economic damage, it's clear that merely throwing money at the problem in the aftermath, immediately after a disaster, constitutes a wildly insufficient approach. Rather, here at CSIS, we've been exploring how to approach this issue set from a different perspective, one that draws on the full spectrum of public and private sector stakeholders that emphasizes risk mitigation and puts into place key elements in advance of a disaster in order to strengthen community community resilience. Today's event marks the completion of our most recent study of natural disasters and community in resilience. Before I talk about the report, our findings and our recommendations, I'd like to briefly introduce our two guests who are seated on the dais to my right. I really could not have asked for two better, more knowledgeable and visionary individuals to discuss the roles of public and private organizations, areas for potential reform, and the need for ongoing dialogue. I will introduce them briefly to you and then summarize the report and then turn the floor over to them. Speaking first, after me would be Ms. Robin Barnes, who is the executive vice president and chief operating officer of Greater New Orleans, Incorporated, which is a regional economic development alliance serving the 10 parish region of Southeast Louisiana. Her organization pursues an aggressive agenda of business and product development, improving regional business conditions through policy, workforce and research initiatives. Ms. Barnes was also a key advisor on the Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force and has been active in the philanthropic space for decades. Mr. Bob Ottenhoff, as president and CEO of the Center for Disaster Philanthropy, a non-profit organization located a scant block away from here, dedicated to transforming disaster by increased disaster given by increasing donor effectiveness throughout the life cycle of disasters through educational opportunities and strategic guidance. Bob is a veteran in philanthropy, non-profit leadership and entrepreneurship, having served at GuideStar an industry leader and using data to help donors make better decisions and improve non-profit practice, and he served at PBS for nine years as chief operating officer. I'll turn to these experts for their thoughts after I quickly summarize our CSIS report. The report presents 12 key findings and associated recommendations that have resulted from nearly two years of our research. Our study team conducted a near-exhaustive literature review and interviewed scores of subject matter experts in the public and private sectors. In August of last year, we released a white paper and a video that was narrated by former senator and chair of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, Joe Lieberman, that teed up the issues we addressed in the report. In the interest of time, I'll refer you to the report, in particular the executive summary, wherein you'll find a table that maps and crosswalks the 12 key findings along with our recommendations. We have five categories of recommendations, and I'll just cover them briefly now. The first has to do with the Department of Homeland Security and FEMA. This category of recommendations talks about identifying and standardizing impact measurements for threat and hazard identification and risk assessments and after-action reports and develops targets and performance metrics for key capabilities. We recommend the Department should further involve stakeholders in developing those metrics and make available more data and analysis. In particular, FEMA's Emergency Business Operations Center should create a national database of information on all relevant state regulations and host a web portal for verified entities to update and exchange information. The second category of recommendation deals with federal executive branch agencies. And we argue that they should advocate for pre- and post-disaster mitigation grants to receive additional preparedness in response assistance funding. Excuse me as I'm... Let me just grab some water real quick. So the house I live in was built in 1900. Just so you know, radiation, radiating, radiation heat, radiator heat, completely drying, and then we come here to CSI. So I apologize for the frog in my throat. So we were talking a little bit about federal executive branch agencies and what they can do. In addition to talking about mitigation grants, we argue that they should create a framework for waivers, for regulatory and other requirements. We can talk a little bit about that during the Q&A session in terms of what kinds of waivers they should grant. The third category of recommendation hinges on state and local governments and what they can do to help community resilience. For example, exploring available options to transfer risk to federal government, which really should be a welcome recommendation for state and local governments, and to prepare memorandums of understanding to improve flexibility and credentialing and again waivers. They should also work within public and private partnerships to detail responsibilities and guarantee protections. The fourth category is what, if anything, would get CSIs into hot water, and that is our category where we talk about what Congress can do. I am a former professional staff member on a congressional committee, and I know that if this cross might ask, I kind of look at scans, but hopefully CSIs can bring enough weight to this discussion for them to actually ask us about what we mean when we say Congress should pursue scalability of response and recovery assistance, evaluate programs critically, authorized FEMA pilot programs that have improved efficiency. Congress should also improve funding flexibility of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, continue to explore ways to improve insurance and reinsurance mechanisms, limit availability of assistance to all uninsured infrastructure within special flood hazard areas, and reexamine thresholds for private sector liability. Our fifth and final category of recommendations deals with public-private partnerships. In continuing research and development efforts on exploiting crowdsourced data for better situational awareness, examining other methods of mitigation promotion, such as incentivizing continuity of operations planning with low-interest loans, exploring public-private efforts to identify plan, implement longer-term risk and vulnerability reduction strategies, and really take a look at accounting for all potential community impacts such as health. In summary, our study addresses the lack of standard, quantifiable readiness and performance metrics, the lack of a clear framework for waiving regulatory and other requirements, the need for more flexibility in waiver and credentialing policies for essential response missions, and the need for more cost avoidance and additional communication between public and private sector entities. Finally, we talk a little bit about better incentives for small businesses to prepare effectively for natural disasters. Now, I know what I have just presented to you is a lot to take in. It is a mouthful. Again, I refer you to the executive summary in the report. Hopefully, in table format, it is a little bit easier to understand than hearing me now. But right now, I would like to turn to Ms. Robin Barnes. For her perspective, she just came in from Louisiana earlier today, and she may have a little bit of insight to offer. So, over to you, Robin. Yep. Okay. I am what has been known as a disaster recovery professional, though I am beginning to try out disaster resilience professional in light of the new paradigm of recovery that has been evolving over the last few years. My own experience with disasters dates back to 9-11, after which I ran a small business recovery program in lower Manhattan. It also includes several hurricanes in Louisiana, including Katrina, the BP oil spill, and most recently, Hurricane Sandy when I worked on the Sandy Task Force in 2013 with some agencies represented here today and some individuals. Hi, Scott. Currently, my work revolves around creating an economic framework for coastal restoration, water management, and resilience activities, all of which are occupying a great deal of our time in the New Orleans area. Disasters not only wreak havoc on communities, but also on economies, local, national, and even global. The supply and price of gasoline at the pumps and crude oil prices and petroleum futures on Wall Street are impacted every time a named storm enters the Gulf of Mexico, the source of about 40 percent of this country's energy supply. The ripple effect of all of that up-and-down supply chains is stunning, impacting small businesses, jobs, and even homeland security. And yet it has been my experience that economic development has been the afterthought of disaster recovery when it comes to the allocation of federal resources and attention. To be sure, it is critical that emergency responders and resources be directed to the provision of food, shelter, safety, in the most expedient way possible. And this is not to say that resources have not been directed to economic recovery after disasters, but usually that has been the result of lots and lots of advocacy. EDA, for example, Economic Development Administration did not get an allocation in the Hurricane Sandy bill. It is imperative that the economy be addressed concurrent with rebuilding infrastructure and housing, and that resources are aligned for maximum impact. Assessing what sectors were impacted and what opportunities may stem from the disaster can prove fruitful in form recovery and most importantly for today's discussion, build resilience. Here are just a few things to consider in terms of investments in economic recovery, all of which are things we have been able to do or continue to do in New Orleans. Taking steps to diversify the local economy so that when disasters or other market shocks occur, business activity remains, even though some sectors may be temporarily offline. Aligning transportation and infrastructure repairs with regional economies, acknowledging that people sometimes live and work in different places and need to be able to get back and forth. Building local capacity of firms and workforce to rebuild and supporting innovation so that local specializations can be developed and exported. Supporting entrepreneurship because not all businesses are able to rebound and may need to be replaced. Investing in economic assets that can generate revenues and jobs for generations to come and ensuring that everyone participate in and benefit from recovery. More recently, investing in green infrastructure, ecosystem restoration, and a more integrated approach to flood and subsidence mitigation and adaptation. These are all things that are critical to economic recovery. These are the sorts of things we have been able to do in New Orleans or are working on utilizing federal resources from HUD to DOT to economic development, administration, and more. But this list is pretty universal and applicable to all areas vulnerable to disasters. The business sector is an integral part to recovery, not only as a recipient of small business loans, for example, or the implementer of rebuilding contracts, but also as a potential innovator and partner. There are not a lot of avenues other than through contracts where businesses can engage in recovery, and I think that is too bad, which is why some of the recommendations around public-private partnerships are really important. Before I end, I want to talk a little bit about two ways in which we are engaging businesses in the long-term resilience of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. The first is the creation of the Greater New Orleans Urban Water Plan, a resilient study and vision for the region for living with water, that storm water, groundwater, rather than simply pumping it out of the city. This will help keep us resilient. This $2.5 million plan was funded by Hurricane Gustav, CDBG disaster recovery funds. Our state had the foresight to think about resilience back in 2008 after Hurricane Gustav and set up a $10 million community resilience fund from which we were able to develop this plan. But instead of engaging only scientists and researchers, we procured a team of Dutch and American water industry leaders, including engineers, architects and designers, urban planners, landscape architects, along with the research institutions and other experts, so that the plan would be relevant in both theory and practice. Of note, we documented the economic benefits of implementing this plan. A conservative investment of $6.2 billion would have benefits and impacts totaling more than $20 billion in reductions of damage from flooding and subsidence, increased property value, lower flood insurance premiums and job creation. Sounds like a good investment. The next example is the Louisiana Coastal Master Plan, a $50 billion plan for achieving real land gain over the next 50 years along our coast. This plan has been legislated and a portion of the funding will come from the Restore Act, thanks to Senator Mary Landrieu and the rest of our terrific federal delegation, as well as delegations from around the country that supported this. Because the voice of the private sector has been absent in advocacy for coastal restoration in Louisiana, we created the Coalition for Coastal Resilience and Economy, which consists of business leaders, bankers, lawyers, CEOs of manufacturing companies, and other business leaders who insist that coastal restoration is economic development and must occur in order to protect our economy. Moreover, it can provide great economic opportunity as well. My friend Dale Morris from the Dutch Embassy is here. He is the one who told me about how when government can partner with academia and private sector, innovation can be born. In the Netherlands, they generate at least 4 percent of their GDP from water management, including exporting services and technology, and who wouldn't want a little bit of that? Thanks. Thanks, Robin. Bob. Hi, everyone. Glad to be here. Nice to see so many people here today. Stephanie, thanks very much for this wonderful report. I know you all and your team worked very hard on it for a long time, so thank you very much. There's a lot of thought-provoking information in it, and I'm sorry that Laurie Burtman's not here. Laurie is the President of the Pennington Foundation and also one of the founders of the Center for Disaster Philanthropy, so hopefully she'll make it before the end of this session. So, as Stephanie mentioned, the Center for Disaster Philanthropy was founded a few years ago. We came out of the Katrina experience, and our founders were all major funders of activities, and they recognized the fact that the philanthropic response to Katrina, like it is to most disasters, was very ad hoc, very reactive, and they were bombarded with phone calls from foundations and corporations who wanted to do something but didn't know what to do. And this is not surprising because if you were to ask most foundations and certainly most corporations, if they're disaster philanthropists, they would say, well no, not really. We fund programs for children or for the environment, and our disaster granting is just a very, very small portion of what we do. So they don't always have the experience, they don't always know what to do, and as a result, funding for the most part from foundations, and I'm going to talk about some notable exceptions to that, tends to be reactive. Ninety percent of all dollars given to disasters is given within 90 days of a disaster occurring, and I'm actually right now doing quite a bit of work with the media on Ebola, and one of the issues with the Ebola crisis is there's not an event that captures media attention. It's a slow evolving event that has occurred over many months and you could argue years. So I thought what I would start is by, first of all, saying something I really like about the report, and that's the emphasis on whole communities. I think that's really important, and there hasn't always been the case, but when we think of a whole community, we want to make sure that government, private sector, is thinking about how to partner with private philanthropy. We've just helped to fund a major report that was just released on funding around Sandy, and this is a report done by the Foundation Center. One of our partners was Philanthropy New York and the New Jersey Council of New Jersey Grantmakers, so all the major funders in the metropolitan area of New York. You probably know some of these statistics. $60 billion came from the federal government, or they're about almost $19 billion in private insurance, and then about $329 million from foundations and corporations. Now this is not including individuals, which was also a significant amount, but I'm going to center my remarks on institutional givers. So you could say $329 million. That's either not very much or that's a lot, depending on what your perspective is, and I'm going to say it's a lot in this case. It came from about 600 foundations and corporations and other institutional donors, and to me the point I want to emphasize here is where did it go? With $60 billion coming from the federal government with nearly $19 billion coming from insurance, what could foundations do? And what foundations like to do, corporate foundations as well, is find the gaps, find the areas that aren't being funded by others, and in this case of that $300 plus million, about 65% of it went to human service organizations. So these are the humanitarian needs of vulnerable populations. I think our statistic I remember is 50% of all public housing is located in a flood plain in the New York City area. So vulnerable populations covers a lot of folks, and another 10% went, and you'll be glad to hear this, Robin, went to economic and community development organizations. You probably had your hand in spending some of that money, and then 5% went to federated organizations. So that's an interesting data point for us to be thinking about as we consider this whole issue of private philanthropy. I wanted to also mention an article that just happened today in the Washington Post, and this is about, it's entitled, In a Bowl of Fight, Private Foundations Provide Critical Financial Aid, and it's centered on the Center for Disease Control Prevention, which has a foundation, the CDC foundation, and it recently received millions of dollars in contributions from well-known contributions from Mark Zuckerberg and his wife from Microsoft Founders Bill Gates and from Paul Allen. Within hours of receiving the money, the organization was authorized for staff to make repairs to equipment that was necessary to provide assistance, and within the week, it was able to order, pay for, and ship to the region about 200 additional pickup trucks and four-wheel drive cars worth $5 million. The unpredictable, and here's a quote, Stephanie, that should have been in your report, the unpredictable nature of the Ebola virus has made the government's partnerships with private donors critically important in the crisis response, working outside the politically charged federal appropriations process, and the sometimes sluggish bureaucracy, foundations and private individuals have been able to offer much needed relief for those on the front lines. One of the workers said the unexpected needs big and small came up nearly every day, motorcycles delivered supplies to narrow roads, baby formula, data entry staffers, there would not have been an obvious second way to do it without foundation support. And then finally, this quote from Paul Allen's foundation, hours, literally hours after their question, we were able to respond. One of the first organizations to donate money was the Paul Allen Foundation. In the case of this humanitarian crisis, we knew how important it was to get the money out quickly. So when we talk about private philanthropy, even though it's not nearly, not always the same amount, it's money that can be offered quickly with less bureaucracy, can be more targeted, can focus on the social humanitarian issues and vulnerable populations, and can be flexible. So that's the first thing I just wanted to mention about thinking about the role sometimes not major amounts of money, but the role that private philanthropy can can play in this whole community. A second part that we also liked about the report and like about the thought of whole community is how the executive branch in private philanthropy have made considerable strides in their ability to work together in the intervening nine years since Katrina. A couple of examples that we have noted is the growing and expanding relationship between FEMA, HUD, Homeland Security, and other executive branch offices in private philanthropy. The creation of the National Business Emergency Operations Center, the creation of the FEMA Private Sector Division in 2007, and the creation of the Center for International Disaster Information. And that the CDE provides resources and conducts public awareness activities designed to empower donors to help people affected by disaster or so. So I think since Katrina we've begun to see some recognition of communication, but there's still many bridges to be built and a long ways to go. Conversely, the private philanthropy sector is, which was previously accustomed to operating in a vacuum, now views the executive branch as both a resource as well as a partner of a disaster. And we're pleased to see USG representatives at the National VOAD conferences, for example, something we didn't see a long time ago. I held, I was the moderator of a panel about six months ago of Katrina funders and I asked them what was the biggest lesson you learned. And they said we didn't deal, we have not established strong relationships with municipal and state governments. And foundations often tend to think, you know, we can do whatever we want with our money and it can be used in any way we want. And what they realized after Sandy was for them to accomplish some of their goals, they needed to go through government layers to get zoning approved, to get new construction plans, to engage in civic engagement, to kind of repurpose how their communities would operate. And I think it's a lesson from Sandy that we're going to hear more of from the foundation community. They must establish stronger relationships with local, state, and federal government. Finally, I just want to mention something about the full life cycle. I mentioned in my opening statement that so much of disaster philanthropy dollars is reactive and we're trying to get donors to focus on the full life cycle. It's I think one of the benefits, one of the side results of Katrina was, I'm sorry, of Sandy, was for the first time we began to hear governors and mayors in the New York metropolitan area begin to utter the word mitigation. And we're now hearing quite a bit of that and we're hearing the press talk about it as well. And so our effort is to try to get donors to think about planning, about preparation, mitigation as well as the long-term recovery. And just a couple of, and so one quote from this report, philanthropic organizations can prove especially important in the long-term planning and recovery phases due to their ability to pool private funding and act independently of election cycles. A couple of examples of that, we're working right now with 10 states in the upper Midwest and working with 18 community foundations. And the whole effort of that work is around helping community foundations become community leaders in planning and preparation for disasters. We also just recently announced an early recovery fund that will now operate in the Midwest where we have accumulated some funds that we will use when disasters occur for early recovery type work. Another recognition from a private foundation that we need to be thinking of the full life cycle. And then of course we're all familiar with Rockefeller partnership with both HUD and USAID to build more resilient communities. So I'll stop here for now, but I just want to say once again three, I think three key concepts that really resonated with us. One is a concept of the whole community getting everybody involved. The second is a full life cycle, making sure that we're talking not just about emergency relief in those few days when the cameras are trained on the situation, but the full life cycle of disasters which is so important. And then finally to not forget about the importance of building social capital within our communities to make them more resilient and better able to bounce back when disaster does occur. Thanks very much. Thanks both of you. They've both mentioned Laurie Bertman who is the president and CEO of the Pennington Family Foundation. And she was the one who came to us at CSI several years ago to talk about what we as a think tank here in D.C. could contribute to the dialogue regarding natural disasters writ large. But we really here have focused on community resilience because we thought that was an area where that was sort of crying out for a little bit of attention here in D.C. It was receiving attention in communities that were struck by natural disasters. As small businesses don't return necessarily in the aftermath of a disaster they maybe decide to move on. Some businesses do decide to return and having the structures and the support and the culture of support in place for them to do so was important. And so as a think tank here in D.C. CSI is really with the support of the Pennington Family Foundation started to explore this area a couple of years ago. Areas that Laurie in particular wanted us to focus on were how do you have a robust dialogue in this space bringing together folks from the philanthropic community from the for-profit private sector such as Walmart the big package stores which means something different in Massachusetts I think about it not that kind of package store but not one that sells alcohol. But big package stores the think tank the nonprofit community the the public element of this all with DHS with FEMA then falling under DHS in the last decade or so. And so having this dialogue so that you can come that you can create these relationships that you can then call on in the lead up to during and in the aftermath of a natural disaster and not only have dialogue for dialogue's sake but turning then to implementation of recommendations turning then to real ways that you could help either infrastructure or insurance things that are not sexy things that don't grab the headlines things like insurance things like small business loans real concrete steps and so if you take a look at a report I welcome any feedback that you all have on it and I'm going to take just one brief period right here and ask the first question and then I will turn it over to the audience but the first question that I have is goes to Robin which is as a as a member of the Sandy Task Force you mentioned the importance of diversifying local economies which is so many times easier said than done when you take a look at what the task force was charged with and sort of the ideas that were recommended for further action can you talk a little bit about reforms that might be needed in the short term and then things that we mentioned before coming out here the long game what are what are things that we can tee up now to help continue this conversation and make sort of the cultural shifts the longer the longer term vision of the changes that are so necessary the I wrote the chapter on small business recommendations for the the task force and it was supporting small businesses and revitalizing local economies and a number of the recommendations focused on how to make contracts for recovery more accessible to small and local businesses and how to have your workforce ready to be able to take on that work and I think this is directly related to diversifying your economy because in fact this work can be part of your economy New Jersey actually added disaster recovery to its list of target sectors for their Department of Labor programs and thereby acknowledging that disaster recovery was actually a sector in New Orleans we've actually created a sector called emerging environmental which is a cluster of companies that addresses environmental challenges related to energy waste and water so part of the diversity can actually be right in the disaster itself and addressing those challenges and actually developing that this specialization and the capacity to take on that work any thoughts on that Bob well I guess too I gave it a presentation recently in Sarasota Florida and we raised we asked I asked who's been in a major disaster and you would think in a place like Sarasota everybody would raise their hand and I'd say of only about a third of the people did and the reason was of the change in population the in migration still occurring in a place like Florida I asked how and since it's been many years since a major hurricane in Florida I asked if the organizations had a had a planning document of some kind and they got a lot of puzzle looks and very few organizations were able to say anything in part I think because of the big turnover of people and a pointed out once again the need to continuously refreshing our planning and preparation activity and to get again to make it a whole community activity to get to get everybody involved in it and you know I think this is an area again where I think private foundations are eager to play a role in the convening activity but it's going to take something like that and I think often small businesses and corporations to my second point can be one of the the catalyst for that because we're seeing growing recognition among corporations that they need to be mindful of their supply chain they need to be much more mindful of their their risks and so we're starting to hear much more sophisticated presentations from corporates particularly from large corporations about the siting of their plants about what kinds of plans their vendors have about transportation issues a whole about the safety of their employees in times of disaster and so I think that kind of awareness about disasters and the planning for disasters is something that the whole community can benefit from. I'd like to turn it over to the floor if anyone has any questions that they'd like to ask our panelists. I ask that you stand wait for the microphone that will magically appear by your elbow. State your name your affiliation if you have one and then if you could ask a question I would very much appreciate it. First up is the lady in the back. My name is Pat Cleveland I'm a faculty member at the Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland just up the road and I am really thrilled that you are having this session today. I appreciate so much that you are addressing these issues from the interface between government business and the community. I had the pleasure for the last three years of teaching an undergraduate course in business continuity management and emergency management to our business majors and following exactly the epiphany that you all are articulating that it is both their needs that come to fore when a disaster hits and and thinking about mitigation but there are assets that the business community can bring to bear and so that's the kind of all hazards approach that we've been taking at the Smith School. I've also been working in the space with our corporate partners and kind of their responses have been very interesting all over the map and so I am getting to my question I promise. In talking with them about what do you do in terms of preparedness you know way too late to start with mitigation if you really begin by conceiving the business issues that are involved in protecting your assets and your people why is there not more engagement from the private sector and the answer that I have been getting is well we have insurance for that. Well we have a special you know group here that they deal with disasters when disasters come but there wasn't anything really strategic. So my question to the panel is the people that you are working with in the philanthropic space are they from the foundations and the philanthropic arms of these private sector entities are they separate from that and is there a role that the foundations for you know consulting firms and other firms can really play in this interface here. Thank you. Tough question to answer in terms of where they're coming from. I think there's this is a gross generalization but most corporate foundation money tends again to be short-term in perspective and it's driven by employee needs a need to get employees involved a need for employees to match contributions a need for their corporate community to feel like they're doing something when a disaster occurs and it's a little hard to get credit or to put in blazing your name on a planning effort for something that may or may not happen 10 years from now. So that's I think part of the the challenge of this as I mentioned we find our best opportunities for partnership are with the risk assessment organizations those who have to think about continuity those who have to think about what does our business do if there is a disaster. So I think you have to kind of segment it a little bit and and find your partners for different types of activities. I've actually seen a lot of progress probably going back to since 9-11 which I don't really know why but for some reason it seemed to put small businesses on the map in terms of philanthropy and focus and I think a lot of that has to do with small businesses now been documented to employing I can't remember 60% of low-age workers in the country I don't know what the exact percentage is but it's pretty significant and so so on the one hand there's sort of the the government support through SBA the small business development centers which now actually do have a lot of business continuity programs but also there are some large-scale initiatives with Goldman Sachs 10,000 small businesses JP Morgan Chase has a focus on small businesses so I think there and that is very much you know from my perspective a good business model for them because that's about protecting also their own interests. So I think that's kind of when it it starts to work is when you sort of have companies sort of seeing that by protecting their own interests there's a gain and small businesses are critical to their supply chain. Thank you there's a gentleman in the back please. I'm Bob Hershey I'm a consultant are you able to use the internet to get people together and get funding together and get agreements on these projects? I'm not sure I understood what you were can we? Sure are you speaking about during disasters or oh in preparation it's sometimes that works I think the effort usually is to start off with in-person meetings to try to build rapport build a relationship I think over time once those those bonds have been created using media multimedia becomes a more effective tool. If I could just add to that in conducting the interviews for this study we talked a lot to folks about crowdsourcing and you know in the era of Kickstarter and all of those you know what draws the attention of the folks who would participate in that kind of forum and it ends up that a lot of times crowdsourcing is really good for situational awareness on the ground during a disaster and in the aftermath of it but talking about what Bob has talked about the planning sort of the deliberate approach in in advance of a disaster it appears that crowdsourcing is not as useful as it could be this is one of the areas where I think you could focus some attention for improving but again currently and probably in the immediate future crowdsourcing seems to be good during and in the immediate aftermath there's potential for for advanced work to be done but I think as Bob was saying it just it's trying to grab an attention of people for an eventuality that may not occur and so it's very hard to get interest levels am I mischaracterizing that at all thank you for for a great this gentleman up here leo bosner with the international institute of global resilience a very small non-profit to work with japan since the 2011 disaster mr. odd enough could you talk a little bit more about how to get the donor community more involved in that full cycle of emergency management you said 90 of the money is given within 90 days do you have any ideas on how to get that spread out a little bit further for the other phases thank you welcome to my world so a lot of our efforts go into educate and inform i think you know this from your own experience in japan it's much easier to talk to a donor who has been through a disaster and so we're finding of course this has always been true in places like louisiana where we can we can talk to lori burton at the pennington foundation because she's been through a disaster or sometimes those donors in florida but now we hear donors in new jersey in new york who are much more aware of what we're talking about when we talk about planning and preparation it really takes i guess i would say there's three things one is it takes a an experience that people can relate to but two then it takes some leaders some determined leaders within a community who are willing to to be the leader i mentioned our experience now in the midwest where we're working with 18 community found foundations it took a determined foundation and a group of leaders and then finally it takes a i think a convener an organization who's willing to stick with it who's willing to organize all those difficult meetings who's willing to stick with it for several years and then to continue to refresh it because so often these these efforts result in a brilliant report that gets everybody excited for a year or so and then as quickly forgotten there was a quote about abola that was in the new yorker last week that i remember and the writer michael specter was the writer us said our approach to pandemics is first we get frightened then we forget and that's going to happen with disasters unless there's somebody there who can you know continually involve the community not an easy task thanks we have time for two more quick questions so um gabriel if you can come and and this young lady in the in the front and then um hear this young lady here up in the front and the gentleman in the purple hello thank you for calling me young lady i'm 63 years old anyway i'm um any kayaban wilderman as i said this morning i am a product of usa id government of the philippines training and this report is very nice and i would like your permission to baseline we will i will do it in the philippines and my question is under methodology because as a planner develop in development planner we always joke about those ivory tower planners okay and that triggered me to really leave with scavengers when i had a scavenging program okay so my question is just a quick glance of this book under methodology uh i think it's implied that when you say local government the local governments represent what our constituency want and also i like the term whole of community i asked that because i just retired from the navy my expertise is facilities and housing oversight i was sent to katrina during the storm and it was very humbling and i saw especially within my philippino constituents those philippinos who are not even u.s citizens who lived in our housing communities i could not get them to move to the hotels that we rented you know they said mom it's okay we owe the navy we will clean up we will not wait for the government and that is the kind of involvement i have seen i beg and i encourage you to google olongapo city the city right outside of the usubic naval base where you see the most amazing partnership between the us navy or the us armed forces and my friends who taught me there who are now admirals retired admirals were going back to the philippines to show the world what the face of the united states is thank you for your perspective i think um it's as robin was saying sometimes you know you you can you can study a particular disaster in the in her case sandy um and then take it and and apply the recommendations in a much broader context so thank you for for sharing your experience uh gabriel if we can just this i'll call him a young man in the front row thank you very much my name is raffia main peer grad of university of law with the focus of disaster management so my question is about you mentioned about the challenges that private sector of business institution face when they want to help uh government of local government how about the other uh non-business institutions such as religious institution do they face similar challenges uh when they encounter with municipal or other city governments uh this is my first question my second question about the uh you we all just you discussed about the the issues that's going in the united inside the united states how about the uh how about the other countries uh how they cooperate you mentioned about the netherlands how about uh other european countries uh could the united states learn from them uh which which best practice it could be brought to the united states thank you very much for the first question i'll i'll ask bob to to look at sort of the the non-for-profit private sector folks the the religious entities and then if i could turn to both of you just to to briefly touch on if you've worked with um colleagues in the international arena and and if so what countries they might have held from so faith-based organizations are very important um to disaster relief uh and play a major role um and um um uh you know a country really couldn't do without um the role of of faith-based organizations in the immediate disaster relief um it's sometimes a challenge uh to coordinate all their activities um and it tends to uh the activity tends to focus primarily on um the immediate relief um what i think uh we need to do in partnership with government is is find more intentional approaches uh that covers whereas we've been talking about about planning and preparation and then uh find organizations who have the resources um for the long term of the recovery building and i think that's an area where we still need more work to there's still more work that needs to be done in in a in a public-private partnership well on the international piece um we certainly see a role of of private philanthropy um um not as much as we see domestically um although we're seeing on Ebola for example there's been over 350 million dollars uh donated in just the last few weeks by some of those major philanthropists um like Gates and Paul Allen and Zuckerberg and now uh Google um so it does happen um but it tends to be a little less there's certainly the large NGOs who play a very important role uh and in some ways um are more organized to do the full life cycle of disasters so you're seeing more activity in planning more activity in recovery sometimes than you even see here domestically and of course government plays such a huge role on the international front and multinational corporations organizations i was actually going to also comment on the large NGOs that um i know after Hurricane Katrina a lot of the NGOs that focused on refugees and relocation and a whole host of um issues overseas actually came to New Orleans because some of those things were playing out um in New Orleans but in terms of i think sort of the sharing is very ad hoc um from what i can tell you know we've had lots of delegations i have not been a part of them from New Orleans that have gone to Haiti that have gone to Japan it sort of depends on you know somebody you know somebody's doing the inviting it's a university or something like that and so there's there's been sharing i don't know that it's been formalized in any way well thank you um before i thank uh the panelists i i would like to call everyone's attention um to a mentor of the Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Program at CSI as we've mentioned her earlier um i said that she was the president and CEO of the Pennington Family Foundation bob mentioned that she was a co-founder of his organization the Center for Disaster Philanthropy and i believe she is um probably one of the foremost experts that i've met um and even heard about in this field of talking about disaster giving um so miss lori Bertman has joined us um true to form with our natural disaster series um we her participation was delayed by weather um and so lori thank you so much for your leadership um for your encouragement and for really um encouraging us here at CSI to take a fresh eye a set of eyes to this space um and for being such a great supporter of our organization so miss lori Bertman and please join us in thanking our um our panelists and thank you all for joining us on such a dreary day have a good one