Director of ISTPP, Dr. Arnold Vedlitz, and ISTPP Research Fellows, Dr. Berke, Dr. Hannibal, Dr. Mostafavi, and Dr. Woodruff, have recently been published in the International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction. In their article, “Institutional Congruence for Resilience Management in Interdependent Infrastructure Systems,” the authors evaluate the congruence of, or agreement across, institutional coordination, planning, and responses to natural disasters. The research team examines three significant factors of resilience management on the institutional and organizational level: involvement in hazard mitigation planning and use of hazard mitigation plans, who is primarily responsible for hazard mitigation, and the relative importance of various factors that contribute to hazards and policies for hazard risk mitigation.
In 2018, the research team surveyed Harris County stakeholders involved in hazard mitigation, including transportation, flood control, emergency response, environmental conservation, and community development organizations. Based on their analysis of the 198 survey responses, the research team determined that although these institutions differ in approaches to flood risk mitigation, there is agreement among survey respondents about the importance of sharing responsibility in hazard mitigation across multiple levels of government.
Farahmand, Hamed, Shangjia Dong, Ali Mostafavi, Philip R. Berke, Sierra C. Woodruff, Bryce Hannibal, and Arnold Vedlitz. 2020. “Institutional Congruence for Resilience Management in Interdependent Infrastructure Systems.” International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction 46. (Early view available online.) DOI: 10.1016/j.ijdrr.2020.101515.
