Managing Disasters Through Public-Private Partnerships

This book examines public-private partnerships (PPPs) as tools of disaster mitigation, preparedness, response, and resilience in the US. 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina demonstrated that government alone is not equipped to respond to disasters because most of the physical and virtual networks we rely upon are owned and operated by private corporations. Despite acknowledgement by both sectors that public-private collaboration for managing disasters would be mutually beneficial, significant barriers to effective cooperation persist. Ami J. Abou-bakr assesses the recent history and current state of PPPs in the US, with particular emphasis on what has been learned from 9/11 and Katrina. She also has in-depth cases of two of the most significant PPPs in US history, the Federal Reserve System and the War Industries Board from World War I. From her empirical analysis she develops two original frameworks to compare different kinds of PPPs and analyze the critical factors that make them successes or failures. The author's findings point the way to better collaboration and provide a starting point for further academic research.