Disaster risk is the product of a complex set of networked processes. Development professionals often use participatory tools to help understand disasters. However, such tools are not designed to capture the interconnections that shape risk. Using flooding in the slums of Freetown, Sierra Leone, as a case study, this article demonstrates how the tools of network analysis can be employed to develop network maps using participatory datasets and discusses the utility of such displays in designing interventions to reduce risk. The article suggests that networked approa ches to risk analysis are uniquely suited to capturing the intricate processes that shape disaster risk and can provide a path forward for developing policies and interventions that seek to address complex phenomena. The article includes an Appendix A with instructions for those seeking to conduct participatory network analysis.

Charles Perrow is famous worldwide for his ideas about normal accidents, the notion that multiple and unexpected failures--catastrophes waiting to happen--are built into our society's complex systems. In The Next Catastrophe, he offers crucial insights into how to make us safer, proposing a bold new way of thinking about disaster preparedness.

Perrow argues that rather than laying exclusive emphasis on protecting targets, we should reduce their size to minimize damage and diminish their attractiveness to terrorists. He focuses on three causes of disaster--natural, organizational, and deliberate--and shows that our best hope lies in the deconcentration of high-risk populations, corporate power, and critical infrastructures such as electric energy, computer systems, and the chemical and food industries. Perrow reveals how the threat of catastrophe is on the rise, whether from terrorism, natural disasters, or industrial accidents. Along the way, he gives us the first comprehensive history of FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security and examines why these agencies are so ill equipped to protect us.

The Next Catastrophe is a penetrating reassessment of the very real dangers we face today and what we must do to confront them. Written in a highly accessible style by a renowned systems-behavior expert, this book is essential reading for the twenty-first century. The events of September 11 and Hurricane Katrina--and the devastating human toll they wrought--were only the beginning. When the next big disaster comes, will we be ready?

Abstract

Governments regulate risky industrial systems such as nuclear power plants in hopes of making them less risky, and a variety of formal and informal warning systems can help society avoid catastrophe. Governments, businesses, and citizens respond when disaster occurs. But recent history is rife with major disasters accompanied by failed regulation, ignored warnings, inept disaster response, and commonplace human error. Furthermore, despite the best attempts to forestall them, “normal” accidents will inevitably occur in the complex, tightly coupled systems of modern society, resulting in the kind of unpredictable, cascading disaster seen at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station. Government and business can always do more to prevent serious accidents through regulation, design, training, and mindfulness. Even so, some complex systems with catastrophic potential are just too dangerous to exist, because they cannot be made safe, regardless of human effort.

The post-World War II fabric of global security, designed and maintained by the United States, has dangerously frayed. Built for a different age, current international institutions are ill-equipped to address today's most pressing global security challenges, ranging from climate change and nuclear proliferation to civil strife and terrorism.

Revitalizing the institutions of cooperation will require a new conceptual foundation for global security. The "national sovereignty" of the twentieth century must give way to "responsible sovereignty"-a principle requiring nations not only to protect their own people, but also to cooperate across borders to safeguard common resources and tackle common threats. Achieving this will require American leadership and commitment to a rule-based international order.

In Power and Responsibility Bruce Jones, Carlos Pascual, and Stephen Stedman provide the conceptual underpinnings for a new approach to sovereignty and cooperation. They present ideas for the new U.S. administration, working with other global powers, to promote together what they cannot produce apart-peace and stability. Recommendations follow more than a year of consultations with policymakers and experts all over the world. They reflect the guidance of the Managing Global Insecurity Project Advisory Group, composed of prominent figures from the United States and abroad. They call for the new president and key partners to launch a 2009 campaign to revitalize international cooperation and rejuvenate international institutions.

As Washington prepares for a presidential transition, the time has arrived for a serious rethinking of American policy. For the United States, this is no time to go it alone.

The most critical issue in merging the Homeland Security Council (HSC) and the National Security Council (NSC) is one that has received the least attention. Merger advocates emphasize that combining the councils will better integrate domestic and international policymaking. Paul Stockton agrees with the importance of that goal. He argues, however, that the most destructive gaps in policy integration lie between federal, state, and local governments. The HSC was originally supposed to include state and local representatives in its policymaking process. That never happened. The failure to give states and localities a sustained, institutionalized role in shaping the initiatives they implement has produced repeated policy and programmatic failures. Stockton argues that now, regardless of whether the administration merges the HSC and NSC, the time has come to include state and local representatives in their work. In this essay he proposes how to do so and also examines the special challenges that a merged council would face in terms of its span of control and other issues.

A growing number of scholars argue that the new administration should overturn a key decision by President George W. Bush administration’s decision in 2002 to create a Homeland Security Council (HSC). Until the September 11 attacks, the National Security Council (NSC) coordinated the handful of institutions, (including the Department of Defense) that protected the United States from its adversaries. Bush responded to al Qaeda’s attacks by organizing a sprawling parallel system of institutions to protect the United States from terrorism. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is only part of that system. The Bush administration also assigned terrorism prevention functions to the Departments of Agriculture (USDA), Health and Human Services, Interior, and other federal institutions which had never before played such significant roles in securing the United States from attack. Bush capped this parallel security system with the HSC to help guide and coordinate its activities.

A spate of recent studies argue that creating the HSC was a mistake and that the new administration should subsume the Council within the NSC. Such a merger, however, would impede the reforms that are most vital for securing the United States against future terrorist attacks and hurricanes or other natural hazards.

The terrible wake-up call of 9/11 brought homeland security and homeland defense into full focus for a nation ill-prepared for the threat of transnational terrorism. Our nation has done much to meet that threat, yet much more still needs to be done. Balancing security concerns against those of individual liberties, ensuring parallel commitments to law enforcement and defense remain complementary but distinct, are just two of the issues of concern. In this spirit, the U.S. Army War College’s Center for Strategic Leadership partnered with The George Washington University, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and the Heritage Foundation to conduct the first annual Homeland Defense/Homeland Security conference. The conference was an ambitious endeavor, designed to draw on a cross-section of experience from the partner institutions, their supporters, and their audiences in addressing the issues at hand. This volume is a reflection of those discussions.