Jump to ratings and reviews
Rate this book

Planning for Community Resilience: A Handbook for Reducing Vulnerability to Disasters

Rate this book
How can we plan and design stronger communities? From New Orleans to Galveston to the Jersey Shore, communities struck by natural disasters struggle to recover long after the first responders have left. Globally, the average annual number of natural disasters has more than doubled since 1980. These catastrophes are increasing in number as well as in magnitude, causing greater damage as we experience rising sea levels and other effects of climate change.

Communities can reduce their vulnerability to disaster by becoming more resilient—to not only bounce back more readily from disasters but to grow stronger, more socially cohesive, and more environmentally responsible. To be truly resilient, disaster preparation and response must consider all populations in the community. By bringing together natural hazards planning and community planning to consider vulnerabilities, more resilient and equitable communities are achievable.

In Planning for Community Resilience the authors describe an inclusive process for creating disaster-resilient communities. Based on their recovery work after Hurricane Ike in Galveston, Texas, they developed a process that relies on the Disaster Impacts Model. This handbook guides any community through the process of determining their level of hazard exposure, physical vulnerability, and social vulnerability with the goal of determining the best planning strategy.

Planning for Community Resilience will be invaluable to professionals working to protect their community from disturbance, including city planners, elected officials, floodplain managers, natural hazard managers, planning commissioners, local business leaders, and citizen organizers.

256 pages, Paperback

First published November 11, 2014

17 people are currently reading
31 people want to read

About the author

Ratings & Reviews

What do you think?
Rate this book

Friends & Following

Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!

Community Reviews

5 stars
7 (33%)
4 stars
11 (52%)
3 stars
3 (14%)
2 stars
0 (0%)
1 star
0 (0%)
Displaying 1 of 1 review
Profile Image for Rebecca.
256 reviews36 followers
May 8, 2019
I had to read this for my grad school course. Overall, this book does a great job at addressing how to evaluate vulnerabilities in a community and what can be done to mitigate problems. It fit the course very well and was very helpful and informative for research and writing. I did not like that the only example used throughout the book was Texas. I prefer having examples from more than just one area, but that is more of a personal preference. I do not feel like you can learn when there are not enough diverse examples.
Displaying 1 of 1 review

Can't find what you're looking for?

Get help and learn more about the design.