Beyond Katrina: lessons in creating resilient communities

This white paper explores the lessons learned from Katrina and how the recovery in New Orleans inspired the creation of new methods of building resilience. The paper identifies a number of critical areas to keep stakeholders aligned, including prioritizing flooding as the paramount risk, devoting more resources to preventive measures rather than post-event disaster relief, and overcoming current infrastructure vulnerabilities. The paper also offers first steps and tactics to help assess and address communities at risk, and ways to improve the affordability of risk-based disaster insurance.