Once states and impacted local communities receive disaster recovery dollars, they are responsible for designing recovery programs that will strategically leverage limited funding to help address the most impacted areas and the greatest number of individuals. During the first part of this course, students will learn how to determine and evaluate unmet need with an emphasis on understanding and identifying the needs of vulnerable populations and how to use that information to design impactful housing, infrastructure, economic revitalization and public services programs.
After disaster recovery programs are designed, states and localities must scale up operations quickly, building internal capacity, developing plans, policies and procedures and hiring staff to implement a wide range of recovery programs. During the second part of this course, students will learn what is involved in starting up large scale disaster recovery operations, and the lifecycle of typical recovery programs from start up through closeout. Students will also learn about some of the common challenges governments face implementing these programs and best practices to build back resilient communities.