Arendt, Alesch co-author book on community recovery from disasters


Lucy Arendt, associate professor and director of the Cofrin School of Business, is co-author of the newly released book Long-Term Community Recovery from Natural Disasters (CRC Press, Taylor & Francis Group, 2014). The book was researched and written with Daniel J. Alesch, professor emeritus of Public and Environmental Affairs. The authors present what they have learned over two decades from more than two dozen community disasters in and outside the United States. Their central thesis is that decision makers must understand how communities develop or decay in the absence of an extreme natural hazard event in order to determine which parts of the community must be reestablished or made more functional to achieve long-term community viability. Arendt and Alesch argue that decision makers must understand communities as complex, open, and self-organizing social systems in order to identify the critical points for policy intervention at various levels of government. The intended audience for the peer-reviewed book includes organizational decision makers, government policy makers, and academic scholars.