This book acknowledges the importance of collaboration between the private and public sectors to improve the ability of a community to prepare for, respond to, and recover from disasters. Despite previous examples of the private and public sectors working cooperatively to reduce the effects of a disaster by implementing building codes, retrofitting buildings, improving community education, or issuing extreme-weather warnings, the book echoes the absence of comprehensive framework to guide private-public collaboration focused on disaster preparedness, response, and recovery.
The book assesses the current state of private-public sector collaboration dedicated to strengthening community resilience, identifies gaps in knowledge and practice, and recommends research that could be targeted for investment. Specifically, the book finds that local-level private-public collaboration is essential to the development of community resilience. It states that sustainable and effective resilience-focused private-public collaboration is dependent on several basic principles that increase communication among all sectors of the community, incorporate flexibility into collaborative networks, and encourage regular reassessment of collaborative missions, goals, and practices.