A Framework for Making multistate disaster management systems perform: Insights from the Caribbean Emergency and Disaster Response Agency (now CDERA)

In this book I use the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to help derive important effectiveness components. My reading of the literature on FEMA helped me derive some important effectiveness factors in disaster management. These studies also show that single-attribute analyses are inadequate in understanding effectiveness; rather multiple factors must be analyzed together. These insights formed the basis of the multiple-variable model I propose and were then applied with other components derived from the general disaster management literature in my study of CDERA. My study on the Caribbean and CDERA shows not only that disaster management is complex, but also that recurring disasters stymie economic development and thus it is important to make disaster management entities effective. It also demonstrates why it is difficult to do so, particularly in that regional context. The region consists of multiple, islands that are hazard prone. Because of the geographic, demographic, and economic context of the Caribbean, CDERA faces additional challenges that increase the complexity of the disaster management environment.

Denise Thompson is assistant professor of public management at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY. She received her doctorate in Public Administration from Penn State university, Harrisburg. Dr. Thompson has been researching how to build or improve disaster management entities performance, especially for multi-state/country systems.