Think Big, Act Fast: Disaster Management From Hurricanes to Pandemics

Ira Pastor, ideaXme life sciences ambassador and founder of Bioquark interviews Craig Fugate Chief Emergency Management Officer of One Concern and former administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

The international context of this interview: In choosing our leaders it is becoming increasingly important to select people who can both anticipate and address and where possible avoid large scale disasters “weather any storm”. Here, Craig Fugate discusses evaluating past disasters, planning for future events and reacting to the “unexpected” – “think big and move fast”.

Ira Pastor comments: The U.S. has sustained 279 weather and climate disasters since 1980 where overall damages/costs reached or exceeded $1 billion (including CPI adjustment to 2020). The total cost of these 279 events exceeds $1.825 trillion.

 

Craig Fugate is the Chief Emergency Management Officer of One Concern, a “Resilience-as-a-Service” solutions company that brings disaster science together with machine learning for better disaster recovery decision making. Craig is the former Director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management, and former administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) an agency of the United States Department of Homeland Security, whose primary purpose is to coordinate the response to disasters that has occurred in the United States and that overwhelms the resources of local and state authorities.

Craig Fugate talks of Disaster Management at State and Federal Level in the USA

Mr. Fugate has decades of experience at the local, state, and federal levels in disaster preparedness and management. He has also overseen preparation and response efforts for disasters such as wildfires and hurricanes, health crises, and national security threats. As Florida Director for the Emergency Management Division, he oversaw the “Big 4 of ‘2004” (Hurricanes Charley, Frances, Ivan, and Jeanne) and as the Administrator for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, he organized recovery efforts for a record of eighty-seven disasters in 2011.

Craig Fugate, Chief Emergency Management Officer, One Concern

On this ideaXme episode we will hear from Mr. Fugate about – -His background and how he went from a firefighter and emergency paramedic to the country’s top emergency manager – An overview of FEMA – An overview of One Concern and novel Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning technologies for disaster recovery – His current work (and learnings from his H1N1 recovery experience) related to Covid-19 / pandemic recovery operations – An overview of his “thunderbolt exercises”, where as FEMA administrator, he would declare a fake disasters to test U.S. emergency operations center preparedness -His “Waffle House Index” and “Starbucks Index” as informal metrics to determine the effect of a storm, or an earthquake, and the likely scale of assistance required for disaster recovery

This interview is in American English.

Credits: Ira Pastor, ideaXme ambassador interview.

If you enjoyed this interview please check out ideaXme’s interview with Tara O’Toole Executive Vice President and Senior Fellow In-Q-Tel.

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