Disaster Labs: How American States Use Partnerships to Manage the Unthinkable

Disaster Labs: How American States Use Part-nerships to Manage the Unthinkable examines the promise and potential drawbacks of public-private disaster response frameworks during the course of six chapters. After the introduction, the author intro-duces a series of case studies and then provides a detailed discussion of public-private collaboration in California, Florida, New York, and Virginia. A conclud-ing chapter then comparatively assesses the value of these partnerships. The cases discussed in Disaster Labs range from informal, ad hoc collaborations to formalized initia-tives with detailed structures defined in contracts and memoranda, setting expectations for perfor-mance and accountability for both the government and private actors. Such accountability is desirable as it can limit fraud and corruption. But it is important to emphasize that not all solutions work in all situa-tions, either.