Papers by Patrick Roberts
The Journal of Markets and Morality, 2008
RAND Corporation eBooks, 2020
Through a coordinated effort, federal, territory, and private partners removed nearly 900,000 cub... more Through a coordinated effort, federal, territory, and private partners removed nearly 900,000 cubic yards of debris of all types-vegetative, marine, power systems, construction, and demolition-from the territory (Government of the USVI, 2018).
Natural hazards have evolved from being the responsibility of subnational governmentsif the gover... more Natural hazards have evolved from being the responsibility of subnational governmentsif the government intervened all-to become a core function of national governments. The cost of disaster losses has increased over time in states with developed economies, even as fewer lives are lost. Increasing losses are caused by an increasing number of extreme weather events, which wreak havoc on urbanizing populations that build expensive structures in vulnerable locations. Hazards governance attempts to use political and organizational tools to mitigate or prevent damage and bounce back when disasters occur. In large and developed states, authority for hazards governance is fragmented across levels of government, as well as the private sector, which controls much of the infrastructure and property that is subject to losses. The political consequences of disaster losses are mixed and depend on contextual factors: sometimes politicians, government agencies, and nonprofit and voluntary organizations are blamed for failures on their watch, and sometimes they are rewarded for coming to the rescue. The study of disasters has become more interdisciplinary over time as scholars seek to integrate the study of natural hazards with socio-political systems. The future of hazards governance research lies in improving understanding of how to manage multiple, overlapping risks over a period of time beyond next election cycle, and across levels of government and the private sector.
This report provides analysis to help the U.S. Virgin Islands accelerate its recovery from 2017&#... more This report provides analysis to help the U.S. Virgin Islands accelerate its recovery from 2017's Hurricanes Irma and Maria by identifying recovery goals, recovery accomplishments, and challenges. The authors focused on crosscutting capacities needed for implementation, infrastructure, and the economy and public services and provide 76 recommendations to enhance recovery efforts, including steps to support implementation.
Dispersed Federalism: Regional Governance for Disaster Policy
Policy, Performance and Management in Governance and Intergovernmental Relations
Political Science Quarterly, 2016
IMPASSIONED CALLS FOR REFORMING the intelligence process in U.S. foreign policy routinely follow ... more IMPASSIONED CALLS FOR REFORMING the intelligence process in U.S. foreign policy routinely follow on the heels of high-profile intelligence failures in which the intelligence community or the government as a whole is caught by surprise. These failures are blamed on inadequate warning grounded in organizational, psychological, and informational weaknesses in the intelligence process, as in Pearl Harbor or the failure to "connect the dots" before the 11 September 2001 attacks. 1 The reforms that follow usually attempt to reorganize agencies and processes by improving the speed, amount, and accuracy of intelligence information provided to politicians, particularly the president. 2 Yet these reforms often fail. 3
International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 2021
A municipality's level of public engagement and especially community involvement is associated wi... more A municipality's level of public engagement and especially community involvement is associated with a greater rate of recovery in Puerto Rico following Hurricane Maria in 2017. This finding is based on an analysis of the relationship between the capacity of Puerto Rico's 78 municipal governments and their rates of post disasterrecovery, controlling for both exposure to Maria and pre-storm trends. Municipal capacity for community involvement may help activate social capital and the co-production of disaster recovery. Community involvement may increase trust among local officials and residents, increase government's knowledge of community priorities, and help residents access federal and state aid. Other measures of management capacity are not consistently associated with a faster rate of post-disaster recovery. The findings suggest that investing in municipal capacity for public engagement as part of disaster preparedness may provide benefits for disaster recovery. For researchers, the combination of original survey data and readily available post-disaster indicators provides a model for assessing recovery after disaster in the short term.
The Emergency Manager as Risk Manager
Disaster Research and the Second Environmental Crisis, 2019
Emergency management as an institution has grown in size and scope in recent decades, but has thi... more Emergency management as an institution has grown in size and scope in recent decades, but has this emergent profession brought better public decisions about managing hazards and risks? The evidence is mixed because though emergency managers have acted wisely and heroically, they are subject to institutional constraints as well as the same decision biases and barriers that affect other experts and professionals. We propose that emergency management can be improved and hazard vulnerability lessened more readily through better decision processes than through the traditional approach of incremental improvements in the quality of information. The current fascination with “big data” focuses on more and better information, but emergency and hazards managers should ensure that they use the data they already have access to well.
Administration & Society, 2020
Public managers make decisions that may directly or indirectly affect the loss of human life, but... more Public managers make decisions that may directly or indirectly affect the loss of human life, but there are few empirical analyses of whether and how public managers make tradeoffs among lives and other goods. We survey local government managers in the United States about tradeoffs using a vignette experiment with hypothetical flood scenarios. We find that managers make tradeoffs regarding lives saved compared with other features of the scenario, including project cost and property damage. Public works managers show a greater aversion to fatalities, while city managers and planners appear less averse. Our study also finds evidence of an equity preference.
International Public Management Journal, 2018
Public administration scholarship could benefit from a return to its Simonean roots for distincti... more Public administration scholarship could benefit from a return to its Simonean roots for distinctively managerial insights about decision processes. Though Simon is often juxtaposed with Dwight Waldo and portrayed as a rationalist focused on the limits of human cognition, a full understanding of his work reveals a rich understanding of the decision context that managers face. Simon argued that decisions should (1) account for norms and values; (2) link means to ends; (3) identify feasible alternatives; and (4) automate processes where automation improves transparency and evaluation. To date, economics and psychology have exploited these insights to a greater degree than has the study of management and administration in the public sector. We use one example of a structured decision process in a salmon fishery and another in a case of religious and cultural conflict in schools as illustrations of the potential for Simon's decision principles to improve public sector decision making.
The American Review of Public Administration, 2018
We present evidence that emergency managers exhibit some of the same decision biases, sensitivity... more We present evidence that emergency managers exhibit some of the same decision biases, sensitivity to framing, and heuristics found in studies of the general public, even when making decisions in their area of expertise. Our national survey of county-level emergency managers finds that managers appear more risk averse when the outcomes of actions are framed as gains than when equivalent outcomes are framed as losses, a finding that is consistent with prospect theory. We also find evidence that the perceived actions of emergency managers in neighboring jurisdictions affect the choices a manager makes. In addition, our managers show evidence of attribution bias, outcome bias, and difficulties processing numerical information, particularly probabilities compared to frequencies. Each of these departures from perfect rationality points to potential shortfalls in public managers’ decision making. We suggest opportunities to improve decision making through reframing problems, providing trai...
Disasters, Jan 12, 2018
Emergency managers who work on floods and other weather-related hazards constitute critical front... more Emergency managers who work on floods and other weather-related hazards constitute critical frontline responders to disasters. Yet, while these professionals operate in a realm rife with uncertainty related to forecasts and other unknowns, the influence of uncertainty on their decision-making is poorly understood. Consequently, a national-level survey of county emergency managers in the United States was administered to examine how they interpret forecast information, using hypothetical climate, flood, and weather scenarios to simulate their responses to uncertain information. The study revealed that even emergency managers with substantial experience take decision shortcuts and make biased choices, just as do members of the general population. Their choices vary depending on such features as the format in which probabilistic forecasts are presented and whether outcomes are represented as gains or losses. In sum, forecast producers who consider these decision processes when developi...
Natural Hazards Review, 2016
This paper examines the application by emergency managers in rural areas of forecasts of El Niño ... more This paper examines the application by emergency managers in rural areas of forecasts of El Niño and other seasonal climate events to (1) improve the understanding of how diffuse networks can help overcome the obstacles to the use of complex scientific information and (2) to widen the use of seasonal forecasts to improve flood management. The investigation draws on ethnographic techniques of observation and conversation with emergency management networks in the state of Oregon, interviews of nearly 50 emergency managers in the state, and two detailed case studies of Oregon counties that have used seasonal climate forecasts to improve flood management. Emergency managers are more likely to use climate information tied to a time-specific and place-specific forecast and to feasible actions, and when the emergency managers are part of robust professional networks that include scientific professionals as well as end-users of forecast information.
Digital technologies have fundamentally altered emergency and crisis management work. This essay ... more Digital technologies have fundamentally altered emergency and crisis management work. This essay sketches the macro-environmental transformations wrought by digital technologies in emergency and crisis management and outlines their implications for managerial reasoning and decision-making. It proposes multi-level approaches to improve congruence between crisis managers and their environments to reduce cognitive and organizational barriers and improve decision-making. The future of crisis management lies in reducing the misalignment between personal, proximal, and distal environmental conditions.
The American Review of Public Administration, 2018
We present evidence that emergency managers exhibit some of the same decision biases, sensitivity... more We present evidence that emergency managers exhibit some of the same decision biases, sensitivity to framing, and heuristics found in studies of the general public, even when making decisions in their area of expertise. Our national survey of county-level emergency managers finds that managers appear more risk averse when the outcomes of actions are framed as gains than when equivalent outcomes are framed as losses, a finding that is consistent with prospect theory. We also find evidence that the perceived actions of emergency managers in neighboring jurisdictions affect the choices a manager makes. In addition, our managers show evidence of attribution bias, outcome bias, and difficulties processing numerical information, particularly probabilities compared to frequencies. Each of these departures from perfect rationality points to potential shortfalls in public managers’ decision making. We suggest opportunities to improve decision making through reframing problems, providing training in structured decision-making processes, and employing different choice architectures to nudge behavior in a beneficial direction.
Political Science Quarterly, 2016
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Papers by Patrick Roberts