Limiting disaster assistance to enhance community resilience

Funding response to natural disasters in the USA currently hinders communities from becoming more disaster-resilient. With economic resources nearing exhaustion, new approaches are needed that promote disaster-resilient communities. This article examines implications of a lifetime-limited model as an innovative idea for community disaster funding. Approached as a thought experiment, weaknesses of the present model are contrasted with inherent stabilities of an idealised model. The limited model integrates resilience planning, comprehensive planning and investment programmes in local communities. It changes the critical roles that federal and local officials, academic and private sectors play in favour of an innovative integrated planning process. This model is expected to: (1) stabilise federal spending through community lifetime limits; (2) shift political actions to local and long-term disaster resilience; (3) stimulate community innovations that encourage proactive natural hazards planning; and (4) build more resilient and sustainable communities by shifting responsibility to local officials.