DHS and Reconstruction
By: Lyle FearnleyA recent hearing of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security dealt with the ongoing reconstruction of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. My question: does rebuilding and development form a component of vital systems security? Why is the Federal Coordinator for Gulf Coast Rebuilding a Homeland Security official (rather than Housing and Urban Development for example)? See his comments here. The issues he deals with include: housing, levees, education, criminal justice system, healthcare, and economic development. The only traditional “vital systems” topic here is the levees.
Some very provisional thoughts. It seems to me that both “insurance” and “preparedness” are technologies that bring future dangers into the present so they can be acted on. Insurance on its own provides a rational system whereby risk is spread across a collectivity, so that if something happens (illness, death, unemployment, etc.) it can be compensated for. But the insurer (private company, the state) wants to reduce compensations, so it is in the insurer’s interest to act upon the insured collectivity to reduce risk. Thus there is a rationalization for “social” spending, infrastructure, preventive care, etc. Now in the case of “preparedness”, one can prepare by doing scenario-planning, building early warning systems, improving response capablities to generic threats, etc. But perhaps there is also a rationalization for “social” (?) spending that will increase preparedness; scenario-plans may (like insurance) target investments, into levees, hardened electrical grids, or even hospitals.