Rosenverse
Disasters and the 21st Century

This video is only accessible to Gold members. Log in or register for a free Gold Trial Account to watch.

Log in Register

Most conference talks are accessible to Gold members, while community videos are generally available to all logged-in members.

Disasters and the 21st Century

Gold
Friday, December 10, 2021 • Civic Design 2021
Share the love for this talk
Disasters and the 21st Century
Speakers: Alicia D. Johnson
Link:

Summary

Pick up a newspaper and every day you see an onslaught of headlines about disaster and crisis. It would seem that the 21st century is starting out as a perpetual crisis. The civic warrior in each of us asks this small question: "How might I make a change? What can I do to make a difference?" During this presentation we dig deeper into this idea—venture beyond the question with tactics to explore the design of a more resilient community.

Key Insights

  • The 1935 10 am policy mandated extinguishing all forest fires before 10 am, causing unchecked growth of underbrush and making fires like Yellowstone in 1988 far more catastrophic.

  • Disasters are amplified not just by natural hazards but by decades of policies and infrastructure decisions that ignore ecological realities and social equity.

  • Mitigation is cost-saving long term but underfunded because it involves upfront investments that are hard to justify politically and lack immediate visibility.

  • Emergency management has become inherently political, shifting from a traditionally apolitical stance to addressing underlying social structures and inequalities.

  • Historically marginalized neighborhoods face disproportionate disaster impacts due to legacy policies like redlining and neglect of infrastructure investment.

  • Designers have a critical role beyond infrastructure, including influencing long-term policy choices that affect environmental and human resilience.

  • The Stafford Act incentivizes rebuilding damaged infrastructure to pre-disaster conditions rather than improving resilience, leading to repeated vulnerabilities.

  • A humanitarian and equity-based approach in emergency management is emerging as crucial in confronting modern climate and disaster challenges.

  • Climate change is shifting the geographic locations and severity of disasters, making inclusive stakeholder engagement essential in planning and response.

  • The 21st century emergency management focus must integrate social impact, justice, and equity to repair community trust and build effective, resilient systems.

Notable Quotes

"Every emergency manager has an origin story, mine was the Yellowstone Fire in 1988 when I was seven."

"The 10 am policy extinguished all fires by morning to protect timber but ended thousands of naturally occurring fires, intensifying disasters decades later."

"Disasters are more than the immediate event; they are the legacy of hundreds of years of policy that led to poor outcomes."

"Emergency management is political—not partisan, but political—and that reality has transformed how we work in this field."

"Mitigation doesn’t make the news and isn’t fancy, but it often saves money and lives in the long run."

"We cannot ensure our way out of wildfire after flood; we must embrace the magnificent power of mother nature and work within it."

"Many disaster-prone communities were historically redlined and still bear the brunt due to lack of infrastructure investments."

"The Stafford Act repairs infrastructure to pre-existing conditions, not better, which hampers resilience and meaningful long-term change."

"The 21st century emergency management imperative is human equity—designing for the social and ecological needs of communities."

"Designers can help by asking how today’s policies and choices will impact people and environment decades from now."

Ask the Rosenbot
Christopher Geison
Theme 1 Intro
2024 • Advancing Research 2024
Gold
Amy Paris
Delivering Equity: Government Services for All Ages, Languages, Sexual Orientations, and Gender Identities
2021 • Civic Design 2021
Gold
Stephen Pollard
Closing Keynote: Getting giants to dance - what can we learn from designing large and complex public infrastructure?
2017 • DesignOps Summit 2017
Gold
Bria Alexander
Day 2 Welcome
2024 • DesignOps Summit 2024
Gold
Tutti Taygerly
Videconference: How to Work with Difficult People with Tutti Taygerly
2020 • Enterprise Community
Daniel J. Rosenberg
Digital Medicine Design
2019 • Enterprise Community
Louis Rosenfeld
Do you want to work on climate? (Climate UX Discussion Series)
2023 • Climate UX Interest Group
Nicole Bergstrom
AccessibilityOps: Moving beyond “nice to have”
2024 • DesignOps Community
Jack Behar
How to Build Prototypes that Behave like an End-Product
2022 • Design in Product 2022
Gold
Marc Majers
Interrupted UX - Add A Dose of Reality To Usability Testing
2022 • Advancing Research 2022
Gold
Emily Lessard
RFPs Without Tears: Writing Inclusive RFPS that Don't Scare Away Talent
2021 • Civic Design 2021
Gold
Andrew Webster
Scaling Design Capability: How Involved Should You Be?
2021 • DesignOps Summit 2021
Gold
Onur Kocan
Understanding the Strategy for Civic Design in a Complex City: Istanbul
2022 • Civic Design 2022
Gold
Catherine Dubut
Bridging Physical and Digital Spaces: Approaches to Retail Service Design
2021 • Enterprise Community
Lily Aduana
5 Reasons to Bring Your Recruiting in-House (and How To Do It)
2021 • Advancing Research 2021
Gold
Ricardo Martins
Unlocking the power of advanced quantitative methods
2025 • Advancing Research 2025
Gold

More Videos

Jerome “Axle” Brown

"Sharing insights is like creating a learning space where stakeholders can use the information in their own way."

Jerome “Axle” Brown

How to Use Self-Directed Learning to Ensure Your Research Insights are Heard and Acted Upon

March 11, 2021

Phil Gilbert

"Design thinking is the scientific method for the 21st century."

Phil Gilbert

A Consistent Culture of Design

May 14, 2015

Kate Towsey

"Research’s role may shift to orchestrators of AI-synthesized insights and gap analyses rather than just primary data collectors."

Kate Towsey Basel Fakhoury Oren Friedman Graham Gardner

Participant Recruitment and Management Tools

March 12, 2026

Sohit Karol

"We showed that a skip is not a skip — it varies based on listener goals and trust in the playlist."

Sohit Karol

Designing Delightful Listening Experiences: Mixed Methods Research in the Age of Machine Learning

March 31, 2020

Christopher Taylor Edwards

"It felt like an assembly line where you don't really know what is happening before you or after you."

Christopher Taylor Edwards Valerie Roske

Design as a Team Practice, A Practical Guide to Cross-functional Collaboration

September 30, 2021

Sheryl Cababa

"Systems thinking requires constant engagement with stakeholders; working in isolation will not lead to successful outcomes."

Sheryl Cababa

Expanding Your Design Lens with Systems Thinking

February 23, 2023

Francesca Barrientos, PhD

"It’s not just about doing the craft of design but also figuring out how design fits into the organization."

Francesca Barrientos, PhD

You Need Your Own Definition of Design Maturity

June 8, 2022

Allison Sanders

"Mentoring new hires actually reignites the mentor’s own passion for their work."

Allison Sanders

Operating with Purpose

January 8, 2024

Saara Kamppari-Miller

"We had to make everybody feel safe to participate in this exercise."

Saara Kamppari-Miller

"Prototype" vs "Prototype"--Breaking Down and Rebuilding Our Understanding of What We Do

October 24, 2019