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This multiple case study investigated strategies that three small real estate business leaders in southeastern Louisiana used to resume and sustain operations after a natural disaster. The chaos theory and stakeholder theory were the conceptual frameworks used. Data were collected from semistructured interviews, review of business continuity plans, and member checking. Emergent themes were leaders ' education and abilities, stakeholder engagement, planning and critical processes, and disaster response. Study findings include identification of effective strategies for increasing small business sustainability through implementation of proven business continuity strategies to help keep communities intact, reestablish commerce, and contribute to regional economic sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increasing risk and exposure of people and assets to natural hazards and disasters suggests an increasing need for temporary housing following disasters. Resilience to natural hazards is dependent on the resources available to families or communities to prepare for and mitigate risk, influenced by social vulnerability. This study seeks to quantify the total environmental impact of temporary housing deployment in New Orleans, using the catastrophic impact of Hurricane Katrina in southern Louisiana in August 2005 as a case example. We employ a novel approach to estimate displacement period and take into account social vulnerability across New Orleans neighborhoods to better understand the scale of post-disaster relief and its global warming potential. The methodology implemented in this study comprises three steps: a risk assessment, a life cycle assessment, and a resulting total impact assessment. We demonstrate the considerable risk of greenhouse gas emissions and energy impacts from temporary housing deployment linked to hurricane hazard. Furthermore, we show that environmental impact is highly sensitive to displacement period and find the current methodology of anticipating temporary housing use by hazard alone to be inadequate. Additionally, the approach presented in this article provides tools to politicians and disaster risk professionals that allow for resource investment planning to decrease social vulnerability, thus enhancing resilience and adaptive capacity in a more homogeneous way at the urban scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: In August 2021, Hurricane Ida struck Louisiana as a near-category five storm, bringing massive devastation to the region's healthcare infrastructure. In its aftermath, extreme heat coincided with record COVID-19 hospitalizations in the state, leaving minimal healthcare surge capacity remaining and medically vulnerable populations unprotected. Meanwhile, sparse pre-storm evacuations exposed prominent gaps in existing medical response plans designed to serve high-risk groups. Subsequently, Louisiana rapidly established a 250-bed alternative care site (ACS) within hard-hit New Orleans. This presentation highlights key considerations in the operation of the site and discusses which patient populations are most in need of medical support following tropical weather events. Method: The findings of this discussion are the result of after-action reviews, brief literature reviews, and the experiences of responders during Hurricane Ida. The presentation also draws on retrospective patient chart reviews from Louisiana's prior alternative care sites. Results: Following Hurricane Ida, a post-storm alternative care site was rapidly established in New Orleans in partnership with a US Disaster Medical Assistance Team (DMAT). Operationalized in less than 72-hours, this site provided inpatient care to displaced persons with major chronic medical needs (e.g. home ventilators, hemodialysis, respiratory therapies), significant mobility impairment, wound care, and psychiatric illnesses. Incorporating Louisiana's experience with a COVID-19 alternative care site, this facility far-exceeded the typical scope of medical shelters, simultaneously lessening medical surge on already-overburdened hospitals and meeting post-storm needs in the region. Conclusion: Following extreme weather events in metropolitan areas, traumatic injuries and acute illness comprise a small proportion of the medical needs after the event. Accordingly, disaster medical responses must prepare to treat large numbers of chronic illness exacerbations that result from a loss of access to primary care, home health support, and auxiliary services. This approach efficiently leverages resources into lifesaving interventions and protects healthcare systems during times of high stress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Calibration and validation of traffic models is a necessary step to better fit model output to real-world conditions. Presently, there has been little research in this particular area of evacuation modeling because of a lack of observed traffic data from evacuation events. This paper provides a general framework for the calibration and validation of regional-scale evacuation models. The authors then present a case study in which calibration and validation is carried out for an evacuation model using observed evacuation data. The case study presents a traffic simulation model that was developed to analyze traffic conditions associated with a regional-level mass emergency evacuation for southeastern Louisiana, including New Orleans and Baton Rouge. The case study focuses on two important aspects of the model: traffic assignment calibration and network flow validation. The calibration procedure attempted to determine parameter values that would result in the most realistic traffic assignment by comparing assignment results with real-world traffic flows. The validation procedure revealed the importance of including background traffic in the simulation model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Louisiana's coastal residents have endured centuries of hurricanes and decades of oil spills. Locally based, inherent resilient practices have enabled them to persist in place. This paper documents the evolution of actions taken by Louisiana's coastal residents that constitute effective resilient activities in the aftermath of disruptive events. It compares the efforts that arose from coastal communities that were rooted in local environmental knowledge with generic external programs designed to enable hazard mitigation, emergency response, and recovery form damaging hurricanes and oil spills. Additionally, it will identify points of opportunity to fortify resilience by integrating inherent and formal resilience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Like sustainable development, disaster resilience can be conceptualized as a collective surge in science, policy, and practice. The strength of the resilience surge is based on the concept’s usefulness as a boundary object and in particular its resonance with the discourses and practices of neoliberalization, in which the role of the state is diminished and superseded by private–public partnerships and contracts. Current U.S. resilience approaches support particular types of state–society relationships, construct particular kinds of at-risk subjects, and privilege technocratic solutions to disaster vulnerability. Neoliberal disaster risk reduction strategies and their outcomes had a profound impact on post-Katrina recovery in New Orleans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we examine the role of local New Orleans nonprofit agencies in disaster and how these local nonprofits become a part of the disaster management process. The dominant disaster management framework, and to some degree the social vulnerability approach, affect the design of postdisaster relief programs, projects, and policies. The new Federal Emergency Management Agency framework asks nonprofits to contribute to postdisaster relief, as well as predisaster preparedness. This increased inclusion of local nonprofits in disaster recovery presents specific challenges. The present case study uses multiple sources of data collected over a 10-year period from nonprofit agencies. Primary data collection included interviews, focus groups, and observations of nonprofits; we also collected data from a series of community workshops for nonprofit agencies. We found the nonprofits in New Orleans that reframed their work to fit into the postdisaster context proved to be the most resilient. Their ability to adapt and be reflexive emerged as the most important skills in a postdisaster landscape. However, in the midst of their substantial post-Katrina accomplishments, the future for local nonprofits in disaster depends on their relationship with the federal government and their impact on federal policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the central strategies employed by the City of New Orleans to address the challenge of disaster recovery after Hurricane Katrina was a place-based strategy of targeted investments. This strategy sought to address the twin challenges of the punctuated disaster from Katrina and the slow-motion disaster of economic decline that pre-dated the storm. We analyze the key components of the geographic targeting program in New Orleans through a case study of a particular target in the Gentilly planning district of the city. The goal of the process was to utilize reinvigorated places to both encourage community reinvestment and deal with the underlying challenge of rebuilding in a more resilient manner. Target-area resources were never fully translated into dedicated resources for project implementation. We find that weak implementation and management capacity significantly limited the effectiveness of the targeting program in meeting place-based goals. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article focuses on the history of Hurricane Betsy in 1965 and how it impacted the New Orleans, Louisiana neighborhood known as the Lower Ninth Ward. The author explores the history of the Lower Ninth Ward as a predominately African American neighborhood, discusses the disaster relief provided to its residents after Betsy, and examines the political and racial aspects of the emergency management responses by U.S. president Lyndon B. Johnson.

In 2007, two years after Hurricane Katrina, several education and child advocacy groups began discussing the depleted conditions of the New Orleans public school district. These groups came together to discuss how to create a sustainable education reform movement post Katrina. New Orleans-based community groups and outside university researchers joined together to implement a multi-year participatory action research project to engage historically marginalized, black communities in a dialog about quality public education. We found that, in order to create a collective vision for what quality public education looks like for black children, the New Orleans community needs to resolve perceived challenges with inequitable access to quality public schools, with who has a say in governing these schools, with inconsistent quality of teachers, with inequitable distribution of resources, and with strategies for serving challenging students. The results of this pilot participatory action research project led to a sustained community engagement campaign addressing these issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An interview with African American playwright John O'Neal, executive director Carol Bebelle and performing artist Nicholas Slie is presented. O'Neal, Bebelle and Slie discuss their experience of the Hurricane Katrica in New Orleans, Louisiana in August 2005. O'Neal describes how the story of his play "Story Circle" begins. Bebelle discusses how the story circle impacted New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Slie mentions the grants provided to the victims of Hurricane Katrina.

This article uses a framing perspective, an approach to social movement studies concerned with the social construction of values and beliefs that support the actions of social movement actors, to assess the narratives of community practitioners working in post-Katrina New Orleans on a variety of disaster recovery issues. The 25 practitioners worked for 25 different organizations that were focused on neighbourhood revitalization, community development, health/environment, housing, and civil rights. Based on a critical discourse analysis of the interviews, three main types of frames were identified: Restoration, Reform, and Radical Social Change. These discourses are analysed in relationship to the perceptions of success by practitioners of their post-Katrina community re-building work. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines how social capital aids in post-disaster community recovery and redevelopment. While previous studies on social capital and post-disaster recovery have tended to focus on social networks as a source of necessary assistance, the primary focus of this study is on how social capital in the form of collective narratives affects post-disaster recovery. We argue that collective narratives can shape the recovery strategies that individuals adopt. To illustrate this we examine the post-Katrina recovery efforts in St. Bernard Parish, an area devastated by flooding and significant environmental damage. In particular, we focus on the shared narrative that dominated qualitative interview data collected in St. Bernard, namely, its shared identity as a close-knit, family-oriented community comprised of hard workers. This narrative led community members to adopt a strategy that emphasized self-reliance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines disparities in the long-term health, emotional well-being, and economic consequences of the 2005 Gulf Coast hurricanes. Researchers analyzed the responses of 216 Black and 508 White Hurricane Katrina survivors who participated in the ABC News Hurricane Katrina Anniversary Poll in 2006. Self-reported data of the long-term negative impact of the hurricane on personal health, emotional well-being, and finances were regressed on race, income, and measures of loss, injury, family mortality, anxiety, and confidence in the government. Descriptive analyses, stepwise logistic regression, and analyses of variance revealed that Black hurricane survivors more frequently reported hurricane-related problems with personal health, emotional well-being, and finances. In addition, Blacks were more likely than Whites to report the loss of friends, relatives, and personal property. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In August 2005, Hurricane Katrina displaced the largest number of public school children ever affected by any disaster. Approximately 370,000 children, including 15,000 Latino/Hispanic children from Louisiana, were scattered throughout the 48 U.S. states (Landrieu, 2010; Louisiana Department of Education, 2004). Although much of the media attention, policy, and research have focused on the effects of race-primarily Black/White-in New Orleans disaster relief, Latino immigrant children were the silenced, invisible victims of the evacuation, policy, relief, and recovery services. The largely unreported immigrant evacuation from Louisiana was along a silent underground railroad of sorts, using a network of relatives and countrymen whenever they could (Plocek, 2006). The findings of this article illustrate the theoretical implications and consequences of identifying immigrant children as racially White. This study documents the intersections of local, state, and federal policy regarding schools and recovery relief showing that access to disaster relief and recovery were framed in context of immigration status often placing citizen children in at-risk conditions. Children have become the victims of anti-immigrant sentiment rising from the much symbolic and actual harassment that constitute the daily, shadow lives of the undocumented population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How might free enterprise have dealt with Hurricane Katrina and her aftermath. This article probes this question at increasing levels of radicalization, starting with the privatization of several government 'services' and ending with the privatization of all of them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociological research emphasizes that personal networks offer social resources in times of need and that this capacity varies by the social position of those involved. Yet rarely are sociologists able to make direct comparisons of such inequalities. This study overcomes this methodological challenge by examining network activation among residents of two unequal neighborhoods severely devastated by Hurricane Katrina. Results indicate that local network capacities of Lower Ninth Ward residents relative to those of the more affluent Lakeview neighborhood dissipated before, during, and after the disaster to erode the life chances of individual residents and the neighborhood they once constituted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past decade, social capital has been explored internationally in the disaster and social work literature, particularly in terms of historical oppression and limited economic resources of disadvantaged communities. Social capital in the United States, however, has had less integration. Using a qualitative grounded theory approach, we examine the different types of social capital (bonding, bridging, and linking) through a social work lens. We examine how social capital operated in the lives of 40 families following Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, Louisiana. We attempt to understand how residents utilized their social capital to survive the storm, relocate, and rebuild their lives and communities. Results indicate residents, especially those with low incomes, relied on, built upon, and collapsed all levels of social capital for individual, family, and community survival. Participants described a process through which close ties (bonding) were important for immediate support, but bridging and linking social capital offered pathways to longer term survival and wider neighborhood and community revitalization. This paper also discusses how social capital inclusion in social work can strengthen or hinder individual and community development following a catastrophic event. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast, causing devastation that would last a lifetime. Indeed, the communities along the Gulf Coast were dealt a critical blow. In the midst of this destruction, the only shelter for battered women in Orleans Parish was flooded and just days later, caught fire and burned to the ground. The director and staff evacuated all of the residents before hurricane landfall, yet returned almost immediately to navigate through the destruction and find ways to offer services to women living with intimate partner violence and also those living through the community-wide crisis of Hurricane Katrina. The storm, the flooding, and the damage would require the organization's staff to think about how to create refuge and safety during and after a catastrophe. In this paper, we use in-depth interviews, document analysis and direct observation to document and analyze how Katrina's devastation changed the direction, scope, and goals of New Orleans Shelter. The lessons New Orleans Shelter learned during this catastrophe may be useful for shelters in future disasters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Are charges of racial disparities in the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s relief efforts in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina accurate? Limited publicly available data on trailer distribution in New Orleans are compared to an on-site trailer count and to a complete trailer count from aerial photographs of New Orleans. The Lower Ninth Ward in Orleans Parish (98 percent Black prior to Hurricane Katrina) had significantly fewer trailers than neighboring Arabi in St. Bernard Parish (95 percent White prior to Hurricane Katrina). To control for administrative differences between parishes and socioeconomic factors, two affluent neighborhoods within Orleans Parish, Pontchartrain Park (97 percent Black prior to Hurricane Katrina) and Lakeview (94 percent White prior to Hurricane Katrina), are compared. The conclusion: racial discrepancies remain large and substantial. A number of hypotheses are developed and the implications discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The historical disparities in the socio-demographic structure of New Orleans shaped the social vulnerability of local residents and their responses to Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. These disparities, derived from race, class, gender, and age differences, have resulted in the uneven impact of the catastrophe on various communities in New Orleans, and importantly, their ability to recover. This article examines how the pre-existing social vulnerabilities within New Orleans interacted with the level of flood exposure to produce inequities in the socio-spatial patterns of recovery. Utilizing a combination of statistical and spatial approaches, we found a distinct geographic pattern to the recovery suggesting that the social burdens and impacts from Hurricane Katrina are uneven—the less flooded and less vulnerable areas are recovering faster than tracts with more vulnerable populations and higher levels of flooding. However, there is a more nuanced story, which suggests that it is neighborhoods in the mid-range of social vulnerability where recovery is lagging. While private resources and government programs help groups in the high and low categories of social vulnerability, the middle group shows the slowest rates of recovery. Further, it appears that the congressionally funded State of Louisiana Road Home Program (designed to provide compensation to Louisiana’s homeowners who suffered impacts by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita for the damage to their home) is not having a significant effect in stimulating recovery within the city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hurricane Katrina caused over one hundred billion dollars in property damage in the Greater New Orleans region. Although much attention has been paid to why particular communities have begun to recover and others have failed to rebound, very little attention has been paid to how the communities that have recovered actually went about doing so. This paper attempts to close that gap by examining how the church provision of club goods can foster social cooperation and community redevelopment in the wake of a disaster. In particular, we investigate the swift return of the community surrounding the Mary Queen of Vietnam (MQVN) Catholic Church in New Orleans East after Hurricane Katrina. Utilizing a unique bundle of club goods provided by the MQVN Catholic Church, residents in the New Orleans East Vietnamese-American community (a) rebuilt their distinct ethnic- religious-language community, (b) overcame the social coordination difficulties created by Katrina, and (c) engaged in successful political action to protect their community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many New Orleans residents who were displaced in 2005 by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita and the subsequent levee failures and floods are still displaced. Living with long-term stress related to loss of family, community, jobs, and social security as well as the continuous struggle for a decent life in unsettled life circumstances, they manifest what we are calling “chronic disaster syndrome.” The term refers not only to the physiological and psychological effects generated at the individual level by ongoing social disruption but also to the nexus of socioeconomic and political conditions that produce this situation as a long-term and intractable problem. Chronic disaster syndrome emerges from the convergence of three phenomena that create displacement: long-term effects of personal trauma (including near loss of life and loss of family members, homes, jobs, community, financial security, and well-being); the social arrangements that enable the smooth functioning of what Naomi Klein calls “disaster capitalism,” in which “disaster” is prolonged as a way of life; and the permanent displacement of the most vulnerable populations from the social landscape as a perceived remedy that actually exacerbates the syndrome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Disaster recovery is an arduous and costly process that requires effective interaction with state and federal agencies. In order to rebuild and restore public services and infrastructure, leaders must have a distinct understanding of roles and responsibilities of applicants to the FEMA Public Assistance Program and other federal recovery programs. An integral part of recovery is the preparation for future disasters. Effects from future disasters can be avoided and curtailed in a cohesive and effective manner by enacting policy level reforms, including an administrative plan and budgetary system, to support a recovery process operating parallel with the day-today government operations. The City of New Orleans is an ideal case study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article seeks to assess the lessons learned by government relief agencies concerning emergency management and disaster preparedness on the three-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Particular attention is paid to the development of social movements to cultivate improved disaster plans to anticipate and respond to state actions. The formation of grassroots movement orientations in post-Katrina New Orleans, Louisiana is examined. They are characterized as rejecting exceptionalism for disenfranchised groups, integrating strategic models of service provision, and a human rights approach to disaster response.

The article seeks to interpret and explain the "neoliberal racial regimes of security" that emerged as a narrative of criminality associated with African American disaster victims in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, Louisiana. The security responses to the disaster are viewed in the context of capitalist interests, radicalized structures of meaning, and relations of force in the Gulf Coast region. It is argued that the mass-mediated discourses of counterinsurgency and security are expressions of moral panic rooted in ideological images of race and crime. The work of political artist and author Sunni Patterson is examined as a source of counter-memories of the disaster for aggrieved communities.

The article assesses the response of rap artists to Hurricane Katrina and government disaster relief efforts for flood victims in New Orleans, Louisiana. It is suggested that a subgenre of Katrina hip-hop was born out of the backlash against the unnecessary suffering experienced by hurricane victims and institutional failure to serve Katrina diaspora. The musical responses of artists such as Mos Def, Jay-Z, and Public Enemy became a cultural force of identification and activism that engaged the violence, racism, and displacement that came to represent the national emergency. The relevance of the term refugee to described Katrina diaspora is discussed.

The article presents an interview with Cherice Harrison-Nelson, an educator in the New Orleans Public School System and creator of a jazz studies curriculum for elementary level students. She discusses the ineffectiveness of non-profit organizations that arrived in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. She talks about the state of the public school system and the challenges facing the Recovery School District in their attempts to serve the needs of students.

The author discusses the politics of Jazz and revival in New Orleans in the post-Hurricane Katina era. Comments are made on the frequently expressed sentiment that the culture and jazz heritage of New Orleans can enable reconstruction of the city. The difficult issues that support race and class divisions amongst the city's many music cultures are examined. How the 2006 New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival used music culture as an economic resource is discussed.

The article examines how Hurricane Katrina fundamentally transformed the Gulf Coast region through a review of the social history and social problems of New Orleans, Louisiana. How the disaster presented an endless number of intellectual dilemmas is assessed through the region's legacy of racism, and its persistence, in the modern era. It is noted that the majority of solutions offered by public, private and nonprofit organizations in the wake of Katrina were impoverished by both subtle and overt refusals to address long-standing social conflicts.

The history of black people in the United States is an epic saga of dislocation, dispersal, and dispossession. Consequently the instability, insecurity, and disruption that accompany displacement have been a persistent part of the black experience in the United States. The post-Katrina crisis confronted by black New Orleanians was yet another chapter in this ongoing saga. This article seeks to explore the ways in which the culture and music of New Orleans has functioned as a reservoir of human resilience and resistance. Specifically, in addition to reflections on the impact of enslavement, Jim Crow, and the Great Migration on the cultural history of black New Orleans, this article considers the cultural significance of the Crescent City in American history as one of the major reasons why issues of resettlement must be central to rebuilding efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reflects on the political, institutional, and personal meanings of Katrina one year after the event and beyond. The author argues that the history of social injustice and economic inequality in New Orleans and the state of Louisiana exposed poor and working-class people to the brunt of Katrina's damage and undermined their capacity to rebuild their own lives in the hurricane's aftermath. The article also laments the failure of city officials to craft a comprehensive plan to rebuild the city and ensure that the levees would stand against future storms. Nonetheless, based upon efforts to rebuild Dillard University, the author believes that such institutional rebuilding activities will attract growing numbers of African Americans back to the Crescent City from the far-flung New Orleans Diaspora. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the extent to which people's prior experience of a natural disaster influenced subsequent behavior concerning the threats of a hydrometeorological disaster and if duration of residency in a disaster-prone landscape affects the extent of preparedness for an impending disaster. Mixed methods research strategies involving survey, field observation, and participant observations at several locations including rescue and evacuation centers in New Orleans, Louisiana, Austin, Texas, and Lawrenceville, Georgia, were used, during the immediate impact phase, emergency shelter phase, and postimpact and recovery phase of Katrina catastrophe. For the survey, a sample of 598 subjects completed a 15-page, 54-item questionnaire addressing various aspects of the Katrina flood in the New Orleans Metropolitan Area. The qualitative aspect consists of field observations of the event, interviews, and direct comments by the victims dispersed across the South. In the regression analysis performed, prior experience was found to be less important than friends' and family members' influence in determining evacuation behavior. However, duration of residency and prior experience were found to be slightly significant in predicting the odds of evacuation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the wake of extreme events, communities immediately adjacent to disaster areas have a unique and important role in mitigating the effects of the resulting hazards to human life and property. This paper reports on an exploratory, qualitative case study to examine the use of information technology in conjunction with disaster mitigation activities in an area adjacent to a large disaster. The experiences, thoughts and beliefs of ten individuals involved in mitigation activities at Louisiana State University immediately following Hurricane Katrina and the resulting large scale evacuation of New Orleans were captured through interviews and cognitive mapping. Collective maps of the experiences of three key groups — Implementers, Decision Makers and Vendors — provide insights into the challenges encountered and strategies employed during the response effort. The results of the study highlight the importance of creating an environment that enables improvisational processes, including: "bricolage," or making do with the materials at hand;organizational openness to improvisation; creating a culture that promotes improvisation; the importance of timing in improvisation; and emergent leadership roles. The study findings contribute to our understandings of the ways that information technology resources can be mobilized in times of emergency, whether this is the result of an extreme event or a business crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Disasters, by definition, are low-frequency, high-impact events. Because of the infrequent occurrence and dynamic conditions of such events, researchers do not often have the ability to thoroughly study their effects. However, as population distributions and densities place more people at risk of experiencing a disaster, more complete investigations of these events are needed. Recovery, the post-disaster phase of returning to “normalcy,” is one understudied aspect. Gaining a better understanding of this process has important implications for the well-being of disaster-affected people and equitable redevelopment of affected places. This article focuses on one aspect of recovery: spatial decision support for communities. Though the literature on community mapping discusses a variety of cases in which geographic information systems (GIS) are used as a tool to engage the public on a variety of issues, it has yet to address concerns in a post-disaster environment. Furthermore, existing research in geographic information science (GISc) for disasters has only limited dealings with community-focused mapping. The result is that community information needs in a post-disaster environment have not been recognized. Based on existing literature and empirical observations from post-Katrina Louisiana, this article addresses the spatial component of these information needs and how GISc can provide decision-support tools in a post-disaster environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]