I heard a report* the other day on the news that referenced a new publication from the Army Corps of Engineers. If you can find a report on your topic, these are fantastic resources for academic references. But that’s sometimes easier said than done.
There are three places I would look immediately for these reports. The first is on the open web. Many of the individual Corps of Engineers districts have their own websites, with linked documents. This is relatively easy if the information you are seeking is geographically-specific, such as New Orleans or Portland, OR. Searching USA.gov has also been made easier by recent improvements.
For University of Richmond users, our subscription to the Homeland Security Digital Library (accessible either on-campus or by using VPN) allows us to search a number of these documents easily. I did an Advanced Search, using the words “Army Corps of Engineers” in the Publisher field, and found many interesting items.
Finally, for reports ABOUT the Corps of Engineers, it always pays to look at my favorite government research agency, the Congressional Research Service. Open CRS doesn’t allow for many tweaks to a search, so choose your search terms carefully.
*I believe it was this one: “Federal Reports Show Levee Safety Issues in Northwest”. NPR very helpfully links to the full list of USACE reports referenced in the story.
In this wide-ranging volume of essays, Kunreuther and Useem have drawn together a number of important thinkers and practitioners in a variety of fields, all for the purpose of understanding what we already know about leadership in disaster and how we can apply that to mitigate future risk. “Thus, the focus of Learning from Catastrophes is on improving our ability to identify and manage events that are perceived to be highly unlikely, but which, if they do occur, can have catastrophic impact at both the national and global levels.” (p. xiii) The result is a holistic approach to emergency and risk management, with examples and application drawn from a wide range of experiences and events.