00:00:00:09 - 00:00:17:07
Daniel Aldrich
Let's do a review of every policy that we have in place right now. For example, emergency evacuation, shelter plans and housing plans. Are they just like we saw in Japan and in New Orleans? Are they individuals being bussed out or shipped out? Or do we ask people, okay, look, we just came here in the shelter. How many people are with you?
00:00:17:08 - 00:00:34:00
Daniel Aldrich
How big is your group? Do you want to move together when you find an open apartment, an open FEMA trailer, a boat, open, permanent housing? How do you want to move? Ask them. Right. Let them drive that process rather than just assuming that our only job is to get them out of there.
00:00:34:02 - 00:00:53:18
Kyle King
Hello and welcome to the Crisis Conflict Emergency Management Podcast. I'm Kyle, your host, and in this episode we will be exploring the role of social capital in disaster recovery. Our guest, Professor Daniel Aldrich, is a full professor and director of the Security and Resilience Studies Program at Northeastern University, who specializes in Japanese politics, nuclear power, NIMBY, politics and disaster recovery.
00:00:53:20 - 00:01:17:13
Kyle King
Professor Aldrich has extensively researched the impact of social capital on disaster recovery, and we'll be sharing his insights on how communities can build resilience through strong social ties. We will be discussing all about social capital, the strategies for building social capital and communities, and the role of government in fostering social capital itself, the impact of social media and technology and the relationship between social capital and preparedness and much more.
00:01:17:18 - 00:01:21:15
Kyle King
So thank you for joining us today, Professor Aldrich. It's nice to have you on the show.
00:01:21:15 - 00:01:22:16
Daniel Aldrich
Thanks for having me.
00:01:22:18 - 00:01:33:19
Kyle King
So let's start off with a really sort of easy question. What is your version of your origin story or your inspiration for becoming interested in this specific aspect of disaster recovery?
00:01:33:20 - 00:01:54:09
Daniel Aldrich
Yeah. Until 2005, I hadn't really thought about disasters at all. I lived a, I think a pretty standard North American life. But then we made the choice to move down to New Orleans, Louisiana, in July of 2005. I had about six pretty good weeks down there. We had a new home. It was my first academic jobs. We bought furniture, we bought a car, we filled our house with stuff.
00:01:54:09 - 00:02:18:18
Daniel Aldrich
We had guests over. Then the very last weekend in August, we discovered that we had moved into Hurricane Alley when Hurricane Katrina arrived and we evacuated with everyone else. Sunday morning, I believe the 28th of August, to remember to correct the date and our home, our car, my hard drives, our paper records, everything we owned was destroyed. And of course, I was supposed to begin working at Tulane University that Monday as my kids were supposed to begin school that Monday.
00:02:18:23 - 00:02:37:08
Daniel Aldrich
And of course, that Monday never came for those of us in New Orleans. So I never actually began working in 2005 at Tulane. I had a lot of free time between that time in August and January 2006, when Tulane did reopen. And part of my thinking at the time was, what does it mean to be someone who's gone through a shock?
00:02:37:08 - 00:02:55:02
Daniel Aldrich
What does it mean to survive? And then what will the resilience look like for my family, for my neighborhood, for my community? And I began reading all the stuff I could find. Everything economic literature, agreed literature, public policy stuff and disasters. And honestly, it was pretty bad. It was pretty it's pretty bad. And in several ways. And we can talk about that if you interested.
00:02:55:02 - 00:03:14:13
Daniel Aldrich
But what I noticed was everything that I had been going through as a person was not at all in the literature that I was reading and all my naive assumptions about what would save me and my family, what would get us back on our feet. None of that happened. So I had this really naive notion that somehow FEMA would come in like a knight in a white horse with a big check like and clarity the character idea.
00:03:14:13 - 00:03:31:07
Daniel Aldrich
I clearing house right PCH that come this big check ten feet long it said Daniel. Go out and buy all your stuff that you lost here. Go out and do that again. So in Turks out, FEMA actually reject your application for aid. We had to apply by fax machine. I think we paid about 15 times that far. It's a very long story that did not work out well either.
00:03:31:07 - 00:03:47:07
Daniel Aldrich
Naive assumption that had beyond the state was the market. My wife and I were just about to get our insurance activated and unfortunately for us, it did not activate in time to actually had neither market coverage or state coverage for all the losses that we incurred. And of course, my kids and I have no home at this point.
00:03:47:07 - 00:04:11:17
Daniel Aldrich
We have no place to stay. We only are wondering what's going to happen to us in this moment when all seems lost, begin getting all these texts and phone calls and emails. People that we've never met. Friends of friends, friends of these organizations. People who've read about our story, offering us everything for a place to stay, which we got offers from across the country Denver, Philadelphia, Colorado, North Carolina, Boston, where we came back to and also places to work and best for my kids to go to school.
00:04:11:19 - 00:04:28:20
Daniel Aldrich
And none of that came from the state or from the market. All of those were through what we call social capital of social ties, right? That ties people that I knew didn't know so well. I remember several times people that classroom fundraisers for our family, people were selling cookies up in Detroit. Right. Help us be able to pay rent in our first apartment afterwards.
00:04:28:20 - 00:04:59:09
Daniel Aldrich
So these kind of moments when you think in another literature I was reading talked about this at all. Everything was about, you know, state involvement and private sector insurance and all this kind of stuff. And you wondered why is it that the literature and my experiences are just so dissonant and that really began this work for me. So I immediately, as I figured this story out over those several months of watching my own life unfold, I began applying for grants and one of them was to go to Japan and India and study both an industrialized country and still industrializing country.
00:04:59:11 - 00:05:32:08
Daniel Aldrich
Did these ties make a difference to people who have a lot of money, some money or no money? And that really beginning my first book called Building Resilience, that was way back. Oh, my gosh, that must have been in 2012. And that was that came out eventually. But that was my first work. And ever since then I've been obsessed with this concept that we often focus on things like seawalls or early warning systems or the newest tech device or what my phone can do for me during a disaster when at the end of the day, the vast majority of things that I think matter have nothing to do with external agency technological stuff or broad
00:05:32:08 - 00:05:38:06
Daniel Aldrich
fancy banging new seawalls really about, you know, our neighbors, our neighborhoods are connections.
00:05:38:08 - 00:06:11:20
Kyle King
I mean, that's absolutely both devastating and fascinating, right, in terms of the outcomes. But absolutely devastating. And the fact that you have to live through that and thousands of people live through that. And so that actually started your path down this aspect of, you know, the social ties and social capital amongst our communities. And I think that's also very interesting because what we have seen, if I could correlate that in some way with a lot of the work that we do is sort of international space, post-conflict spaces and things like that, we see a lot of the same approach in terms of social capital, especially in communities that have gone through their own version of
00:06:11:20 - 00:06:28:20
Kyle King
disaster. In this case conflict, and are having, you know, have have lost all these sort of the how could I say lost all these sort of mechanisms, the things that we have on a daily basis, all these sort of lifestyle things that we have in terms of phone the data and Internet and ATMs and everything else that goes along with that is all been sort of taken away.
00:06:28:20 - 00:06:46:18
Kyle King
And they're living in through, you know, sort of a very difficult situation. So when you were going through this research, you went through this period, you dived into these topic. You mentioned the documentation. The research that you found was was vastly different than your own experience. Can you explain that a little bit more in terms of what you were finding and then what was driving you like?
00:06:46:20 - 00:06:50:10
Kyle King
What was the difference between what you found and then what you were sort of identifying today?
00:06:50:10 - 00:07:12:10
Daniel Aldrich
Yeah, So so one of the texts, remember, reading was about economics, the economics of recovery. And the big focus here was on things like wealth, right? And outside aid. To what degree did you get money? To what degree did you have money beforehand? And economists have all kinds of language for this, right? I can't write consumption and a few other sort of very fancy terms for describing how people deal with the fact they don't have any money.
00:07:12:12 - 00:07:26:19
Daniel Aldrich
And what I was noticing, especially in India, that no money to begin with was that what was really helping people in India as well after the Indian Ocean tsunami and little to do with, you know, were they wealthy beforehand or not or whatever, but rather what kind of connections they had. And we had some really cool ways of measuring this.
00:07:26:19 - 00:07:44:03
Daniel Aldrich
For example, attendance at weddings was one of the things I remember vividly in Japan. We even went back in time, the 1920s and found evidence there on interactions between people in the community, the way they interacted with each other and the government. So that this wasn't a question of, you know, if you had more money, you bounced back more easily.
00:07:44:09 - 00:08:01:14
Daniel Aldrich
Right. What we're finding instead was to what degree did your experiences have you intersect with people who lived nearby? You know, we may call those, you know, boarding and bridging ties and people in power and authority, but you call linking ties just to talk about a little bit. So we try to figure out, you know, it's not that every connection that we have is the same.
00:08:01:14 - 00:08:20:15
Daniel Aldrich
If you go through your phone, if you go through your Facebook connections, Right. Some people you talk with every day think about an aunt and uncle, a sibling, a parent, either people really close to you, that's called bonding social capital. And typically, by the way, they look like you and sound like you. So if you're a fast talking white guy from the Northeast like me, that probably a lot of my friends look and sound like me.
00:08:20:17 - 00:08:45:14
Daniel Aldrich
Bridging ties, in contrast are those two people who are different than us ethnically, religiously, culturally. Maybe they think differently than we do, and often we make those ties to places like workplaces or schools or basketball clubs or the Armenian Friendship Society, these kind of places. And then linking ties are vertical ties between me and someone in power and authority and I've tried to do my research is to show it's not a question of how much money that you have or had before the disaster.
00:08:45:20 - 00:09:01:02
Daniel Aldrich
And again, it's not a question of having insurance, by the way. That's a whole discussion. You know, in New Orleans, only about a third of the survivors in New Orleans actually had insurance. And that's pretty much the same thing around the world, right? In many cases, you might have insurance coverage or insurance penetration, as it's called, is very low.
00:09:01:02 - 00:09:20:16
Daniel Aldrich
Right. So we have all these technological or market based solutions. But really, it's this distribution of bonding, bridging and making ties that can very strongly help correlate with the way things go. And there's a really good research that we've done and other teams have done on this question. Even during COVID, for example, we have information showing how the ways that our neighbors interact help keep out COVID, right?
00:09:20:16 - 00:09:34:17
Daniel Aldrich
Are we listening to the authorities? Are we masking a physically distancing? And that if someone does get sick, their outcome means does a neighbor help them get to the hospital, doesn't even notice they're coughing too much. It doesn't sound healthy. Let's let's get you over there right now where we need someone to get you medicine from the store.
00:09:34:17 - 00:09:53:23
Daniel Aldrich
I'm going to see this anyway, right? So I found was this big gap between, again, the economic literature on what people seem to think mattered to us in sense just wealth, right? Having money or not versus the actual outcomes of people that I talk to. And what I went through myself that I did these, you know, large scale surveys in India and Japan and understand it's not just a question of wealth, a question of population density.
00:09:54:04 - 00:09:59:02
Daniel Aldrich
You know, these things are really being driven by the kind of connections that you have before the shock begins.
00:09:59:04 - 00:10:20:08
Kyle King
It's really fascinating. And we often talk about in the emergency management community and as you know, like all disasters are local, right? And so we know that's like our scene, that's like sort of our mantra that we talk about all disasters are local, first responders are local. Don't wait for FEMA to come in and like you said, night on a white horse and try and save everybody and do everything because obviously they can't and nor should they.
00:10:20:08 - 00:10:36:04
Kyle King
But the really interesting perspective when I hear you discuss this is like we've known this for a long time. Why haven't we been exploring this before you started your work? I mean, if you found the research there and it's all sort of economics based and and models based, I mean, why have we not explored this in the past?
00:10:36:04 - 00:10:42:22
Kyle King
This doesn't seem like it's some revelatory sort of situation here. I mean, we just forgotten a lot of the things of the past.
00:10:42:24 - 00:11:05:04
Daniel Aldrich
And found, you know, this is I like to point back to the founders, right. Of these ideas. There are two articles that I had to literally dig through archives. One of them was written by Nakagawa and Shah. I believe that was from the mid 1990s and Nakagawa, and she had a qualitative article. I tried to compare two different disasters the Kobe disaster and the Gujarat earthquake side by side.
00:11:05:10 - 00:11:23:22
Daniel Aldrich
The degree to which social capital mattered in that process. The other, and I can't remember if I mentioned this right, was by Ojha, but maybe it is by Dyson. I think he was an early founder in Delaware. I'm sorry, I'm his name is escaping me right now. It'll come back to me after we stop talking properly. But it found his article.
00:11:23:22 - 00:11:40:12
Daniel Aldrich
But this was from the 1970s, and those articles hadn't gotten much traction. At least when I began poking around, you know, 15 years ago or so, back in 2005, I'm not much traction. I didn't really see the Red Cross talking about this. I didn't see the FEMA talking about this when I was in Australia. Nima wasn't talking about this when I was in New Zealand.
00:11:40:12 - 00:12:02:21
Daniel Aldrich
Rima was talking to all these organizations that I interacted with just to ask them, okay, So look, I think social capital matters. Is this all part of what you do? Then you'd see really sad moments like again for New Orleans when social capital was actively damaged by existing public policies. One of the worst ones that I saw was survivors of Hurricane Katrina being randomly put on busses and cars and literally driven to locations.
00:12:02:21 - 00:12:19:08
Daniel Aldrich
They had no idea where they were going. And they get off the bus in Arkansas right. So here's someone who had a relationship with friends and neighbors and family and maybe some who didn't have their own cars. Maybe it didn't have a lot of money beforehand. And we just actively cut them off from their real resources they had of their network by putting them in a random place.
00:12:19:08 - 00:12:42:07
Daniel Aldrich
Right. That kind of thing. We're sitting in Japan, by the way, in 1995 of the Kobe earthquake there. The Japanese authorities wanted to really help people get back on their feet as quickly as possible to evacuated as many people as possible out of the area. Right. Put them in random places, busses, trains as far away as they could to you had was hundreds of people, especially the people in their 6070s and eighties who had networks beforehand, had friends, had doctors, had a routine.
00:12:42:09 - 00:13:04:04
Daniel Aldrich
And now you've moved them away from everything that they know by themselves. The Japanese called the outcome code or cushy or lonely deaths. Right. So here you have again, good intentioned, well-meaning policymakers trying to do their best during a disaster. Again, rapid evacuation from a vulnerable area. It sounds great on paper. What you've just done is you've just killed several hundred people in Japan's case and maybe even more in New Orleans case.
00:13:04:04 - 00:13:25:11
Daniel Aldrich
So those are the kind of things that began seeing, again, trying to understand why hadn't this idea that our networks are a critical element of the recovery. I tell you another example that we saw in Japan, this was after the Fukushima nuclear meltdowns there, as you know, after the 311 disasters in March 2011, where the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdowns, three reactors melted down, 140,000 people had to evacuate.
00:13:25:13 - 00:13:43:20
Daniel Aldrich
So colleagues and I began studying, read, write, speak Japanese. We began studying the mental health recoveries for people from Futaba. It was about five kilometers from the meltdowns over about a three or four year period. And we noticed that huge numbers of them had PTSD levels off the charts. We used a thing called the Kessler six or six index.
00:13:43:20 - 00:14:03:00
Daniel Aldrich
Very easy to answer and use questions that resemble over the past month. How often is it so hard to get out of bed in the mornings or over the past month? How often has life felt meaningless to you? Right. Very simple answer. And we found was individuals from this town who'd gone through the earthquake, tsunami and meltdowns had the highest possible measurements of PTSD, of anxiety that we could find.
00:14:03:02 - 00:14:29:12
Daniel Aldrich
Then we'd ask them questions like, okay, well, are there counselors nearby? Are there therapists nearby? Is there a chaplain or a rabbi, anyone nearby to talk to you? And the answer almost always was no. There's almost no investment in psychosocial first aid in mental health care. Not a top priority right after this major nuclear disaster. So, again, you have all these disasters, Hurricane Katrina, Kobe, Fukushima meltdowns, and people not thinking through the degree to which the ties that we have matters so much.
00:14:29:14 - 00:14:52:00
Daniel Aldrich
I just give you one more story and I'll stop talking about this, which is that, you know, oftentimes when I speak to decision makers about how they get ready for the next disaster, almost all of them mentioned physical infrastructure, right? So, for example, in Maui right now, we just had literally had the fires this week. People were talking about building back telecommunications, better building back water systems better, making sure there's a firebreak or a firewall.
00:14:52:00 - 00:15:09:17
Daniel Aldrich
Right. All these kinds of things. It's a great start. But we know what activated immediately. Even though there was, for example, no siren activation by authorities, even though we know how the communications were down. But neighbors knocking on the doors of neighbors, neighbors helping people get out of the dangerous areas, We're bringing in food and supplies from other islands via boat on their own.
00:15:09:17 - 00:15:29:02
Daniel Aldrich
Again, another coordinated attempt from FEMA, just neighbors helping neighbors in those moments. Again, what are we doing right actively right now? Not the building, the fences systems, not a new app for the phone, which, by the way, if you remember in 2018, that app malfunctioned in Hawaii, predicted an incoming nuclear missile from North Korea. Right. That ballistic missile.
00:15:29:02 - 00:15:47:23
Daniel Aldrich
So these are apps that we so rely on, Right. Our phones, our technologies we fall back on Now that thinking, okay, I just moved here do I know my neighbors very simple questions do I know my neighbors first and last names for example, email them or text them if something went wrong with my community, who needs a wheelchair to get around, who can't walk out of their neighbor's house if there's a fire going on?
00:15:47:23 - 00:16:01:21
Daniel Aldrich
Right. Who has pets? It is very simple questions again around the world that we found many of us can't answer, especially those of us who live in urban areas. By the way, some of the worst, right? We have neighbors often who move in for a year and we left without again, we're so busy with our own lives again.
00:16:01:22 - 00:16:13:07
Daniel Aldrich
You know, the more time I spent in this field looking at the gap between I knew the literature on disasters and resilience, but in the policies we have in place to try and build them, the more I realized what an imbalance we have out there.
00:16:13:09 - 00:16:22:24
Kyle King
Yeah, that's a fascinating history. I mean, so let's turn to today. I mean, we talked about government and policy and technologies. I mean, but what role can government play in terms of fostering the social capital?
00:16:22:24 - 00:16:39:23
Daniel Aldrich
Yes. So several things. You know, first, the first rule, as they say in medicine, do no harm. So let's do a review of every policy that we have in place right now. For example, emergency evacuation, shelter plans and housing plans. Are they just like we saw in Japan and in New Orleans? Are they individuals being bussed out or shipped out?
00:16:40:00 - 00:16:57:06
Daniel Aldrich
What do we ask people? Okay, look, we just came here in the shelter. How many people are with you? How big is your group? Do you want to move together when you find an open apartment in open FEMA trailer about open permanent housing, how do you want to move? Ask them. Right. Let them drive that process rather than just assuming that our only job is to get them out of there as quickly as possible.
00:16:57:06 - 00:17:16:21
Daniel Aldrich
So first is do no harm. The second would be are we making space for these social ties in all of our planning there? For example, when we're talking about new technologies, when you're talking about the next generation of seawalls or sirens or whatever else we're doing, to what degree are people on the ground actually engaged with us in that process, telling us what they want to need?
00:17:16:23 - 00:17:30:22
Daniel Aldrich
Right. Again, someone in their sixties and in their forties and someone in their twenties. Right. And what they're going to need in that process, only they can tell us rather than us telling them as experts. No, no, no, no. I've got this under control. I'm going to design an evacuation route for you or you need this app to get out of here or whatever.
00:17:30:24 - 00:17:50:06
Daniel Aldrich
And you see while you technology. So again, engaging them. The next thing as we try to do and this is my life's work, what can we do to actively build these social ties wherever we are? So again, is it neighbor to neighbor? Is it, for example, in San Francisco right now taking the idea social capital seriously? Every year they give out money to local neighborhoods to have a party.
00:17:50:06 - 00:18:08:19
Daniel Aldrich
That's right. Your block party can be funded by your government. Why? Because San Francisco knows a huge earthquake is coming. They also know they can't stop the earthquake. They know they can't retrofit every building seismically to make it resilient to those earthquake. So what can they do? They can build actively social capital. Even having a party in a neighborhood means I'll bring the chips.
00:18:08:19 - 00:18:23:13
Daniel Aldrich
Right? Kyle's going to bring the guacamole. Someone else have to get the permit for the band going to organize internally. And we see, Okay, what is Mrs. Smith showing up? How about Mrs. Tanaka? And how about Clarence next door like we're watching during this party? Who is coming? Who isn't coming? Who's showing? They really can't plan very well.
00:18:23:17 - 00:18:40:20
Daniel Aldrich
We don't even know what's going on. So we're already keeping our eye in that process of building a party on the next shock that's coming. So San Francisco has this Neighbor Fest program. I think it's fantastic. I think Dan Holmes, he is the is the leader there in San Francisco. So, again, what can they do in the city where they can help out communities build these ties?
00:18:41:01 - 00:18:54:18
Daniel Aldrich
The next level up is building what I would call social infrastructure. These are the places and spaces in our community where we build these ties. Right. It's not going to be, for example, on a Zoom call, as much as I like the Zoom calls, it's not going to be in my workplace because I know that people are ready.
00:18:54:20 - 00:19:12:04
Daniel Aldrich
Oftentimes it's me taking my dog to the park. My dog gets in a fight with some of the dog and I talk with the owner, right? Or I taking my children to the park. I take myself for a linear reserve stroll or I go to a pub or I had to a library, or there's a moment where I'm meeting people in my community, learning to trust them and interact, be learning a new name, a new face.
00:19:12:06 - 00:19:32:21
Daniel Aldrich
Those are the moments in those spaces and places and societies building the building blocks of future interactions. So are we supporting social infrastructure? For example, as we build Maui, are we building parks and benches and green spaces and linear, or are we building hotels for the tourists? No fancy new places? Or are developers buying up, you know, 45 storey buildings, right, for their next income?
00:19:32:21 - 00:19:52:11
Daniel Aldrich
So again, we can think through carefully when we build or rebuild our communities. To what degree are we making them? Ones where social ties can be easily built? I always think about Jane Jacobs, right? The dean of this Fields the 1960s. You said a long time ago cities job is not being efficient. Irobot's job is being efficient. A city's job is giving us space to interact even in ways we hadn't planned, right?
00:19:52:11 - 00:20:09:09
Daniel Aldrich
So I'm walking outside. I stop for a coffee. I see someone looks vaguely familiar. I say, Hi, I'm Daniel. What's your name again? All right. I saw you at that Little league game last week. What's going on? Where you from? And those are the kind of interactions that she recognized 60 years ago, 70 years ago that is going to drive The next time I meet that person, I see someone else.
00:20:09:14 - 00:20:33:02
Daniel Aldrich
I trust that I'm building the likelihood of interacting with them. And I can just say it fast forwarding this conversation to the end. We did a lot of research recently, and this is my new book Project on Social Infrastructure. To what degree do these places and spaces change the trajectory of earthquakes and disasters? I can show you the paper I just published has 700 neighborhoods with different levels of social infrastructure, some with a lot per capita, some with almost none.
00:20:33:03 - 00:20:53:20
Daniel Aldrich
Those communities that had more social infrastructure controlling for all kinds of other factors at better recoveries and better survival rates, and that same disaster areas that were less connected through their libraries, parks, children centers, afterschool programs and so forth. So again, this is not some namby pamby idea. Oh, Kumbaya. Yeah, we shall feel good. No, no, we actually have evidence in the same way that we can measure economic outcomes.
00:20:54:00 - 00:21:09:07
Daniel Aldrich
If you measure mortality, the same way that we can measure demographic outcomes, we can measure social ties and social capital. So this is not some namby pamby idea that we should hold hands. This is a policy data driven idea. We should be building our societies, building a post-disaster recovery, and it really does help us get better.
00:21:09:09 - 00:21:31:12
Kyle King
I have so many questions. I'll start with a couple of points here, because I think the everything that you're saying is valid. It's the way I grew up when I think when we're all in a certain age demographic, you know, and let's just say generation X, right? You're coming from this generation. You were outside all day anyway. And everything that you're saying is also counterintuitive to the use of technology.
00:21:31:14 - 00:21:58:15
Kyle King
So we are now at a point where we have gone through the past of sort of living in that environment that you're talking about, knowing your neighbors. People knock on doors, you go outside, you meet people, you stay out all day, you're doing things that are interacting with the communities to the point of the heavy industrialized use of technology, a loss of that social capital, and then now having to almost in a certain way formally come back and try and reinvent this and implement this through design in our cities.
00:21:58:15 - 00:22:15:05
Kyle King
And I think that's just crazily ironic. It's come to that to a certain extent when we talk about technology. So and this is where it comes to technology. So we're not obviously going to just put down all our phones in the world and turn off the Internet. My first question is how do we find balance between these things?
00:22:15:05 - 00:22:34:06
Kyle King
You mentioned one program such as, you know, having your community, you know, block parties and things like that. And I have questions about that too. But I guess my first thing is how do we find balance between the use of technology and building social capital? The second question being, when you have these types of programs that foster social capital in communities, are those also integrated at a policy level with cities and administration?
00:22:34:06 - 00:22:51:12
Kyle King
So then people are going out, say, from the Office of Emergency Management and talking about, you know, a you know, realize it's not necessarily 24 hours, it's 72 hours, maybe 1872 hours, you probably got to be able to survive a week or two, you know, and having those types of conversations, raising awareness at the same time of trying to also build social capital.
00:22:51:12 - 00:22:53:00
Kyle King
So a couple of questions for you there.
00:22:53:00 - 00:23:06:04
Daniel Aldrich
Yeah, So technology's a great point, right? Certainly. You know, I have four kids. All four of them are on their phones far more than I feel comfortable with, including when I'm talking typically, I'm trying to I talk to them during dinner. Right. So there's their moments. Yes, of course. I think the new generation is not going to put it down.
00:23:06:04 - 00:23:27:17
Daniel Aldrich
But that means then when thinking about social capital and social infrastructure for them, those online places, for my youngest son, it might be a gaming space, I might be Roblox or mine, but if he's called mine as the name of the game, he plays it. Those games right where they do this collectively, that might be where he's building his connections and ties, maybe not to local people necessarily, and maybe they are from his school.
00:23:27:19 - 00:23:41:19
Daniel Aldrich
Right. From people for the race. So, yes, absolutely. Digital spaces, AP, a WhatsApp group or a Facebook affinity group, we have to take them seriously. Right. And by the way, I would point out that many first of all, no no organizations that I know run things like TAC, which is where all the younger people are right there on Facebook.
00:23:41:19 - 00:24:00:01
Daniel Aldrich
They're sort of the state or organizations, you know, famous on tech stock and so forth. But again, we have to go where people are and Tik Tok and those are the places Instagram, that's where we should be pushing organizations to think, to what degree are we actually engaging with people of different demographics? So, yes, we need to have those social infrastructure in them, in digital spaces as virtual community and also for the very elderly, right?
00:24:00:01 - 00:24:14:07
Daniel Aldrich
So people who are older than 65 for them, they also might be using Facebook, they might be using WhatsApp in a way. Ironically, my youngest kids also do it, which is they don't go out as much. It's too hot these days where my parents live in North Carolina. It's very hot outside right now to I feel comfortable going outside for a walk.
00:24:14:07 - 00:24:28:15
Daniel Aldrich
So maybe they've got to get online and have their event going to be online, Right, rather than being in person. So that's one set. Yes, Technology, absolutely. Part of it. For the rest of us, though, we're not quite between, let's say, late sixties and late teens. We do have neighbors, whether we're a homeowner or a renter. And those relationships are critical.
00:24:28:15 - 00:24:42:12
Daniel Aldrich
I can just talk about my own neighborhood here in Brighton where I live. We had a house fire and even 30 feet behind us and well before the fire truck arrived, it's a very narrow street. They couldn't get all our neighbors acclimated, knocking on all the doors, make sure people were out. Someone dislocated a shoulder. Everyone heard, went to their house immediately to help them out.
00:24:42:18 - 00:24:56:03
Daniel Aldrich
One of my neighbors went unconscious. We got through the window. So these are sort of mundane activities, mundane disasters, not this large scale shock. But again, in those moments, we need to have connections. I should have a neighbor's key. They should know my last name is, you know, my kids look like you know, and this is a very simple thing, right?
00:24:56:03 - 00:25:10:15
Daniel Aldrich
How do you know someone's neighborhood house isn't being broken into if you don't recognize your neighbor's face? Right. So that's it's a starting point. Yes. We need to have digital, but we also need to have the analog connections. As you're building social capital and integrating it. There are some cities that are doing this. I can talk about Cambridge, Massachusetts, not too far from me.
00:25:10:17 - 00:25:25:17
Daniel Aldrich
They do a great job now of mapping social capital as part of what they do in their city, not just mapping demographics or social vulnerability, which is kind of the old school way. This is the Susan Cutter stuff, right from the 1980s. Social vulnerability is, you know, do you have someone who is from another country is speaking, which is a second language, are the elderly?
00:25:25:17 - 00:25:39:05
Daniel Aldrich
I don't think that's enough anymore. I don't think social ability is sufficient to capture what's going on. There are plenty of programs for people over 65 who are not vulnerable. Right. Or probably for people who speak English as a second language. We're not vulnerable. It's those people who are let's say, over 65 and alone. And this is Eric Clanton.
00:25:39:05 - 00:25:55:08
Daniel Aldrich
Briggs were a great heat wave. That's the intersection that we have to be worried about. So we have to move beyond vulnerability in our mapping to actually capture social ties and social infrastructure. So making mapping a part of your city's work, do you know where the cold spots are of individuals who are isolated and alone? If we don't, it's a problem.
00:25:55:08 - 00:26:11:20
Daniel Aldrich
Those are the individuals you'd be worrying about during heat waves, during floods, right? Those are people during Maui's fire who didn't have neighbors knocking on their doors to get them out. Same thing in the tsunami in 2011. In Japan, individuals living in communities that well connected, it didn't survive as well because it didn't have neighbors who came to help them get out before the tsunami arrived.
00:26:11:20 - 00:26:31:08
Daniel Aldrich
So first thing is, are we mapping our local government? Is our regional government involved in helping us map these things? Next, we absolutely can integrate things like neighbor, fast block parties, civic engagement, faith based organizations, roads, right? These are all things we can actively choose. You know, some I've seen a few emergency disaster management people who really do one way communication.
00:26:31:08 - 00:26:56:01
Daniel Aldrich
Right? They get on whatever it is a radio, they get on the thing and they last had emails, which is great. It's a form of communication, but that's not really what we've seen as the apex, which is like Remo supremo there, Wellington Regional Emergency Management Organization, and they're in Wellington, New Zealand. They spend a third of their time outside the artists embedded in four age groups Kiwanis groups, lions groups, afterschool groups, mosques.
00:26:56:06 - 00:27:14:19
Daniel Aldrich
They go to those groups and sit there during their meetings just so their faces are known and their plans are known. And by being there consistently, they've built up tremendous trust. 1/10 of the Internet in that community goes through their web page now, not because there's huge disasters, but because people trust them as a people, people who know them really, really well.
00:27:14:24 - 00:27:34:06
Daniel Aldrich
So again, here are ways to integrate this concept of social ties matter, social infrastructure matters. We're going to engage in that infrastructure, not just one way communication, but actually getting involved. We're going to go to pubs, we're going to go to zoning board meetings, I'm going to go to the church and synagogue and mosque and good, we're going to spend that time getting to know our community rather than sitting back in my office, you know, sending out this communiques.
00:27:34:06 - 00:27:50:21
Daniel Aldrich
And one more thing is, is design. Again, as we think about our cities and as we have zoning rules under our control, what are we doing to build, again, livable, walkable, engaging communities where, again, it's not that we're in a suburb where there's no library, there's no park, there's no dog walking zone, no then linear area people can get together.
00:27:51:00 - 00:28:11:07
Daniel Aldrich
You know, there's no shade, right? We have a lot of control over how things are done with zoning. That is a local government, local civil society issue. But absolutely, this concept of are we building a community resilient to shocks? Do we have evacuation routes? Do we have information to have block stewards engage with civil society? Do have those linking ties between communities and the decision makers?
00:28:11:07 - 00:28:26:18
Daniel Aldrich
So I've seen this done really, really well. I mentioned San Francisco already a mission Wellington, I mentioned Cambridge. There are plenty of cities around the world that are taking seriously the idea that to be resilient to disaster means more than just you have a phone or do you have three days of water individualizing the problem? Rather, is it your community engaged?
00:28:26:22 - 00:28:41:16
Daniel Aldrich
Do people in the community know each other? Horizontal connections? Are they helping each other get ready for that shock that is coming, whether it's a heat wave or a flood or a fire like in Maui, are we making sure that we're thinking and talking about that disaster rather than just saying, Oh, no, that's not really for us? You know, we're busy right now.
00:28:41:18 - 00:28:55:03
Kyle King
So in terms of the data, if somebody in the audience is is working in their Office of Emergency Management, maybe they're not in one of these cities that have sort of invested in this social capital perspective. But how would they go about starting to to map this out and measuring social capital in their own community?
00:28:55:05 - 00:29:16:20
Daniel Aldrich
Yeah, The first thing is I always begin by telling them, find allies, right? Know, emergency disaster management person has the time to get a master's degree or whatever in, you know, social care, capital mapping. That's not their job. Start by talking to people like me in your community, right? Whether it's a community college, whether it's a four year college, a public school, a private school, wherever you are, start engaging with social workers, sociologists, geographers.
00:29:16:22 - 00:29:39:01
Daniel Aldrich
These are all people who often as students need to do work anyway. They've had great success actually working with high school and college students, helping us map out parts of Boston. So again, rather than thinking, Oh my gosh, I can't do this, I'm so busy already, who are the allies out there? Right? So begin thinking, okay, convince people above me in the categories above me, what they should be doing to help me get funding, support, resources to map it, what do I need?
00:29:39:01 - 00:29:57:00
Daniel Aldrich
How far does the community extend? How granular can I get? Can it be every community at least so that every person. Okay, great to get 10% of every community. Great. And then we have great stuff online already at my website and elsewhere. There's a thing called the Social Capital index, right? So she s OCI Social capital index. We have a bunch of ways there of capturing it, using publicly available data.
00:29:57:06 - 00:30:13:24
Daniel Aldrich
We can also give suggestions to people, What would you want to do to measure this? And FEMA has been talking about social capital mapping as well. So again, the first thing to do is find allies in your administration who think, yes, right. It's not a question about vulnerability anymore. It's going beyond that. What kind of connections do people have to help them read stuff?
00:30:13:24 - 00:30:30:02
Daniel Aldrich
Right. Give them excerpts from Eric Klinenberg. Heat wave, right. Talking about. So maybe hundreds of people who died in Chicago in the 1990s or that things we're seeing in Maui right now where we're hearing neighbors helping neighbors escape. Again, this is not some abstract concept. This is what we need to be doing. So that's the first thing. Find allies mapping.
00:30:30:02 - 00:30:45:24
Daniel Aldrich
Again, a lot of communities have been doing this. Use peer to peer assistance. People like me, social scientists out there in the field and the mapping. Then you think, okay, I discovered three cold spots, right? And who knows, maybe it's the wealthiest community you have, but no one talks to each other because they have long driveways, a gated community, right.
00:30:45:24 - 00:31:00:11
Daniel Aldrich
And rushes in front of their cars. And at the end of the day, there's no walking around their neighborhood. For them, it's all in their home by themselves. So okay, then, you know now where those resources should go. Where do we invest now in those Community Fest neighbor fest events? How do we make sure people there know what's going on?
00:31:00:13 - 00:31:16:11
Daniel Aldrich
We have people in the community who can be stewards and block captains, people who can take charge, and people know what's going on. So I think mapping is the very first stage to know what you need to do, where you need to do it, and then start thinking through how do we intensify the connections that we have there to build trust, to build attractions.
00:31:16:17 - 00:31:34:06
Daniel Aldrich
You know, a simple thing like know how many libraries per square mile or Pacific community, how many pubs, how many things? And again, this is we done this in our lab before other communities, map this as well. You know, this data was available, but again, it's going to take an ally to help you build that connection, build that map and see, oh, you're right, this community was a suburb.
00:31:34:09 - 00:31:49:02
Daniel Aldrich
There's no library, there's no park, there's no shade. People aren't probably leaving their homes. What happened to the power goes out and no one has any electricity and it's 110 degrees. What's going to happen there right now? And you want to get people organized. Where are we going to meet? Right. There's no physical space there. What are we going to have this kind of broader connection?
00:31:49:02 - 00:32:04:11
Daniel Aldrich
So those are the kind of questions we should be asking right now in peace time. You know, Maui has this tremendous tragedy, at least 200 dead. But they also have a little bit of pausing right now before the recovery begins. How can Maui build a resilient community, not just the fires, by the way, that's an old school like one hazard approach.
00:32:04:11 - 00:32:20:21
Daniel Aldrich
When we're thinking where it comes in the future, I want our community to be resilient to right. That requires these horizontal and vertical connections. That means there is going to be COVID 2024 or whether it's going to be a fire or a flood or Godzilla. We want to have our communities connected to each other in decision makers. Before that arrives.
00:32:20:21 - 00:32:22:15
Daniel Aldrich
We need to start now.
00:32:22:17 - 00:32:37:13
Kyle King
Yeah, I think that's a great point. And when we're talking about mapping though, I can't help but think mostly because we work in the international space, but the impact of culture and sort of measuring social capital. And so how did cultural differences affect social capital and disaster recovery?
00:32:37:13 - 00:32:48:18
Daniel Aldrich
Yeah, it's funny, I get that question a lot and I do a lot of work in East Asia. I still do a lot of work in the Gulf Coast, and I would say it's certainly easier in the background. But to most of us in the field, I would say it's not the biggest concern we should be having. Right.
00:32:48:22 - 00:33:08:20
Daniel Aldrich
In the same way that, let's say your organization and mine are different bureaucratic cultures and maybe my dinner and your dinner looks quite different in the way our kids and I interact. If you're as a respectful, they listen to you and you have that time together. Mine are not so much right. So those are cultural differences. But at the end of the day, what's going to matter a lot more than the culture in my household or my organization is going to be trust, engagement, right?
00:33:08:20 - 00:33:25:03
Daniel Aldrich
Those long term behaviors of do I know people nearby and feel comfortable working with them? To me, that's much more important than thinking, okay, I'm working in state X or community Y. Ideally, by the way, this is part of the idea of having a steward or a captain. If you're mapping a community that you don't know is well, a say for fun.
00:33:25:03 - 00:33:40:24
Daniel Aldrich
I'm in New Zealand with a bunch of people coming over from Syria and Afghanistan who speak Pashtun and Arabic as a first language. I don't I want someone who can communicate with us to have these connections, right? So I need to find a local leader, a local local steward, local captain who can take on that work. Right. And do that work together with me.
00:33:41:02 - 00:33:56:13
Daniel Aldrich
But I would say for for those of us working the disaster space, this idea of culture maybe is pushing us too far not to do stuff. Well, I really can't do that. The culture won't let us. Well, culture is a very malleable thing. I think about North American culture in 2023. What's acceptable right now. I was just on it at a movie theater just yesterday.
00:33:56:16 - 00:34:07:15
Daniel Aldrich
People had their shoes off and the feet up on the seat in front of me. Now, when my parents were growing up, that would have been throw you out of the movie theater offense. It looked pretty normal. Where I was sitting. There were my feet, by the way, someone else's feet. So that's the kind of thing our culture changes all the time.
00:34:07:15 - 00:34:21:21
Daniel Aldrich
So I'm not sure that culture is the first thing I would worry about. I'd really more. But to what degree do we know the community well enough to go in and spend that time together? To what degree do I understand the ability of them to listen to me and it and trust me? Have you ever been there before?
00:34:21:21 - 00:34:35:13
Daniel Aldrich
This is outside the culture. Is this about do they know me? Can they trust me? Do I look and sound like them? If not, maybe that's a bigger question. Can I hire a staff example? If I'm working in a primarily community of color and I'm not a person of color, why don't ask people of color my staff working with me, right?
00:34:35:13 - 00:34:45:10
Daniel Aldrich
Or if Vietnamese are the first language in parts of village Celeste in New Orleans, I better have someone speaks Vietnamese, right? So this is on me really, in a sense, not the cultural aspect, but more like the ability to connect.
00:34:45:12 - 00:35:07:04
Kyle King
So one of the things that I think about when I think of culture and some of our international work in and where I maybe distinguish between the two is in many of the communities that we've been working in the international space, you know, they're very for sort of family centric, right? So you have these generational households, you know, parents on the bottom for the kids and then, you know, sort of the house gets bigger as the family gets bigger and, they add another four to the house.
00:35:07:04 - 00:35:24:05
Kyle King
And this is something you don't necessarily see, I think as part of the culture in the United States. You see basically, you know, grow up and get out of house doing get out on your own and then sort of so there's a disbursement of family, whereas in many other countries there's just this, you know, this generational approach to families and living together and things like that.
00:35:24:05 - 00:35:43:11
Kyle King
And I think that inherently is a strength in terms of social capital, because, you know, everybody's there in one location, you're not dispersed, people can help each other and things like that. So this is one thing that I would try to consider as being it's not an obstacle, but I think it's just a differentiator between sort of the cultures and how social capital has developed and maintained.
00:35:43:11 - 00:35:57:12
Kyle King
Now, one could argue that even though if we move out of the House, you still have close connections, you can still support each other and maybe you're down the street or you're 10 minutes away, you know, that's all fine. But I think just in the approach to that and sort of that generational family aspect has a positive impact overall.
00:35:57:17 - 00:36:20:10
Daniel Aldrich
Yeah, and I think that's the kind of thing you want to know, right, Because that's where you're working actually is funny, in Japan, we had this image of Japan as tightly integrated, intergenerational, right where we have multiple generations. The reality is, or should that I know, don't live with their parents. A lot of parents in Japan are being placed into older folks, homes and that's elder day care during the day rather than, for example, living with them at home, which I've seen in Italy when I used to live in Milan.
00:36:20:10 - 00:36:32:20
Daniel Aldrich
Right. So a lot of people in Italy, their even twenties and thirties, are still living at home with their kids. I think that's a point, right? So you want to know, okay, I'm designing a household experience or a survey or some kind of training exercise. I'd want to make sure that grandparents, the center generation and the kids are all involved.
00:36:32:22 - 00:36:47:15
Daniel Aldrich
But for me, the bigger question would be, okay, great. To what degree do those intergenerational families know their neighbors? To what degree do they trust local responders or firefighters or police officers? How much information do they have? What's going on? What would they call it as a problem? Do they trust the police often enough to call them? Right.
00:36:47:16 - 00:37:00:06
Daniel Aldrich
And again, depending on where you are in North America, at least then it is be quite different. You know, we know from research here in Boston, there are some committees that don't call 911. There's a problem because they don't trust the police. And again, that is a cultural thing that's come out from history. We can also change. Right.
00:37:00:06 - 00:37:15:17
Daniel Aldrich
To what degree are we showing now that we recognize that there are these problems here? But I think it's a good point, right? We do need to recognize household composition is different. Intergenerational work is different. But at the same day, it's we need to know how that families interacts with families nearby. How much trust do they have in the system, a contact with people above.
00:37:15:18 - 00:37:20:08
Daniel Aldrich
You know, again, how much knowledge do they have about the system? That's something that culture really can't dictate ahead of time.
00:37:20:13 - 00:37:52:20
Kyle King
So when we talk about in this case, we're using an example of sort of the fires in Hawaii and things like that. And we're talking about these recent disasters. We talk about Recovery week and sort of the planning effort that we need to pause and consider for example what businesses and organizations will contribute to that, whether it's going to be a high rise or if it's going to be community park or something or a library specifically, do businesses an organizations have in terms of contributing to building social capital, especially in a period of like now after a wildfire and they're in this, I think, a very unique period before they start to recover?
00:37:52:23 - 00:38:09:12
Daniel Aldrich
Yeah, I think it is a great writings. On the importance of local businesses as entrepreneurs, not just entrepreneurs for business, but social entrepreneurs during disaster. There's a great book by virtual store on this in New Orleans, and I think, you know, certainly in Maui and elsewhere, businesses may have really strong anchor to the community. They want to come back and serve their clients.
00:38:09:18 - 00:38:34:23
Daniel Aldrich
They've been there for maybe decades, if not generations. And that is where they want to go, even if it's going to cost them months or years of opportunity costs to be there and rebuild and wait for the client base, wait for tourists to return, wait for things to be, quote, normal again in the future. So I think those businesses should be front and center and we want them with those local businesses to be front of center, not, for example, outside real estate speculators, you know, international currency purchasers, people looking for a real estate investment and their retirement funds in some of the country.
00:38:35:04 - 00:38:56:14
Daniel Aldrich
We want it to be locals who live there who drive that right. And we've seen this with Airbnb and other outcomes. We know this from a data, right, that when communities become ones driven by outside investment rather than locally based investment community currencies, for example, they keep that local right local based businesses that are not an international chain or a licensee, really local businesses driven by locals and by locals for locals.
00:38:56:16 - 00:39:25:23
Daniel Aldrich
And those cases, money circulates in the community. Rather than going back to some shareholder or some stakeholder elsewhere. So yes, businesses have a huge role to play in this process, as you faith based organizations in the community, as do civil society and in that planning process, want to think through which voices will dominate. We've done research on a number of post-disaster committees, and you can probably guess males, engineers and elite tend to dominate these committees afterwards rather than local bottom up, gender balanced non engineers and business people.
00:39:25:23 - 00:39:41:15
Daniel Aldrich
And this voice is not to be heard, which is too bad, right? Because the reality is, again, Maui or in this case, I know where these communities are not they're not, you know, 80 million people or 30 million people or 20 million people or thousands of people. And the way the community is structured will strongly impact you. People want to come back.
00:39:41:17 - 00:40:03:03
Daniel Aldrich
It's a lot of interesting research called the Reconstruction Paradox. This is by a guy named Nagamatsu Shingo in Japan. Put it out. Actually, what we found in data, the more big projects that you build, large scale dams, roads, berms, huge construction projects, developments this slower, the recovery often goes because local citizens on the ground are waiting for their favorite barista, waiting for their kids school to reopen, waiting for the house to be built.
00:40:03:08 - 00:40:26:02
Daniel Aldrich
They don't really care. And it is a new 14 lane highway there or new port or dam. They want to know Again, are my friends there is there a sense of connection? Is there a sense of place? So now Nagamatsu pointed out that oftentimes what we think are very helpful process of big spending, often top down government spending has very little to do with the recovery experience on the ground and much more to do with, again, the economics, the political economy, recovery.
00:40:26:07 - 00:40:48:02
Daniel Aldrich
Think about Naomi Klein's disaster capitalism, right? Big firms benefiting from this to really be quite careful in this moment right before anything starts, as we're still now hopefully finding all those who are deceased, upping the mourning process, taking a breath, having those conversations, even if it takes time. And I think this is the other thing we talk about sometimes our push is let's get back as quickly as we can to what was, you know, what to build back.
00:40:48:02 - 00:41:05:10
Daniel Aldrich
What was it is clear Lahaina, Maui, very vulnerable to fire, probably also vulnerable to flooding. How do we build a resilient community right now? That's for the people. And again, not for large construction companies, not for I'm not going to name them before going on a podcast here. But large firms at profit right from a large scale shock.
00:41:05:16 - 00:41:30:16
Daniel Aldrich
We want to make sure the businesses who live there, that business people who live there, the residents who live there, we want them to be on the front lines right of the process of deciding what happens and then staying there. What we don't want to happen is to rebuild Maui or to rebuild Lahaina. For some community, a Tim demographic like for the tourists who come in for a few days and leave again for developers who build a massive 40 storey apartment complex and rent them all out to outsiders, We want to make sure the community is being built for the people who live there.
00:41:30:18 - 00:41:47:11
Daniel Aldrich
And we see this all the time, by the way, in New Orleans as well. Oftentimes, expensive rebuilding means gentrification, treasury pricing out locals for the community. So we want to make sure we take that pause, take a breath before we begin rebuilding, to make sure what kind of community is being built is being discussed, at least before we start doing anything.
00:41:47:13 - 00:42:12:09
Kyle King
I think those are all great points, and I think there's a lot to be said for restoring people's ability to return home, just restoring the communities after a disaster and getting to a degree of normalcy before you start really progressing and trying to build the version to of your community. So I think what a lot of people look for, at least immediately and they at the outset, recovery from a disaster is just some form of a return to normalcy in their lives because they've gone through such a shock.
00:42:12:09 - 00:42:33:21
Kyle King
Right. And that doesn't mean that you have to have these massive plans for rejuvenation and revitalization of a community to execute from day one or disaster plus one. They can go through phases and sort of what you're talking about, like had those conversations paused. Take a break, restore the community, start bringing things back together, and then build upon and create a more, you know, a safer communities and the future.
00:42:33:21 - 00:42:51:00
Kyle King
It doesn't just have to be, you know, like you said, massive construction projects from from day one. And there's oftentimes this push to be able to do that and especially in a national space as well. So it's not just in the United States, but in a well, we'll just sweep in with all this money and start things. And look, you've got all this brand new stuff in this brand new building, but it's a replacement.
00:42:51:00 - 00:43:05:03
Kyle King
It's not restoring sort of the life of the people in the community. Those are all great points. I think we could probably talk about this address. Well, we are going in-depth, but we are going a little bit long. And so where can people find your book? So you mentioned that you actually from what I understand, you had three books.
00:43:05:08 - 00:43:30:01
Kyle King
One is called Site Fights, which was focused on states handle conflict over controversial four city facilities like nuclear power plants, airports and dams. You have a second book which is called Building Resilience and the University of Chicago in which investigated how social capital facilitates recovery following disasters. Your third book is Black Wave 2019 from University of Chicago Press, showing how horizontal and vertical ties are critical to helping people survive and thrive in crisis.
00:43:30:01 - 00:43:35:12
Kyle King
And I think those are would be all very interested reading and highly recommended. And so where can people find these books?
00:43:35:14 - 00:43:52:08
Daniel Aldrich
My favorite phrase is wherever books are sold, Amazon sells them. For example, I believe Barnes and Noble as well. You know, I'm a big fan of local retailers, so if you have a local bookstore there in town, I believe they can get them as well. So and also the nice thing about them is because I've really encouraged the publishers to try and reduce the prices.
00:43:52:10 - 00:44:06:19
Daniel Aldrich
So sometimes these Kindle versions are available for less than $5, which is great, really affordable. I don't want books that are 115 or whatever. So these are affordable books. But again, some public libraries also have them as well. So again, if you're interested, please Google my name and those books will pop up.
00:44:06:24 - 00:44:16:06
Kyle King
Okay, great. Yeah, absolutely. Support your communities and everybody has a questions. Or maybe they're in the field and they want to start looking at how they can measure social capital in their communities. How can people reach you?
00:44:16:08 - 00:44:32:06
Daniel Aldrich
Yeah. So my favorite public forum for discussion right now is the site formerly known as Twitter. I believe it's called X these days. Who knows? It'll be called Y tomorrow. I'm not really quite sure why it's called x r times, as my kids call it. So the Times website, I'm there. My Twitter handle is Daniel Aldrich. I'm on that site.
00:44:32:08 - 00:44:50:24
Daniel Aldrich
My email address is also pretty much public knowledge. It's my name a d Dot Aldrich, Ala. D r. I see H in Northeastern taught edu and happy to answer questions again. If people want to talk about, you know, this idea of mapping, this idea of, you know, looking at social infrastructure, it's in such we're I was curious to do how but we can and again I would also say happy to think about ways to build allies.
00:44:51:05 - 00:45:00:15
Daniel Aldrich
Right. So you're in San Francisco, for example, some physical universities entered Berkeley, a lot of communities nearby. So having to talk about ways to build those allies for disaster managers who are looking for help.
00:45:00:17 - 00:45:15:11
Kyle King
Okay, great. Well, that's all the time we have for today's episode of Crisis Conflict Emergency Management podcast. I want to give a huge thank to our guest, Professor Daniel Aldridge, for his time and sharing his valuable insights on social capital and disaster recovery. It was truly an honor to have you on the show. Thank you very much for joining us today.
00:45:15:15 - 00:45:32:01
Kyle King
And to our listeners, thank you for tuning in. If you have any feedback or suggestions for future episodes, please don't hesitate to reach out to us on our website or social media channels. And if you like the topics and discussions, please share and leave a review on your favorite podcast player. Until next time, stay safe and keep learning.
