In Case Of Emergency, Read Blog

I am in Chicago this week for the third in a series of fascinating Aspen Institute roundtable discussions examining individual cities’ (and the nation’s) “preparedness for another 9/11-scale terror attack and another Hurricane Katrina-scale natural disaster.”  

The three-day Aspen workshops bring together the area’s leading officials and experts from the government, business, academic and non-profit sectors to present and discuss the status of preparedness.

The project is described on the Aspen Institute website:

Thanks to a generous grant from the Ford Foundation, the Aspen Institute’s Homeland Security Program has launched a two-year project that will assess five cities’ (namely, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, and New Orleans) preparedness for another 9/11-scale terror attack and another Hurricane Katrina-scale natural disaster. Moderated by program director, Clark Kent Ervin, the first of several roundtable discussions (at least one in each targeted city) was held in New York City on December 3-5 at the Ford Foundation’s offices.

Among the speakers and panelists were New York City Police Department Commissioner Ray Kelly; Deputy NYPD Commissioner for Intelligence and former top CIA official David Cohen; and the top FBI counterterrorism official in New York City, Mark Mershon. The invited guest list included homeland security think tank experts; foundation representatives; area university representatives, and key congressional staffers.

A report will ultimately be prepared that will identify best practices in these cities that can be replicated elsewhere in the nation. Gaps in preparedness will also be highlighted in this report, along with recommendations for closing such gaps. The report is intended to help set the homeland security/counterterrorism agenda for the new president and the new Congress taking office in January, 2009.

The Houston and New Orleans roundtables will be held later in the year.

The workshops are off-the-record so I cannot quote anything here. But the information I learn at the these discussions already have and will continue to help inform my work on this blog.