BIO

My name is Colin Morrill and I am a freshman at Florida State University majoring in International Affairs and Political Science. I am from Weston, FL, and have lived their my entire life. My interests span many fields, but I have to chosen to specialize in international affairs because of its widespread nature and diverse applications, such as those in the environment, urban development, counter-terrorism, and everything in-between. Outside of the classroom, some of my interests include reading, discovering new music, and playing sports.

Florida's Hurricane Preparedness, Response, and Recovery amid the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

In the status quo, Florida communities are working to address the challenges posed by the composite effects of sea levels rising and the active hurricane seasons from the Atlantic. Simultaneously, the emergence and rapid spread of the respiratory virus known as COVID-19 stretched the traditional ways that public administrators would go about planning for disaster preparedness, response, and recovery. Between draining emergency budgets, gutting supply chains, and everything in-between, no country or community has been entirely unaffected by COVID-19. As for coastal communities, the challenge of facing hurricane season in the midst of a global pandemic led by a highly-contagious virus meant that administrators had to address these issues in an even further complicated scenario. This study utilized a qualitative approach using structured interviews with emergency managers from federal, state, and local levels of government in Florida and non-profits to discover these challenges and pose possible solutions. In any context, the results showed that disasters (hurricanes and COVID-19) have a disproportionately greater effect on rural communities. This can be largely attributed due to the lack of ICT (information and communication technology) infrastructure. Ultimately, however, the biggest challenges indicated were insufficient financial resources, lack of human capacity, digital divide, and collaboration challenges. As this is an on-going research project, our expected results yield a heavy emphasis on interdisciplinary collaboration across all sectors as a requirement for solving these challenges.

Keywords: collaborative governance, hurricane, COVID-19, resilience