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Preface
The Urban Institute has undertaken a 12-month project to assess the feasibility of studying the consequences of Hurricane Katrina for Administration for Children and Families (ACF) service populations. The assessment is concerned with Katrina’s consequences for child and family well-being and the need for ACF services. The analysis is organized around four substantive areas: migration and resettlement, income and employment, program needs (that is, needs for services), and program effects (that is, systemic effects on delivery systems). As part of its assessment of how to study the consequences of the hurricane, the Urban Institute project team has undertaken a broad literature review and produced a large bibliography on works that address the human, social, and economic dimensions of the storm, beginning with landfall in August and September 2005.
To identify the vast array of materials of potential interest, we used a systematic approach to gathering all known studies and relevant writings, using search terms specific to the disasters as well as broader but related topics concerning how regions, communities, economies, people, programs, and policies were affected, and what current and future needs will be. The search through electronic clearinghouses on Hurricane Katrina–related subjects encompassed electronic and print media, academic journals, and work developed by nonprofit and for-profit organizations, foundations, and federal, state, and local governments. For example, we searched the Brookings Institution and Living Cities, Inc. “Katrina Reading Room”; the Urban Institute’s series After Katrina; and http://www.Hurricane-Katrina.org, a selected list of over 25 national and state-level nonprofit and private sector organizations that are known to have produced relevant work in the aftermath of the 2005 hurricanes. We also reviewed relevant reports from key government agencies such as the Department of Health and Human Services and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and others engaged in research, such as the Government Accountability Office, the Congressional Research Service, the National Science Foundation, and the National Research Council. Similarly, we searched a selected list of national, state, and local newspapers and magazines that might be expected to have produced analyses of the effects of the storms, or detailed accounts of local conditions important to understanding the context of developments and the effects of the storms.
In addition to these sources and in order to use different perspectives to identify relevant materials, we used a variety of online search engines, several college and university library systems that have created guided search strategies since the storm (such as Brown University’s “Katrina Disaster Response,” and Michigan State University’s “Hurricane Katrina: Research and Resources”), and several relevant research databases in EBSCOHost. We also conducted a comprehensive search of JSTOR, an archive of scholarly journals. Finally, we reviewed a bibliography prepared by the Urban Institute as a primer for participants in a joint conference of the Institute and the Louisiana Association of Nonprofit Organizations held in November 2006 to consider the efforts of nonprofit organizations in disaster response and recovery, and we consulted with internal and external experts from various fields to alert us to any recent publications or works in progress that might be relevant to our effort. Because of our ongoing work related to Hurricane Katrina, we are also the beneficiaries of formal (for example, Tulane University’s KATRINARESEARCH-L listserve) and informal sources for information on research efforts related to Katrina and disaster response, and we have brought these sources to our search.
Rosa Maria Castaneda conducted the search, which concluded in January 2007, although a few additions that have come to our attention since have been added. Brendan Saloner undertook the lion’s share of initial reading, and LaTasha Holloway helped manage the database, edit, and provided quality control for the final product.
We have winnowed down more than 300 works that emerged from the search to about half that number, which appear on the following pages. Our bibliography is nonetheless expansive and diverse, including many forms of description and analysis of the human, social, or economic dimensions of the hurricane. The inclusions are deliberately diverse because the bibliography serves dual purposes. In addition to informing the ACF, the bibliography has been used to provide background to four teams of experts who have been convened for this project to assess research completed or underway, important gaps in that research, and the research capabilities of existing datasets to inform the questions of interest to ACF. As such, the works included are a mix of research studies, journal articles, conference proceedings, reports, speeches, essays, opinion pieces, issue analyses, and fact sheets, selected in part for their utility to the working groups. The breadth of information provides a rich view of what is known to date and the issues of importance to understanding the consequences of the storm.
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