Dyson College of Arts and Sciences

M e s s a g e f r oM t h e P r e s i d e n t October 2015 On October 20, 2014, Pace University organized and hosted Summit on Resilience II: The Next Storm. The conference brought together leaders in business, government, and academia to discuss the lessons we learned from Superstorm Sandy, how public and private partnerships bolster our resilience, and what we can do to drive sustainable growth and opportunity in our communities —both now and in the future. Pace University was an obvious choice to host the conference. Pace is a center of discussion and debate on the critical public policy issues of our time. The University is also uniquely positioned to facilitate these discussions and contribute to solutions through our faculty's multi-disciplinary expertise and research work. In addition, our location in lower Manhattan put Pace faculty, staff, and students directly in Sandy's path. Our experience in the storm's aftermath—meeting the basic needs of our student residents and working with our neighbors to restore normalcy to the area—gave us a unique perspective on the conference's key issues. Pace was proud to participate in this event. A shift back to urban living has put additional stress on already over-taxed infrastructures and a city's ability to provide residents with food, water, energy and a way to communicate in our increasingly technology-dependent world. Climate change and the extreme weather conditions it creates means potential disasters such as Sandy will occur more often in the future. How seamlessly the public and private sectors work together to respond to these disasters will determine how quickly everyday lives can return to normal. We were fortunate to hear from a number of prestigious speakers during the Summit, including Stéphane Hallegatte, a Senior Economist in the Climate Change Group at The World Bank, Patrick J. Foye, the Executive Director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and Michael Berkowitz, President of 100 Resilient Cities from the Rockefeller Foundation. We are extremely grateful for their participation and insights on this crucial topic. A video of the conference is available on the Pace University at www.pace.edu/dyson/resilience2014. The enclosed booklet highlights the need for a truly interdisciplinary approach to addressing this challenge. Pace University faculty, representing five schools within Pace, wrote essays on resilience and public-private partnerships. It also includes an introduction from Dr. Joseph Ryan, Chair and Program Director of the Management for Public Safety and Homeland Security Professionals graduate program at Pace, and reflections from Andrew Revkin, the Senior Fellow for Environmental Understanding at Pace's Academy for Applied Environmental Studies. Mr. Revkin is also the author of the Dot Earth blog for The New York Times On behalf of Pace University, I thank you for your interest in this important subject and look forward to seeing you at the Summit on Resilience III. Sincerely yours, Stephen J. Friedman

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