After Hurricanes Irma and Maria caused widespread destruction across the U.S. Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, FEMA tasked the Homeland Security Operational Analysis Center (HSOAC) to work with the government of Puerto Rico, federal agencies, and other stakeholders to write a congressionally mandated economic and disaster recovery plan. This report summarizes HSOAC's strategic planning process to support the government of Puerto Rico in its development of the recovery plan. The HSOAC team developed nearly 300 potential recovery actions (courses of action) that Puerto Rico could take to repair damage from the hurricanes and address longer-term economic recovery needs. The courses of action delineate potential activities, policies, programs, and strategies designed to further the goals prioritized by the government of Puerto Rico and other stakeholders. Each individual course of action describes an approach to addressing a problem associated with hurricane damage or with a preexisting condition that inhibits economic recovery. To develop the courses of action, the HSOAC team aligned 12 teams with the FEMA sectors supporting the National Disaster Recovery Framework, ranging from water to housing. For each course of action, the team estimated the costs that would likely be incurred and identified potential sources of funding for implementation. The extent of the hurricane damage, combined with the preexisting economic challenges, meant that the recovery actions identified covered every aspect of a modern economy. The hundreds of courses of action represent complex actions that need to be understood in context with how they redress these challenges, with insights into how they connect with the key interests of inclusiveness and innovation, what their contributions will be toward meeting the strategic objectives that the governor of Puerto Rico identified, and their impact on the total cost of the plan. To help the government of Puerto Rico select a cohesive and effective set of courses of action for its recovery plan, the HSOAC team bundled these courses of action into portfolios and developed a unique decision support tool to summarize and synthesize possible options. Ultimately, the analysis and support provided by the HSOAC team facilitated the governor's final decision on which courses of action and portfolios to select, but neither HSOAC nor the decision support engagements exclusively determined the content of the final recovery plan.

Puerto Rico has suffered the compounded effects of multiple disasters since the devastating impacts of Hurricanes Irma and Maria in September 2017. At the end of 2019, the island was impacted with recurrent seismic activity in the southwest region, and in January 2020 the unset of the COVID-19 pandemic. All these disasters are underscored by a crush¬ing debt crisis and a federally mandated austerity regime since 2016. Recent disasters have revealed serious vulnerabilities in Puerto Rico's prepared¬ness planning, institutional response capacity and coordination, resource management at various levels of implementation, data availability, and the lack of suitable and accessible mechanisms to sup¬port adequate local community engagement. The collection of studies included in this special volume of CENTRO Journal show evidence of how post disaster recovery is progressing in Puerto Rico, the challenges and opportunities for local participation in reconstruction programs, and the potential of nonprofit organizations, municipalities, and local businesses to contribute to post disaster recovery in Puerto Rico. To date, the available evidence leads to a portrait of an uneven recovery. The studies included in this volume indicate that the long-term impact of post-disaster federal funding for economic recovery is contingent on implementing a comprehensive strategy for reforming public policy to encourage and support nonprofit developers' participation in reconstruction programs, building industry capacity by strengthening intermediaries and CDCs, encouraging intra-industry partnerships and collaborations, and providing professional development for economic recovery.

The government of Puerto Rico developed a plan to recover from the destruction caused by Hurricanes Irma and Maria, build resilience to withstand future disasters, and restore the struggling economy. The Homeland Security Operational Analysis Center (HSOAC), operated by RAND Corporation under contract with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, worked with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to assist with the development of the plan. Acting in support of FEMA's Education sector, HSOAC analyzed data sources to conduct an assessment of the damage and recovery needs, and engaged with stakeholders to identify recovery courses of action, costs, and possible funding mechanisms. Education system reforms initiated prior to the hurricanes and poststorm legislation set the strategy for the recovery actions. This report details prestorm conditions, assesses the damage and recovery needs, and describes the courses of action represented in the recovery plan for the Education sector. The analyses, coupled with discussions with local education stakeholders and subject-matter experts, informed the development of 13 courses of action to support Puerto Rico's recovery plan and efforts to transform the education system. The courses of action cover four major themes related to Education sector recovery: rebuilding, repairing, and upgrading infrastructure; strengthening and supporting the government's K-12 system reform; expanding and improving out-of-school and preschool learning opportunities; and increasing access to vocational, technical, and career education and strengthening school-to-work transitions.

The Homeland Security Operational Analysis Center was asked to develop a poststorm recovery plan for Puerto Rico. This report describes the transportation sector, including prestorm conditions, damage, repair cost estimates, and courses of action.

Many of Puerto Rico's cultural resources were devastated in Hurricanes Irma and Maria. The authors discuss their importance, the damage they endured immediately after the storms, and detail recovery actions in Puerto Rico's recovery plan.

With its 155 mile-per-hour sustained windspeeds, the near-Category 5 Hurricane Maria brought catastrophic devastation and destruction as it diagonally crossed the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico from the southeast to the northwest on September 20, 2017. The official death toll estimate of 2,975 lost lives means this record storm became one of the most devasting hurricanes not only for Puerto Rico but for the U.S. Many of these deaths, as well as the prolonged human suffering, were attributed to what was described as inadequate disaster response and slow restoration of basic services (including running water, electricity, and the provision and distribution of food and medicine), and not to the direct impact of the hurricane itself. At the same time, Hurricane Maria made landfall when Puerto Rico had been confronting a severe economic crisis surging for over a decade. This crisis, referred to as La Crisis Boricua, was characterized by a significant loss of industry and jobs, a deteriorating infrastructure, record net outmigration, a shrinking and rapidly aging population, rising healthcare under-coverage, a bankrupt government, and federal legislation restricting fiscal policy decisions made by elected officials on the island. Thus, Hurricane Maria exacerbated the effects of La Crisis Boricua on the socioeconomic, health, and demographic outcomes affecting Puerto Ricans on the island and U.S. mainland. Bringing together scholars from a wide variety of disciplines (including economics, sociology, demography, health, psychology, disaster research, political science, education, the arts, and others), this volume represents one of the first interdisciplinary sets of studies dedicated to analyzing the effects of Hurricane Maria on island and stateside Puerto Ricans. Specific topics cover Hurricane Maria’s impact on labor market outcomes, including wages and employment by industry; health implications, including mental health; changes in artistic expression; civic engagement; and disaster response and recovery. A common thread through many of the chapters was the destruction of Puerto Rico’s electrical grid and the prolonged restoration of electricity and other essential services that resulted in the loss of thousands of lives.