Risk and Resilience: Interorganizational Learning Followingthe Northridge Earthquake of January 17, 1994

Strategies for coping with risk of future adverse events vary from efforts to ignore the possibility of collective harm to detailed efforts to prevent such harm from occurring. The effectiveness of either strategy depends upon the accuracy of our estimates of future events, our capacity to reorganize existing resources, skills, and knowledge to meet unexpected demands, and most importantly, our ability to fashion systems of action that cross and recross organizational and jurisdictional lines.