Disaster recovery after Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico: Assessment using Endsley's three-level model of situational awareness.

This paper uses Endsley's three-level model of situational awareness to analyse the challenges faced by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) when coordinating the relief efforts in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria made landfall. Most obviously, obtaining data about the impacted area was highly challenging, making it much harder to comprehend the magnitude of the event. In turn, this made it difficult to know where to focus recovery efforts as the event unfolded. The situation was further exacerbated by Puerto Rico's remote location with respect to the US mainland, and the fact that FEMA was not logistically prepared for Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria to spread its resources so thin. The paper concludes that for US disaster responses to be successful, all levels of government and the private sector should pool resources in a complementary manner in order to streamline supply chain and inventory management practices.