Urban Resilience for the 21st Century - The Perspective of 100 Resilient Cities

100 Resilient Cities, pioneered by the Rockefeller Foundation, is the world’s leading non-profit focused on helping cities around the world become more resilient to the physical, social, and economic challenges that are a growing part of the 21st century.  Cities in the 100RC network are provided with resources to develop a roadmap to resilience, which includes financial and logistical guidance, expert support, access to service providers, and network membership.  In this lecture, Michael Berkowitz, President of 100RC, will introduce the 100RC framework for urban resilience and discuss specific efforts to improve the resiliency of cities in the 100RC network.

Michael Berkowitz joined the Rockefeller Foundation in August 2013 to shape and oversee the 100 Resilient Cities. Previously, he worked at Deutsche Bank, most recently as the deputy global head of Operational Risk Management (ORM). In that capacity he oversaw the firm’s OR capital planning efforts, served as a primary regulatory contact and connected the myriad operational risk management efforts group-wide.

He held multiple other positions at DB, including Chief Operating Officer of Corporate Security, Business Continuity (CSBC) and Operational Risk Management, where he had responsibility for budgeting, operations, and global coordination across the group's six workstreams. During this time, he also served as the head of the Bank’s Protective Intelligence unit, designed to assess and analyze security and geo-political threats to the Bank, its staff, processes and information.

Prior to December 2010, he was the CSBC head in APAC with responsibility for all business continuity planning and alternate site operations, as well as physical security, executive and event protection, fraud investigation and prevention, and cybercrime.  Between 2005 and 2008 he had management roles for DB in Mumbai, India and New York.

Until January 2005, he was Deputy Commissioner at the Office of Emergency Management in New York City. In this position he worked on major planning initiatives, including the New York City Coastal Storm, Biological Terrorism and Transit Strike contingency plans.

At OEM he led an initiative to create OEM’s Public-Private Emergency Planning Initiative and its Ready New York citizen preparedness campaign. He also responded to incidents including the 1999 outbreak of West Nile Fever, Tropical Storm Floyd, major flooding in Southern Queens (1999), the crashes of SwissAir 111 and American Airlines 587, the 2003 Northeast blackout, as well as the 2001 anthrax incidents and the World Trade Center disaster.