There is a need to facilitate learning from failures in the context of natural and man-made disasters. This
paper investigates the multi-faceted nature of research in disasters and the aspect of hybrid approaches
in modelling within this domain. The paper applies a framework of reliability and multiple criteria decision
analysis techniques to the case of the Hurricane Katrina disaster of 2005. It is shown how this hybrid
model can be used through an integrative approach to perform a systematic analysis that can lead to
learning from failures.