I've been a fan of Vinay Gupta since i first ran into his Reykjavik breifing a while back.  Here's another briefing he gave to another group in the US government.

http://files.howtolivewiki.com/star_tides_ndu_briefing_8_apr_08/

It includes lots of links.  Alot of the focus is on disaster relief, but Vinay throughout and particularly at the end links the two concepts of disaster relief and development to the same fundamental issues of protecting life and building infrastructure.