disaster management plan

disaster management plan

Developing an Effective Disaster Management Plan: Strategies and Best Practices

1. Introduction to Disaster Management

In the context of this paper, disasters are extreme events such as earthquakes, typhoons, tornadoes, hurricanes, or large-scale fires that result in extensive loss and damage. Even man-made occurrences such as terrorism, wars, accidents, or computer-related events can result in disastrous consequences that can leave many organizations struggling to survive. Recognizing the potential events that may disrupt business activities, it is clear that the PMO needs to have plans in place to work through and manage these disruptive events when they occur. These plans take on many titles. They could be disaster recovery plans, war room plans, crisis management plans, or business continuity plans. Providing plans are in place to manage the unexpected earthquakes or hurricanes, the PMO can show to the organization that it is doing an effective job in managing the projects.

Disaster management is critical to building a disaster-resilient community. Hence, it is of great importance for a project manager for a Project Management Office (PMO) in an organization to have plans in place to work through and manage disruptive events. In this paper, practical approaches, strategies, and best practices are recommended to enable a PMO project manager to develop an effective disaster management plan. Furthermore, the importance of these approaches, strategies, and best practices are outlined to help a PMO project manager to understand and manage the issues and impacts accordingly.

2. Key Components of a Comprehensive Disaster Management Plan

The third process analog responses resource business continuation and productivity. The above-enumerated plans only want to maintain business as usual during smaller disasters. The final planned orientation properly addresses individual participation and training during a disaster.

The second process reflects safety of the people that make up the operation. The understanding here is that a business facility and equipment without people cannot function. This module addresses how to alert and evacuate, reentry into the building, employee notification procedures, communication protocols, family message center, and hotlines for updates in the event of a disaster.

The first process responses resource management, that is the thought of what needs a physical business consideration when disaster strikes, how to activate specific resources, and procedures for resuming operation activities. Although the resource management has so many components, three vital resources worthy of considerations are people, operations, and damages.

An ideal comprehensive disaster plan will consist of five major components referred to as five-phase planning processes. The belief in the structured planning process and major orienting factors of disaster management plans is the first module effort resource management, second planning process resources employee safety, third element response and recovery both resources and business productivity participation and training, fourth employee health and personal activation, and the fifth equipment and other adjusting disaster activities tools. A few key documents from these formats are considered.

There is no one-size-fits-all acceptable disaster management plan. Different circumstances, location, and scale of operation give room for variations, though general orientation is vital. However, due to the complexity of disaster management and the challenge of synchronizing five processes into one coherent and efficient operation, the need for several key documents regarded as modules cannot be overemphasized.

3. Implementing and Testing Disaster Preparedness Strategies

Testing a good disaster preparedness plan might take on several forms including: dry runs, functional exercises, tabletops, location-led voluntary efforts, and full-scale drills. What can be learned is that these various testing efforts can identify some of the needed coordinated location-to-location response procedures, help understand areas of work with multiple locations, and isolate areas of personal preparedness.

Once the best solution strategies have been chosen, the plan can be implemented. This is what official agencies and the public are most familiar with when thinking of preparation for disasters. Moreover, it is part of the plan that can be most vividly tested and evaluated prior to disasters taking place. Examples of elements in the implementation phase include developing and adding inventory and supply chain support, setting up appropriate physical facilities, and obtaining evacuation assets. During the implementation phase, it is important to also draw upon best practices learned from prior disaster preparedness and recovery efforts. In this chapter, we discuss key strategic activities that need to be considered in operational detail. In particular, we address some of the implementation issues in terms of placing inventory and evacuation assets. Then we illustrate some of the issues in practice, through a case study on the Pima County Disaster Recovery Facilities Plan.

4. Collaboration and Communication in Disaster Response

To enhance disaster collaboration, the non-profit sector and the government need to realize that they often end up collaborating at the crisis behest and often under the nose of first responders. This collaboration needs to be planned in advance in order to achieve desired outcomes for the affected population, ultimately promoting community resilience from future disasters.

Since various responders and relief workers find themselves working in the same physical space, there is an area of utilization of common resources or infrastructure. Therefore, collaboration in the response phase leads to unlocking resources in disaster-affected communities and assists relief workers from different backgrounds to improve their services to affected communities. In the long-term, it supports sustainable and inclusive disaster recovery strategies.

Effective collaboration among organizations involved in the response phase during the disaster management process can help to reduce duplication or unnecessary delays in providing help to the affected population. At a minimum level, collaboration in disaster response occurs when two organizations provide support in each other’s activities without any formal arrangement. Collaboration also encompasses the full range of relationships and negotiations among stakeholders, such as government agencies, non-profit organizations, and voluntary participants, like responders and survivors, in a disaster-affected community, with the objective of achieving desired outcomes.

5. Case Studies and Lessons Learned

Upon the 6.8 magnitude earthquake in the areas outside Sisak and Petrinja in Croatia and the accidents in atomic energy plants (e.g., Kozluduy atomic energy plant in Bulgaria), these methods and platforms have demonstrated their reliability for disaster manager training purposes in a scientific institution in the EU, so that they can be subsequently adopted for wider usability including local and national operational disaster management for large-scale events.

In the disaster management stage, the prepared disaster IT components, operational weather data and many years of elaborated disaster maps are issued to the area being affected by the event. At the same time, an absolute value index is updated according to the event’s specific situation, including links to diagnosis for people, risk assessment, disaster management, historic events and general electronic storms. This one-stop, disaster-manager-interface approach aims to reduce and fight the global risks associated with natural and technology-related disasters on the wider European and Mediterranean level.

In the disaster IT preparation stage, all available information sources, including publications, abstracts and other resources, were issued to an actual disaster. These data sources are integrated initially and on-line for real time large-scale event analysis environment (e.g., flooding, earthquake, biological disaster) using operational weather derivations services in international disaster prediction and control. When a disaster happens, all the involved planners must have disaster kits, including electronic disaster management platforms.

A bioinformatic model for large-scale, long-term disaster applications was presented at an International Conference organized by the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology, the European Environment Agency, and others. It addressed disaster preparedness, disaster impact studies, disaster management and large-scale-event epidemiology.

The NLM abstracted and compiled a computer searchable database of toxicology literature citations. This was a phase II project sponsored by NLM. The objective was to provide access to important toxicology journal articles. A reference and a restricted abstract was created for each article. Also included were several hundred unpublished NLM biomedical toxicology abstracts.