disaster management education

disaster management education

The Importance of Disaster Management Education

1. Introduction to Disaster Management Education

Events often adversely affect the social and economic status of a community, region, or nation. This results in many real-world impacts including economic losses, loss of life, and the loss or damage to cultural resources and critical infrastructure systems. Too many people die as a result of disasters, and too many communities are left devastated following these events. This is in part due to the lack of disaster management education. To lessen the physical, social, and economic impacts of a disaster, the process of disaster management must begin with the recognition of the needs of individuals and communities. Individuals, families, and communities must recognize the potential hazards, develop action plans, and take steps to implement them.

Disaster management educates and prepares individuals and communities to avoid human loss and social and economic disruption. Awareness, education, and training are essential in preparing individuals to participate in disaster response and recovery. If people are not aware of emergency management procedures, their lives and the lives of others may be endangered. Basic awareness is the minimum level of preparedness; adequate training of emergency responders is necessary if they are to provide effective response to chemical, radiological, nuclear, or biological attacks. In order to provide a comprehensive understanding of emergency management principles for the government and public safety sector, higher education institutions and emergency responders must be prepared to train and educate the public in regards to disaster management techniques and skills.

2. Key Concepts and Principles in Disaster Management

INTERACTION BETWEEN DISASTER RISK REDUCTION AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT There is a need for the increase of the capacity of countries and regions to provide for accessible drinking water and safe drinking water facilities. Programs and projects should be formulated aimed at providing access to education, particularly for women, in order to ensure equal access to primary and secondary education for all. Public awareness programs need to be undertaken, sensitizing people to the need of hygiene, and the importance of having basic sanitation facilities. In that way, the quality of life of the people living in those areas can be improved. It is also important to increase public awareness of the role that quality management can play in the drinking water treatment chain in order to ensure and guarantee the safety of the health of the consumers. Therefore health risk assessments should be performed and specific risk reduction measures should be proposed.

The concept of disaster management provides the perfect example of official jargon which makes responses to challenges – in this case, dealing with disasters – more complicated than they need to be. The words ‘disaster’ and ‘management’, including even the word ‘pre-disaster’ and the comprehensive term ‘disaster risk reduction’, are misleading because they concentrate on events and not enough importance is placed on the pre-existing vulnerabilities which allow these events to develop. Unless attention is paid to the vulnerabilities, it will not be so easy to recognize the extent of the preventable suffering that is happening. Help must be shaped accordingly. Some of the supposedly technical questions in all this are in fact moral questions. For example, no matter how much mediation or obstruction takes place — no matter how much preparation a tannery owner in one of the poorest parts of the Indian subcontinent has made for a flood he knows may submerge his premises — the helplessness of the human beings long employed by him, and the dehumanizing poverty which triumphs once there is no work for them, is a moral failure.

3. The Role of Education in Disaster Preparedness and Response

In countries with high disaster maturity, there is an assumption that citizens deploy faculties and tools in their immediate personal and urban environment to ensure that people, buildings, and ground heritage are as safe as is possible and feasible. Other countries, often very vulnerable due to lack of resources, rapidly growing cities, and, in some cases, intimidating structural issues, must understand that engagement in disaster management at all levels and between all communities is critical at the national, regional, and global scales. The approach of including citizens in safe resilient cities benefits from the enriched understanding fostered through education to better implement the Dubai Declaration (2016), Sendai Conference (2015), and the 2030 United Nations Agenda.

The role of education in disaster preparedness and response involves a layered and lifelong approach that includes early warning through various communication channels, as well as response-related competencies from all levels. Education is also key to building an understanding and, more importantly, a respect for our immediate environment and communities. There is a need to consider the extremes of infrastructure in both developed and developing nations, such as the role of organized emergency services in disaster events.

4. Challenges and Opportunities in Implementing Disaster Management Education

Interest in prevention as the primary focus of disaster education is not high, and lessons learned are often hard won. Although many life lessons are often most effectively communicated through story and experience, in cases where hazard or disaster exposure is relatively rare, story may not be sufficient. Disaster risk reduction discussions during the current UNESCO project identified that principles related to DRR should be introduced to children from a very young age. Moreover, social capacity, i.e. the potential to work and take responsibility, should develop throughout the individual’s life. University students completed well-focused professional studies in DRR but still lacked the necessary blending of science with disciplines such as economics and commerce, which is necessary to promote the understanding of the evaluated risks. Moreover, it was discovered that students do not learn enough about the application of their studies to transform the DRR knowledge into practice.

Successful implementation of educational programs is often faced with inherent challenges and difficulties. These challenges and difficulties can appear either at the level of educational institutions, curriculum development, or the learning process. The UAE NRG concludes that while designing a disaster risk reduction (DRR) educational curriculum, there are several social and communication strategies to be considered. This includes representatives from private sectors and non-governmental organizations, extending education to learners with special needs, state-of-the-art technology, collecting and documenting best practices, linking education and disaster, among others.

5. Best Practices and Case Studies in Disaster Management Education

In the United Kingdom, practical activities to provide opportunities for future disaster managers and practitioners to undertake community service as part of their disaster education curriculum have been incorporated into a new university-based development studies programme. In a developed country with a considerable tradition of international relief and a long record as academic and financial contributors to the international aid system, most of the students from such programmes may already be reasonably well informed about many aspects of disaster consequences through the media and other sources. However, most students certainly lack good practical knowledge of local or international communities and problems, let alone the ability to learn directly how to address some of the situations outlined in this paper. Although this example may be of less direct relevance to the usual development issues examined in this Symposium, the same concepts might be useful in related educational and disaster management experiences.

If the case for including disaster and risk reduction curricula at the higher educational and research institutions, as well as the secondary and primary levels, is compelling for the long-term ambitions of each country, less persuasive but still relevant rationales can be derived from some recent case studies and institutional experiences.