the disaster management essay

 the disaster management essay

Effective Strategies in Disaster Management: A Comprehensive Analysis

1. Introduction to Disaster Management

For these reasons, proper disaster management plans and strategies are a necessity. Regardless of whether a disaster is natural or man-made, management is a key factor in the adverse effects that are caused in relation to the danger, making these key skills important for the security and safety of a society in all social, economic, and political aspects. There are different actions that we can do to avoid the negative consequences of disasters, which can be broken down into different phases including risk management and prevention, preparation, response, and recovery. Each of these phases has associated problems and therefore a specific necessity for proven management techniques.

Disaster management is a worldwide need that is addressed by the major agencies around the globe. People worldwide are faced with problems on an almost daily basis, either related to major disasters, traffic accidents, natural disasters, technology accidents, or any other situation that might affect our daily activities. Surprisingly, the level of preparedness and anticipation for these types of events is rather low. Governments, local, regional, and even national institutions, as well as different types of organizations, do not see this danger as part of their planning. There is no doubt that many of the human, property, and environmental losses could have been avoided if preventive measures had been taken. Financially, the losses incurred annually from natural disasters have only been increasing; they have doubled in the last few decades.

2. Key Principles and Concepts in Disaster Management

The human species inhabit the earth within the framework of nature and its cycles to meet its needs. However, natural phenomena can affect the environment and prevent the human race from living in certain areas, limiting the natural phenomena to the level that people are comfortable to live. Factors such as structural and nonstructural methods of working on impact, disaster awareness, and ignorance of people will always have contradictory effects on life over time. Under the mentioned working reasons, technology is also constantly developing all over the world. This development and change in technology has had great repercussions on natural disasters in different areas and effects mediated in terms of damages. Regular disaster management practices around the world are the subjects treated in a different field. The increase or decrease in the frequency, intensity, and effects of disasters, which are caused by natural and/or man-initiated phenomena to which the natural or human environment is inadequate due to rapid social, economic, and environmental changes.

The term disaster is very broad and it has been defined in many ways according to the experiences and necessity of the people drafting or proposing each definition. For example, a burgeoning problem, an obstacle that needs to be solved, or a merge or flow of one’s beliefs and needs while aiming for a vital aspect. It is efficient to effectively meet with the system and the administration process. The rising process must be repeated to gain experience. When searching for one’s own personal views, an example of human suffering is always far beyond accepted handling. It is a human phenomenon that exists in one’s belief that disaster is something that occurs in the environment of another country.

3. Types of Disasters and Their Impacts

A natural disaster refers to widespread, extraordinary, immediate, and excessive loss of life, property, or livelihood in which the community is directly affected. These are caused by forces of nature and can strike with little warning. As a result of when a hurricane, like the tsunami of December 2004, major disaster may occur. Death, loss of property, loss of employment, loss of shelter, mental trauma, separation from family members, structural collapse, and lack of food and water sometimes lead to riotous and unmanageable situations. Disasters are categorized into fast-onset and slow-onset types. The fast-onset disasters are characterized with immediate impacts, such as air crashes, earthquakes, landslides, cyclones, and typhoons. The slow-onset disasters are characterized with long exposure time, gradual impacts that extend over several months or years, and a high degree of predictability. Such disasters are droughts, famines, desertification, soil degradation, environmental damage, and loss of vegetation. Slow-onset disasters are taking a heavy toll on human lives and public health, and are regularly on the increase. As it is easily observable, an extensive loss of farmland, respiratory problems, and damage to human skin can be anticipated as direct effects of slow-onset disasters. These can make people more susceptible to sickness and disease.

Disasters are events that cause havoc in a nation and bring about destruction, adversity, misery, and damage to life and property. Disasters are the result of natural hazards and man-made or synthetic hazards. Natural disasters are caused due to the occurrence of earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, windstorms, floods, droughts, health hazards such as pandemics, epidemics, and so on. Realization of the losses at the root and national level is currently very commonly related to natural hazards. Human-made or synthetic disasters are caused by accidental or planned events, such as the Bhopal gas tragedy, Chernobyl nuclear disaster, chemical spills, oil spills, fire, and bursting of dams. They result in the deaths and permanent disability of a large number of people and economic losses. Today, the world is experiencing loss and adversity as a result of a variety of disasters that occur across the globe. The class of disasters, no longer confined to natural hazards, has created chaos resulting in social, economic, and environmental disruptions. The entire disaster management community in response has had to reorient itself to address not only natural and slow-onset disasters, but also complex emergencies brought about by conflicts and unnatural set of events.

4. Effective Strategies in Disaster Preparedness and Response

The final section of the paper reviews basic principles and underlying philosophies that should guide disaster preparedness and response policy at all levels of government. Disaster management policies and program design should reflect the following principles: Incorporate all elements and phases of disaster management; locating primary responsibilities and policy-setting authority at the lowest practical level to ensure comprehensive local decision-making; recognizing that a successful national disaster management program is built on effective and sustained partnerships among state, local, and tribal governments; and other organizations; and including specific procedures for sharing program costs associated with disasters with state and local governments, and with private, voluntary, and religious organizations.

Given the diversity of hazards and communities, no single set of policies and programs works best in all circumstances or communities. Nevertheless, strategies for specific types of disaster preparedness and response should be based on overarching principles that have been found to improve disaster outcomes. What follows is a list of strategies organized to apply to different components of disaster preparedness and response including structural mitigation, nonstructural remedies, land use planning, emergency preparedness, emergency warning, emergency response, disaster recovery, and addressing special needs in particularly at-risk communities. Underlying all these strategies is the assumption that done effectively, disaster preparedness and response holds the potential to protect lives and property, strengthen communities, enhance economic growth, promote environmental awareness, and build a better future.

5. Conclusion and Future Directions

These strategies are a cry for worries and meditation for disaster management practitioners and the advocates. The results presented are expected to add momentum to new and more effective means to construct, mitigate, and rebuild the damaged facilities as well as encouraging a way to seek the risks involved in the prevalent society which endeavors to encapsulate the system risks within tolerable thresholds. However, this study sown a garden for a complete research ecosystem not only for practitioners but also it is a fountain of derived components, fruits, and vegetables for students who intend to develop their skills through business schools and academic ties.

The disaster management life cycle is attaining a high profile within the government, private, and non-government sectors. Certainly, public and private companies have to encounter the hazardous event with decisive, expeditious steps to racial and abate the destructive consequences following the catastrophic event that often dares the normal emergency response capability. The study attains a stepping stone in formulating different strategies and tactics in the disaster management life cycle from the configuration of life cycle phases and introduced the strategies imparted with this global phenomenon of disaster management.

Conclusion and Future Directions

Strategies are intended not only for use by the people directly involved in disaster preparedness, management, and response, but also for decision makers who authorize or fund disaster preparedness activities, which endeavors to encapsulate the system risks within tolerable thresholds. The speed of mitigation and recovery is a rare public asset and phenomenon which is indispensable to be preserved through different strategies and tactics so that in the advent of disaster, the people can hurriedly mitigate the damage and take the steps towards reconstitution. The analyzed framework is anticipated to aid the vulnerability reduction of the community from different disasters and attain an efficient disaster management plan from the contribution of strategists and the multi-disciplinary practitioners.

Natural, man-made, or technological disasters are present around the world, and several nations have designed disaster management plans to counter this ill-omened occurrence of nature and to assist the citizens in the war of defense against them. The governments have formulated policies and missions to perform these emergent and time-sensitive activities and to reward the instrumental framework to achieve risk reduction and the aim to accumulate and use the material in disaster mitigation and recovery. With respect to this fact, this study explores an analysis of categories in disaster management, covering the disaster management life cycle. This also gives different strategies and tactics on system disaster preparedness and reconstitution.