crisis and disaster management

crisis and disaster management

Effective Strategies in Crisis and Disaster Management

1. Introduction to Crisis and Disaster Management

A complex society is subject to unexpected crises and severe, far-reaching disasters. These emergencies cause loss of life, major property damage, and public and political mismanagement of the emergency response and recovery efforts. Crises and disasters produce a heightened level of public communication about policy making and the political response of government. The public response in critical situations requires the utmost skill and leadership ability for dealing with ambiguity, uncertainty, and stress that disorients citizens. The condition usually disposes individuals to unusual behavior, institutional and resource conflict, and risk to one’s own life and immediate family members. An effective emergency response requires recognizing and analyzing a dynamic, chaotic shifting of political and administrative decision-making priorities in real time.

2. Key Concepts and Theoretical Frameworks

Crisis and disaster are words that are often heard and of particular interest to scholars from different disciplines who are in the area of crisis and disaster management. What is a crisis then? What is a disaster? A crisis is generally defined as a crucial stage, a form of a disease in which the outcome will make a great difference, and of which the consequences might be both favorable and unfavorable. According to Hill et al., a crisis is an event that “increases elements of uncertainty and elements of fear and often with the requirement for immediate and quick decisions that may be less than optimal.” They also claim that crises are difficult to predict, therefore making it harder to plan and prepare. In some cases, the time between knowing a crisis is going to happen and the actual crisis is minutes; there is really nothing that can be done to prepare in that time. However, there are many crisis events that can actually be predicted and that actually get addressed in advance. The severity of this type of crisis can be decreased. According to Fink, crises such as heart attacks and fluctuations in the business world are manageable if decisions are rapid and well executed. As a result, it has become an industry standard in companies that high-risk events are predicted effectively in advance, and negative consequences limited. Crises can have widening consequences and affect organizations far removed from the initial event. In addition, crises vary in terms of size, geography, culture, governance, size, scope, duration, and death toll.

Crisis and Disaster: Key Concepts

Since some key concepts and theoretical frameworks need to be clarified at the beginning of the Special Issue on “Technological Advances in Educational Crisis and Disaster Management,” this manuscript gives a definition of the basic concepts such as crisis, disaster, emergencies, crisis management, disaster management, and disaster education. It lists examples of various forms of crisis and disasters that can happen, including fires, earthquakes, and school shootings, among others. It also provides a summary of key theoretical models in crisis and disaster management in literature.

Context:

3. Best Practices in Preparedness and Mitigation

Natural hazards, such as floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, and earthquakes, have occurred throughout human experience and are now coupled with our man-made environmental systems, such as industrial pollution, toxic waste, and oil spills, to become a major threat to human physical, social, cultural, and economic well-being. Advances have occurred for effective responses to hazard impacts which are explicitly designed to minimize human pain and societal dislocation. Namely, in preparedness and mitigation activities. As a society with a progressive social memory of tension and consequences is established, the concept of the inherent lethality of a specific hazard is gradually disproven. Preparedness actions that recognize a special hazard in all public and private decision-making can reduce, by societal agreement, the risks associated with the occurrence of that specific hazard. As long as a social consensus exists to accept the financial, the scientific, and the physical capital investment characteristic of that risk prevention.

The articles in this special issue provide much evidence of the progressive developments in the capability of human organizations to deliver great effectiveness in the management of crisis and disasters. Prevailing conceptions in social science would lead us to expect fragmented systems and divided institutions. Individual responsibility and social identity conveyed necessarily dampen the degree of reward in managing collective problems. These articles demonstrate the reverse and support conclusions about best practices, best designs, best methods, best evidence, and best validation. They can also point the way forward to what must be a key requirement for any social system’s claims to legitimacy. In the nomenclature of de Tocqueville, the collaborative capacity to address the really major problems of the modern world. In reminding ourselves of that capacity, we might help the thousands who have been convinced for over a decade of the invincibility of the dysfunctional castle they have had to work in. And whom we know can produce so much greater achievements for good management.

4. Response and Recovery Strategies

8. Planning and E-MIMIC’s Role in Recovery from Crisis Historically, people recover from a crisis or disaster using their own initiative, family support, community resources, and public assistance. Material goods are replaced, homes, businesses, and lost social services are rebuilt. However, after the extraordinary response by family, friends, and community in the short term, values, attitudes, and motivations return to their usual workings. The ideological, geopolitical, and personal power strategies that contribute to a disaster are not influenced by the disaster per se, even if the situation changes in ways that usually lead towards reversing previous changes and accelerating their growth. The purpose of an action, recovery from the crisis, and the restoration of former policies, planned intentions, and directions is directly related to the continued stability after events.

This section outlines the strategies employed for disaster response and recovery. The response strategies are the operational actions—frequently characterized as the “collapse phase”—to bring the situation to stability and restore services. The recovery actions are meant to rebuild the damaged area and reconstruct services to a state that either eliminates the emergency phase or mitigates the period that would follow—this is frequently referred to as the “disaster mitigation phase.” Both policies as well as initiatives to further enhance the power and readiness of the society before a future threat are discussed.

5. Case Studies and Lessons Learned

Often, local units of government, using their unique knowledge of their communities and the real risks that exist, are much more capable of developing effective strategies for managing crises and disasters. They will be more likely to establish and effectively utilize a Leadership Group than the United States federal government will be successful in its attempts to develop and train managers.

The federal role in this phase of the risk management process has been overwhelmed by public expectations and the increased participation espoused by federalism. With the promulgation of Presidential Decision Directive 39 and Executive Order 13073 and the publication of various response handbooks, like the Federal Response Plan, proactive federal involvement is clearly established. Entities like the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) should provide assistance for local response organizations ahead of incidents, fostering better plans and preparation, and teach, encourage, and sell good response practices and techniques.

Crisis and disaster response in the United States has moved beyond the stage of task delegation. It has evolved (in select locations) to the level of inter-local responsibility.

In discussing leadership and coordination following crisis and disaster, the terms that have been used in this chapter are police chief, fire chief, etc. Also used have been references to the public officials responsible, but these are only for lack of a better term. Simply appending the word “Unified” to “Command” does not imply that a combined group of agencies is working together. Public officials must be at the Unified Command level beyond the rhetoric that a Leadership Group is of a higher rank than an Incident Commander.

Practice has demonstrated that regardless of attention devoted to planning and preparation, any crisis or disaster will bring new or unexpected problems. Of significance, plans for managing crises and disasters are essentially management documents. Managers not trained to work with these plans will be at a significant disadvantage when called on to use them.