EAR318 Disaster Management Lecture Notes -Andrew Fox

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Disaster Management By: Andrew Fox

A 1hr lecture for EAR318 module, delivered on 27th January 2014

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Aim

The aim of this lecture is review systems for managing disasters and draw on the

personal experience of the lecturer working as an engineer in the field of disaster

management to help highlight important lessons.

Learning Outcomes

At the end of this lecture students will be able to:

Start to address the question: What is a disaster?

Describe some practical approaches to pre-disaster planning, the emergency

response, disaster relief and long-term disaster recovery

Consider some of the challenges faced by those wishing to engage in disaster

management research

Key references for this lecture:

1. HMG (2005a) Emergency Preparedness, Emergency Planning College,

York

2. HMG (2005b) Emergency Response and Recovery, Emergency Planning

College, York

3. Quarantelli E (ed) (1998) What is a disaster? Perspectives on the

question, Routledge, New York

4. Stallings RA (ed) (2002) Methods of Disaster Research, Xlibris, USA

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Some background

Before we delve into the topic of Disaster Management, let me tell you something

about myself. I am a chartered civil engineer, possibly the first civil engineer you may

have encountered on this programme. As a civil engineer I have been deeply

involved in development programmes, both in the UK an in a range of international

locations. But my understanding and involvement in development issues is not why I

am standing in front of you today. I am here because for the past 15yrs, I have taken

an active interest in how disasters are managed.

Very briefly, my awareness of disasters (or the potential for disasters) began in early

childhood experiencing hurricanes and earthquakes in the Caribbean and USA,

volcanoes in the Far East, social conflict in the Middle East and Africa, and floods in

the UK. It was while working in one of these areas (Africa - Seychelles), that I first

became professionally involved in post-disaster recovery operations. The experience

led me to seek out further work in post-disaster situations, and I was successful in

securing a job in Montserrat. There I helped to rebuild settlement areas after the

eruption of a local volcano. Paul Cole and others contributing to this module may

have talked to you about their own experiences on Montserrat.

In Seychelles and Montserrat my job was engineering based - designing and

implementing engineering solutions to local problems. But, I subsequently split away

from mainstream engineering to join the NGO sector. I was employed in Turkey,

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following an earthquake in the Marmara region. There I helped to deliver a

programme of disaster relief projects. These projects were largely logistical in nature,

but also addressed the social impacts of the disaster (help for newly disabled,

training for trauma counsellors and equipping local neighbourhood emergency

response teams). Engineering projects included immediate water supply and

sanitation systems, medium-term improvements to emergency shelters, provision of

transitional shelters and advising on long-term improvements to building safety.

The field experience of disaster management led me to want to learn more about the

subject area. So, I joined the Disaster Management team at Coventry University. The

department was very multidisciplinary, with experts in natural hazards, engineering,

sociology, physical and mental health as well as politics and international relations.

Interestingly (and unexpectedly for me), it also included teaching staff from the

emergency services (fire, police, ambulance and health services). At Coventry my

narrow perspective of disaster management was shattered, as I learned that disaster

management is a truly multi-disciplinary field and I became convinced that anybody

who holds to the belief that it is wrong to think that a single discipline can take

ownership of the field of disaster management.

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What is a disaster?

It may seem like an odd question, but it is one that is fundamental to the study of

disaster management. If we cannot define what a disaster is, then we cannot define

a management strategy to address future disaster events. Enrico L Quarantelli is a

leading author in the field of Disaster Management, and is held-up by some to be

one of the founding fathers of the subject area.

Dr. Quarantelli is widely known as one of the founding scholars of the social

science of disasters. His first involvement in the area dates back to 1949

when he participated in the first systematic disaster field studies as a

researcher in the National Opinion Research Centre (NORC) team at

University of Chicago. Among his many accomplishments ELQ was one of the

founding directors Disaster Research Centre, Ohio State University, 1963.

Was First President, ISA International Research Committee on Disasters,

1982-1986. Was the founder and first editor of the International Journal of

Mass Emergencies and Disasters.

(Source: University of Delaware, Disaster Research Centre, website: www.udel.edu)

Notable amongst his many publications is one that directly addresses the question

posed above. Quarantelli felt compelled to put together his text because of what he

saw as a lack of consensus on the answer to the question. To some extent, the

problem seemed to stem from the multi-disciplinary nature of the subject area, as

each subject discipline had a different way of defining a disaster. Broadly speaking,

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different disciplines focussed on either the social, biological, technical, economic or

environmental impact of a disaster. These sub-divisions are largely accepted in

contemporary studies, but it is interesting to note that these aspects of disaster were

still being questioned as late as the end of the 1990s.

Quarantelli never intended to answer the question. Rather, he sought to generate

some cross-disciplinary debate and to highlight areas of consensus and areas where

opinions differ. The deliberations of Quarantelli and his co-authors raised a number

of ancillary questions, questions like:

Are disasters social constructs or natural events?

Does our definition of disaster contain a gender bias or a bias towards

a Western/Developed World perspective?

Is disaster research changing how we define disasters?

Are disasters systemic events or social catalysts?

Why do disasters keep happening?

Some progress has been made in addressing these questions over the last 15yrs,

but they are questions that you may wish to explore in more depth yourselves.

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Disaster Management Planning, Response and Recovery

One thing that became clear to me when I joined Coventry University was that

planning for disasters is not a field devoid of history. My experience had led me think

that disasters were unanticipated events, but at Coventry I was able to explore the

subject beyond the boundaries of my engineering discipline. I quickly learned that

social anthropologists have known for a long time that humans have always lived

with exposure to events that threaten our survival. All my social science colleagues

stressed that the fact that we humans have survived many crises is a clear indicator

that we have developed systems for managing them. What they considered is that,

as our societies have become more complex the articulation of our crisis

management system has become lost in the milieu of the media that surrounds us.

My psychology colleagues claimed that disaster management is an innate human

characteristic. To them, all mentally sound individuals have an in-built ability to

manage crises at the personal level. However, at the collective level, the

management systems require formalisation.

Let me explain this a little bit more before we go further:

If we accept the view that disasters are social constructs. Then, at the heart of

every disaster are human individuals and all disasters will include at least one

personal, human, tragedy.

As stated above, we humans all have an innate ability to survive tragedy. We

do this by mobilising reserves of a wide diversity of capital resources: human,

social, economic, physical and cultural capitals.

Humans rarely live in isolation and many of their capital resources are derived

from or accessed through other humans in a complex array of social relations.

Put another way, our coping mechanisms may be described as being founded on the

premise that:

While I accept that I need to rely on my own capital reserves to survive the

initial effects of the disaster, for my long-term survival I will expect to receive

(or give) support from (or to) other human beings.

Quarantelli and his associated have worked hard to explain the issues inherent to

the first bullet point. Psychologists have largely led the work to understand

mechanisms underpinning the second bullet point. As an engineer, my work has

largely been undertaken to address the third bullet point, and in that field I have been

supported by Political Scientists, Sociologists, Human Geographers and Social

Anthropologists (amongst others).

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At this point, I must acknowledge that what I have described is just the human

aspects of disasters. You may well be aware that, within a disaster management

system, there is a need also to understand the mechanisms causing disasters. To

achieve that, disaster managers need the input of a different set of specialists the

physical and environmental scientists. These specialists are needed to provide

explanations of the processes that trigger disaster events (e.g. floods, tsunamis,

earthquakes, hurricanes, etc.) and their input is vital when developing plans to

maximise the effectiveness of limited resources.

If you look closely at the systems for managing disasters, you will find that are

generally divided into a number of areas that span pre-planning and post-event

management. This is often described as the Disaster Cycle. Pre-event planning

focusses on disaster preparedness and mitigation. Post-event planning is split into

three main phases: first is the short-term or emergency phase. Second is the

medium-term or disaster relief phase, and third is the long-term recovery or

reconstruction phase. Depending on the nature and scale of the event, the post-

event phases may last hours, days, weeks, years or even decades. Similarly, and

because disasters are infrequent events, pre-event planning may have to be

maintained for equally long periods of time.

Extended periods of time stuck in the pre-planning cycle of disaster management

can have a detrimental effect on the post-event response, as people forget details of

the plan. In addition, the larger the disaster the greater is the delay in mobilising a

response. Specifically, before a disaster plan is enacted, all other crisis management

systems must first be deployed and found wanting (or fail) before a disaster is

declared. For very large disasters and in areas with robust systems to deal with crisis

events, scaling up to a disaster response can take an extended period of time. The

paradox here is that, in disasters, the needs of victims are most acute, but helps is

often slower to arrive than in less acute circumstances. This scenario reinforces the

claims made above, that: in disasters victims need to rely on self-help and/or the

helps of local survivors in the immediate aftermath of an event.

I do not intent to delve any more deeply into the subject of disaster management at

the individual level. Instead I will focus on disaster management at the collective

level. As I stated above, long-term disaster survival is directly related to the ability of

the collective system to recover from the shock of the disaster and for pre-prepared

plans to be put into practice. It is towards the development of those collective plans

that we now turn our attention.

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Developments in disaster planning

In 2002 I set out on my own personal quest to make a contribution to the general

improvement of disaster planning. I presented a paper based on my experience in

Montserrat to a meeting of some like-minded engineers and architects (called the i-

Rec group). After that meeting I worked with some of the organisers to formulate a

planning process designed to capture much of the thinking at that time relating to

disaster planning. We built on our original concepts by organising a series of

international conferences that brought together a broader pool of theorists and

practitioners and debate continues to evolve...

Being engineers and architects, our initial plan focussed on hazards that pose the

greatest risk of damage to the infrastructure that developed societies rely on for their

well-being (thus we immediately fell foul of the bias identified by Quarantelli, and

mentioned above).

Historically, we (architects and engineers) had focussed on the physical impact of

hazards on the urban environment. We knew that that any planning system needed

to quantify the risk of potential disaster occurrences. But new research was

suggesting that our traditional focus on large events with statistically low frequency

obscured the fact that much damage is caused by smaller but more frequent events.

We were also aware that during the 1980s and early 1990s the concept of

vulnerability had become a big issue and efforts were being made to incorporate its

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principles into the planning process. We felt therefore, that our disaster planning

proposals should harness the strengths of vulnerability analysis.

At the time, we were also aware that the media was becoming increasing able to

report up-to-the-minute news on a global scale. Disasters were becoming widely

reported and as people became more aware of the consequences of disasters, the

public perception to disaster risk was changing. This growth in globally connected

media and the changes in public perception placed new pressures on disaster

managers, requiring some re-education and modification to traditional ways of

working.

By the end of the millennium, studies in vulnerability had evolved to include

environmental issues. That blending led to emergence of sustainable development

as a strong point of focus for development planners. Governments across the world

adopted the aims of sustainable development and placed duties on planners to

produce strategies designed to secure a long-term sustainable future of local

communities.

All these things were incorporated into our disaster planning framework

The i-Rec framework for disaster planning:

1. Vulnerability assessment and risk mapping

2. Survey of traditional systems to deal with risk and vulnerability

3. Evaluation of traditional system performance in the face of disasters

4. Consideration of modern techniques to reduce vulnerability

5. Development of disaster response plans to include emergency and long term

redevelopment

6. Education of industry practitioners

7. Strengthening of inter-agency arrangements

8. Development of community participation schemes

9. Instigation of environmental monitoring systems

10. Performance evaluation

11. Dissemination of evaluation results

Within the framework it is possible to identify areas where expertise from different

sectors may play a more prominent role.

1 & 2 rely heavily on local planners and architects

3 & 4 benefit from academic and international input

5 & 6 utilise skills of emergency planners

7 & 8 are multi-sectoral based

9, 10 & 11 benefit from independent and specialist observers

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The amalgamation of all the above historic developments in the disaster planning

process has given rise to the concept of resilience. This concept has a focus on

disaster and addresses the ability of the community to recover following the impact

of a disaster. It is possible to translate this more specifically in terms of a planning

process designed to achieve resilience:

For a community to improve its resilience to a disaster impact, it must first

undergo a process of hazard identification:

All risks associated with hazards need to be quantified in order to assess

priorities for further investigation and dedication of resources:

Examining socio-economic factors allows vulnerability to be mapped in

relation to the risks and hazards faced by the community. This is a particularly

important process, because vulnerability can be considered the root cause of

disaster.

Incorporating environmental considerations ensures that sustainability factors

are fully evaluated.

All of the above can be done prior to the disaster impact.

Actions to improve resilience following the disaster impact include:

Develop procedures to assist the community in meeting all its immediate

survivability needs:

Implement long term plans which will allow recovery to happen as quickly and

as efficiently as possible:

Incorporate any lessons learned as a result of the disaster

My interest in recent years has focussed on resilience planning, but I will not develop

that concept further now, because I understand that Prof Geoff Wilson will be

delivering a lecture next week, specifically about Resilience.

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Civil contingency planning in the UK

In parallel to my work with the i-Rec group, I have been studying the UK system for

managing disasters.

The UK government does not use the term disaster management. Instead it has

traditionally talked about emergency planning or civil contingency planning. There

is also a perception within the planning authorities that, unlike other parts of the

world, the UK is not prone to disasters. That perception is representative of the

somewhat closed and institutionalised system for dealing with disaster planning in

the UK. However, following the events of 11th September 2001 (9/11) the British

Government began to think seriously about its arrangements for civil contingencies.

This facet of governance had suffered a long slow decline in importance from the

end of the Second World War, through the demise of the Soviet Union and after the

cessation of violence in Northern Ireland. Ultimately this manifest itself in the repeal

of Civil Protection laws and the blurring of direct responsibility for Civil Protection in

the Government structure.

By 2001 the situation in the UK had reached what may be described as a low point.

No statutory duties existed to plan for civil contingencies at the local level and the

roles and responsibilities of those agencies involved in the response to any civil

emergency had become unclear. 9/11 provided a sharp reminder of the vulnerability

of all nations to the threat of terrorism but it also came on top of a series of other civil

crises in the UK including the BSE crisis in the early 1990s, the Foot and Mouth

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outbreak of 2000, the Paddington and Hatfield train crashes in 1995 and 2000 and

repeated flooding events across the country during the 1990s and into the new

millennium. In 2003 the British Government resolved to take action and remedy the

situation by setting out a new agenda for dealing with Civil Contingencies. The

centrepiece for this agenda was the Civil Contingency Act 2004.

The 2004 Act created new duties for responder organisations and provided a

framework within which these duties were to be enacted. The essence of this

agenda was one of multi-disciplinary and multi-hazard planning; engaging the full

range of structural and non-structural measures to mitigate potential hazards.

After the Act came into force two important guidance documents were published.

The first part (HMG 2005a) relates to Preparedness Planning and is intended to be

viewed as statutory Guidance (with a capital G), the second part (HMG 2005b)

relates to Response and Recovery and the guidance is viewed as discretionary (with

a small g).

The Act created what it termed: a duty to assess, plan and advise. It also

established a two-tier grouping of responder organizations who are obliged to

cooperate with each other in order to implement this new duty:

Category 1 responders

Local authorities

Emergency services

Category 2 responders

Utility companies

Transport companies

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Health services

The Environment Agency

The Health and Safety Executive

The civil contingencies agenda in the UK is well summarised by the eight principles

of effective response and recovery (HMG 2005b: 6):

1. Continuity of service before, during and after critical incidents

2. Preparedness for all hazards and degrees of complexity in crisis

situations

3. Subsidiarity ensuring that decisions are taken at the lowest

appropriate level

4. Direction by clarity in understanding response and recovery

objectives

5. Integration of planning and response by a collective of responder

groups

6. Cooperation between all relevant individuals and organisations at all

levels

7. Communication without delay to those that need to know, including the

public

8. Anticipation of ongoing risks and indirect consequences following

incidents and actions

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The 2004 Act also introduced the concept of a risk register, stressing that the

development of such a register requires multi-agency cooperation, achieved using

Local Resilience Forums working in Local Resilience Areas. Category 1

responders must participate in the forums and Category 2 responders may be

involved as appropriate.

Both the guidance documents (HMG 2005a, 2005b) recognise that not every

organisation involved in a response is identified or covered by the Act and they

emphasise that it is not intended that such organisations are to be excluded, stating

that Category 1 responders should encourage organisations which are not covered

by Part 1 of the Act to co-operate in planning arrangements (HMG 2005a: 160).

For example: the voluntary sector is identified as playing a potentially important role,

and Category 1 responders are required include these organisations in the planning

process. How such collaborations work in practice is not made clear, so voluntary

organisations are required to set out exactly what kind of service they can provide

and ensure that they train their staff to fulfil any emergency planning or response

role.

Information sharing and providing advice is also required by the 2004 Act.

Responders have a duty to share information with each other and this information

sharing is seen as an important part in developing the culture of cooperation

intended by the Act. But the Act stops short of full participation and disclosure by

admitting some information should be controlled if its release would be

counterproductive or damaging in some other way (HMG 2005a: 25). In this regard,

emphasis is placed on categorising types of information and obtaining consent for its

disclosure.

The Act also places a duty on responders to communicate with the public. This duty

is split into two distinct forms. First is warning and informing the public and applies

before, during and after an emergency event. Second is providing business

continuity planning advice to local businesses (HMG 2005a).

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Pre-event planning

A major proportion of the Guidance (HMG 2005a) is dedicated to planning and it

states clearly that emergency planning is at the heart of the new duties placed on

responders. The plans in question are required to address the prevention, reduction,

control and mitigation of emergencies and their effects.

Plans must enable the determination of when an emergency has occurred, provide

for the training of key staff and involve exercising and review of the plan. What risks

to plan for are the responsibility of the local responders to decide and in this they are

encouraged to work collectively. The risks may be dealt with using generic plans or

by specific plans.

Emergency and Business Continuity plans are developed in a six-step process:

1. Contextualisation consider the social community, the environment,

infrastructure and hazardous sites

2. Hazard review and allocation for assessment identify hazards of a

generic and site-specific nature and assign the people and processes to

be used for the review

3. Risk analysis assess likelihood and impact of risks within a five-year time

frame

4. Risk evaluation combine likelihood and impact assessments in order to

rate the significance of risks

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5. Risk treatment prioritise risk-reduction measures in accordance with the

rating of risks

6. Monitoring and review undertake a full and formal review at appropriate

intervals to suit the level of the risk.

At the regional level, both local and central level representatives were obliged to

work together to address larger scale civil protection issues. However, in 2010 the

new Conservative party Government abolished all regional governance bodies and

with that went the regional tier of emergency planning.

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Post-event planning

The range of agencies involved in response and recovery activities is recognised as

being more extensive than for planning and preparedness. As such, the tight duties

in relation to Category 1 and 2 responders are not so evident. The guidance

(HMG2005b) reinforces the established system of response coordination using the

Bronze, Silver and Gold command and control structure but is enhanced with

additional guidance for localised, wide-area, terror and maritime incidents.

The focus for response and recovery activities is listed as:

saving and protecting life

relieving suffering

containing the emergency

providing warnings, advice and

information

protecting personnel

safeguarding the environment

protecting property

restoring critical services

maintaining services

promoting and facilitating self-help

facilitating investigations

facilitating socio-economic recovery

evaluating response.

The guidance (HMG 2005b) explains that Civil Contingency Committees will be

convened when they can provide added value to a response. Their role will be to

collate and maintain a strategic picture, assess what issues can be resolved at local

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level, facilitate mutual aid and ensure an effective flow of information between central

and local level.

When central government support is required in a response, a Lead Government

Department (LGD) will be designated to head the Government response (HMG

2005b). The LGD can decide on the use of emergency powers, mobilise military or

other national assets, enact counter security measures and manage international

relations and any public information strategy.

The response and recovery guidance (HMG 2005b) also includes advice on the

focus for humanitarian assistance, by identifying what such programmes should

cater for, namely:

injured and uninjured survivors,

families and friends,

the deceased,

rescuers and response workers,

children and young people,

religious and cultural minority groups,

the elderly

the disabled

It is my belief that the enactment of the Civil Contingency Act 2004, and the

publication of the two associated sets of guidance has created a robust system for

disaster management in the UK. This system correlates well with academic theory

for the effective management of disasters and, although crisis event continue to

occur, the organisational system for dealing with the consequences of disasters

continues to perform reasonably well. Of course, you may have other views on this.

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Challenges in disaster management research

Before I finish I just want to say a few words about disaster management research.

It is possible that, like me, some of you may be considering pursuing a line of work

that will engage you in disaster research.

Throughout this lecture I have continually referred to the very human nature of the

subject area, and you may not be surprised to learn that social science

methodologies dominate this aspect of disaster research.

Robert Stallings said:

The types of methods used in social science research on disasters are not unique.

Yet, people well-trained and with experience in survey research or qualitative

methods will find that the study of disasters is different.

(Source: Stallings 2002, p21)

Stallings dedicated an entire book to explaining how and why disaster research is

different, so I will just share a few of his insights here.

I believe it would be fair to say that when Stallings is describing the differences

between normal research and disaster research he is describing the differences

that relates to research conducted just before, during and immediately after an

event. Research conducted in the pre-event planning and medium to long-term post-

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event phases is less likely to suffer the challenges he describes. But, what I believe

he is emphasising is that, due to its unique challenges, the event phase is the least

understood aspect of a disaster and most in need of further research.

For Stallings, human behaviours during the course of, and immediately after, a

disaster event present special challenges. He describes late arriving researchers as

being faced by growing problems, as agency officials become more wary of negative

public reactions to their actions, and concerns grow about possible litigation and the

like. What Quarantellis group at the DRC did to address this, was embed

researchers in responder agencies in advance of a disaster. While embedded they

were able to build trust agency personnel and become familiar with systems and

process that would be used to manage the disaster response.

Stallings also stressed that in the midst of a crisis people are often unwilling to talk

about unfolding events. This situation may be reversed in later life, but memories of

events can sometimes be unreliable. For Stallings, the issue here is that disaster

data are perishable, and the lack of time between the disaster occurrence and the

fielding of research teams, means that important information can easily be missed.

Here again Quarantelli and his team at the DRC tried to address this by not just

training their researchers in relevant methods and techniques, but also in how to

cope with the specific disaster context. They maintained teams of researchers, ready

to deploy at short notice, and when mobilised they tried to flood a disaster area with

researchers in an effort to collect as much data as quickly as possible.

Field based disaster research in such a context can be exciting. And, to paraphrase

Stallings: some people are good at mucking about in the world of real human

beings.others are better at analysing data on a computer. When I was at Coventry

we were approached by the University of Christchurch in New Zealand who had

been working with the UN in disaster zones across the globe. The University had

collected vast amounts of data in manner similar to how the DRC collected its data.

Just like the DRC they were then left with a problem lots of data, but too few

researchers to process it. Clearly there is no shortage of researchers willing to

engage in the exciting world of field-based disaster research there is more of a

problem finding resources to spend on processing the data.

Stallings also pointed to a global imbalance in the bulk of disaster research data

collected. Specifically, most of it related to disasters in the developed world and

there is little known about the great majority of disasters that happen in the

developing world. Related to that was his judgement that researchers are not

ethnically balanced, which has an impact in the ability of researchers to collect and

interpret data in alien counties and cultures.

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Conclusion

At the start of this lecture I stated that my aim was to review systems for managing

disasters and draw on my personal experience to help highlight important lessons in

the subject.

I presented a short synopsis of the work Enrico Quarantelli had undertaken to help

define what is a disaster? The question was not effectively answered, and a number

of ancillary questions were presented. The lesson here is that, as a truly multi-

disciplinary field the definition of disaster varies depending on your disciplinary

perspective. What is important is to try and learn where your discipline shares some

common understanding with other disciplines and where differences remain.

I went on to describe some practical approaches to pre-disaster planning, the

emergency response, disaster relief and long-term disaster recovery. In so doing I

presented you with some of the work I and a number of colleagues in the i-Rec

group developed and I outlined the UK civil contingency planning system. I describe

the UK system as fitting well with the academic theory and providing a robust

framework for managing disasters in the UK.

In the last part of my lecture I presented some of the challenges faced by those

wishing to engage in disaster management research. Drawing heavily on the work of

Robert Stallings I explained some of the unique challenges faced when trying to do

research just before, during and immediately after an event.

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I hope that my talk has given you some insight into the subject area of disaster

management and that some of you may even be inspired (despite the challenges) to

engage with this field of study at some future point in your careers.

Thank you for listening.

Andrew Fox

January 2014

Documents

EAR318 Disaster Management Lecture Notes -Andrew Fox