Disaster Management Community

National Consultation

On

“Enhancing Knowledge and Innovation for Effective Disaster Risk Reduction in India”

06 December, 2014At

The Metropolitan Hotel, Bangla Sahib Road, New Delhi

Supported under

GOI-UNDP Project on Enhancing Institutional and Community Resilience to Disasters and Climate Change

Background:

Solution Exchange is an initiative of the United Nations that connects development professionals with similar interests ("Communities of Practice") for the purpose of sharing knowledge and experience towards the common objective of problem-solving. Communities are organized around national development priorities, contributing to their successful achievement. This platform in which the UN serves as a catalyst and plays a facilitation role was launched in India in 2005. Solution Exchange connects development professionals in similar fields from diverse organizations ranging from Government, bilateral and multilateral development partners, and non-governmental organizations to academics, corporate, and media. This is done through an email based network and frequent face to face interactions.

In view of the importance attached to disaster management in India, a community of practice on Disaster Management was launched in April 2007 jointly by the then Vice Chair Person of the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) and the UN Resident Coordinator. It is a network of professionals having expertise in various aspects of Disaster Management phases such as preparedness, mitigation, warning and dissemination, response, recovery and reconstruction as well as long-term development planning. This community, currently with 3200+ members has been addressing various issues and challenges specific to reducing disaster risk and mainstreaming disaster management in the development process through approximately 156 discussions and 126 updates (information provided by members on launch of websites, documents, publications, etc.,). The DM-CoP has generated lively discussion while reviewing of Disaster Management Act-2005, preparing various Disaster Management Guidelines, developing of Knowledge portal on best practices on Disaster Management and on Water Purification Technologies for the affected areas during Kosi floods in Bihar.

National Consultation:While the DM-CoP has been vibrant and discussing various emerging issues

pertaining to Disaster Management in the country, quite often many of the grass-roots practitioners have been expressing their concern over the limitation of the COP to reach out to the communities that are not connected to email and those who find difficult to articulate in English. While the Resource team made an attempt to overcome some of the barriers, there has not been any tangible breakthrough.

With the changes in the climate that influence incidents of extreme events and the national international discourses on various aspects of disaster management, the subject in India as such has been receiving more attention. Several Universities in India are now offering regular courses on disaster management and has been undertaking research on issues related to disaster management. However, many of the knowledge products developed by the academic/research institutions remain in their domain. Many of these institutions are also unable to enter into partnership and benefit from each other’s work.

The Resource Team of the DM-CoP has been discussing the above concerns with various experts and it was felt that the members need to have a face to face open discussion on some these issues and identify role that DM-CoP can address these concerns as well as issues related to enhancement of effectiveness of DM-CoP. In view of these, we propose to organise a National Consultation on “Enhancing Knowledge and Innovation for Effective Disaster Risk Reduction in India”, to provide an opportunity for the members and select experts to come together and discuss areas of concern to the DM-COP. During the one-day consultation the participants will:

Reflect on the usefulness of the KM products of the CoPs; Identifying Knowledge Partnership and Strategic Collaborations Expanding Community Outreach for Language and Technology

Venue:

The national consultation is being organized on 6th December 2014 at Hotel Metropolitan, Bangla Saheb Road, New Delhi -110001. The program is scheduled from 9.00 a.m. to 4.30 p.m. The participants for the national consultation will be members of Disaster Management Community of Practice, Officials of Government Institutions, CSR Representatives, Academicians and UN Agencies.

Format for the Consultation:After the initial presentation on the work of the Community and the progress

attained till now, the participants will have an opportunity to reflect on the performance of the community and suggest areas of improvement. Subsequently, there would be presentations from experts who have made efforts to foster partnership with various organizations/institutions/agencies to pilot innovations. The presenters will be selected on the basis of their demonstration of past work which implemented peoples’ ideas and they would be requested to share with participants their experience and the challenges they faced while taking it forward.

The afternoon session will focus on the challenges presented in the forenoon as well as other areas of concern. The participants in 2 groups would have an opportunity to respond live to specific queries which would be posted to the community. This will provide an opportunity to other members of the community to participate in the face to face consultation.

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