III. INFORMATION NEEDS OF STAKEHOLDERS
7. The disaster management community, one group of stakeholders,
is the initiator of user requirements as well as the beneficiary
of the information products developed to effectively meet
the decision-making needs for comprehensive disaster management.
The community in most of the countries in the region has
many members (GDIN, 1997):
- Government (intergovernmental and inter-agency): national,
provincial, local and international agencies in connection
with emergency management, along with overall management
of floods and drought;
- The private sector or public domain: for awareness,
search and rescue, and critical infrastructure support,
as well as overall management;
- Voluntary and non-governmental organizations: for assisting
with relief and rehabilitation; mitigation, preparedness
and public education;
- Academia and the research community: for research and
development support, data analysis, development of decision-support
tools and public policy analysis.
It is worth mentioning that the community of stakeholders
is undergoing rapid transformation as it assimilates critical
technologies to improve the quality of disaster management.
The community includes the most interdisciplinary public
service professionals, cuts across all sectors of development
and implements all aspects of disaster management policies
and plans on the ground.
A. Policies: Trends
and Strategies
8. Creating resilient societies is indeed a long-term vision.
The global consensus on this has been demonstrated on several
occasions. While disaster management policies, especially
in developing countries, broadly address all phases of disaster
management, in actuality much of the focus has been on disaster
response rather than mitigation and preparedness. Having
learned much from disasters in recent times, the Yokohama
Strategy and Plan of Action for a Safer World and the International
Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction (IDNDR) set the following
broad goals, as part of the global strategy towards sustainable
development (ISDR, 2002):
- National evaluations of vulnerability and of the risks
posed by natural hazards;
- Medium- and long-term mitigation and prevention plans
with cross-sectoral linkages, at the national and local
level, including preparedness and community awareness
campaigns;
- Access to worldwide, regional, national and local warning
systems, in addition to the widespread broadcasting of
warnings.
Recognizing the vitality of disaster management for poverty
alleviation and sustainable development, Millennium Development
Goals and the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD)
could also successfully cultivate global opinion in this
direction. In fact, WSSD provided a timely reminder to the
international community that faulty development and inappropriate
use of resources are contributing factors in natural disasters.
The Johannesburg Plan of Implementation includes commitments
related to disaster and vulnerability reduction and improved
early warning.
9. It is clear that the growing trend to develop reduction
plans by stakeholders derives from the ongoing shift from
post-event relief and recovery to pre-disaster preparedness,
planning and mitigation, and the decentralization of government
responsibilities. Such plans envisage promoting a risk-based
approach to development in which sustainable development
is based on an understanding and management of all risks
– physical, environmental, economic and social. This total
risk management approach integrates the proactive mitigation
of disaster risk with sustainable development (ISDR, 2002;
Cutter, 2001). By integrating goals for disaster mitigation
into regular development mechanisms of stakeholders, Governments
may achieve the long-term efforts necessary to reduce disaster
vulnerability. National agencies, as well as international
agencies such as the World Bank and the Asian Development
Bank, have begun to require the development of mitigation
plans or the inclusion of mitigation features as part of
their plans and funding for disaster reconstruction.
10. In the above context, there are three types of strategies
being pursued by stakeholders towards disaster reduction
in the region: government-developed, grass-roots/citizen-led
and integrated private-public. The information needs for
pursuing government-developed plans are generally more holistic.
Grassroots mitigation strategies developed through involvement
of NGOs and community-based organizations benefit from public
involvement and support, particularly useful in policy implementation
and public awareness. The most effective strategy has been
partnership efforts, at various levels, involving stakeholders
from both government and grass-roots organizations. These
private-public partnerships are built upon (a) integrating
the financial resources and regulatory role of the Government
with the activism and resources of civil society organizations
and the private sector and (b) sharing information and knowledge.
B. Policies: information
needs for implementation
11 Implementing disaster reduction policies through the
various types of strategies, including private-public partnerships,
needs intensive information support for stakeholders. Broadly,
the information needs in support of implementing these policies
are summarized in table 2. In terms of information support
to the multi-tier hierarchical strategies involving stakeholders at various levels, a
viable decision pyramid
Table 2. Broad information needs
in support of implementing policies
is necessary. Information requirements
in terms of the vulnerability or risk maps addressing multi-tier
hierarchical strategies, for example, show the diversity
of scale, contents, standards, formats and other aspects.
The mapping scale becomes increasingly large as the move
away from strategies of planning and monitoring shifts towards
the implementation by stakeholders at various levels (figure
I).
Figure I. A decision pyramid, based
on the hierarchical needs of information services for stakeholders
at various levels
12. Viable, context–specific information systems
based on primary, core and secondary data sets provide a
trade–off, meeting the information needs through multisectoral
information integration. This has been demonstrated by several
case studies and operational practices in some of the developing
countries in the region (Dehqanzada and Florini, 2000).
The information system may be classified into two categories:
(a) pre-disaster baseline data about the country and risks
and (b) post-disaster real-time data on the impact and the
resources available to combat it. These systems could be
organized with the synthesis of spatial and attribute data
sets to deliver the necessary products and services, as
listed in table 2.
13. Early warning systems have made a substantial contribution
to overall risk reduction objectives by enabling vulnerable
groups to take timely action to mitigate loss and damage
in advance of an impending hazard. Existing early warning
capabilities for floods and drought, however, are often
limited to the monitoring, forecasting and telecommunication
aspects. The multi-tier information systems, in conjunction
with effective early warning systems, cater primarily to
the information needs of stakeholders at the various levels.
Using them in conjunction requires the development of institutional
capacity for risk analysis, warning, disaster preparedness
and communication at the local level, as well as the horizontal
and vertical flow of information.
C. Setting the goals
14. A survey of nodal disaster management (information)
agencies in 22 countries of the region, carried out to find
out which of their priority activities are funded by the
national government or international agencies, has revealed
the following priority rating (figure II): hazard zonation
and risk
Figure II. Results of the survey
conducted on priority activities by disaster management
agencies in Asia and the Pacific
assessment (91%), early warning (81%), emergency communication
(64%), impact mapping (45%) and damage assessment (27%).
The surveyed countries are listed in annex I. Giving the
highest priority to hazard zonation and risk assessment
substantiates the perception that these activities are central
to their disaster management framework. Obviously, information
support is necessary to strengthen these activities. The
goals could accordingly be (a) hazard zonation and risk
assessment, (b) early warning systems, (c) emergency communication
and (d) impact and damage assessment. All of these are highly
information - and technology - intensive. It is important
that the capabilities in the developing countries be strengthened
to pursue such goals.
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