Emergency Risk Management: Tsunami as a Natural Disaster - Research Proposal Example

Risk Management – Tsunami Introduction Tsunami is a natural disaster that occurs rarely like all natural calamities. The most recent Tsunami occurredin Asia on December 27, 2004. In all natural disasters, the poor people are most affected as they live on the banks of the rivers or coastal zones that are risk prone to natural calamities like floods caused by earthquakes as in the case of Tsunami. The first after-effect of such a calamity is that water becomes contaminated by bacteria, viruses, parasites and toxic matter. Secondly, food quality gets affected due to crop destruction like fields, fisheries and aquaculture – the whole infrastructure is damaged. There is need to create awareness on the risk management issue in the context of disaster. Disaster management is a crucial part of total risk management system for saving communities from the affects of disaster. Patrick Helm has remarked in an article in Ministry of Civil Defence journal that it requires ‘a structured, systematic and consistent approach that forces the analyst into understanding the total risk picture (Hodges, 2000). There are risk management standards, which need to be followed. These standards provide reasons to integrate risk management into emergency management of a situation that may arise out of natural, environmental, political or business risks. Implications of risks are finally verified. To define it, risk has doubtful implications for happening of something that may impact the aim. Risk can be considered qualitatively as per its effects and possibility of happening. Risk management is related to processes and structure aimed to mitigate the wrong effects and exploit the emerging opportunities. Emergency risk management is carried out in orderly process by employing a number of steps, which add to the welfare of communities and the environment (Hodges, 2000). As risk management is the proper use of management policies, procedures and practices to the job of setting the context and finding, analysing, examining and treating the risks; these are the significant measures of the process. Other crucial parts of the process of risk management are checking, revising, communicating and giving right advice. First of all, a context has to be set, which could be strategic, organisational or the risk management context. The criteria have to be developed to decide the structure of the process. The stakeholders as per the nature of the risk need to identify the risks of happening and think over what can happen and how it can happen. Risks are analysed to measure their possibility of occurrence and the impacts on the stakeholders. Next is the severity of the risk to be managed, whether it is low, mild or life threatening, as some natural disasters can be. To evaluate risks, they are compared against the given criteria so that preferences could be made on attempting to focus on more concerning issues first. Some risks can be avoided through the following steps such as: Postponing the risk – It requires serious consideration, as it may increase the level of other risks. Minimising the possibility – Risk can be reduced through a number of steps as per the situation. For example, it might need review of organisational set up, activation of precautionary measures, use of technical controls or beginning of new research and development. Minimising the results – The effect can be minimised through emergency planning, rehabilitation plans, engineering and structural means and design. Shifting the risk – Certain contracts like insurance covers and joint ventures can shift the risk but society and community at large cannot be saved. Chances are that the related management finds itself incapable of controlling the risk. All the above steps cannot escape the management from the residual risk, which remains and planning to manage the affects of residual risk has to be made. Treatment of risks comes in the last. It requires first of all identifying the choices. Next in line is the evaluation and selection of right options. After selecting the right options, treatment planning has to be prepared to finally implement it (Hodges, 2000). The process of disaster management stated above can be reexamined by knowing the disaster, its origin, its occurrence and how Tsunamis reach the land. How are Tsunamis generated? Tsunamis are generated when the water gets displaced at the bottom of the sea due to tectonic earthquake; it displaces the water. Waves get generated and dislocated water tries to reach the earlier level due to the gravitational pull of the earth’s crust. The perpendicular disturbance of the earth’s crust happens at plate limits. Plates interact beside these limits, which are called faults. For example, in the Pacific Ocean, around the boundaries, heavier oceanic plates sneak below the continental plates due to suction process. Thus, suction earthquakes more often than not are a cause of tsunami generation. How Tsunamis occur? Other than earthquakes, tsunamis also occur due to landslides, volcanic eruptions and cosmic collisions. Submarine landslides and fall of volcanic structures also cause earthquakes by disturbing the water column above as rock pieces and sediments fall heavily sloping downward and are rearranged across the seabed. In the same way, a wild submarine volcanic eruption creates an impelling force that raises the water column resulting in a tsunami. Thus, tsunamis occur due to disturbance at the bottom of the sea. On the contrary, super marine landslides and heavenly bodies’ effect creates disturbance from above as the fast pace of falling debris is shifted to water into which the debris fall. Tsunamis created by these mechanisms break up quickly and hardly have any affect on the coastlines quite far away from their origin where they occur unlike Pacific-wide tsunamis caused by earthquakes. What happens when a Tsunami reaches land? Although energy of tsunami waves is lost because of bottom friction and disturbance yet they reach coastlines with tumultuous power to deplete beaches of sand collected there from many years, eliminating trees and destroying coastal vegetation. Being capable of submerging hundreds of meters inland past the normal high water level, the flooding tsunami can create havoc with coastal buildings. The run up vertical maximum height of a tsunami beyond the sea level could be, thus, 10, 20, and even 30 meters. How do tsunamis differ from other water waves? A tsunami differs from a wind generated shallow water waves in periods and wavelengths. A wind generated rise engendered by a storm could have a period of about 10 seconds and a wavelength of 150 meters. On the contrary, a tsunami’s wavelength crosses 100 km in the time period of 1 hour. Due to the long length of tsunami waves, they act like shallow water waves. When the ratio between a wavelength and water depth becomes very small, it becomes a shallow wave. Scientific explanation Shallow water waves have a speed, which is equal to the square root of the product of the acceleration of the gravity, which are 9.8m/s/s. It means that if we take for an example the Pacific Ocean, where the normal water depth is approximately 4000m, a tsunami travels at a speed of 200m/s, or more than 700km/h. As there is an inverse relation between the loss of energy and length of a wave, tsunamis can travel not only at high speed but can cover big transoceanic distances with very little loss of energy. Precautionary steps to protect from a Tsunami Act on your own risk to move the people after feeling an earthquake. You should have knowledge of local peoples’ preferred route to safe places. You should possess a personal emergency preparedness guidance kit to depend on your own sources of survival for minimum three days. Get ready a kit each for home, car and office. Participate in a first-aid course to learn survival skills. If you are on a boat, don’t try to reach the harbour. In stead go for open water as there is lesser tsunami risk. If you are on a floatplane in a harbour, get started for a safer landing area on a lake or land away from risky area. Switch on a radio station of the concerned area for guidance tips from officials and remain where you feel safe until getting “All Clear” signal from the officials to go back to coastline. Make a call to local fire, police and ambulance service only if there is an emergency. Don’t collect your goods scattered on the beach; just run away to a safer place from the beach or ocean where you are strolling. Don’t go near the coast to view a tsunami as it moves quicker than a person runs. Mostly, local communities specify evacuation routes. In case there is no route signed, choose a route avoiding tidal flats, shores of coastal rivers and bay areas. A tsunami in the Pacific can have a wave height between 21 to 45 feet at the coast as has been seen in the last 80 years. It is interesting to find that local areas are not equally affected by a tsunami -- one area may be severely affected by it while the other may not suffer any type of loss. Role of Technology There are alternate Communication Systems available to alert or warn the people living near the sea shores. A number of technology based systems include Disaster Emergency Logistic Telemedicine Advanced Satellites System developed with support of ESA, the Mozambique Flood Information System developed with the support of the German Aerospace Center (DLR), the GIS-Based Flood Information System (AWRA, 2003), the National Urban Search and Rescue Response System (FEMA, 2003), the Real-Time Emergency Management via Satellite (REMSAT, MDA, 2001) and the UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction. It is quite challenging to manage data, search, interpret, desegregate, visualise and communicate on the basis of the semantics of the heterogeneous geo-informational sources dissimilar in different aspects like scale/resolution, dimension (2D or 3D), classification and attribute schemes, temporal aspects (up-to-date data, history, predictions of the future), spatial reference system used, etc. Analysis of Similar Systems It is of utmost importance to know which system is suitable according to the end-user’s requirements. Some systems are simple while others are very complex. There is variation in complexity from comparatively simple flood risk maps founded on digital topography and previous flood extensions found by satellite to more difficult systems working on a unified multi-risk management system. There are two Canadian examples to observe. (a) The 1997 Red River flood in Manitoba that used RADARSAT-1 data in a near real time mode for mapping flood extent and planning rescue and protection activities in the field. (b) The REMSAT system, developed by MDA and Telesat with the support of CSA, ESA and the telecom industry (MDA 2001). This system proved its efficiency during the severe forest fires that occurred in British Columbia, Canada in 2003. The contribution of European Commission is also noteworthy in taking initiatives under the EU-MEDIN programme to assess, mitigate and integrate geographical information. Again, it is important to make a choice of preferred system according to end user’s capability to make use of the system with in the limitations of its technological environment, recurrent power failures, set computing facilities and communication disturbances. The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration maintain this center for the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission with the sole purpose of mitigating the effects of tsunami throughout the Pacific. Example of Maldives Islands Maldivian community takes pride in their sense of cleanliness. People came forward in cleaning other islands where there was total destruction. They worked and cooperated fully with the foreign teams to resolve the local problems. Maldivians community sense was unassailable but the role played by the civic agencies created chaos. The participation of local communities through local institutions after the occurrence of tsunami and such calamities is very important not only in constructing buildings, roads and economic infrastructure but reconstructing communities, community lives and means of livelihood for a million people facing poverty. The tsunami healing process should be democratically channelised through local level institutions to link it with the peace process. Post tsunami, it was found that there was chaos among different local agencies to provide basic amenities like water and sanitation. Arrangements were not up to mark and full of strife among national, provincial and local institutions. It was made clear by the central authorities that local bodies were responsible to provide infrastructure and look into their own financial health. But right to take decisions on capital investment in creating infrastructure and basic facilities was not with the local institutions. It resulted in debt accumulation. Different reasons were given to the inability of local bodies like their lack of initiative to serve the people or dictatorial attitude of the state governments. In some cases, the state governments took the initiative to arrange smooth flow of funds. There was lack of communication and cooperation among local bodies as to laying of pipelines and joining them to a water plant of another area. Corrupt practices were reported being common in departments serving local issues. Post tsunami, public works departments were performing inefficiently by not utilizing the present resources fully and unnecessarily investing in other areas. Lack of management of financial resources resulted in abatement of corrupt practices. Delay in transfer of funds from national to provincial governments with the problem of either ‘use it or lose it’ led to yearly budgetary reimbursements not properly provided for resources meant resulting in leakage. It promoted haphazard planning. It was also found that post earthquake and tsunami there was lack of human resource power. Management and accountability systems were weak, leaving no scope for evidence to prove connivance of officials to run a parallel system of payments between individuals that existed in the local institutions. There were clear hints that income-earning opportunities were provided to lower staff with the connivance of senior local government staff. After the occurrence of Tsunami, there emerged lack of human power. There was no parameter to measure accountability and management efficiency. There was no system to prove the involvement of senior officers in running equivalent machinery and defrauding by paying for services not rendered. Conclusion The risk management strategies cannot be preplanned as no one can be sure of the loss to life and environment due to natural disasters. Patrick Helm has remarked in a paper in a Ministry of Civil Defence Journal, stating “Risk management strategies of themselves cannot guarantee better performance because of both the role that chance and uncertainly play, and the vagaries associated with human intervention. But the methodologies used for assessing risk can contribute to understanding where the most serious components lie. They can point to the more promising control options, assist policy development, and inform the allocation of resources (Hodges, 2000). A shift towards prevention and variance in service, empowering the community, developing responsibility and encouraging cooperation among government and private agencies is needed. Such disasters need a force of permanent staff and trained man power to face disasters like Tsunami. Setting of priorities is quite significant besides the participation of communities in disaster management processes and decisions. An understanding of the weakness of communities in coming out safely from such disasters is important for agencies. In the context of emergency management, disaster management is related very seriously to the welfare of people bearing the impact of a disaster and their reaction to it. References Journal Hodges, Alan. (2000). Emergency risk management. Risk Management vol. 2(4) pp. 7-18. Palgrave Macmillan Journals. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3867920 Websites http://www.geophys.washington.edu/tsunami/general/mitigation/itic.html http://www.geophys.washington.edu/tsunami/general/physics/meaning.html http://www.geophys.washington.edu/tsunami/general/physics/earthquake.html http://www.geophys.washington.edu/tsunami/general/physics/transform.html http://www.wsspc.org/tsunami/OR/Ore_wave.html http://www.pep.bc.ca/hazard_preparedness/Tsunami_Brochure/Prepare_for_Tsunami.html Read More