Post Disaster Management - Essay Example

Management Post Disaster Management The aim of this paper is to emphasize on the difficulties that can be faced by Humanitarian aid agencies when they are not aware of local cultural system and the problems humanitarian logisticians has to deal with at times of different kinds of disasters. The steps that were followed by the humanitarian aid agencies in past events give an idea to deal with such situations if similar circumstances arise. Post disaster strategies on waste management and reconstruction after disaster will also be discussed briefly in this paper. Research based on past events and the shortcomings in dealing with those events will assist to overcome such problems in future and how organization should manage the disastrous events with the recommendations that were outlined after such past events. Humanitarian aid aims to save lives of helpless people and protect human prestige before, during and after any disaster. In helping people they should also take care of their traditional beliefs, norms and values. “Conflicts are inherent in all societies. While differences in interest and opinions between groups and countries are accepted as natural, how such differences are expressed and managed determines if the conflict will manifest itself in political or violent ways” (Rodonn et al., 2012). Cultural differences can arise between people providing aid and the beneficiaries, which may result in the form of clashes between them. In order to avoid such clashes, measures should be taken to minimize conflict before providing aid and the aid agencies should know about the cultural values of the recipient of aid. Humanitarian agencies should guide the beneficiaries about their work and try to work in accordance with them along with respecting their cultural values. Local communities may also misunderstand the terminologies used by aid agencies and end up ceasing the use of products that have been provided to them. Other to take help to discourage aid program stops some beneficiaries. Humanitarian agencies must be well aware of the conditions of the place, which is struck by disaster, their management should be efficient to know about amount of aid required and the amount of aid they can provide. Aid agencies need to act quickly, efficiently and innovatively towards any act, which may stop the beneficiaries to avail the benefits (Rodonn et al., 2012). Humanitarian Logistics pursue in organizing supplies and stocking the supplies in the warehouse. “The activities of planning, implementing and controlling the efficient, cost effective flow of and storage of goods and material as well as related information, from the point of origin to the point of consumption for the purpose of alleviating the suffering of vulnerable people are known as humanitarian logistics” (Kova ́cs & Spens, 2009). There are different forms of humanitarian organization including big and small, governmental and non-governmental organizations. They try to provide an immediate response to affected areas and restore everyday life. The humanitarian logistic is dealing with different types of natural and man-made disasters. The impact of each disaster is different depending upon the country’s geography and demography. Disaster’s destroying transport infrastructure reduces the speed of aid. Different disasters have different type of impacts on the people and infrastructure. Humanitarian logistics deal differently towards different disasters as they need to plan according to the destruction caused by the disaster. Humanitarian organizations differ from each other in terms of operations also, as some organizations focus on water and sanitation, some on food and shelter and some on children (Kova ́cs & Spens, 2009). “A lack of prior knowledge and proper points of reference have made most of the recovery plans guessing games, eventually failing without adding appropriate values to the recovery attempts” (Karunasena et al., 2012). Research based on past events and data gathered from disaster management database assist the humanitarian supply chain, as they can be much prepared about the region of disaster, effects of the disaster and what measures should be taken to work effectively. Humanitarian agencies lack of trained logisticians, vehicles, warehouse which makes increases the level of difficulty for them. Improvements in humanitarian agencies and statistical data will enhance the efficiency of such organizations and immediate and effective relief will be provided to the disaster struck humans. Numbers of disasters are increasing day by day and has made post disaster management a key concern. The impact of disaster causes a lot of destruction and a huge amount of waste matter. A lot of money is spent for the removal of disaster waste as it cannot be removed like ordinary waste is removed. Toxic substances like lead and asbestos can highly degrade environment and health of human beings of that region. Toxic and hazardous constituents are mixed in the disastrous waste and can cause serious health problems and environmental issues if the management of disaster waste is inefficient. “If C&D waste management is deemed to be important, it is necessary to understand how it fits into the broader plans for pre- and post-disaster management. Disaster management is a collective team effort, which seeks to improve measures to prevent, respond and recover from the effects and consequences of a disaster” (Karunasena et al., 2012). The agencies must be well prepared and must evaluate the cost that will be required to dump the wastage and that should be able to differentiate between the types of wastage. Some of the waste material can also be utilized in landfill, which is very beneficial while other waste material needs to be decomposed in a proper manner. Construction and demolition management must start their work with immediate effect as it is their responsibility to remove the debris and clear the route in order to avoid disruptions in work of other humanitarian agencies. Afterwards they should plan to completely remove the debris and waste material. Removal of waste has always been an issue and there are many reasons for it. Non-governmental and governmental institutes have conducted many interviews and researches and their viewpoints have been shared which are not quite different from each other. The agencies responsible to remove the waste product firstly face the problem of proper management and resource allocation. In addition to it, capital, lack of coordination and communication and lack of technology know-how are also the key factors for inefficient removal of waste. All these problems are to be dealt with mutual consideration and by applying the right person for the job. The loss of human life in disasters is a big tragedy and it cannot be replaced; ecosystems as well as economy also have a significant impact by the destruction of infrastructure and buildings caused by such disasters, which must be dealt properly to reduce the problems of people (Karunasena et al., 2012). After the destruction, the region needs to be reconstructed, which is a difficult task as resourcing for post disaster reconstruction faces a challenge of availability of resources, which further will be discussed briefly. “The relationship between disaster risk, resilience ant the built environment suggests that a resilient built environment will occur when we design, develop and manage context sensitive buildings, spaces and places that have the capacity to resist or change on order to reduce hazard vulnerability, and enable society to continue functioning, economically and socially, when subjected to a hazard event” (Chang et al., 2012). The reconstruction done should be resilient in order to reduce hazardous vulnerability and the society should be able to function economically and socially. Social and economic life should continue as soon as possible and by resilient reconstruction the threat of greater destruction can be reduced. Resilient built environment requires skilled workers and resources, which include capital and construction material. Post disaster reconstruction requires resourcing which is a wide range of activity. There are different types of resourcing namely donor driven resourcing, contractor driven resourcing and community driven resourcing. This different type of resourcing plays a dominant role in post disaster reconstruction. Donor driven resourcing plays an important role related to resourcing the projects whereas contractor driven resourcing include complete resource attainment and delivery along with professionals of housing reconstruction. On the other hand, community driven resourcing is rebuilding of houses by the disaster affected communities (Chang et al., 2012). Through different researches it is observed that the main problem, which arises in post disaster reconstruction, is resourcing but there are several other problems, which are also challenging like construction market and transportation system. There is a contradiction relating to construction market in the research carried out from the past events, at some places competition for resources is seen among the local production capacity and aid agencies which is a market factor but at some places such market factors do not apply as the producers are not willing to sell their products at a lower rate to the disaster struck community. Transportation system must not be ignored by over investment in housing, roads connecting the houses should be built and proper transportation system should be activated in order to avoid difficulties in providing aid. It can be concluded from a summary review of the selected articles that humanitarian aid agencies, when helping the disaster affected area should be prepared first, they must be aware of the culture, traditions, norms and value of that region and skilled workers must be there to provide innovative solutions in case of any problem that may arise. The skilled workers of aid agencies must evaluate the cost required for providing relief and cleaning of waste material should also be disposed by taking appropriate steps (Cozzolino, 2012). In order to curb the difficulties after a disaster, assessment and identification of skill and resources for reconstruction must be done. The resourcing plans and strategies should be discussed between aid agencies and government in order to be more effective. Management and proper coordination is required to do all the work effectively and efficiently otherwise mismanagement will lead to improper aid to the disaster effected regions. List of References Chang, Y., Wilkinson, S., Potangaroa, R. & Seville, E., 2012. Resourcing for post-disaster reconstruction: a comparative study of Indonesia and China. Disaster Prevention and Management, 21(1), pp.7-21. Cozzolino, A., 2012. Humanitarian Logistics: Cross-Sector Cooperation in Disaster Relief Management. New York: Springer. Karunasena, G., Amaratunga, D. & Haigh, R., 2012. Post-Disaster Reconstruction of the Built Environment: Rebuilding for Resilience. Journal of Civil Engineering and Management, 18(4), pp.457–68. Kova ́cs, G.̈. & Spens, K., 2009. Identifying challenges in humanitarian logistics. International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management, 39(6), pp.506-28. Rodonn, J., Serrano, J.F.M. & Gime ́nez, C., 2012. Managing cultural conflicts for effective humanitarian aid. International Journal of Production Economics, 139, pp.366–76. Read More