A crash course in changing the world.
The making and the taking of a disaster
Pre setting a technology based system, like Ushaidi, is a great measure in the phase of pre-crisis, during crisis and after crisis. It needs to be set up and awareness spread among citizens on how to use the system, in enables urgent rescue missions. Saving human lives within the critical few seconds, minutes and hours.
However, I’d like to discuss another measure. Disasters or crises, whether man-made, of nature or act of terrorism need to be anchored, in each community / state on a strategy level. A community or area at risk can adopt these measures:
- Recognize and classify the type of disasters, and line them up as per risk or probability to happen.
- Such disasters can be: water floods, explosion of poorly kept toxic industrial material like ammonia, tsunamis, ...
- Segregate the plan of action into three parts:
o Pre-disaster preparations
o During the disaster
o Post disaster / rehabilitation
- For each potential disaster facing the area, a committee is formed, one officially designated person from (for example): water company, electricity company, port authority, police, civil defence, community, local senior authority, youth
- Establish method of communications in emergencies
- Make up a strategy that is subject-specific. For example, a water flood is different than an oil spill.
- The strategy covers mode of action, distribution of roles, available resources, ...within three mentioned phases
- Involve community. Involve youth
- Employ Ushaidi or similar mechanism for added support. But, it is possible that in an earthquake in a rural area, reception of all communications is interrupted, i.e. no mobiles or internet.
Views: 1
-
Comment by A.V.Koshy on April 16, 2010 at 7:21am -
it is already being done - it's called disaster preparedness
personally in places like india i felt fm radio and cell phones would work better though ushahidi is not at all something we dont require
i guess we need to use everything at our disposal in the days to come
-
Comment by Sam Osborne on April 16, 2010 at 7:36am -
real possibility here, it seems like many of your points are already being done individually, or a couple here/there, but not as a total program. Maybe you could put something together in your region and see how it works. In Wisconsin we have weather radios, if something like that could go two way in times of crisis directly to something like Ushaidi the response network could be made practically foolproof.
-
Comment by Reem N Bsaiso on April 16, 2010 at 2:38pm -
Thank you. Our hurdle over here is the mentality, and no motivation to act as groups. In Yemen, the tsumani hit Al-Mukallah at 4 am in the morning, washed away an entire village, 80 died. It was so hard to gather NGOs and prepare for next disaster. In the UK, south (Dorset) there is more community agregations, old retired people organized themselves to work as "ambulances" to help commute people in distress to hospitals. and as they say...politics starts with the ability of a group to agree..as littel as the neighbourhood watch
-
Comment by Ken Eklund on April 22, 2010 at 3:28am
-
Great analysis – I especially like the cataloguing of potential problems with probability estimates (people are notoriously bad at thinking correctly about probabilities). The things I would add: (1) Imagination. Pre-imagine the problem with all its ramifications (crowdsourced wisdom is great for this). (2) Tools. Once you've imagined the situation, imagine what you need. Emergency food and water? Backhoes? Battery-powered radios?
Comment
© 2012 Created by Alchemy.
You need to be a member of Urgent Evoke to add comments!
Join Urgent Evoke