Disaster preparedness

It is now for the government to partner with agencies that are world leaders in disaster preparedness.

The last decade has seen a string of natural disasters in Pakistan, all of them costly in terms of life, livelihoods, property, livestock and infrastructure. Earthquakes and floods have done the greatest damage. Earthquakes are always going to be unpredictable, and extreme weather events are only marginally more so, and Pakistan is going to experience more of these as time goes by. The government has made provisions for coping with these events, and the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) has been set up and tasked to coordinate response as well as provide (often limited) relief. Other agencies, and local and international NGOs also play a major part in disaster preparedness and response, and the major player in this broad field is the Pakistan Red Crescent Society (PRCS), which is a partner organisation of the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

Agencies and entities such as these play a lead role in developing disaster response technologies, and the timely release of the “World Disasters Report 2013” particularly highlights the use of new technologies in increasing the resilience of communities and states that are particularly disaster prone. The PRCS already has a mobile SMS service, an email service and a radio communication system that is independent of government resources, and is seeking to develop other interventions such as video conferencing and a disasters data bank. As was observed at the launch of the report, technology is evolving faster than the humanitarian agencies are able to develop methodologies to get the best out of it. Sometimes it is those who have suffered in a natural disaster that themselves turn out to be the innovators, using available social media and mapping to help themselves, a phenomenon recently observed in the Philippines once power and communication was restored to cities like Tacloban. It is now for the government to pick up the baton and partner with agencies that are world leaders in the development of disaster preparedness. There is a pool of locally developed competencies and expertise that must be capitalised upon, because the next disaster is lurking in the wings.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 12^th, 2013.

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