Disaster and Crisis Management : Public Management Perspectives

Name: Disaster and Crisis Management:Public Management Perspectives
ISBN: 9781315677545

doi:10.4324/9781315677545

Book

ABSTRACT

A wide range of natural hazards pose major risks to the lives and livelihoods of large populations around the world. Man-made disasters caused by technological failures, industrial accidents, spillages, explosions, and fires, compound this threat. Since 9/11, security threats based on violence (terrorism, insurgency, and civil strife) have attracted much governmental attention and a great deal of public resources. As the scale, frequency, and intensity of disasters and crises have dramatically increased over the last decade, the failures in responding to these crises have prompted a critical need to evaluate the way in which the public sector responds to disaster.

What have we learned? What has changed in the management of disasters and crises? What do we know about the causes, patterns, and consequences of these events? This book looks at some of the approaches that can be taken to empirically examine disaster and crisis management practices. It contributes to the literature on crisis and disaster management, as well as social policy and planning. Introducing approaches that are applicable to a variety of circumstances in the U.S. and in other countries, it offers ways to think through policy interventions and governance mechanisms that may enhance societal resilience. This book was originally published as a special issue of Public Management Review.

After the failures of disasters and crises responses, there is a critical need for careful stocktaking. What have we learned? What has changed in the management of crises and disasters? What do we know about the causes, patterns, and consequences of these events? We need public management research to help address these challenges. This book, based on the special issue of Public Management Review, offers a ‘sampler’ of issues and approaches that can be used for empirical examination of disaster and crisis management. QUESTIONS The contributing authors address a variety of relevant questions in this volume. Intriguing questions include the following: • How can the concept of disaster resilience be operationalized in a way that is useful as a framework to investigate the conditions that lead to stronger, safer, and more sustainable communities? • What factors account for the variation across geographic jurisdictions in the ability to respond and recover from a disaster? • Which policy interventions and governance mechanisms can be developed to improve the practice of disaster and crisis management and reduce vulnerability to natural disasters? • How are disaster and crisis management strategies conceptualized, operationalized, and implemented in different parts of the world? • How have various disasters, as focusing events, impacted policies and practice disaster and crisis management? • What are some of the key differences between developing and developed countries in respect to disaster and crisis management? • How did disaster-impacted communities collaborate with multiple stakeholders (local, state, international) during the transition from disaster response to recovery? • Can the collaborative nature of disaster recovery help build resilient communities? PERSPECTIVES This book makes us of various perspectives: International and comparative Rather than focusing primarily on one specific country, the book expands the scope of empirical analysis to international contexts. This brings additional contextual factors that improve the general understanding of disaster and crisis management and how communities plan for and manage disasters and crisis.

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Multi-level The volume presents chapters that analyze vulnerability and resilience at individual, organ-izational, and societal levels. Interdisciplinary It is important to understand the role of culture, social capital, socio-economic vulner-abilities, and interpersonal social networks and international collaboration. This requires analytical perspectives from different disciplines. Solution-oriented Chapters in this volume explore how various conditions and factors may have implica-tions for planning decisions, policy-making, and governance. The volume shifts atten-tion away from a ‘silo’ approach to a ‘collaboration’ perspective in creating disaster resilient and sustainable communities. It aims to support the development of effective collaborative governance strategies for improved management in the mitigation, prepa-ration, response to, and recovery from natural and man-made hazards. OVERVIEW This book contributes to the literature on crisis management, emergency management, social sciences, policy, and planning. The volume introduces approaches that are appli-cable to a variety of circumstances in the US, Europe and other countries; it offers ways to think through policy interventions and governance mechanisms that may enhance societal resilience. Chapter 1, authored by Julia Fleischer, presents a theoretical argument that the study of time provides crucial explanatory factors to the analysis of public sector crisis responses. The chapter asserts that time is an external condition and an internalized feature of organizational behaviour in response to crisis and disasters. The author claims that time influences governmental crisis responses but can also be exploited by actors during such critical episodes. Chapter 2, co-authored by Denis Fischbacher-Smith and Moira Fischbacher-Smith, considers the challenges for hospitals in the UK that arise from the threats of mass casualty terrorism events. The chapter argues that the academic focus is often on the role of healthcare as a major resource and rescuer in terrorist attacks and other mass casualty crises; it often lacks attention for healthcare organizations as a victim of disaster. The chapter highlights the nature of the challenges facing the UK healthcare system, with a special focus on hospitals both as essential first responders under the UK’s civil contingencies legislation and as potential victims of terrorism and other man-made disasters.

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, co-authored by Scott Robinson, Warren Eller, Melanie Gall and Brian Gerber addresses a topic which has recently gained significant attention among scholars in the disaster management community. Disaster preparedness, response, and recovery involve different actors from different sectors (public, private, and non-profit). The chapter assesses the temporal dynamics of disaster networks in two moderately sized communities that have served as large-scale disaster evacuation hosting sites in the past decade in the US. It discusses the potential advantage presented by having a two-tier network for evacuation hosting that mixes core and periphery across multiple sectors in dealing with disasters. Chapter 4, authored by Triparna Vasavada, studies disaster management networks in the state of Gujarat, India, using social network analysis. It examines the governance structure of a disaster management network and factors affecting its effectiveness. Trust, the number of participants in the network, goal consensus, and the need for network-level competencies based on the nature of the task were analyzed as key factors in network effectiveness in response to disasters. Chapter 5, co-authored by Simon Andrew, Sudha Arlikatti and Marina Saitgalina focuses on the challenges faced by disaster survivors in developing countries where there is a lack of pre-identified shelters and staging capacities, as well as an inability of public sector entities to manage catastrophic events independent of local and international non-profit organizations. The chapter investigates evacuation decision-making and shelter choice in the wake of the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami. Chapter 6, authored by Paul Stephenson, examines the impact of a public health crisis on French public management. The chapter specifically considers how government agencies across various state institutions have engaged in post-crisis reform. The chapter highlights how state actors drew policy and practical lessons from previous experiences. The chapter demonstrates the discursive use of solidarity in a game of political blame-shifting and experimentation in the context of crisis enquiries. Chapter 7, co-authored by Claire Menck and Richard Couto examines the leadership of one organization, Market Umbrella, which used farmer’s markets as spaces of commu-nity building to help facilitate the recovery in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. It focuses on the social and cultural role of food in New Orleans. The chapter suggests that informal leadership can use ‘free spaces’ of community gathering to recreate fractured relation-ships between people and places affected by disaster. Chapter 8, co-authored by Arjen Boin and Michel van Eeten discusses a topic that recently gained much attention from practitioners and scholars of disaster studies. The chapter focuses on resilience at the organizational level: it examines relationships between organizational characteristics, processes, and resilience, building on the insights of high reliability organizations theory and crisis management research. Chapter 9, co-authored by Adam Rose and Tyler Kustra, provides a framework for designing transboundary disaster management institutions and policies based on

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economic perspectives. The chapter highlights the importance of economic considera-tions as disaggregating economic losses into direct and indirect components, which vary in terms of their transboundary potential. It applies economic principles, such as scale economies, externalities, and public goods analysis, studying European cooperation in emergency management. The chapter concludes by identifying the type of consequences that might best be addressed by a wider geographic and political authority in dealing with transboundary crises.

Disaster and Crisis Management

ABSTRACT

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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INTRODUCTION: STUDYING DISASTER AND CRISIS MANAGEMENT

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