Each member has a different need and contribution in a different way to the programme. The business derives its workforce and market from the community and hence their risks and the way they approach must be different. Education also has a large role to play in the event of disaster as they provide shelter to the displaced people. Each member must be looked at and motivated by finding ways for keeping them interested and showing them how they can derive direct and indirect benefits.
The committee then identifies the CEO and goes about planning subgroups for handling various tasks. Then comes the process of identifying the various hazards and vulnerability of the communities to the identified risks
Second Phase - identifying the risks
The purpose of this stage is to proactively find out the possible hazards that can strike a community, assess the vulnerability of the community and find out ways to minimize the damage.
The steps would be to
- Hazard Identification - This will define the extent to which natural hazards threaten your community (e.g., mapping)
- Hazard Vulnerability - This is to Identify with existing knowledge those structures and areas that are vulnerable to hazards. In addition one could use a community growth plan super-imposed on the hazards map to help identify areas vulnerable to natural hazards.
GIS has a direct role to play in this step to help to identify the areas and to come with a good emergency support plan. The MapInfo experience in handling New York Ice Storm is a great example to understand how GIS can play an effective role in such areas.
Third Phase - Prioritizing Needs
This is a significant step. Once all the vulnerabilities and hazards are identified, we must start prioritizing the identified needs. The needs of each community varies and hence the committee has to start identifying which is most important to them and structure their mitigation plan accordingly.
Some of the policies related to hazard regulation, which will get reviewed in this phase, include,
- Community growth management planning
- Land use planning and regulation
- Transportation planning
- Planning for open spaces
- Conservation and recreation
- Public safety and housing
- Preservation of historic resources
Fourth Phase - Communicating Progress
This is the phase where in the community is continuously informed on what is happening and what are the actions already taken. This is also to be done is a very systematic manner - just like any business will manage its public relations.
This would involve organising a publicity sub-committee, which will constantly look at various at various milestones reached and will communicate to the outside world. This can be done be holding special events, press conference, press release and all ways which will act as visual proof of achievements of the community. It would also be good idea to recruit media outlets as sponsorers or partners in the process.
Why should business contribute?
While the threat to business is real, business also has three primary responsibilities-
- Responsibility to the company. The primary responsibility of any company is to protect itself and to protect its physical assets against damage. The case study of Anheuser Busch, a brewery company, is a great example here. This company, realizing that it was in an earthquake prone area, identified all the company building that had weak structure and spent huge amounts of money as part of its risk reduction programme
Result - when earthquake did occur, they stood to save US$300 million in direct and indirect losses, which 15 times the money that spent in strengthening their physical assets.
- Responsibility to the employees. This responsibility is the very cause of a company's survival. If a disaster strikes and there employees are not protected then when employees are lost, the companies looses all its skilled labourers. Then comes the cost of training and recruitment. On the contrary, if their homes are protected then they can continue to contribute to the economy. Michale Baker Associates is contributing to help to protect the assets of their employees by contributing either 10% or $50 towards flood insurance.
- Responsibility to the community. This contribution is part of every large business house. TATA group has its own Tata Council for Community Initiative (TCCI). Similarly all large business houses may contribute their might towards the welfare of the community of which they form a part. This could be a good ground to bring business houses to contribute towards disaster mitigation progrmmes.
Do business organistions ever worry about such disasters?
For some of us who want to know how businesses do this kind of proactive efforts, listed below are some of the examples.
The example in figure 1 shows how an insurance company puts its policyholders on the map and then overlays the earthquake zones to find out the impact of possible earthquakes.
From figure 2 we proceed to do a step-by-step analysis of how an insurance company arranges its risk analysis. In the figure 2 we have the insurance company put all its policy holders on to the map.
In figure 3 we see the company doing a thematic on the types of policy holders based on the amount of policy they have taken.
In the figure 4 the company overlays the bush fire zones onto the map.
Now the company simulates a bush fire event e.g. bush fire zone extending by few kilometers and does an impact analysis (figure 5).
Thus we do find business has equal interest if not more in protecting the communities against such disasters.
A plan like the FEMA plan, if implemented, keeping the business communities also involved, would be beneficial to the community and the participating business houses.