Planning and Management of Complex Emergencies

Introduction: the complex emergency

In the 1990s, particular strategic and physical circumstances led to the definition of the "complex emergency" in developing countries affected by the lethal combination of warfare, socio-economic breakdown and natural disasters.[1] A good example is the current situation in Eritrea and northern Ethiopia, where large-scale population displacements, insurgency, drought and the injuries caused by landmines combine to make each day a disaster for local people.[2]

However, in the debate over such events it has been pointed out that all emergencies are complex to a greater or lesser degree.[3] Therefore, emergency planning and management are first and foremost about making sense of complexity. In industrialized countries, disasters have not merely become more common and more destructive, but also more complex. For instance, it has been suggested that despite measures to protect Florence against floods, and manage such events effectively, a repeat of the 1966 event would lead to worse effects than those experienced 35 years ago. The relentless accumulation of physical capital and the presence of 10,000 vehicles in the city centre would significantly complicate emergency operations.[4]

The hard part of the planning process is no longer the estimation of physical forces and their distribution--the where, when and how much of floods or earthquakes, for example--but the prediction of consequences for the socio-economic system: complex patterns of damage, lost production, medical costs, compensation and liability issues, etc.[5]

Fortunately, powerful new tools have been developed to reduce complexity in disaster to manageable levels. But are they sufficiently well understood to be used effectively? Do we have enough consensus, training, funding, expertise and experience to benefit from the tools, or do they merely complicate emergency preparedness and distract attention from the real problems of bringing aid to stricken populations? This essay will consider ten of the most salient issues in planning for and managing contemporary emergencies.

1. From the paper planning syndrome to the digital planning syndrome

Lack of real commitment to emergency preparedness can lead to the formulation of plans that are treated as static documents and deposited in archives without the necessary adaptation, testing and updating that would render them functional and efficient. This was long ago identified as the "paper planning syndrome", in which only the letter, and not the spirit, of civil protection regulations is honoured.[6] In theory, the application of digital computing technology to emergency planning should make the syndrome a thing of the past, as computers offer a vastly greater degree of flexibility in how plans are devised, stored, displayed, communicated and utilized, as well as making it very easy to amend and update them.[7] But has the digital revolution merely substituted one syndrome for another?

To begin with there is no absolute obligation to use computerized planning procedures any more effectively than their typewritten antecedents. Secondly, the use of computers and the Internet involves questions of balance. Possibly, products with superior marketing strategies are likely to accumulate the most followers regardless of their degree of usefulness. Moreover, the most vocal people and companies can flood the market with their views. Hence, digital technology can become a vehicle for diffusing, not only valuable advances in methodology, but also inaccurate information.

It has also been suggested that, by reducing the degree of personal interaction, computer use diminishes opportunities for non-verbal communication and introduces a sense of artificiality into emergency management, akin to that which prevails in modern aerial warfare, where screen-watching and button-pushing replace more direct action.[8]

Unfortunately, most emergency preparedness courses do not include guidelines on how to make the best use of computerized technology and how to guard against problems such as artificiality and misuse of information. Indeed, as far as I know, no widely accepted guidelines exist: they should be formulated as a matter of urgency.

The interim solution is to use computer technology with a large dose of self-awareness and self-evaluation. No procedures should be implemented without considering their eventual effectiveness. No expenditures should be made without some form of cost-benefit analysis, and without specification of the criteria for identifying and judging benefits (which are often less easy to quantify than are costs).

Computers and associated communications technology have enormous potential for reducing the complexity of disasters to levels that are intelligible and manageable.[9] However, at the same time they introduce a new level of complexity--and vulnerability--into emergency preparedness. Systems therefore need to be robust, complemented by adequate redundancy and back-ups, and above all user-friendly. Both designers and users should contribute to the process of achieving such goals.

2. The role of the scenario in emergency planning

There is often a tendency to write emergency plans backwards, and thus to try to match the problem to be tackled to the resources available to tackle it, rather than the other way around. Such plans tend to be very vague about the nature of the emergency situations that they will be applied to. Many emergency plans either have no base scenario or make an uncritical, untested assumption that the last great event in the area covered by planning is exactly diagnostic of what to expect next time. In contrast, a well-constructed plan should be based on a thorough analysis of the kinds of event that it will eventually have to tackle. This requires the full-scale use of scenario modelling.[10]

A predictive scenario is an exploration of what is likely to happen under a particular set of circumstances. It asks the question "what if...?", but this should be backed up by scientific forecasting of hazards and strict logical investigation of the chains of consequences that may occur when a hazard strikes.[11] The aim is to draw out the most likely train of events, and reactions to them, in order to form a secure basis for planning. As the principal objectives of emergency planning are to reduce the gap between the resources that are needed and those that are available, and to apply the latter as effectively as possible to the urgent problems caused by disaster, it follows that the planner will need an accurate and detailed assessment of what is likely to happen.

The base scenario, or scenarios, used in emergency planning should be subject to logical evaluation. As they are a predictive tool, they will have to make a considerable number of assumptions about what is likely to happen under certain sets of conditions. This should not be an impossible task, nor necessarily a daunting one if sufficient background research has been conducted. Such work should be based on the fundamental relationship[12]

hazard × vulnerability [× exposure] = risk --> impact

Hence, successive stages in the formulation of the scenario involve collecting information on the spatial and temporal distribution of hazards, assessing the vulnerability of populations and structures to these, deriving patterns of risk and considering how the risks are likely to materialize as impacts. As the best modern planning is generic (all hazards)[13] rather than restricted to single hazards or risks, this process should be carried out with a sufficient level of generalization and flexibility that it is unlikely to break down in the face of unexpected developments.

3. The relationship between emergency planning and urban and regional planning

One of the most remarkable aspects of emergency planning in the modern world is its lack of relationship with urban and regional planning. Disaster preparedness is not usually taught to students of planning, and trainee disaster managers are not usually given a grounding in land-use planning. Yet the links between the two disciplines ought to be self evident: they lie in the concept of the "hazardousness of place".[14]

One of the principal and most successful means of reducing the risks to life and property posed by natural and technological hazards is to restrict land uses in the most threatened places. In 1986 a petroleum tank explosion and fire claimed several lives and rendered 2600 people homeless in central Naples. In 1998 150 died in the towns of Sarno and Quindici in predictable mudflow disasters. Both of these represent cases in which an identifiable hazard did not simulate vulnerability reduction measures. The simplest, and often the cheapest of these, is to separate incompatible land uses. At the very least, this requires a strong dialogue between emergency planners, who can formulate scenarios for future events, and municipal planners, who can institute measures to restrict development in hazardous areas.

A second aspect refers to the possible role of urban planning in improving conditions for emergency management. Roads may need to be straightened, widened and cleared of obstructions to ensure either that evacuees can get away quickly or that emergency vehicles can arrive in minimum time. Emergency scenarios should identify critical nodes, points in the urban system that are vitally important to operations in disaster. These include hospitals, fire stations, emergency operations centres, assembly points, and also places where disaster may strike, such as floodable areas, unstable slopes or warehouses stocking hazardous materials. Urban design can do much to facilitate emergency management if this is explicitly incorporated into it.

The solution is to integrate emergency plans with urban plans as much as possible. It requires dialogue and cooperation between both sorts of planner, who must appreciate each other's terms of reference and problems to be solved.[15]

4. The vertical and horizontal integration of emergency plans

Another common fault of emergency plans is that they are often written in isolation from one another. In Italy the prevailing legislation is vague about the relationship between plans at the municipal, provincial, regional and national levels. Provinces and regions have coordinating roles, but these are poorly specified. At the same time, there is no guarantee that municipal emergency plans will mesh with plans for factories, hospitals, airports, and so on. As disaster planning becomes more common, this problem is set to grow. The result is a vast area of potential conflict between the objectives and procedures of overlapping plans. This could lead to duplication of effort, or failures of communication between organizations, or other forms of inefficiency. In Italy, a municipality that is the seat of a COM during a national disaster may have as many as 37 desks for 9-14 different support functions, if one takes into account national, prefectural and municipal operations centres. The more such desks there are, and the more duplication of functions occurs, the more opportunities there are for failures of coordination and communication.

Municipal emergency planners should act as catalysts to stimulate disaster planning in other organizations, such as hospitals and factories. But there needs to be a high degree of compatibility and interaction between the planners and their plans. This will enable tasks to be delegated and will ensure that communication is effective between the organizations during emergency situations.[16]

5. The achievement and recognition of adequate professional standards

The current consensus is that emergency preparedness is not quite a profession.[17] Typically, those who practice it also have other jobs, or come from unconnected fields, to which they may well be asked to return. No adequate professional standards exist and no widely accepted protocols govern the content of training courses. Few academic institutions offer courses or degrees in emergency planning and management[18] and there is, in any case, little agreement about exactly what an emergency responder ought to know. Furthermore, what training courses exist offer an exceedingly heterogeneous mixture of information and usually impose no control on the quality of instruction. The first result of this is that the knowledge levels and capabilities of emergency managers vary enormously, and the second is that both interchange and ability to learn from others are hampered by lack of compatibility and an agreed body of common knowledge.[19]

It is time to devise better standards and norms for emergency training and eventual certification. These should specify a minimum number of hours of instruction and define the content of courses. They should also specify the appropriate balance between of learning between theory and accumulating practical experience.

The increasing complexity of disasters requires that emergency responders be acquainted with many different aspects of the problem. Some 30 different academic and applied disciplines are involved, as well as many practical skills.[20] In the absence of adequate guidelines about what to study and how to go about it, the best strategy is to supplement one's knowledge by reading widely among the materials that are internationally available. Several World Wide Web sites offer guided reading, for example, the U.S Emergency Management Institute site http://www.fema.gov/emi/.

Theory should not be treated as inferior to practical experience, as it is, in the words of one expert in the field,[21] the "road map" that orientates the disaster manager in times of confusion and uncertainty. Successful learning is marked by the realization that theory and experience qualify one another and render one another intelligible. This aspect will be explored further in the next section.

6. The gap between research and practice: the need for dialogue

Few disaster managers are regular readers of academic literature and few academics write up their research with disaster managers in mind as their primary audience. Academic writing is often abstract and laced with jargon, which legitimizes it to the peer groups who are its main readership but makes it unreadable by others. In any case, much of it is hidden away in publications that are not easily accessible to disaster managers. As a result, many useful applied research results have failed to come to the notice of the very practitioners who could benefit from them.

At the world level, several institutions are actively trying to combat this state of affairs. Paramount among them is the Natural Hazards Centre at the University of Colorado at Boulder, USA. This institution offers a well-furnished web site (http://www.colorado.edu/hazards/), three periodicals in printed form and one in e-mail format. Likewise, the Emergency Preparedness Information Exchange at Simon Fraser University in Canada (http://hoshi.cic.sfu.ca/epix/) is an important academic resource for emergency responders. So is Emergency Management Australia (http://www.ema.gov.au) and the Canadian Centre for Emergency Preparedness (http://www.ccep.ca/).

Dialogue requires that both sides demonstrate willingness to interact. Disaster managers must make their research needs known and identify gaps in their knowledge. Researchers must learn to communicate, without lowering the tone of their discourse, in ways that non-specialists can understand and benefit from. Both groups need their horizons widening and both must learn to listen more effectively.

7. Information management in an age of superabundant data

The paradox of information technology is that it vastly increases the quantity of information available but does not necessarily improve its quality. Thus we all need to evolve a survival strategy in order to cope with information management. This means:

• avoiding dependence on sources of vital information that could fail at critical moments


• ensuring that essential information does not become archived or destroyed and thus lost through failure to recognize its importance


• ensuring that "perishable" information is collected when it is available (usually during the early phase of disaster)


• learning to discriminate rapidly between valid and invalid information, useful and useless data, appropriate and inappropriate material


• learning to cope with information overload


• avoiding overdependence on computer technology and situations in which the available hardware and software determine the solution, rather than letting it be governed by the nature of the problem itself


• developing a critical ability to recognize what is useful


• learning to interpret data in human and operational terms[22]

Recent major disasters have spawned as many as 20 web sites each,[23] but this has not guaranteed that the free availability of information over the Internet actually improved their management, especially as no control was exercised over the quality, accuracy and usefulness of the information posted.

Nevertheless, information has become a very valuable commodity and much of commerce, banking and industry is now dependent on its diffusion by electronic means. Emergency planning must thus be extended to ensuring that information is part of the solution rather than part of the problem. Communications breakdown can lead to huge losses if money cannot be transferred electronically, orders cannot be fulfilled and customers informed about what they need to know in order to purchase goods and services. Information loss is therefore not just a risk for emergency management but also a significant and growing part of general disaster losses to be mitigated by taking precautions before disaster strikes.[24]

8. Political acumen of the disaster manager

Modern courses usually involve teaching aspects of management science and psychology to trainee disaster managers. However, it is clear that such people will not only have to direct people under their control but also hold their own in the political arena. The disaster manager is, above all, a facilitator, whose job is to obtain the consensus that is necessary in order to innovate in the field of emergency planning and management. This requires knowledge of the legal, social and political consequences of decisions taken in times of quiescence and during emergencies, and to communicate effectively so that political hierarchies are convinced of the need for better civil protection systems.

However, both during emergencies and in the intervening times, the disaster manager should have a perception of the prevailing situation that does not exceed his or her command of the available resources.[25] Obviously, realism is the key ingredient. In addition, command structures need to be free of equivocality.

9. The challenge of involving the public in disaster mitigation and creating a culture of risk mitigation

Recent trends in emergency preparedness have demonstrated the importance of democratizing the field. People will not relate to disaster prevention if efforts are not made to involve them in it. Conversely, they need to be empowered and given some responsibility for their own safety. The assumption that civil protection is a matter exclusively for experts is both widespread and dangerous.

Successful schemes for involving the public require first a certain selectivity about which groups to work with and secondly the collection of information on the effectiveness of projects--i.e. feedback from the users. Publicity needs to be designed carefully and its impact evaluated in terms of the results it produces and knowledge it diffuses. Awareness of results is critically important: in the past, schemes to increase the level of public awareness of hazards have sometimes led to the diffusion of misassumptions.[26] At the very least, public indifference is indicative of a failed publicity program.[27]

In the past public information programs have failed for the following reasons:

• warnings that have not resulted in disaster


• information about what is likely to happen, but not what steps to take when it does


• vagueness about hazards and warning signs


• conflicting orders and information


• failure to involve the public in decision making, so that decisions are resented by those people who feel they have had no say in them


• failure to observe local cultural norms, patterns of activity and ways of communicating.[28]

All of these pitfalls can be avoided by adequate attention to the local context of public education programs and careful monitoring of their impacts.

10. The mass media: friend or foe?

The news media are critically important to awareness campaigns both during disaster and at other times. Research has given split results about the role of the media in disasters. The balance probably leans towards regarding them as irresponsible and unreliable[29] though some researchers have shown how the media can be a vital part of emergency management if journalists are properly engaged.[30] In either case, disaster managers ignore or mistreat representatives of the news media at their peril: they cannot stop reports being published or broadcast.

Mass media cannot be coopted in disaster. The best that can be hoped for is that they can be engaged constructively and induced to collaborate in the diffusion of correct information and the discounting of incorrect news. Treated as responsible they will usually rise to the challenge and behave responsibly. They must, however, be given adequate representation and facilities in emergency operations. Attempts to drive them away will only lead to negative reporting about the quality of emergency operations, and possibly the diffusion of misassumptions. This can lead to reductions in the degree of public cooperation with emergency authorities. Hence, many of the best emergency plans include chapters on managing the news media and treat this aspect as vitally important, which indeed it is. A useful primer on news media liaison during emergencies can be found at the U.S. FEMA website http://www.fema.gov/media/.

Conclusion

In summary, a good emergency plan is:

• generic (all hazards) rather than restricted to single hazards


• written on the basis of carefully compiled scenarios of hazard, vulnerability, risk and impact


• integrated with plans made by other organizations and levels of government


• a process and not an end in itself--i.e. constantly updated, revised and tested


• linked to urban planning with the objective of reducing the "hazardousness of place" by land use control processes.

A good emergency planner is

• well versed in the applied hazards literature


• well versed in the political and legal implications of his or her work


• a person who facilitates rather than commands


• able to appreciate the connections between different disciplines and methodologies


• able to work effectively with the public and news media representatives.

Notes

1. A classic paper on this topic is Duffield, M. 1996. The symphony of the damned: racial discourse, complex political emergencies and humanitarian aid. Disasters 20(3): 173-193. A more didactic one is Prehospital and Disaster Medicine 1995. Complex, humanitarian emergencies: I. Concept and participants. Prehospital and Disaster Medicine 10: 36-42.

2. See the situation reports of Action by Churches Together (ACT) available at the Volunteers in Technical Assistance web site http://www.vita.org/.

3. Kirkby, J., P. O’Keefe, I. Convery and D. Howell 1997. On the emergence of complex disasters. Disasters 21(2): 177-180.

4. See Alexander, D. 2000. Confronting Catastrophe. Terra Publishing, Harpenden, UK, and Oxford University Press, New York: 99-101.

5. Ellson, R.W., J.W. Milliman and R.B. Roberts 1984. Measuring the regional economic effects of earthquakes and earthquake predictions. Journal of Regional Science 24: 559-579.

6. See discussion in Auf der Heide, E. 1989. Disaster Response: Principles of Preparation and Co-ordination. Mosby-Yearbook, St Louis, Missouri, 363 pp. This book can be downloaded for free from the Internet at the following address: http://coe-dmha.org/dr

7. Gruntfest, E. and M. Weber 1998. Internet and emergency management: prospects for the future. International Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters 16(1): 55-72.

8. Quarantelli, E.L. 1997. Problematical aspects of the information/ communication revolution for disaster planning and research: ten non-technical issues and questions. Disaster Prevention and Management 6(2): 94-106.

9. Tobin, R. and R. Tobin 1997. Emergency Planning on the Internet. Government Institutes, Inc., Rockville, MD, 230 pp.

10. Alexander, D. 2002. Principles of Emergency Planning and Management. Terra Publishing, Harpenden, UK (http://www.terrapublishing.net), and Oxford University Press, New York (http://www.oup-ny.com/).

11. Alexander, D. 2000. Scenario methodology for teaching principles of emergency management. Disaster Prevention and Management 9(2): 89-97.

12. After UNDRO 1982. Natural Disasters and Vulnerability Analysis. Office of the United Nations Disaster Relief Co-ordinator (UNDRO), Geneva, and Burton, I., R.W. Kates and G.F. White 1993. The Environment as Hazard (2nd edn). Guilford Press, New York, 304 pp.

13. Quarantelli, E.L. 1992. The case for a generic rather than agent specific agent approach to disasters. Disaster Management 2: 191-196.

14. Hewitt, K. and I. Burton 1971. The Hazardousness of Place. University of Toronto Press, Toronto.

15. Britton, N.R. and J. Lindsay 1995. Demonstrating the need to integrate city planning and emergency preparedness: two case studies. International Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters 13(2): 161-178.

16. McLoughlin, D. 1985. A framework for integrated emergency management. Public Administration Review 45 (special issue): 165-172.

17. Drabek, T.E. 1988. The Local Emergency Manager: The Emerging Professional (Part 1). National Emergency Training Center, U.S. Federal Emergency Management Association, Emmitsburg, Maryland.

18. About 3.5 per cent of U.S. colleges and universities (70 institutions) offer courses in emergency preparedness. Even fewer courses are available in other countries.

19. Neal, D.M. 2000. Developing degree programs in disaster management: some reflections and observations. International Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters 18(3): 417-438.

20. Alexander, D. 1993. Natural Disasters. UCL Press, London, and Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, 632 pp.

21. Professor Thomas E. Drabek, in one of the FEMA outline courses cited above.

22. Quarantelli, E.L. 1997. Problematical aspects of the information/ communication revolution for disaster planning and research: ten non-technical issues and questions. Disaster Prevention and Management 6(2): 94-106.

23. For example, the Hanshin-Kobe earthquake in Japan (1995) and Hurricane Mitch in central America (1998), both of which spawned up to 20 websites.

24. U.S. National Research Council 1996. Computing and Communications in the Extreme: Research for Crisis Management and Other Applications. Computing Science and Telecommunications Board, National Research Council, Washington, DC, 174 pp. This and similar publications can be obtained from http://www.nap.edu/readingroom/.

25. Alexander, D.E. 1999. How are emergency plans written, tested and revised? In P. Fontanari, S. Pittino, D. Alexander and S. Boncinelli (eds) La Protezione Civile verso gli Anni 2000. CISPRO, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Florence, Italy: 151-177.

26. Alexander, D. 1993. Natural Disasters. UCL Press, London, and Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, pp 16-20.

27. In one notorious case (the River Thames flood warning exercise of 1981 in the city of London) a costly and extensive publicity campaign came to nothing: social surveys after the event revealed that 50 per cent of respondents did not hear the warning, and of those who did, 30 per cent did not understand what it meant and 60 per cent did not know what to do (IDI 1981. The Physical and Social Consequences of a Major Thames Flood. International Disaster Institute, London, p. 44).

28. Southern, R.L. 1995. Warnings that failed, warnings that worked. Stop Disasters 25: 9-10.

29. Goltz, J.D. 1984. Are the news media responsible for the disaster myths? A content analysis of emergency response imagery. International Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters 2(3): 345-368.

30. Scanlon, J., S. Alldred, A. Farrell and A. Prawzick 1985. Coping with the media in disasters: some predictable problems. Public Administration Review 45 (special issue): 123-133.

A Career in Emergency Management

When people are seriously injured they expect good, professional medical care to be readily available, but curiously when major emergencies have turned into mass-casualty incidents we have been content to leave their management to people who are completely lacking in formal qualifications. In Britain today that is now changing, and so is the assumption that we live in a land free of disasters. Recent years have seen foot-and-mouth disease epidemics, widespread river and coastal floods, North Sea storm surges, sudden snowfalls, and power blackouts, to name only some of the national emergencies that have occurred. The government is concerned about possible future epidemics of SARS or influenza, and the potential for chemical, biological, nuclear or radiological (CBRN) terrorist attacks. Hence, in November 2004 it passed the Civil Contingencies Act, the first really significant legislation on peacetime emergencies to reach the statute books since 1948. The Act places a burden on local, unitary, county, regional and national authorities to prepare for disaster. It also requires the private-sector providers of some of our basic needs to plan for emergencies, so that they can guarantee the continuity of electricity, gas and water supplies, public transport, and other municipal services.

In addition, with the appalling and widespread suffering engendered by the Asian tsunami of 26 December 2004 there is a new commitment to disaster work overseas, and the loss of many British lives in that particular catastrophe has provided yet another incentive to strive for a safer world.

A fledgling profession

At last, emergency planning and management in Britain are moving towards acquiring the status of a fully-fledged profession. County authorities now maintain a chief emergency planner, who will probably have a small staff at his or her disposition. Local and unitary authorities may have an emergency planning officer, though in the smaller towns he or she may also have another job to do within the local authority's structure. The 12 regions of the United Kingdom each have resilience teams whose job is to plan for emergencies in a co-ordinating role. Disaster management is an important emerging field both in the UK and world-wide.

Paradoxically, despite the obvious imperatives arising from disaster, the field has acquired different names in different parts of the world. 'Disaster management' is commonly used in the UK; 'civil protection' is employed widely in Continental Europe, Russia, Latin America and Canada (it has the advantage of translating easily into Romance languages). France also uses 'civil security' and Switzerland 'civil defence, though the latter term is usually reserved for older methods of organising civilian populations to survive armed aggression by a foreign power, not the modern preoccupation with natural disasters and humanitarian emergencies. In the USA the preferred terms are 'emergency preparedness' and, increasingly, 'homeland security', which reflects a strong preoccupation with the threat of domestic terrorism. Allowing for differences of detail, it is essentially all the same field.

The profile of the practical expert in this field (call it what you will) is changing rapidly as the level of professionalism rises. In the past, the typical incumbent was a white, middle-aged man with a military background who took up emergency preparedness as a second or third career. His training in civilian emergency management was usually negligible and the methods he used bore a strong military imprint. There is nothing inherently wrong with this, and some military men have proved to be outstanding emergency managers, but times have changed, and so have expectations regarding how disasters are managed.

The modern emergency planner is likely to be younger and have a much more diverse background than hitherto. Women have proved to be particularly adept at acquiring the necessary skills--and no less firm than men when it comes to getting things done in difficult circumstances. As the military ethos recedes, so a distinctly civilian form of emergency management comes to the fore, with a stronger emphasis on democratic participation. This is vitally necessary, as the problems of avoiding or abating the effects of disaster are so onerous that the general public will have to take some responsibility for looking after its own security. Emergency managers are increasingly being trained to liaise with the public and mass media in order to achieve this.

Qualifications

The modern emergency planner will have gained academic qualifications in the field. In this respect there are several potential strategies for acquiring them. For example, it is now possible to take a bachelor's degree in the field and hence enter it straight from school. As the subject of emergency preparedness is a very eclectic one, first degrees may be either a BSc or a BA. A 'hard' science BSc will probably furnish additional skills in engineering and mathematics that can be useful for practical work in the field and for such abstract matters as calculating the probability that future events or situations will occur. A 'soft' science BA will provide skills in social sciences, which are particularly useful for examining and dealing with people's responses to disaster. Both types of degree will provide skills in management. In this context, it is worth noting that, although there is some overlap, the skills needed to manage disaster are not quite the same as those acquired in a business management degree or MBA.

A second form of training in the field is to take a master's degree in emergency planning and management. Entry is usually open to the holders of many different kinds of first degree, including, obviously, one in disaster management. The advantage of a master's degree is that it offers advanced training and education to students who already have a relevant first degree. As emergency preparedness is a 'lateral' field of knowledge that spans as many as 35 different traditional academic and professional fields, many qualifications are indeed relevant. The resulting graduate has some specialised knowledge, a good grounding in theory (for example, regarding the nature of risk and vulnerability to hazards), acquired skills in management and co-ordinating people's activities, and enough knowledge of the many specialised disciplines that contribute to the field to be able to communicate effectively with their protagonists--architects, engineers, urban planners, psychologists, and so on.

Armed with either a bachelor's or a master's degree, a typical graduate employed in emergency planning and management will manage ordinary risks on a daily basis, prepare for emergencies (for example, by drawing up, disseminating and testing plans designed to cope with them) and will occasionally have to manage the emergencies themselves when they occur.

Employment prospects

The UK Civil Contingencies Act will have the effect of creating additional jobs for emergency planners at the national, regional, county, local and unitary authority levels. Furthermore, the need to maintain business continuity in private companies has created a further demand for experts in civil contingencies, especially as major public services have been privatised and the companies responsible for them have a statutory duty under the Act to ensure for continuity of service. Moreover, the Control of Major Accident Hazards (COMAH) legislation based on the European Union's Séveso directives has created a demand for people who are competent to pan for managing--or better still, avoiding--technological disasters such as toxic materials releases and explosions in factories.

In the private sector the larger companies may have in-house expertise in business continuity and disaster preparedness. This is increasingly necessary as there is abundant evidence that companies afflicted by disaster of any kind, from loss of data and customer records to destruction of assets and loss of public image, have a much better chance of pulling through if they have made business continuity preparations beforehand. Hence there is also a growing consultancy business in bespoke emergency planning, as well as in training in how to activate and use the plans.

Work experience

It is axiomatic that emergency preparedness cannot be learnt only in the classroom. Expertise is gained by a mixture of academic learning and practical experience. University courses increasingly recognise this by giving students field or work experience (and preferably both), internships in emergency planning offices, release periods or the opportunity to do dissertation research in appropriate workplaces. They also bring in practitioners from the emergency services and planning offices as guest lecturers.

The rest must be learned on the job. Here there is a third route to education--professional development courses. These can be of two kinds: general courses for non-graduates and specialised or higher-level courses for graduates. They are short courses, usually taken in modular form, part time by day-release from work, and they focus on particular aspects of emergency preparedness, such as search and rescue, business continuity planning, and emergency psychology.

So important is it to reach out to the practitioners that universities have started to offer part-time, distance learning or blended learning options on their main courses. This recognises the fact that the main clientele for disaster management education is already employed in the field: the new recruit--or old hand--in an emergency planning office; the employees of police, fire and ambulance services who want to deepen their knowledge of how to handle major crisis situations; and the company security executives who need to gain more expertise on how to manage contingencies.

A dangerous world

Many developments are conspiring to make the world a less safe place for its inhabitants. Climate change is leading to more intense storms, population growth is relentless in hazardous areas, the global rise of terrorism is posing a serious threat to security and stability, to name but three sources of future disaster. At the same time there is an increasingly coherent movement to tackle the risks seriously, and emergency preparedness is an important part of this. It is sad to have to admit that "the worse it gets, the better it gets," but as the 21st century wears on there will certainly be more jobs and brighter career prospects in disaster management and we can only hope that this helps make our world a safer, more peaceful and caring place.

[UK, 2004]

Disaster Management for Whom?

This paper reviews contemporary trends in the management of the crisis phase of disasters. It charts the recent history of emergency preparedness in the light of a basic distinction between civil defence and civil protection. As the former has metamorphosed into homeland security and the latter into civil contingencies management, so a distinction has grown between devolved and centralized management of disasters. This has been accompanied by differences in the strategies employed to bring relief to stricken populations, including the extent to which military and paramilitary forces are involved. Having considered the question of devolved versus centralized emergency management in the light of its impact on welfare, the paper examines the question by reviewing some aspects of the management of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in August-September 2005. It seems reasonable to conclude that symbolic aspects of the media and political response tended to provide impetus to discrimination in the provision of aid. In economic terms, disaster involves a complex process of negotiating for resources, in which the marginalized sections of society are almost automatically disadvantaged. The solution lies in making emergency preparedness more democratic, which is a major challenge for the present century. The article ends by establishing ten principles for fair and democratic civil protection.

On December 25th, 1972, an earthquake of moderate power and shallow focus situated under Lake Managua devastated large parts of Nicaragua's capital city. Of the population of 405,000 people, 4000 were killed, 16,000 were injured, 200,000 were rendered jobless and 280,000 became homeless (Kates et al. 1973). As was to be expected in the second poorest country of the western hemisphere, most of the victims were poor and landless. With access to capital and insurance, the small cohort of middle- and upper-class survivors rebuilt their homes and businesses in no more than six months. In contrast, a good many of the poorest victims never acquired the resources to rebuild (Bolin and Bolton 1983). The Managua earthquake was neither the first nor the last of what Blaikie et al. (1994, 2003) termed a "class-quake". On the other side of the great wealth divide of the Americas, the differential effects of disaster are equally visible in the impact of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans in 2005 (Rydin 2006).

Questions of equity and access to resources can be raised about any of the phases of the disaster cycle: risk reduction (disaster mitigation), preparation, emergency management, recovery and reconstruction.1 While recognizing the importance of social justice in the other phases (Richardson 2005), this article will concentrate on the issue of fair access to resources and services during the emergency phase of sudden-impact disasters. Specifically, the paper will:-

(a) examine the origins and growth of modern emergency preparedness, with emphasis on their implications for social justice and the apportionment of resources (my aim here is to explain how the present situation arose and what current trends might signify);

(b) consider some of the shortcomings of the response to Hurricane Katrina in terms of the implications for the further development of emergency response in the international arena; and

(c) on the basis of this analysis of development and trends, suggest some basic principles for the fair and healthy development of emergency preparedness.

Governments have a moral duty, and usually also a legal and constitutional one, to protect their citizens against foreseeable sources of harm (Beatley 1989). Thus society has acquired a complex set of laws, regulations, codes, norms, protocols, and regulatory bodies and agencies charged with the application of these instruments. The parts of this arrangement that relate to disaster prevention and response make up a system that is variously known as emergency preparedness, disaster management, emergency response or civil protection (Gillespie and Streeter 1987). Its history varies from country to country in line with the political system, type of state, dominant hazards, and--often--ideological considerations that affect public administration (Aguirre et al. 2003). One of the most common and significant differences between systems in different countries is that what works in a federal republic is not likely to be perfectly transferable to a unitary nation-state in which there are different divisions of legislative powers and sovereignty. Thus in many cases it is difficult to make emergency preparedness compatible between neighbouring countries; for example, the 25 national systems of the European Union vary between federal and unitary states, republics and constitutional monarchies, and centrist and devolved administrations (Sperling 2006). Differences are also evident between the levels of commitment and preparedness among the various US states and Canadian provinces (Scanlon 1995, Redlener and Berman 2006).

Despite the heterogeneity of disaster management arrangements around the world, there are some common themes and they are of particular relevance to the question of equity. The next section will trace the emergence of broad trends in emergency preparedness and consider them in terms of their implications for protecting society's most vulnerable members.

The origins of modern disaster preparedness

In recent decades there has been a gradual separation between civil defence and civil protection2 (Alexander 2002). The former has military or paramilitary origins and was created in order to protect civilian populations against armed aggression by a foreign power. The latter, which evolved 40-50 years later than civil defence, was devised to protect citizens against natural and technological disasters.

Modern civil defence has several progenitors. Prototype arrangements were made to protect the civilian inhabitants of large cities under threat during the First World War, possibly even during the American Civil War. No doubt there were many antecedents in the sieges and military campaigns of the more distant past. However, the clearest example of a prototype civil defence organization emerged, somewhat spontaneously, during the aerial bombardment of Guernica in 1937 in the Spanish Civil War. When many European and Asian cities were subject to intense aerial bombardment during the Second World War arrangements quickly became more widespread, universal and highly organized (Hewitt 1997).

Civil defence based on air raid precautions (ARP) gradually metamorphosed into a system intended to protect people and their governments against a possible thermonuclear bombardment. In reality, the consequences of nuclear war are both devastating and difficult to imagine. Hence the arrangements tended to be based on incomplete scenarios. There was little sense of continuity in terms of what would happen when people emerged from underground bunkers into a post-nuclear world, or perhaps a nuclear winter, in which life-support systems had collapsed. In any case, opportunities to protect the general public were extremely limited. Probably only Switzerland came anywhere near to achieving the goal of democratic access to radiation shelters: most other countries, and especially the poorer ones, would only have sheltered a tiny group of elite personnel, and in the event of a war the general public would have been left to fend for itself (Kerr 1983).

Hence, whereas ARP was generally broadly based, the civil defence arrangements of the Cold War were highly discriminatory. Restricted privileges were complemented by highly draconian forms of command and control, many of which were present in the arrangements for coping with natural disasters (Waugh 1993). Secrecy was paramount and, although it may have helped deny intelligence to hostile foreign powers, it also served to protect government officials against recrimination for their sins of omission or commission. Given that it was physically, logistically and financially impossible to protect whole populations against nuclear war, the emphasis shifted to protection certain groups--VIPs, political leaders and key government personnel--against the perceived threat (Blanchard 1994). In their most developed form, such arrangement could have been used to protect political leaders against the democratic rights of their own populations, or for various other abuses of power.3

By the 1970s civil defence had become an increasingly inefficient mechanism for tackling disasters, especially large natural catastrophes. It was excessively centralized, rigid and poorly adapted to the rigors of natural disaster response.4 Gradually, under the duress of repeated natural disaster, a new system emerged (Alexander 2002). Civil protection is amenable to development at the "grass roots" level of communities, neighbourhoods or local authorities (Boughton 1998). It recognizes that the local area is the "theatre of operations" when disaster strikes. However, it is not exactly a "bottom-up" form of organization, in that guidelines are needed from higher echelons of government, preferably originating at the national level (Perry and Lindell 2003). To a certain extent the growth of civil protection has been coeval with the relative decline of civil defence, though its reinvention in the form of homeland security has yet to determine a new status for civil defence or its potentially broader development, civil contingencies management.

Given the growing imperative of large disasters, civil protection has been relatively slow to develop. In part this reflects the universal tension between centralized and devolved government. A good civil protection system involves arrangements for tackling emergency situations that are harmonized across a wide variety of political units at various levels within a particular nation, but that are simultaneously adaptable to specific local needs--and of course sensitive to the needs of the most vulnerable sections of the community (McEntire and Myers 2004). The next section will examine the question of how disaster management powers are apportioned between different levels of government.

The tension between centrism and devolution

A consistent theme in the emergency preparedness activities of government--indeed in most aspects of civil administration--is the tension that arises between central control and devolution. The balance between these two opposing tendencies varies considerably from one country to another and in many cases also over time with the evolution of the political process. It also tends to vary with the prevailing system of emergency management. For example public administration in France is strongly centrist, with power vested in the prefectures as representatives of the national state in the regional Departments (Lagadec 2002), while federal nations allow varying degrees of autonomy to be held by their constituent states (Scanlon 1995). The centrist-devolution dichotomy has profound implications for emergency preparedness.

The dictates of intelligence gathering, counter-terrorism policy and military participation ensure that civil defence is usually a highly centrist function. It thus tends to reinforce the tendency to manage major emergencies from the leading seat of government. Moreover, participation in counter-terrorist activity by civil protection forces is necessarily limited. However, there are several reasons why this strategy is inefficient and risky. To begin with, the local authority area is usually the "theater of operations" when disaster occurs. It is very easy for incomprehension to creep in when experience and problems on the ground have to be matched with orders from a distant seat of government (Hilhorst 2003). Secondly, disaster response really requires the support of its beneficiaries, and that can best be achieved by making them active stakeholders in security management, not mere passive beneficiaries (Kumar et al. 2005). Thirdly, when disaster strikes, local knowledge, expertise and resources should not be supplanted by imported assistance, which is usually relatively slow to arrive, often insufficient or inappropriate and seldom a match for what can be generated locally if communities and local administrations are supported in their fight against disaster (Milliman et al. 2006). Fourthly, failure to strengthen the local response is likely to have negative repercussions for the ability of communities to recover effectively from disaster, especially where careful co-ordination and substantial resources are required (Lindell 1994).

Some of these organizational questions are well illustrated can be seen in the response to Hurricane Katrina, as the next section illustrates.

Hurricane Katrina and the protection of the poor

As most Americans are only too well aware, two recent events have revolutionized--or at least galvanized--US emergency preparedness: the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 (Calhoun et al. 2002), and the impact of Hurricane Katrina on the Gulf of Mexico coastline on September 29-31, 2005. They were, of course, radically different catastrophes. The first had immediate emergency management implications that stretched around the world (Scanlon 2003). It stimulated the largest reorganization of the US Federal government for almost 55 years and established homeland security as a national strategic priority.3 The resulting configuration of 150 federal agencies may have been adequate to face the terrorist threat, but faced with a large natural disaster it collapsed into what one researcher has called a 'bureaucratic nightmare' (Bier 2006) and another described as "the worst mishandled disaster I've ever seen in my life, and I've been studying disasters since 1949" (Walker 2005).

With the benefit of hindsight, the balance sheet for Hurricane Katrina is roughly as follows:-

(a) a well-developed system designed to forecast hurricane landfall timing and position had little effect on actual emergency management

(b) scenarios had been written that accurately predicted the effects if a hurricane were to make landfall at New Orleans, including estimation of emergency management needs (Laska 2004), but they had not had sufficient impact on disaster preparedness

(c) structural protection of large urban areas was patently inadequate (Foster and Giegengack 2006)

(d) evacuation needs were underestimated and operations were badly organized

(e) shelter requirements were underestimated and shelter was structurally inadequate, especially at the Superdome, where an estimated 20,000 people sought refuge

(f) some breakdown in law and order occurred, though it is difficult in the welter of mass media exaggeration and distortion to ascertain to what extent violence and anarchy actually prevailed (Walker 2005)

(g) relief operations were poorly co-ordinated, with distinct hiatuses between the actions of various levels of government and jurisdictions6

(h) imported assistance was badly managed and inefficiently used

(i) fraud was allegedly widespread in the handling and use of relief goods and money

Wealthy, mobile people with adequate financial resources fared relatively well; the poor and handicapped and people without cars fared badly. This was also a geographical problem of discrimination between rich, well-connected neighbourhoods and poor, vulnerable ones (Rydin 2006). One could argue that the same processes of social differentiation and marginalization were at work as had been present in Managua 33 years previously. Tierney (2006: 127) saw the neglect of the poor of New Orleans and the anarchy that prevailed when they were left to their own devices as indicative of the fact that "intergovernmental institutions [in the USA] are wholly incapable to responding to the needs of diverse publics during disasters." In a negative sense this observation is probably untrue, as the following section seeks to demonstrate.
The value--and perils--of a symbolic interpretation

The disaster movie as a genre likes to portray major emergencies as events that cause the breakdown of civil society and the emergence of the egotistical savage that is presumed to be latent in each of us (Mitchell et al. 2000). The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina was no exception (Arnold 2006a). In the end the situation is supposedly saved by the forces of altruism in this straight battle between 'villains' and emergent 'heroes'. Such a grotesquely black and white interpretation of human behaviour is greatly at odds with the kinds of 'therapeutic community' that sociologists have identified time and time again in disaster situations (Barton 1970). However, it has gained symbolic significance to the extent of becoming almost a self-fulfilling hypothesis: the mass media frequently prefer the Hollywood version of disaster to the more sober, objective one presented by the sociologists. The following quotations from news bulletins issued on September 1, 2005, illustrate the media's addiction to "breakdown of society" scenarios:-

"Looters rampaged through flooded streets and survivors scrambled to get out on Thursday as shell-shocked officials tried to regain control of the historic jazz city reduced to ruin by Hurricane Katrina." [Reuters]

"Some 4,000 National Guard troops fought an uphill battle to restore order to the largely submerged jazz Mecca plagued by gun-battles, fist-fights, gangs of roving thugs, looters and carjackers. Residents reported survivors dropping dead in shelters or gunned down outside the local convention centre. Hospitals were evacuated after power ran out and helicopters ferrying patients and babies drew gunfire. 'This is a war zone,' said Melissa Murray, 32, a Louisiana state corrections officer helping in the relief effort." [AFP]

"Gunshots were reportedly ringing out and fires flaring around New Orleans last night as looters broke into stores, houses, hospitals and office buildings - some in search of food, others looking for anything of value." [CNN]

Whether or not looting, sniping, theft, violence, rape and other forms of anti-social behaviour were a significant element in the reaction to Hurricane Katrina, they were a policy gift to the new cold warriors, who were handed a bonus when Hurricane Katrina struck (cf. Berman 2003). Although later reports led to some rewriting of the script in favour of a more objective, sober interpretation, there is no doubt that considerable anarchy reigned (and it was not restricted to the public, as field reports of police behaviour include some bizarre stories). But it was centred on the poor. In the words of Tierney (2006: 119): "If current trends continue, disaster victims will increasingly be seen as 'problem populations' requiring strict social control, and immigrants and minority group members will feel even more marginalized and fearful."

There are various possible combinations of forces in disaster management, with configurations that are either more or less reliant on military support (Wright 1997). The tendency over the last half-century has been to demilitarize civil emergency operations, particularly in European countries. Yet Hurricane Katrina was managed--at great expense and with monstrous inefficiency--by a combination of military and paramilitary forces.7 At the most superficial level this represented a triumph of authority over anarchy, albeit achieved slowly and laboriously. Delving somewhat deeper, it represented the triumph of authoritarianism over representative local democracy. "Bureaucracy has committed murder here in the greater New Orleans area" as Aaron Broussard, President of Jefferson Parish in the South New Orleans area, famously commented in a television interview during the early aftermath. Though not discussing his own agency's shortcomings, he produced some precise examples of Federal and state failure to provide support for local actions; indeed, their tendency to hinder them (cf. Somers 2005).

Mitchell et al. (1989) taught us to assess the significance of disaster in the light of what else is important at the time it occurs. In 2005, the seriousness with which the terrorism threat was treated led to a considerable momentum in favour of bringing back civil defence at the expense of civil protection. Whereas one might interpret the failure of city-, county- and state-level emergency preparedness as a good reason to strengthen democratic participation in restoring it to effectiveness, the federal response was clearly to supplant local initiatives with those generated far away in the main seats of power (Eisinger 2006). Moreover, a report on Katrina written for the White House and published in February 2006 advocated bringing homeland security directly under the command of the Pentagon (Townsend, 2006: 54, 71).8

Several authors have commented that problems of the kind exemplified by Hurricane Katrina will not go away in the future (Winterfeldt 2006: 37, Foster and Giegengack 2006). In the meantime the terrorism threat has, in effect, scared administrations into swinging the balance back from civil protection to civil defence (Alexander 2002), despite the evident fact that counter-terrorism preparations are quite unsuited to the task of managing a large natural disaster. Moreover, this has occurred despite the fact that between September 11, 2001, and September 11, 2005, there were only five deaths from terrorism in the USA. Nevertheless, vast sums have been spent on preparing for CBRN attacks. Granted that their consequences could be spectacular and that they are at least partly preventable if prior preparedness is sufficient, there have nevertheless been remarkably few CBRN incidents in modern history (and very many natural disasters).

Parker et al. (2006) noted that the US Federal Emergency Management Agency had strong prior awareness of the hurricane risk to New Orleans but saw Louisiana as "a terminally ill patient", incapable of preparing itself for the impending event. Perhaps deficiencies in the middle and upper ranks of emergency management are inevitable unless there is a solid base of preparedness at the grass-roots level. This suggests that the questions of welfare and relevance to people's lives need to be made much more central to preparations for catastrophe (Kirschenbaum 2004).

Welfare and resources for emergency preparedness

This section offers some select observations on the question of the extent to which poverty is diagnostic of lack of protection in the emergency phase. Economists have viewed the impact of disaster as a form of accelerated consumption of resources (Albala-Bertrand 1993, Jones 1987). Accordingly, disaster relief and recovery involve replacement of the assets that have been consumed. The balance between the profit function of market capitalism and the welfare function of social assistance is temporarily altered in favour of the latter. However, the relative scarcity of resources for relief, recovery and reconstruction means that these are subject to complex transactions. In general, local government negotiates support from regional and national, regional from national, and national from the international community, if appropriate. Faced with scarcity relative to demand, higher levels of government must ration resources and apportion them between the competing demands from lower levels (Figure 8). Local authorities must ensure that resources are fairly distributed among beneficiaries (Lee and Low 2006). The degree to which this happens may be a measure both of how effective government is and of how committed it is to the welfare of its citizens. Variations from case to case tend to reflect the following factors (cf. Hogg 1980):-

(a) degree of political connectedness, influence and patronage: communities that are well connected with the national political hierarchy fare best;

(b) effect on voting patterns: places containing significant proportions of the electorate are most easily listened to;

(c) geographical proximity to the centres of power: not merely actual geographical connectivity (the ease with which communities can be reached in times of crisis), but the perceived remoteness or centrality of places;

(d) national strategic significance;

(e) economic power;

(f) how vocal citizens' associations are (Superamanium and Dekker 2003).

The question of whether disasters accentuate the division between rich and poor or do something to bridge the gap has frequently been debated (Maxwell 2003, Varley 1994). The consensus is that temporary patterns of social welfare and solidarity under emergency conditions soon give way to a widening gap as the poor are left behind in the race to rebuild livelihoods and structures (Arnold 2006b). In the worst cases, the plight of the poor is such that the term 'disaster' becomes entirely relative: normal daily life can hardly be distinguished from emergency conditions (Bradbury 1998). Yet poverty and vulnerability are not exact synonyms however much they tend to go hand in hand. That being stated, disasters must not be used to consolidate power over the poor and disadvantaged (Tierney 2006).

Conclusion: a manifesto

The hypothesis that disasters tend to reinforce the power structures that create and maintain poverty, disadvantage and marginalization has been powerfully argued (Wisner 1993, 2003). One antidote may be a cogent agenda to empower the excluded groups. Emergency preparedness needs to be made more democratic, or at least that its democratic underpinnings need to be defended vigorously. I believe that disaster management services should respond to the following ten principles:-

1. Civil protection must be a service explicitly provided for the population, not merely for the state in any of its forms.

2. It must be responsive to the security needs manifested and expressed by ordinary people.

3. It must involve people, in a participatory manner, in the maintenance of their own security.

4. It must give priority to satisfying the needs of disadvantaged groups.

5. It must be organized primarily at the local level, while higher levels of government must provide coordination, harmonization and support but not supplant local crisis response capability.

6. The service must be fully demilitarized and must be as professional as possible.

7. It must involve scenario-based, generic emergency planning, which is designed to reduce the vulnerability and tackle the fundamental needs of the general population of the geographical area in which the plans apply.

8. It must define sustainable emergency management and risk reduction and work towards achieving them.

9. It must be compatible with ecological sustainability and urban and regional planning that pertain to the local area.

10. It must keep the public well informed of any risks and contingencies that may require people to take action.

As principles 4 and 7 indicate, the welfare function of emergency management should not be allowed to decline under the duress of neo-liberal ideology (Wisner 2003). I believe that making emergency preparedness more participatory and more democratic is the fundamental challenge of the 21st century (cf. Quarantelli 2004). This means that significant effort must be devoted to encouraging local preparation, especially among the most vulnerable groups and neighbourhoods in society.

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End notes

1. As the phases are not necessarily strictly sequential (Neal 1997), people may be disadvantaged simultaneously in a variety of ways, for example by lacking access to resources needed to face both the emergency and the long-term aftermath.

2. For the sake of consistency and clarity, I am using the European terms, which are widely accepted elsewhere in the world, particularly in Russia, Canada and Latin America (Horlick-Jones et al. 1995). Their relationship to emergency preparedness and homeland security, partial synonyms in the USA, will be discussed forthwith.

3. In the 1960s several western European states were close to coups d'état, though in each case the news was suppressed for years or decades.

4. According to Beresford (2004), organized civil defense in the USA began as a local, civilian responsibility and became a national one as it was militarized during the Cold War.

5. Beresford (2004) noted that the term "homeland security" had been used by the Federal government since 1998. However, not until four years later did it become premium currency.

6. In the words of Bier (2006, p. 253): "many of the problems in the aftermath of Katrina were not due to any one person or organization, but rather were problems of coordination at the interfaces between multiple organizations and multiple levels of government."

7. Within a week of Hurricane Katrina 14,200 military personnel and 50,000 National Guard personnel were providing logistical support, search-and-rescue capability and security in the Hurricane Katrina disaster area. However, they suffered from fragmented command and incompatibility of equipment (Townsend, 2006).

8. There have, however, been some powerful dissenting voices (Mitchell 2003, Handmer 2006).

Do You Want to be Commanded and Controlled? Reflections on Modern Emergency Management

It has long been clear that people react to circumstances on the basis of their perceptual models of reality, and that these may or may not reflect how things actually are (Burton and Kates 1964, Saarinen et al. 1984). Over the last half-century a considerable body of information has been accumulated on the ways in which people perceive and react to disaster (Drabek 1986). Emergency managers who know their field are well aware that public perceptions of hazard and risk present both opportunities to improve disaster management and constraints upon it (Scanlon 1991).

There are also wider questions of how events are perceived; indeed how the course of human history is envisioned. We tend to have a short-term view of things. For example, capitalism has become so powerful and pervasive around the world that it is often treated as if it were the result of some natural law of human organisation. Yet for much of human history it has not been the dominant force. The polarisation of society and competition between its members may to some extent be natural, but they are not the only alternatives for humanity. Relying as it does on competition, capitalistic organisation is something of an anathema to the welfare functions that go with managing emergency situations. This may explain why it is difficult and unwise to privatise disaster management (cf. Horwich 1993).

Secondly, there is nothing particularly immutable about the modern nation state. Sovereignty, fixed boundaries, territoriality, patriotism and national defence may have ancient antecedents, but their modern interpretations are not subject to any natural law about how societies should be organised. Many of the moral and legal principles on which they are based could be interpreted in radically different ways without loss of basic freedom or democracy. Terrorism has its origins and causes in questions of statehood and governance: on the other hand, natural catastrophes show no respect for political boundaries. Hence, both forms of disaster call into question the modern concept of statehood (Hewitt 1994).

In emergency management, the political problem boils down to a question of centrism versus devolution (Wolensky and Wolensky 1990). In principle, disaster management systems need to be organised on a local basis, with regional and national coordination of the many separate local systems (Sink 1985). In fact, despite decades of hard work by many different pan-national agencies, the world disaster management system remains in its infancy, poorly coordinated and unable to make the crucial effort to stop the relentless rise in impacts and losses.

Thirdly, there are broad questions about how knowledge is perceived and managed. The practise of dividing it up by department and degree is a remarkably modern one. It is also becoming increasingly counter-productive, especially in emergency management, a field which requires some level of synthesis of anything up to 35 academic disciplines. Moreover, in the present decade it is becoming increasingly clear that risks can only be reduced successfully by using holistic, integrative methods. This calls into question the basic framework of emergency planning and management (Alexander 2000).


Management and disaster management

In the modern world, the academic and practical discipline of management has its roots in capitalism (the organisation of production, distribution and consumption) and the nation state (through civil administration). However, disaster management has more diverse roots, and for this reason it may enter into conflict with its nominal parent discipline (Greening and Johnson 1996). Let us examine how.

To being with, in disasters, order does not spring from chaos by management alone. The essence of managing an emergency is to apply available resources to urgent problems in the most timely and efficient manner: in this respect ordinary management principles should be followed. However, there is also a vital need to understand and anticipate contingencies before they materialise--in other words, to reduce the level of improvisation in a disaster to a minimum. Thus emergency planning is at least as important as emergency management and should always precede it (Alexander 2002). The field is strongly allied to urban and regional planning, not least because both should tackle the question of the 'hazardousness of place'--i.e. reducing the risks of human settlements and activities (Britton and Lindsay 1995). Disaster management is thus much more than a technique to be learned in advance and applied ad hoc. It requires careful consideration of the scenarios for hazard, vulnerability, risk, impact and emergency action (Alexander 2000). It adds up to a need to develop techniques of "thinking the unthinkable" and "foreseeing the unforeseeable". This can, and should, be done.

The essence of disaster management is therefore not leadership in chaos--management as reaction--but rather the application of procedures that have been carefully worked out in advance. The degree of maturity of a country's emergency preparedness system can therefore be judged by the extent to which it is based on detailed (but flexible) planning and to which it is participatory. In my opinion, low levels of development are represented by the command and control approach (Waugh 1993).

Command and control has its origins in both warfare and colonialism. It divides participants into a disaster into commanders and commanded, and sets ground rules for how the former will control the movements and activities of the latter. Granted that some degree of control must be exercised over public safety and the efficiency of emergency operations, it is nevertheless easy to take this approach too far.

The challenge of the 21st century is to democratise emergency preparedness in such a way that ordinary people take more responsibility for their own safety. This will require them to know the risks, face up to them and make informed choices (Platt 1999). In extreme situations, it will also involve safeguarding their rights, not setting these aside.

Much progress has been made in designing and implementing civil systems for the management of civilian emergencies. The civil defence that grew up in response to 1940s air raid precautions and subsequent Cold War attack scenarios has mercifully ceded ground to civil protection against floods, storms, earthquakes, toxic spills and so on. But the cold warriors have not disappeared, they are in fact ready to stage a come-back. The terrorism threat is drastic enough to require more authoritarian methods of management than do most civil emergencies. It also involves different levels and criteria of predictability than most other non-military hazards. But need it require the suspension of participatory emergency management? Has anyone asked the general public whether it wishes to be commanded and controlled, and if so to what extent? Is authoritarianism really the way to manage great crises? These questions remain largely unanswered.

In addition, there are both small and large issues of democracy. With regard to the former, public support for emergency management must depend to some extent on sharing information and guaranteeing rights. The large issue is that command and control structures may in extremis be used either to safeguard the chosen few, rather than the public in general, or to safeguard the state against the demands of the public. At present there is a serious risk that civil protection services, which prize their own neutrality, could inadvertently be drawn into situations of extreme polarisation and forced to side with one party or the other. This is a risk that has loomed very large at recent anti-globalisation protests.


Command and colonise

A 1979 United Nations report on disaster management in developing countries observed that technologies and management techniques developed in Western countries are often inappropriate for managing emergencies in the world's poorer countries (U.S. National Academy of Sciences 1979). Knowledge and expertise are not necessarily directly transferable. Despite this, there has been a tendency to assume that such methods are etic--i.e. independent of specific cultural referents. In reality they are emic--dependent on assumptions about cultural acceptability and feasibility (Brislin 1980). Thus, in local indigenous circles, the foreign expert who arrives in an unfamiliar country and seeks to apply his or her knowledge to local problems has become something of a detested obstacle to good emergency preparedness (Allinson 1993).

The problem has its origins in the colonial epoch in such historical events and the British mismanagement of famines in the Indian subcontinent (Hall-Matthews 1996). It has persisted in the extraordinary poverty of solutions offered by countries that purport to manage disaster well and transfer their expertise to those that lack appropriate knowledge and structures. For whom are disasters being managed? By educating a professional class and diffusing a universal body of know-how are we pitting professionals against local people (Beatley 1988)?

At its worst, globalisation can be interpreted as an integrated system of commercial exploitation that has had the effect of increasing the world's income differentials, concentrating wealth in few hands, and spreading poverty, marginalisation and polarisation. If that is so, then it is a situation that facilitates the return of the colonial approach to emergency management, in which dissent, as much as disaster, has to be managed, order and stability have to be restored at any cost.


Conclusions

Is it inevitable in a divided world that we be separated into those who manage and those who are managed? In terms of preparedness for disasters the problems have steadily worsened, despite decades of hard work on devising new solutions. Besides the importance of well-known factors such as increased risk-taking, rising urbanisation and burgeoning populations in hazardous areas, the problem is also a result of the primacy of science, management and autarchic establishments (Wisner 2001). We may talk, not about policy, which ought to be sensitive to real, fundamental needs, but about "policy metaphors", which impose parameters where variables are warranted.

Civil protection against the peacetime emergencies that threaten populations need to be managed from a grass-roots perspective. The key words are 'participatory' and 'empowerment' (Wisner et al. 1977). Volunteer groups need to be trained and encouraged to improve their professionalism; ordinary people need to take more responsibility for their own safety (Wolensky 1979; Bowenkamp 2000). Modern information flows need to be the catalyst for sharing the burden of disaster. The technical component of disaster management is set to increase in both developed and developing societies. There will thus be a convergence of problems and solutions, but not one in which there will be any right or other justification for imposing solutions upon people.

In synthesis, the prospects for democratising civil protection worldwide need to be evaluated in the light of global trends in exploitation, diplomacy, hegemony and the uses to which new technologies are put. We must differentiate structure from mentality or mind-set. It is vital that the former not be conditioned by outdated forms of the latter. Neither at home nor abroad should risk and emergencies be managed by excessive use of command and control, or excessively technocratic management systems, or of excessive economic management by monetarism (Butler and Doessel 1981; May and Burby 1996). New paradigms of global security should not be used as an excuse for reintroducing forms of exploitation under the guise of preventing terrorism or forcing the pace of development.

In future years there will be an increasing convergence in emergency management systems between rich and poor countries, as both will have to cope with the growing complexity of modern disasters and the international dimensions of their impacts. It is essential that the convergence be based, not on rigid crisis management systems, but on a management process that emphasises planning to foster flexibility, co-operation and co-ordination.


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