Disaster Management Approach and Phases

Introduction

The growth of technology has affected the environment in many ways. Manufacturing industries are releasing harmful chemicals in the air that disturb the environment due to which disasters occur. Changes in weather and climate will lead to natural disasters. Natural disasters are dangerous as they lead humans to death and destroy lands. The technology also increases unintentional events, like attacks and others disrupting business operations.

Disaster management is a process of avoiding and reducing the risks created by natural and manmade disasters. Business organizations are creating disaster recovery plans or business continuity plans to protect their business from these threats. Every country has disaster management plans to protect the nation and its people. Disaster management includes planning, responding to disasters, mitigating the risks, and recovering the business operations.

The disaster recovery plan helps either prevent the disaster from occurring or take appropriate action to reduce the risks and losses due to the disaster. The disaster manager or the team needs to identify the possible risks and threats from the external and internal factors and create a plan to reduce losses from those threats and vulnerabilities. The disaster recovery team is responsible for assuring the continuity of business operations after a disaster and protecting business assets.

The disaster recovery plan needs to include the identification of threats, creating a plan, training employees on the procedure, and maintaining the strategy for future use by updating it as and when required. A plan must be tested to ensure effectiveness so that no employee panics while using the plan during the disaster.

Types of disasters

1. Natural disasters occur because of changes in the environment and climates, such as floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, and others.
2. A technological disaster occurs when the computer system and automatic machines used in organizations and hospitals fail to respond correctly. All the data will be lost, and patients' lives will be at risk. The other technological disasters are cyber-attacks that target a company’s data and lead them to discontinue business operations.
3. Malevolence disasters are the disasters made by humans, such as terrorist attacks in which groups of people are hijacked to demand something from the government.

Phases of disaster management

Prevention: in this phase, the organization and the employees are protected from the threats of human disasters and natural disasters using preventive measures such as a disaster recovery plan, evacuation plan, designing the organization so that the building does not harm employees doing the natural disasters, and other emergency precautions.

Mitigation: in this phase, employees and other people must be trained and aware of the disaster and risk to their health and property. They need the training to protect themselves from the disaster effects, such as creating health insurance, going to a safe place during the disaster, and using the techniques to protect themselves and other persons near to them. Preventive and mitigation measures are different from each other. Mitigation is to reduce the risks, whereas preventive measures to protect from the disasters like floods by building houses on poles, using earth earthquake valves to shut down the supply of natural gas and protecting household items, and so on.

Preparedness: preparedness will reduce the effects of disasters by creating a plan and procedure to reduce the losses and protect their assets. Some of the planning and preparedness include:

Implementation of disaster communication systems to communicate with the emergency service providers and with the family,

To install the notification and alert system in the workplace.

To create a backup of confidential assets of the organization,

To practice the developed recovery plan,

To decide about the languages to be used and the communication means to use during the disaster.

To keep emergency things and food for the employees in the workplace as they cannot go out in disaster.

Response: the organization needs to create a team that can respond quickly to the disaster situation and rescues the people near the disaster place. They need to use the plan and help the organization reduce the consequences.

Recovery: it is the final stage of disaster recovery management in which the place of disaster is recovered to normal. The data in business is restored to start business operations. The entire emergency contact list is contacted as they restore the business operations, give treatment to the employees, and ensure safety.

Disaster Management Approach

The management is responsible for assuring the safety of the organization from every crisis. They need to create different crisis management teams and plans to respond to the emergency apart from business strategies and objectives. Small organizations can keep their data backup as they cannot invest in creating disaster recovery plans. Organizations with a large volume of data need to create an effective disaster recovery plan to protect their business from every threat. The following are the steps to building a disaster recovery planning team:

The disaster management team should consist of senior managers, disaster committee members, incident handlers, technical officers, public relationship officers, legal officers, and other experts. They need to have a broad range of skills and expertise through which they need to gather relevant business information and make the right decisions. There should be one or more disaster recovery teams that can handle disasters in an emergency.

A disaster management communication center must be created so that all the communication between the disaster management team happens without disturbance.

A spokesperson with desired communication skills must be selected to communicate continuously with the team and spread the information among them to reduce conflicts and confusion. He should handle the media and new channels by speaking confidently, as they are the sources through which consumers and markets get the news of how the organization is regulating the disaster and its effectiveness.

The disaster recovery plan must contain the communication objectives, the persons to be informed about the disaster, such as employees, customers, family members of employees, stakeholders, shareholders, top managers, union representatives, crisis committee, and others to respond effectively. They should use adequate communication tools to communicate with the emergency service providers like fire engine officers, health centers, networks, data backup providers, dealers, vendors, police officers, and others to start the recovery process and save the employees from the crisis.

Public interest groups and government officers must be informed about the disaster and the recovery process continuously. The team needs to take help from the media to inform about the safety of employees and others to reduce panic in public. Rumors are spread by the media when they are not involved in the recovery process, which harms the reputation of the business in the market, even when they become successful in restoring business operations. Therefore, media must be handled effectively by the public relations officer.

Conclusion

Disaster recovery management and the communication process are essential to reduce the consequences of disasters in the organization and other areas. Organizations should have a plan to reduce the effects of disasters. Disaster recovery planning must be included in the business strategic planning process to ensure business continuity. Organizations need to create policies and procedures to handle the business data effectively by the employees to reduce the technological disasters and train them about the threats and vulnerabilities that occur while using technology. Technologically both communication and data storage applications must be used effectively to reduce disasters and protect the company from natural and human-created disasters.