Research Based Criteria for Evaluating Disaster Planning and Managing

The paper discusses what is important in preparing for and managing disaster occasions. The starting point is that what is crucial is not planning or managing per se since there is always a degree of both, but good planning and managing. It is possible to have bad instances of both. Thus, to assess in any intelligent way the preparedness planning for and the managing of disasters requires asking the question: What is good planning and managing? We answer this question on the basis of the results of the empirical research undertaken by social and behavioral scientists over what is now a 40 year period. This research cuts across natural and technological disasters and since it essentially shows that no significant behavioral differences in the two types of crises, we do not discuss any distinction in the two occasions. First, we discuss rather extensively ten general principles of good disaster planning. Our basic point is that any planning can be evaluated as being good or bad depending on how well it meets the ten criteria discussed. Such an evaluation can be made even prior to any disaster occasion. This discussion is followed with a presentation of ten general principles of disaster managing. This is done because our view is that an evaluation of the management of a disaster has to use somewhat different criteria than those applied to preparedness planning. Good management does not automatically follow even from good planning since there is only a partial correlation between the two processes