The collaborative risk assessment environment in disaster management

In the past century the occurrence of natural disasters and man-made disasters have steadily increased with a significant loss of life, damage caused to infrastructure and property, and destruction of the environment. There is much evidence that natural disasters are growing on a global level. Dealing with disasters demand the involvement of a range of agencies collaborating and making collaborative decision. This research has identified the need for a collaborative platform to bring together a variety of information to enable multi-agencies to prepare for disasters and to enhance the resilience of cities. Risk assessment is a crucial aspect within the activities of multi-agencies. Risk assessment enhances emergency planning which can then be tested by detailed appraisals and exercises. Whenever risk assessment is updated, plans are revised and additional tests are carried out. Risk assessment helps multi-agency planners decide what resource requirements they need and what multi-agency activities need to be planned collaboratively in order to prepare for disaster. The aim of this research is to investigate the nature of an interactive map that can enhance multi-agency team collaboration in the risk assessment process in disaster management.This research uses the six-step risk assessment process used in Australia and New Zealand which is widely recognized as being good practice. These steps are Contextualization, Hazard Review, Risk Analysis, Risk Evaluation, Risk Treatment and Monitoring and Reviewing (Standards Australia/Standards New Zealand Standard Committee, AS/NZS ISO 31000:2009).In this research, the characteristics of a suitable interactive map for risk assessment was defined in collaboration with the senior practitioners within a multi-agency team in the UK. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with the senior managers of Category 1 responders in The Greater Manchester Local Resilience Forum (GMLRF) to capture the requirements for a multi-agency collaboration platform. The outcome of these interviews were used to capture the characteristics and develop the a prototype of the interactive map that can support risk assessment. Once implemented, the validation of the interactive map prototype was conducted involving senior practitioners of stakeholders in the GMLRF development group. The experiment was held in the THINKpod in ThinkLab, at the University of Salford. A total of 23 senior practitioners took part in the evaluation experiment. After a demonstration of a scenario and using the interactive map, the participants evaluated the prototype as a group and then completed questionnaires thatxvfeatured range of open, closed and rating scale questions. These questionnaires were designed to evaluate the perceived effectiveness and impact of the interactive map on strengthening collaboration among the multi-agency teams during risk assessment. The outcome of the evaluation shows a good level of satisfaction among the practitioners. The overall result suggests that the professionals view the interactive map as a good platform to support collaboration multi-agency teams in risk assessment activity