Disaster Response and recovery

Component-I (A) – Personal Details

Role Name Affiliation

Principal Investigator
Paper Coordinator, if any Prof. P.K Shajahan Professor, School of Social work
Tata Institute of Social Sciences
Content Writer/Author Dr. K N Parivelan and Associate Professor, Nodel Centre
(CW) Ms. Nalini Yadav* for Excellance in Human rights
Education, TISS
*Research Scholar TISS
Content Reviewer (CR) Prof. John Menacherry Principal Matru Sewa Sangh Institute of
Social work, Nagpur

Language Editor (LE)

Component-I (B) Description of Module

Items Description of Module

Subject Name Social Work
Paper Name Fields of Practice in Social work
Module Name/Title Disaster Response and recovery

Module Id
Pre-requisites<Expected to know Some basic understand about what is mean by disaster, how to
before learning this module> reduce the impact of it

Objectives • Understand the concept of disaster response

• Understand the concept of disaster recovery
• Understand the correlation between disaster
response and recovery
• The importance of these concepts in disaster
management
Key words Disaster response, recovery
Module: Disaster response and recovery

1. Introduction

Disasters are non routine events which disrupt daily routine of the communities. They result in loss
of lives and livelihood, communication & transportation failure, and devastated infrastructure. In
21st century, disasters have become recurring phenomenon and require planned response and
recovery measures. It is important to examine if we are ready to adequately response and recover
from disasters so as to bring back the communities to their daily routine with reduced vulnerabilities
and enhanced capacities. Bringing back normalcy requires rapid interventions to effectively reduce
the losses and ensuring safety of people by mobilizing resources. These interventions can be for
short-term, medium or long term but largely depending on intensity of the disaster and specific
needs of the communities.

2. Learning outcomes

 Understand the concept of disaster response

 Understand the concept of disaster recovery
 Understand the correlation between disaster response and recovery
 The importance of these concepts in disaster management

3. Disaster Management cycle

The following figure shows phases of disaster management cycle:

In the given picture we see four phases of disaster management cycle:
1) Disaster Mitigation
2) Disaster Preparedness
3) Disaster Response
4) Disaster Recovery

Disaster mitigation refers to activities carried out before or after a disaster occures to
prevent/minimize the effects. For example, hazard and vulnerability assessment, infrastructure
improvement etc. Disaster preparedness is preparing to respond to disasters which also includes
recovery planning. It takes place before a disaster strikes, for example, stocking food and drinking
water, preparing evacuation planning. Disaster response is the immediate action taken after a
disaster occurs such as search and rescue operation, fire fighting, providing food, water, and shelter
etc. Actions planned during preparedness are executed in response phase. Disaster recovery refers
to long-term response activities carried out to bring back normalcy in the affected communities. It
largely refers to reconstruction, temporary shelter, economic recovery, livelihood restoration,
health services and psychosocial well being of the affected community. It is important to mention
that all these activites are closely related with each other. A robust disaster management plan needs
to establish coordination among these four phases to ensure effective response.

4. Disaster response

4.1 Definition
UNISDR has defind disaster response as 'actions taken directly before, during or immediately after
a disaster in order to save lives, reduce health impacts, ensure public safety and meet the basic
subsistence needs of the people affected'.

4.2 Concept
From the given definition it is understood that the immediate action taken after a disaster to mitigate
the impacts is referred as disaster response. Disaster response caters to post disaster short and
medium term needs. It includes evacuation, emergency aid, search and rescue operations,
immediate health care and prevention of health emergencies, temporary shelters, providing water
and food to the disaster survivors, and to bring back normalcy.
The initial 24-48 hours, is the most critical duration of disaster response but the local infrstructure,
communication and transformation is heavily disrupted therefore; immediate response often takes
place without critical assessment details.

4.3 Key functions of response:

4.3.1. Early warning system(EWS)

In the current UNISDR terminology, early warning is defined as ‘the provision of timely and
effective information, through identified institutions, that allows individuals exposed to a hazard to
take action to avoid or reduce their risk and prepare for effective response’.
The concept of early warning is to provide information on a possible hazard in order to enable
action in advance to reduce the impacts of risks involved. It is concerned with natural events such as
floods, Tsunami, drought, landslides, volcanic erruptions etc. An effective early warning system has
four components:
(i) Risk knowledge,
(ii) Monitoring and warning service,
(iii) Dissemination and communication and
(iv) Response capability.

Basher (2006) has explained the relationship between these components through the following
figure:
Risk Knowledge
Monitoring and warning service
Knowledge of the relevent hazard
A technical capacity to monitor
and of the vulnerabilities of people
hazard precursors, to forecast the hazard
and society to these hazards
evolution, and to issue warnings

Dissimination and communication Response capability

The dissimination of understandable Knowledge, plans, and capacities for
warnings, and prior preparedness timely and appropriate action by
to those risks authorities to those risks

Figure 2: components of early warning system.

The elements seeem to be logically sequenced but a successful early warning system is an outcome
of strong co-ordination and communication between these four elements. (i)Risk knowledge
referes to collecting data pertaining to a specific hazard keeping the local vulnerabilities in
consideration. Risk assessment could be based on historic experience and human, social, economic,
and environmental vulnerabilities. It helps in prioritizing early warning system needs and preparing
for disaster response. (ii) Monitoring and warning services is the most well recognized element of
EWS. It require sound scientific basis to generate timely and accurate warning but traditional
monitoring mechanism also play vital role in case of failure of scientific measures.
(iii) Dissimination and communication is concerned with dissiminating the monitored warning to
those at risk. In order to initiate effective response, the message should have useful information and
people should be able to understand them. (iv) Response capacities is community's ability to
understand and implement response on the warning message. It can be enhanced through awareness
on risks and vulnerabilities by formal and informal educational institutions. A complete failure of
lack of coordination among EWS elements was observed during 2004 Tsunami 1, resulting in
devastation and loss of lives.
It is important to highlight that despite the introduction of advance EWS technologies, isolated
communities are still unable to respond immediately to a disaster because the information does not
reach them in time. It can cause serious threat to many lives therefore; an international drive called
'Last-mile connectivity' has been launched which aims to dissiminate warning to the last vulnerable
individual. As part of this drive local resources such as light, signs, drums, siren are utilized to warn
each individual against the rising risk.

4.3.2. Post Disaster Needs and Damage Assessment (PDNA)

PDNA is set of guidelines and methodologies to assess the economic, and physical damage cause by
a disaster. It identifies immediate and long-term needs of people and produces a structure to recover
including risk reduction strategies. PDNA has following objectives:
1) To quantitatively define financial needs for economic recovery and reconstruction after
disasters.
2) To define priorities in geographical areas, sectors and special groups in recovery and
reconstruction programmes.
3) To ascertain capacity of government to conduct post-disaster programmes on its own and/or to
define international cooperation needs.
4) To provide basis for monitoring for the ex-ante disaster risk reduction and management
schemes.
A PDNA also leads to recovery framework so as to improve pre-disaster conditions to reduce the
risk of future emergencies. There are two types of damange and needs assessment:
(a) Rapid need assessment
(b) Medium-long term impact assessment

Needs and damage assessment is a part of both, response and recovery phases of disaster
management in order to deliver effective relief, rehabilitation and reconstruction. The damage
caused to various sectors such as Infrastructure, Agriculture, Livelihood, Health and Environment,

1 https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2005/01/warn-j03.html last accessed on 16 May, 2017.

is assessed by sector experts to address the immediate needs and long-term recovery plan. It also
caters to the emerging needs of marigalized communitites.
The following table shows the various sectors assessed under PDNA:

Infrastructure sector Housing, road & bridges, electricity, communication, transport,

water resources, sanitation and hygiene.

Productive sector Crops, livestock, agriculture, irrigation, commerce and industry,

tourism, financial sector.

Social sector Housing and human settlements, health and population,

nutrition, education, culture and heritage.

Cross-cutting sectors Governance, environment and forestry, disaster risk reduction,

social protection, gender equality and social inclusion.

Rapid needs assessment begins within few hours of a disaster and is generally completed within 3
days. It collects data on health, water, sanitation, food and non-food items, shelter, and community
resources. The aim is not to collect an in-depth assessment but to conduct a basic survey of
immediate needs to strengthen response by identifying priorities of the population at-need. The
coordination between government, local institutions, and NGOs is required to conduct rapid
assessment immediately and effectively. One of the drawbacks of rapid assessment is that due to
lack of adequate time, it may suffer with biased data as sometimes the sector experts might not be
able to access an areas due to safety issue or the cumulative impacts of a disasters also restrict
mobility.

Medium and long term impact assessment is more applicable is recovery phase. The objective of
this need assessment is to produce an explict report on infrastructure, social, productive, and cross-
cutting issues. It is helpful in developing the objectives, budget, and time-frame for long-term
recovery plan. Incorporating disaster risk reduction plan is a manadatory for these assessments so as
to reduce risk of future disasters and help the communities in build back better. The focus in also on
prioritizing the needs of most vulnerable population such as female headed households, children,
elderly, and people with special needs.

Things to remember
(a) In most of the disasters, there is no planned methodology to assess the damage as disaster
impacts are difficult to model.
(b) Environmental damage and disasters are closely related to each other. In normal situations,
conducting an Environmental Impact Assessment is helpful in dentifying possible environmental
impacts and mitigation measures.

5. Disaster Recovery

5.1 Deinition
UNISDR has defined disaster recovery as the process of 'restoring or improving of livelihoods and
health, as well as economic, physical, social, cultural and environmental assets, systems and
activities, of a disaster-affected community or society, aligning with the principles of sustainable
development and “build back better” to avoid or reduce future disaster risk.

5.2 Concept
Disaster recovery is the process of bringing disaster affected community back to its social, political,
and economic routine however; recovery cannot be measured in time-frame as each disaster is
different and each community has different needs. They take their own time to recover from the
aftereffects. As mentioned earlier, the long-term damage assessment helps to bring back normalcy
and built back better. It is important to note that disaster response and recovery cannot take plaec
separately. An effective response is the foundation for a planned recovery process.
Recovery includes multiple institutional actors such as public and private sector, NGOs,
communities, emergent groups, and volunteers. The public sector includes government entities at
local, state and central level. There are three basic functions of disaster recovery:

(a) Household recovery

(b) Business recovery
(c) Community recovery

5.2.1. Household recovery

Households recovery has further three components: housing recovery, economic recovery, and
psychosocial recovery. It takes plave over a span of time as each component is affected by
socioeconomic factors, demography, age, gender, ethnicity, employment, and social capital.
Household recovery is a collective action wherein external factors such as employment, transport
facilities, recovery of schools , healthcare and social services play vital role in household decision
when it comes to shelter.
 • Housing recovery: There are four phases of housing recovery; (i) emergency shelters are
spontenous locations selected immediately after a disaster stirickes. (ii) temporary shelters provide
fooding and lodging untill a safer/better shelter is available, for example, community halls,
schools, etc. (iii) temporary housing provides way to housholds to get back to their normal routine
untill a permanent housing solution is found. (iv) permanent housing is the final phase of housing
recovery wherein housholds return to their everday routine. These houses are designed to eliminate
the physical vulnerabilities for example, building earthquake resistance houses in earthquake prone
areas.
Further, housing recovery among lower-income housholds is slower that that of higher income
households due to pre-existing vulnerabilities and poor resources. Sometimes, poor-income
housholds are forced to live in temporary housing for many month whereas high-income
housholds already relocate to permanent housing. Discrimination against female headed
housholds, race, and caste are also observed in recovery phase. For example, post hurricane
Katrina 2, the lower-income African American communities received lesser financial support from
government agencies and were offered lesser jobs than the White, middle-classs Americans.
Similarily, female-headed housholds are often find it difficult to access relief material and claim
their property rights.

• Economic recovery: It is determined by factors such as household income, houshold size,

damaged caused by the disaster and phase of housing recovery adopted by the houshold. As
described in the previous example of hurricane Katrina, poor-income households find in difficult
to recover quickly. They are often trapped with negative coping strategies such as setting off
assets, cattels, and farms to meet basic needs. It is observed that children leave school untill
normalcy return however, in poor-income housholds they are forced to permanently leave school
and contribute towards household income. Due to lack of proper education and skills, they often
settle for petty underpaying jobs. Thus, they run the risk of falling deeper into the poverty cycle.
Slow economic recovery can also result in prolonged economic deprivation. For example; the
fisherman community in Myanmar 3 had not received their fishing boats and livestock even after
five years of cyclone Nargis. Therefore, speedy and effective economic recovery strategies should
be framed so as to contribute towards economic growth and welfare.

• Psychosocial recovery: Disaster affected households suffer from trauma of loosing their family

2 https://ricochet.media/en/1344/racism-and-recovery-rebuilding-new-orleans-after-katrina last
accessed on 16 May,2017.
3 https://unchronicle.un.org/article/economic-recovery-after-natural-disasters last accessed on 16
May, 2017.
 & friends, livelihoods and social network. The survivors are unable to perform the routine events
of daily life and often experience anxiety, anger, and depression. Mental health care providers who
have worked on taking care of psychosocial needs have specified post disaster mental health
concerns, referred as Post Tramautic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Psychosocial recovery provides
consultation for individual grief without making them realise that they need any assistance as
many times people tend to get offended. To break the general notion that individuals seeking
mental assistance have mental inability is also a challange for mental healthcare providers. The
psychosocial recovery process includes identifying concerns, setting priorities and assisting the
survivors in decision making. In many cases, the survivors are not aware that they need exclusive
psychosocial care however, their symptoms are visible such as grief, sadness, anxiety, anger,
fatigue, stress, and reliving specific events of the disaster etc.

5.2.2. Business recovery

Each business has its own set of factors which affect its recovery after a disaster however; it is
common that local business often takes longer to recover than big maufacturing or construction
business. The local business typically serves neighbourhood communities and compared to large
markets, they are dependent on local financial resources and government funding to recover.
Further, the insurence policies cover physical damage but do not compensate for lost business. For
example, post hurricane Katrina, from 2005-2006, around 7,900 4 local shops shut down in southeast
Louisiana, including New Orleans due to lack of recovery funding from government. The constant
struggle with insurance companies, lack of employees, customers, and supplies became challanges
for sustenance of local market.
Post disaster business recovery aims to not only restore the lost business but that of making it
resilient to future shocks by relocating the business from disaster prone areas. A diversified
economy recovers quickly from disaster impacts than an economy which is dependent on only one
resource. For exmaple, completely tourism based industry will attract lesser tourists after a disaster
which will delay economic recovery.

5.2.3. Community recovery:

Community recoevry has become an important agenda of relief and recovery programmes.
Governent, NGOs, community based organizations and emergent groups contribute towards
community recovery. The goal of community recovery is to bring the community back to its normal
routine with reduced velenerabilities as restoration of earlier environement may reproduce previous

4 https://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/smallbusiness/2007-08-28-katrina-finances_N.htm
last accessed on 16 May, 2016
 hazards. Community recovery goes hand in hand with household and business recovery but it
cannot take place immediately. Local government’s ability to improvise effective recovery
strategies affects the speed, efficiency, and equity of community recovery. A pre-existing
community recovery plan stimulates speedy recovery. The intervention strategies should effectively
allocate resources so that rapid and full recovery is achieved. A preimpact disaster recovery should
consider the following:

a) Recovery plans need complete detail of community resources which is a time taking process and
can cause delay in recovery. Community recovery is often postponed due to urgent need of
houshold and business recovery.
b) The pre-impact plan can be based on data collected during non-disaster situations but it should be
flexible to adjust according to the immediate disaster impacts.
c) The objective of disaster recovery should be to restore the community to the conditions that
existed before the disaster. As noted earlier, this will simply reproduce the community’s existing
disaster vulnerability.

Restoring livelihoods is another challange for community recovery. UNDP has introduced an
operational framework for planning and implementation of a livelihood framework. In this
framework, livelihood interventions are loosely categorized into to 3 overlapping phases, namely:

• Livelihood provisioning
• Livelihood protection
• Livelihood promotion

Livelihood provisioning is a relief-based objective, which relies on swift response and the logistical
capacity to deliver critical provisions. Livelihood protection is aligned with the recovery phase and
requires careful and complex assessment and benefits from local contextual knowledge. Livelihood
promotion is the transition from recovery efforts to development goals and requires the long-term
commitment of governments and other development actors.

6. Summary

The priority of disaster response is to deliver humanitarian assistance and mitigate the impacts.
Recovery is the next phase where long-term needs of household, business, and community are
addressed. It also includes reconstruction programmes, restoration and normalization of essential
services. Understanding of concepts of recovery, rehabilitation and reconstruction, damage and loss
assessment tools, and methodology are essential for those involved in disaster management.
Response and recovery are not only planned to return to normalcy but also to ensure risk reduction.
Anticipating recovery needs and goals and identifying local resources and organizations prior to a
disaster will speed up implementation of recovery plans. At the same time, strengthening
coordination among local community and governmental organizations through recovery planning as
part of the routine planning process will improve response and recovery effectiveness. Tapping on
local resources can enhance response and recovery effectivness. Recovey may take time but it
should not be rushed as haphazard planning can increase stress among local communities. Also,
sensitivity towards cultural values makes the communities to respond towards recovery activities. It
should also be looked as an opportunity to eliminate pre-existing inequalities specially in housing.