Post-disaster Need Assessment

2003

This paper reviews the role and methods of market analysis in the Emergency Needs Assessment (ENA) process. If emergency interventions pursue efficiency objectives -with an eye to minimising costs and collateral economic damage then market analysis must be an integral part of the process. The analytical methods for all areas of market analysis are well documented, and can be borrowed from a large corpus of literature. But methods are often developed around large panel datasets that are not available in emergency situations. Nor are advanced economic modelling and econometric skills readily available in the humanitarian community. The challenge is to develop methods in a practical middle ground between ‘seat-of-the-pants’ calculations and academic research. But robust methods of market analysis take us part of the way to ensuring that operations are cost-efficient. The information must be used to inform flexible programme and resource-allocation decisions.

2010

This is a guideline for World Bank task team leaders (TTLs) entrusted with the design and execution of assessments to determine disaster impacts as well as post-disaster needs for recovery, reconstruction, and disaster risk reduction or management. Assessments estimate, first, the short-term government interventions required to initiate recovery and second, the financial requirements to achieve overall post-disaster recovery, reconstruction, and disaster risk management or reduction. The end product of the assessment is a comprehensive program of recovery, reconstruction, and risk management that will guide all actions in a developing country following a disaster. The damage and loss assessment (DaLA) methodology uses objective, quantitative information on the value of destroyed assets and temporary production losses to estimate, first, government interventions for the short term and second, post-disaster financing needs. The DaLA method ensures that the affected government, the Uni...

Pakistan's earthquake. Method of data collection was mainly secondary sources from; scientific journals, government reportsand books sourced from database. Primarydata were also collected through sources such as; conference proceedings, archival data retrieved through statistical report, followed by data analysis and interpretation. Study found that the disaster need assessment (DNA) teams were not proactive in immediate response to the affected areas and people, therefore played insignificant impact during Pakistan's 2005 earthquake. For instance, study noted that a village was only discovered 10 days after the earthquake had occurred. Again study also found that coordination problems existed between the donor countries and the end beneficiaries in Pakistan. Apart from that,government of Pakistan felt reluctant to declare a state of emergency immediately to attract attention of the international community as well as paid lip attention in allowing easy access to distribution of materials and people during the crises. Relief materials were scattered and abandoned at the ports causing traffic jams and logistics problemwithout reaching the end beneficiaries meant for it. Finally, study recommends the following; that advanced methods such as unmanned aerial vehicle system (UAVS) should be used to collect data for proper need assessment in case of such a disaster in the future; the host nation should not relent to declare a state of emergency for international actors to intervene in the crises;and government of Pakistan should enter into long term contracts with logistics service providers (LSP) or United Nations government to help them in such situationssince they have taken such initiatives before.

2012

The US has not yet developed adequate models for estimating hazard generated needs, the necessary first step for developing useful decision support systems needed to estimate the capability and capacity of the response forces required. Modeling and technology required to support the decisions made by humanitarian relief organizations requires scenario driven catastrophic planning. This paper documents the lack of effective decision support tools and systems for humanitarian aid and describes the current state of models and methods used for determination of hazard generated needs. The paper discusses work performed on a catastrophic earthquake preparedness project. It outlines how the results of this project will be used to advance the modeling and decision support capabilities of federal, state and local disaster planners and emergency responders.

Natural Hazards Review, 2012

The paper focuses on the quantitative study of immediate resource requirements, which is one of the most severely understudied aspects of humanitarian logistics. As part of these analyses, the paper develops numerical estimates of the immediate resource requirements and their temporal patterns after Hurricane Katrina. The analyses are based on a dataset put together by the authors by post-processing the Action Request Forms (ARFs) issued in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The ARFs are forms used by emergency responders to request critical supplies from the federal government when the needs exceed what state and local agencies could provide.

S St tr re en ng gt th he en ni in ng g E Em me er rg ge en nc cy y N Ne ee ed ds s A As ss se es ss sm me en nt t C Ca ap pa ac ci it ty y ( (S SE EN NA AC C) )

Definition: a speedy evaluation that is carried out after the onset of a disaster with the objective of assessing the affected region or district and the needs of the disaster victims. The initial rapid assessment is entirely separate from the life saving activities of that involve the search and rescue teams or disaster medical assistance teams. The Sphere Standards indicates that the initial steps in the process of humanitarian response involves evaluation of needs required by the affected population which is followed closely by the prioritized designed plan of action based on the indentified needs (Fiedrich, 2013). This approach ensure that speed and efficacy of the response. Consequently in the event a Rapid assessment is not carried out during the initial stages of a disaster overlaps in efforts will occur, gaps will not be created and may not be indentified therefore result in wastage of precious time and resources during the time of great. In the event this scenario occurs the affected populace will be further burdened. The evaluation of the disaster zone and its populace is conducted as soon as a few hours after the occurrence of the disaster event, this should be completed with the first three days. The assessment is not detailed however it is broad evaluation by collecting information from as many sources as possible inclusive of direct observation for the purposes of verifying data (The Sphere Project, 2011) Rapid Disaster Assessment during the Relief Phase The relief phase involves keeping the affected population alive, thus the needs of the public have to be met; this needs include shelter, water food and medicines. The relief phase can go on for a very long time or can end fairly quickly. It depends on the nature of the emergency and the resources at hand. The length of time it takes to recover depends on the magnitude of the disaster, the preparedness of the country, the vulnerability and accessibility of the affected location, and the resources that are immediately or locally available. Rapid evaluation during the relief phase involves includes access and security, demographics of the affected population including the total population affected, number of displaced population as well as gender breakdown and the number of children under the age of 5.

Journal of disaster and emergency research, 2019