PHASES OF OPERATIONS.

Mitigation

Mitigation involves risk reduction and monitoring to lessen socioeconomic impact of a disaster. Earthquake disaster mitigation entails protecting the public against the possible impact of future earthquake events. There is consequently a requirement for a variety of spatial and temporal information from different sources: demographics, building stock characterization, seismic history and neo-tectonic understanding, the location of faults and an understanding of their mechanism dynamics, including fault motion and strain.

Warning

Warning involves forecasting and cautionary processes and systems. For earthquakes, this implies predicting an event to within 15 km, a few days, and one order of magnitude - a current impossibility. Yet some progress to that end has been made. In addition to seismic techniques, earthquake prediction technologies include such approaches as coupling of ground-motion measurement devices, high tech computing and electronic switches and valves. There has been a dramatic increase in the resolution and amount of data available from weather satellites, besides vital improvement in their interpretation. These two factors have lead to more accurate and timely forecasts of some natural disasters such as earthquakes

The world over use of space-based sensors and military reconnaissance aircraft have been of a great help in the assessment of major disasters, such as wildfires, pollution, drought, and flooding. The application of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) technology to disaster planning and management is significant. By integrating GIS with Global Positioning System (GPS) data, it is now possible to accurately predict potential flood levels anywhere in the world. Experts can use the output from laser beams across fault lines, hydro dams, bridges, etc., when coupled with GIS/GPS feedback, to detect earth movement, structural failure, or landmark displacement.

Response

Response involves search and rescue operations, restoration of communications and civic amenities, crisis management and damage control for which information becomes vital. Disaster management is like a military operation and is best left to the armed forces to conduct in the way they are trained to do so. A simultaneous activity is mapping damage extent and nature, primarily for purposes of relief. The information required in the first hours after an event is not necessarily the same as that required days or weeks afterwards.

Relief and Rehabilitation

If one were to analyze the physical damage, its intensity would pale in the face of psychological suffering, trauma and anxiety. Its sole panacea and alleviation is information and human communicative interaction, in other words "reaching out to the victims." The technologies for relief and rehabilitation require efficient technologies for search, rescue, post-disaster relief, communication and information dissemination arrangement.

In September 1993, an earthquake struck Maharashtra, killing about 8,000 people and damaging some 230,000 houses in Latur, Osmanabad, and eleven other districts. With the help of the World Bank, the government of Maharashtra did a commendable job in rehabilitating the affected. A programme called Maharashtra Emergency Earthquake Rehabilitation Programme (MEERP) was initiated which institutionalized community participation and ensured that beneficiaries were formally consulted at all stages of implementation. The government of Maharashtra took an innovative step and appointed two respected community organizations, the Tata Institute of Social Sciences and the Society for Promotion of Resource Area Centre to carry out the reconstruction process. That lent the programme legitimacy and credibility. Its significance lay in beneficiaries being involved in decision making at all critical stages and provision of technical assistance to ensure that the houses were earthquake resistant. Training programmes were also organized in the villages. Within a year and a half, the programme took on the dimensions of a housing movement, As the MEERP progressed and results materialized, community participation in the rehabilitation received greater acceptance. While project management unit officials were initially skeptical of the community participation process, they later came to recognize it as an effective tool for dealing with difficulties that arose during implementation. Participation also had a positive psychological effect. The MEERP became a people's project, opening many informal channels of communications and accessibility between the people and the government. Lessons that stand out are a sense of participation, mutual consultation, information and awareness, areas where the IETE has ventured into through its mass computer literacy programme.