Emergency Response
A report in 2013

The World Disaster Report 2013

Burgess COMMENTARY
A LinkedIn message sent to Patrick Meier in response to his request for feedback on Chapter 3

Dear Patrick

I have had a look at the 2013 World Disaster Report, and as you suggested am giving you some thoughts from reading Chapter 3.

For many years, I was involved with post emergency reconstruction in a variety of situations. Getting data to help get some sense into the priorities was always a problem.

It was also a problem getting data to make sense of development planning even when there was no disaster!

From my perspective, many places are in disaster mode even though there is not obvious emergency. The data about these places is pretty pathetic all the time, and not only during the visible emergencies.

I would love to see the power that now exists to collect and organize data to be deployed as a system that routinely compiles the state, progress and performance of every place on the planet.

Were this information to exist, an emergency response could start from some baseline data that are worth a damn, rather than starting with nothing, or worse, less than nothing.

These ideas have been evolving for quite a time, but all the elements to deploy such a system are now very much in play, and I believe something quite impressive could be done.

I describe the metrics architecture that I am thinking about in a 2 page introductory paper and a rather longer 32 page paper. I call this initiative Multi Dimension Impact Accounting (MDIA). These papers can be located at this URL:
http://www.truevaluemetrics.org/DBadmin/DBtxt001.php?vv1=txt20080001

Whenever I read material about emergency response I am always amazed at the lack of useful data at the getgo. Over the years, I have worked in various parts of the 'development' community and I think I understand some of the dynamic of how this can be, but it still annoys me intensely.

I realize this is not an 'emergency' focus ... but something like MDIA might well help to avoid some emergencies.

I would welcome feedback!

Peter Burgess

Open PDF ... The World Disaster Report 2013