There are a number of activities involved in the anticipation of disasters. Management of floods is no exception. In anticipation of the occurrence of floods, a number of activities need to be carried out in preparation of any imminent disaster that may arise.
Responders to disaster need psychological support which is aimed at helping them to deal with trauma that may arise as a result coming face to face with the devastating effects of this type of disaster. The Disaster Response Network (DRN) offers pro-bono mental health service to responders as well as helping forge working relationship between all responding organizations. However, there are policy issues that need to be addressed to ensure that all these responders are strategically incorporated in disaster management.
There are a number of activities and procedures involved in preparing and anticipating floods. They include; threat information gathering, particularly, from the environment and persons, paying particular attention to the information obtained, interpreting this information in relation to evident disaster signs, a series of processes geared towards informed decision making.
Responders also need to be given the necessary psychological support and training in anticipation of the imminent trauma that they will be exposed to by the devastating effects of the floods (Gist and Lubin, 1999; Lindell and prater, n.d.). The Disaster Response Network (DRN) is a function of the American Psychological Association (APA) that offers pre-disaster psychological support to disaster responders. When responding to floods, DRN enables the responders to deal with trauma in the process of their humanitarian work (APA, 2011).
The DRN offers a number of supportive roles to disaster responders. Basically, it coordinates the activities of all responding organizations including the Red Cross. The DRN aims at maintaining fruitful working relations between responding organizations, communities and individuals in response to flood management.
Furthermore, the DRN offers psychological counseling to the communities affected by floods (APA, 2011). To provide these services, the DRN as well as other disaster responders are mandated to follow a code of professional ethics (Phelps, Eismanb and Kohoutc, 1998).
Given that there are a number of organizations with different structural policies but sharing a common goal in responding to disasters related to floods, conflicts may arise. This is due to the fact that the corporate organizations respond to disasters not only for humanitarian reasons but also for publicity.
As such a conflict of interest arises between the corporate organizations and other humanitarian organizations that respond to floods. Currently, the DRN is working with other organizations such as the Humanitarian Relief Initiative (HRI) of the World Economic Forum (WEF) and corporate organizations to establish priorities and harmonizing the objectives of all these organizations to address the set priorities (Martin and Darcy, 2011).
So far, there lacks an in depth understanding of the motive behind the involvement by the corporate organizations in response to disasters emanating from floods. Within the humanitarian policies, there exist gaps that corporate organizations must be able to address. For example, commercial organizations are useful in long-term disaster management especially in post-disaster reconstruction. However, the current humanitarian policy limits involvement of corporate organizations to short term engagement.
To address this strategic weakness, the current humanitarian policy needs to be reevaluated and requires that commercial and humanitarian responders categorically state their motives. This will lead to informed decision making and strategic disaster management (Martin and Darcy, 2011).
To effectively overcome the challenge of incorporating commercial organizations to disastrous floods, there needs to be policy changes that require openness about the motives of engagement in humanitarian work. This will ensure there a sustained long term engagement by these commercial responders. This will be in intended at addressing current shortcoming in policy issues.
Reference List
APA. (2011). Disaster response network member guidelines. Web.
Gist, R. and Lubin, B. (1999). Response to disaster: psychosocial, community, and ecological approaches. London: Taylor and Francis.
Lindell, M. and Prater, C. Estimating evacuation time components: lessons from nuclear power plants, hurricanes, and the first world trade center bombing.
Hazard Reduction & Recovery Center, Texas A&M University. Web.
Martin, E. and Darcy, J. (2011). Uneasy bedfellows: The motives and drivers of collaboration between the commercial and humanitarian sectors. Humanitarian Exchange Magazine. Web.
Phelps R., Eismanb, J. and Kohoutc, (1998). Psychological practice and managed Care: results of the CAPP practitioner survey. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 29 (1)