Asking for and offering aid in disaster

Remember that requests for and offers of aid in disaster should include:

WHO is requesting/offering - organization and what is their authority?

WHAT is needed/offered - people, supplies, services?

WHEN is it needed/available?

WHERE is it needed/deliverable?

FOR HOW LONG is it needed/available?

Collaboration Partnership Advice

This came out in a workshop I conducted recently. It's good advice for many, but especially pertinent to the ISCRAM association now our debutante phase, being courted by many:

• Define threshold for partnership
• No half-baked, meaningless collaborations
• Only real, impact-generating partnerships
• Define focus, that will define where you partner
  

What Would You Do?

This just came across the IAEM mailing list: A simple and very real scenario.

Good Afternoon- as a student and active volunteer I need your opinions. We have no confirmed cases of H1N1 in Aruba, but we have a ship docking on Friday with 3 confirmed cases of H1N1. If it was your island, how would you handle this? Our public health officials are trying to calm the media generated hype. We have cautioned that basic hand washing and not to panic as most cases have been mild. If you were the PIO, how would you approach this? As an EM, beyond the normal concerns, what are your protocols? If you wish, please email me at [deleted, email Susanne if you can help]. I will be talking to our EM soon and wish a spin on this beyond my scope of experience. They say that everything is a lesson-real life schoolroom- but not the way I wanted.

Thank you in advance for your time. Your posts have really helped with my learning.

Regards,
Amy

"The social graph"

"the social graph" -- Dan Russell (Google) used this phrase in an email talking about using data from social networking technologies.

I find it both telling and fascinating. One of the difficulties I experience personally with the use of social networking tools, and which is a critical obstacle to their use in crisis management, is that they assume a "flat" graph. I need a clustered graph: I do, want and need to compartmentalize most of my interactions, e.g., I'd use Twitter much more if I could target/hear from friends vs ISCRAM board vs ISCRAM community vs Silicon Valley Red Cross vs American Red Cross etc.

(The next step needed for crisis management is the ability to filter and screen interactions based on cluster membership and role.)

Is anyone looking at clustering for identifying and managing social groups meaningfully?

There's no I in power

In Gulliver's Travels, Gulliver visits Lilliput, where he -- a relative giant -- is overcome by hordes of (relatively) minuscule Lilliputians. Many analogies can (and have been) drawn from this tale; the one I'd like to muse upon here is the power of the collective over the power of the individual.

As both a leader and a manager, there is a temptation to try to solve the problems people bring to us, that is, to be the one with the answer, the "go to" person -- "just bring it to me and I will take care of it." This can be a result of wanting (or needing) to reinforce authority, and it can be a well-intentioned desire to make things easier for the people around us.

Either way, we've all heard that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

When I make myself the center of problem-solving and decision-making, I am laying down an I-shaped brick bottleneck. People have to wait for me to attend to all the other important problems I am handling before I can attend to theirs. And, after they've waited, I can only give them the insights and knowledge of one person: me. In Gulliver's Travels' terms: I am trying to be the Lilliputian with the one big rope that can hold Gulliver down.

Uhm, but, the message was: There is no one big rope that can hold Gulliver down. So, if I want to see the giant held down (and, incidentally, just possibly, maybe, help build a stairway to heaven), I do much better by relaying to, trusting in, relying upon, all the individual threads that we possess. That is, there is greater power in the net than in the rope.

As a leader and manager, I get more authority and make things easier for the people around me when I nurture the net and let us be the center of problem-solving and decision-making. People get answers more quickly, and benefit from the insights and experiences of many individuals -- including, perhaps, just the right one. (Besides, it's a lot less work for me.)

In other words: Engage, delegate, empower. There is we in power but no I.

P.S. Einstein may have stood on the shoulders of giants; me, I stand on the shoulders of hundreds of midgets.

If you're interested in the power of we, I can recommend the book It's Your Ship.

First Silicon Valley ARC Chapter Disaster Volunteer Meeting

The first meeting of the disaster volunteers from the new Silicon Valley Chapter of the American Red Cross took place on Tuesday Jan 27, 2009 with about 70 people in attendance.

It was, in part, a "Meet and Greet" for the volunteers from the two former chapters, but was also intended to seed the new chapter mantra of "Excite, Engage, and Empower." In this case, that meant starting volunteers thinking about preparedness needs, and understanding that they do not have to wait to be told what to do, but should feel able to take initiative and come up with suggestions when they see that actions need to be taken.

Specific attitudes that need to be overcome:

• "I don't have the authority to do that"
• Well, if not you, then who?
• If you don't know, maybe you d0. Find out.
  
• "'They' have to ..."
• Sorry, you can't assign action items to others. You can take an action item to ask them if they can and will take it on.

Mistakes were made:

• The food was in the center of the room, splitting attendees into two large groups, and leaving speakers talking to the food.
• Meeting purpose and process was not made clear from the outset.
• It was not made clear up front that this was to be a working rather than an informational meeting.
  
• Lost teaching moment: A public, flat-out answer of "No" was challenged only on the underlying reason, and not on the unacceptability of a "No" response.
• Follow-up plan was not clear.

However, a lot of energy, good ideas and momentum were generated. I hope to be able to channel this into an opportunity to develop and experiment with the Participatory Preparedness Planning Process methodology.

Participatory Preparedness Planning (PPP)

One of the obstacles to effective preparedness is that many planners have little or no actual experience with disaster response, so that considerable amounts of learning may be needed before they can comfortably engage in planning activities. Additionally, disaster preparedness is typically only one of many competing demands on their time.

Participatory Preparedness Planning (PPP) is a preparedness planning methodology that integrates participatory design, training and disaster exercise development in order to provide planning teams with a structure for thinking through realistic scenarios, reviewing response plans, and developing realistic action plans accomplishing preparedness tasks.

The methodology assumes that preparedness is an on-going process of planning and training, and that plans are not documents but individual and institutionalized knowledge. It works through a series of meetings in which participants define desirable outcomes and match them to the actions and resources necessary to achieve those outcomes. Thinking of outcomes, actions and resources is done in the context of specific event scenarios that are based on the hazard and risk analysis of the relevant jurisdiction.