According to The Daily Yomiuri:

The government on Wednesday conducted a disaster drill under a scenario in which three massive simultaneous earthquakes struck a wide area along the Pacific coast in central Japan. Wednesday’s drill, the first under the triple-earthquake scenario, was among many similar exercises conducted nationwide, marking this year’s Disaster Prevention Day.

Japan’s Disaster Prevention Day was established to mark the anniversary of the Great Kanto Earthquake which killed more than 100,000 people in 1923. And China, since its 8.0-magnitude 2008 Sichuan Province earthquake, has also held two national disaster prevention days with nationwide drills.

This blog has long advocated both more extensive civilian drills as well as a special preparedness day to undertake them. If Japan and China can do so, I think we can too.

Most every top national and local government preparedness official I’ve spoken to believes that preparedness exercise for the public would increase citizen readiness and engagement. Short of an actual incident, a drill is the best way to get people to think through what they would do if something actually happens. (For example, how to evacuate in a hurricane for residents, like in the northeast, who are not used to doing so.)

And, I strongly believe that there needs to be one day in the year dedicated to the emergency planning process. If we as a nation feel it is really important for the public to develop emergency plans, it would be far more effective if everyone was doing that at the same time — rather than asking individuals to do it on their own. This ‘preparedness day’ would also be the time that we all asked the questions about planning then practiced and updated those plans. It would be useful for both responders and the public.

Among the questions that will come out of that type of drilling day include: Where would you go? Would it depend on the type of emergency? Would you be able to get out of work? Would your kids’ school want you to come there? How would you get in touch with each other as well as how would the authorities would communicate with you?

The fact is that families will never be able to fully answer all these ‘what if’ questions in advance; it will always depend to some extent on circumstances (ie. evacuating vs. sheltering in place), but this day would at least begin the preparedness process.  It would be the time to think through some scenarios and link together some of the institutions/people families would need to rely on in a disaster.

Japanese children in Disaster Prevention Day drill.

Currently more than 20 million Pakistanis have been affected by the worst natural disaster in Pakistan’s history. The pictures we see coming out of Pakistan are painful images of human suffering at its worst. Americans have always shown great generosity to others facing crises around the world. And I call on you to do what you can.

Viewers are instructed to text “flood” to 2-7-7-2-2 to donate $10. More information can be found at State.gov.

State Department/Ad Council PSA for Pakistan flood relief.

CrisisCommons, as has been covered frequently on the blog, is, according to its website, “a global network of volunteers who help people in times and places of crisis. If you can use the Internet, a word processor, a cell phone or any other kind of technology, you can help.”

And in the wake of the catastrophic Pakistan floods, that growing network has mobilized itself throughout the world to help, just as it did after Haiti earthquake and the Gulf oil spill.

After a couple of CrisisCamp meetings and cross-continent calls, the CrisisCommons website has just posted a long list of tasks for individual citizens can contribute to remotely at http://wiki.crisiscommons.org/wiki/Pakistan/2010_Floods/Tasks, including contributing to the excellent mapping and reporting work of Open Street Map, Ushahidi, Sahana, and Tweek The Tweet.

Once again, after the Pakistan flood, CrisisCommons has displayed the incredible asset that is the average citizen, and the desire for those citizens to help out in an emergency. For an organization that is little more than a year old, it is doing amazing things and growing meteorically from disaster to disaster.

If you want an excellent video summary of the development of CrisisCommons and its future, I’d recommend watching the presentation given by Heather Blanchard (the organization’s one full-time employee) at the Red Cross’s Emergency Data Summit which was taped by C-SPAN here.

And if you would like to contribute to their work in Pakistan, check the tasks page here.

(UPDATE 8/23: On the CrisisCommons website, there is now an update on the activities of this weekend, including CrisisCamps London, Cambridge & Chile.

CrisisCommons volunteers working at the World Bank earlier this year.

According to the post:

How you can help: …Please visit the links below for more information about aid organizations operating in the areas mentioned. U.S. citizens can also still text “SWAT” to 50555 to donate $10 for flood relief in Pakistan.

2010 has seen natural disasters strike around the world, from the devastating earthquake in Haiti at the start of the year, to recent mudslides in China, wildfires in Russia, and flooding in Pakistan.

The United States has joined with the governments of these countries, as well as with nations, NGOs, and citizens around the world, in rushing humanitarian relief and assistance to where it is needed most.

How can we encourage the international community to maintain focus on natural disaster response after the initial crisis has passed?

Dipnote last week asked readers for “Innovative Ways The International Community Can Respond To Natural Disasters”.

(UPDATE: The State Department website has posted a list of ways that people can assist Pakistani flood victims here.)

It may help explain why many Americans still do not prepare for disasters (and, by contrast, Japan and China hold special disaster preparedness days for its citizens). It also may underscore the challenge — as well as the need — of building community preparedness in the U.S.

According to the study reported on the Emerging Health Threats Forum website:

People from different parts of the world rate differently their risk of dying or getting injured in a disaster, and this has more to do with cultural factors than actual exposure to an event, suggests research published online in Risk Analysis. It also indicates that people across cultures share a belief that they are less prone to harm than others around them…

Unlike risk assessment, which is based on objective information, risk perception tends to rely on a person’s psychological state, personal experience and socio-cultural factors. Cultural values influence which hazards are believed to be relevant to a group, the authors explain. “Members of a group construct shared meanings to explain the reasons behind hazardous events to promote a sense of stability and allegiance within the group.”

Researchers measured and compared risk perceptions between 365 mental health workers from Japan, Argentina, and North America — countries that represent different degrees of interdependence and histories of exposure to disaster:

During a four-hour disaster preparedness training run by one of the study’s authors, the participants were asked to complete a risk perception survey after being presented with information describing a tsunami and a terrorist event. The survey included questions about the probability of themselves or other people suffering a disaster-related fatality or injury. Risk scores were calculated based on answers to these questions, and differences between groups were analysed statistically.

“Japanese groups had the highest risk perceptions for both types of hazards and North Americans and Argentineans had the lowest risk perceptions for terrorism,” report the authors. They also found that participants in all groups rated their own risk in either type of disaster as lower than that of others.

“The strongest and most robust findings were of an optimistic bias that was especially prevalent in the US samples,” add Gierlach and colleagues. Although participants from the USA had a higher exposure to terrorist events than those from Japan and Argentina, they believed they were least vulnerable to them.

This may be explained by the country’s position of power in the world, the authors speculate. It also indicates that cultural factors have a stronger influence on risk perceptions compared with the frequency of exposure to disaster events. Similarly, participants from Japan, where terrorist events were least frequent, had the highest perceived risk, possibly because of the region’s instability and a history of other disasters such as atomic bombs and tsunamis.

The Pakistan Crisis Wiki was created in 2005 by Pakistani native Sabahat Ashraf, a technical writer living in Silicon Valley, in response to an earthquake in the northern part of the country. He, along with a group of Pakistani bloggers (or “blaagers” as they call themselves) have kept the wiki up posting specific pages for other social issues (including human rights).

They recently created the Floods 2010 page with information on what is needed from the public in the relief effort. Ashraf also said that the Wiki can help local aid organizations inside Pakistan which do not always have significant web presences.

The Pakistan Crisis Wiki is a terrific example of the kind of technology application that is set up and ready in preparation for a disaster so people know where to go for information. It is very much along the lines of the CrisisWiki that NPR’s Andy Carvin and CrisisCommons have set up (I recommended to Ashraf he get in touch with Andy). And, I encourage you to check out the Floods 2010 Wiki page here.

A screenshot of a part of the Pakistan Crisis Wiki’s “Floods 2010″ page.

Traveling should be fun-filled and worry-free. But vacationers leave behind the predictability and convenience of home. Travel can be complicated by unforeseen crises — medical emergencies, canceled flights, lost luggage, natural disasters, political turmoil. In tough economic times, amid less sympathetic airlines, a dream getaway can devolve into a logistical challenge or worse.

Knowing how to handle travel emergencies can salvage a trip or, in the most dire situations, save a life. Preparedness can make a huge difference.

The full article can be found here.

The post notes that Americans have been donating to Pakistan relief from their cell phones, by texting the word “SWAT” to the number 50555 as they did after the Haiti earthquake. The blog’s “Question of the Week” is what other new initiatives how the international community can help there and in future disasters.

It’s unclear whether this request will come up with any new “innovative” ideas that the State Department has not received through other channels, but it is good to see it reaching out directly to the public using the blog. If you would like to send in an idea to State, click here.

The article, “How CrisisCommons Is Helping The Tech Community Help Others,” by Geoff Livingston offers an excellent review of the work thus far and analysis of why it has been so successful so quickly:

The CrisisCongress took place last week in Washington, DC. The event, a convening of more than 80 tech-savvy leaders from five countries, aimed to create social media-based solutions to help communities facing disasters like the recent Haiti and Chile earthquakes…

CrisisCommons has inspired a huge swath of people from various global communities to come together to help. Whether it’s a hardcore coder building the Oil Reporter mobile app, a member of the Ushahidi team, or a social media communicator, people with different skill sets connect and work without any personal agenda to achieve solutions that make a difference…

Within a year, CrisisCommons launched and built a dedicated community spanning 10 countries. Almost all of the original networking began online via social media tools, migrated to CrisisCamps, and eventually the Congress itself. According to Gael Musquet, charge d etudes, Departement Amenagement du Territoire in France, the reason the Camps were able to enjoy so much far-reaching success so quickly was that they were structured in a way where everyone could emulate everyone else, and learn from each other’s successes.

“It is based on the power of the Internet to show what we are doing, and how we are doing that,” he said. “That helps people to reproduce the methods of groups who have succeeded, and realize the same things in different cultures with the different languages. For me, things like wikis and Twitter represent the power of the Internet.”

The challenge now is continuing to sustain and expand on the early success:

CrisisCommons is also looking to learn from past mistakes and experiences. “In many ways we’re preparing for the next Haiti simply by learning how to organize these events and hosting them again and again,” said [Andy] Carvin. “Meanwhile, some of our projects have disaster preparedness in mind as well as disaster response. For example, our CrisisWiki.org project is designed so that anyone can add disaster-related resources to the wiki at any time … Then, if there’s a disaster nearby, it’s easy to pull together the resources, because many of them have already been curated there.”

However, the future holds some challenges for CrisisCommons. The hardest part is moving from survival to sustainability, said Berrent: “CrisisCommons will have to look beyond the next crisis and into their own three to five year future. [The] structure around building community chapters, working with international governments, and creating sustainable revenue models are serious endeavors…”

The full Mashable article can be found here.

According to the SwiftRiver website:

User-generated content is becoming an increasingly important source of information during emergency events while traditional media continues to play a pivotal role in documenting events as they unfold. These trends are expected to continue well into the future. The challenge, then, becomes filtering this growing torrent of information. There is an apparent tradeoff between crowdsourcing (opening the floodgates) and validation (the filter). One of the strengths of crowdsourcing is the ability to collect a high volume of information from highly diverse channels like Twitter, email, news sites, blogs, and SMS.

SwiftRiver acts as the verifying filter for these different channels and is possible precisely because of the volume of information available from these sources. The more information generated, the more the community interacts with it, and the easier it becomes to identify mutually trusted sources.

That’s the question addressed in an interesting piece on ForeignAffairs.com, “Disaster Politics: Why Earthquakes Rock Democracies Less,” by Alastair Smith and Alejandro Quiroz Flores.

The authors conclude that a nation’s political system may be the most important indicator of disaster preparedness and response success:

The recent earthquakes in Chile and Haiti are illustrations of this dynamic. Given the extremely high magnitude of the earthquake in democratic Chile, the resulting 500 casualties were relatively few, and the government has been rightly praised for its effective response. Though Bachelet was nearing her term limit at the time of the earthquake, her management of the crisis helped her party and is expected to benefit her if she runs for reelection in 2014. On the other hand, the more autocratic Haitian government has failed to provide even basic recovery services for the 230,000 victims buried in rubble. Elections in Haiti are notoriously corrupt, and the regime has already used the earthquake as an excuse to postpone even these half-hearted contests. Although there have been a few protests, the regime seems likely to endure despite its abject failure to help its people.

Political survival lies at the heart of disaster politics. Unless politicians are beholden to the people, they have little motivation to spend resources to protect their citizens from Mother Nature, especially when these resources could otherwise be earmarked for themselves and their small cadre of supporters. What is worse, the casualty count after a disaster is a major determinant of the amount of international assistance a country receives. Relief funds can even enhance a nondemocrat’s hold on power if they are used to buy off supporting elites. Given such incentives, autocrats’ indifference to disaster-related deaths will continue. The fix can only be political — leaders will not use the policies already available to mitigate the effects of natural disasters until they have the incentives to do so.

The full article can be found here.

Repair efforts in Chile after this year’s earthquake.

CrisisCommons, according to its website, “is a volunteer technology community dedicated to bringing together technology, innovation and volunteers to help people and communities in times and places of crisis.” I was lucky to have attended the first CrisisCamp held in Washington last June. Since then, the organization has taken off with CrisisCamps organized all over the world in the wake of the Haiti earthquake and Gulf oil spill. Already, output from the Commons (such as the Oil Reporter) is having a significant impact.

On Thursday, the CrisisCommons and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars are hosting, with support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, a series of roundtables with crisis response organizations (nongovernmental groups or non profits), members of the private sector and the academic community.

To sign up for the CrisisCommons roundtable series, click on any of these: NGO/Nonprofit Roundtable, Private Sector Roundtable, Academic Consortium Roundtable. If you are a member of these communities and cannot attend, you can provide written feedback or suggestions on their wiki and participate via webcast. (Roundtable Webcast Schedule: 8:15AM EDT – NGO/NonProfit Webcast / 12:45PM EDT – Private Sector Webcast / 3:45PM EDT – Academic Consortium Webcast)

On Friday, CrisisCommons community with support from the Sloan Foundation and the World Bank will host the First International CrisisCongress at the World Bank headquarters in Washington DC. This forum will explore lessons learned from CrisisCamp Haiti and CrisisCamp Chile and the opportunities and challenges of building a sustainable volunteer community whose mission is to use technology tools and expertise to aid communities in crisis.

There are a small number of tickets left to attend the International CrisisCongress in person. To register to attend click here. To attend virtually please click to the Congress webcast beginning at 8:30AM EDT (mms://wbmswebcast1.worldbank.org/live). The CrisisCommons Twitter feed is here.

To give you a better sense of the CrisisCommons concept, I have posted this Current TV segment (below) “Geeks for Haiti”:

Current TV segment on CrisisCommons

CERT team members along with their Haitian students

Herman Schaffer, the NYC team leader, kept an interesting journal of the experience and posted it on the City’s Office of Emergency Management’s Facebook page (photos are here.) Below is an excerpt:

We have just under 100 trainees today, including 18 women. The trainees are organized into two companies, A and B, each with four sections. Each section is composed of 14 people, including one Rapid Responder. These Rapid Responders had previous leadership roles in the camp and manage all administrative duties in their sections, like taking attendance, selecting volunteers, moving groups from one place to another, taking questions, etc. Their assistance allows the fire and health trainers to focus purely on instruction.

The class portion is conducted with two instructions using a PA system to speak to all 100 students seated in bleachers. The practical sections are broken down by sections (14 people). Each day, every trainee gets an MRE (Meals Ready-to-Eat) for lunch. I had to bring my own sandwich today, because the MREs are too salty for me.

On June 8, we trained the volunteers in fire safety. The course was interrupted by an hour-and-a-half monsoon and we had to move into two large tents to finish the classroom portion. When the storm passed, we practiced putting out different types of fires: five charcoal fires, one wood fire, and one plastic fire. The plastic fire helped highlight the different health threats and firefighting techniques required by various fires. The trainees felt empowered by the lesson and decided to collect all the plastic trash in the camp to reduce the threat it could add to fires.

The full journal can be read here.

During rain storms, CERT classes were forced inside

A Haitian trainee receives fire safety guidance from two CERT instructors

The team has been teaching the CERT program to classes of 40 to 50 people over a 10-day period. The lessons are based on the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s national CERT curriculum which has been been modified to meet the needs of Haiti’s population. Witt Associates has been working with the J/P Haitian Relief Organization and the UN Development Programme to bring the CERT training to Haiti.

The 12-member New York City team is comprised of: 4 Haitian-Creole speaking firefighters instructing CERT trainees in fire suppression and light search and rescue; 2 FDNY EMS personnel teaching first aid and triage;  2 Health Department employees running courses in public health; 3 OEM staff members assisting with course instruction and manage the team; and 1 senior CERT instructor serving as an adviser and helping manage the team. There will be a disaster simulation for the trainees along with the graduation. It is the first time CERT has been taught there.

Herman Schaffer, the NYC team leader, has been keeping an interesting journal of the experience and posting it on the City’s Office of Emergency Management’s Facebook page. An excerpt is below:

June 9th: Training is going better than expected, primarily because of high levels of organization at Camp Petionville. We have just under 100 trainees today, including 18 women. The trainees are organized into two companies, A and B, each with four sections. Each section is composed of 14 people, including one Rapid Responder. These Rapid Responders had previous leadership roles in the camp and manage all administrative duties in their sections, like taking attendance, selecting volunteers, moving groups from one place to another, taking questions, etc. Their assistance allows the fire and health trainers to focus purely on instruction.

The class portion is conducted with two instructions using a PA system to speak to all 100 students seated in bleachers. The practical sections are broken down by sections (14 people). Each day, every trainee gets an MRE for lunch. I had to bring my own sandwich today, because the MREs are too salty for me.

On June 8, we trained the volunteers in fire safety. The course was interrupted by an hour-and-a-half monsoon and we had to move into two large tents to finish the classroom portion. When the storm passed, we practiced putting out different types of fires: five charcoal fires, one wood fire, and one plastic fire. The plastic fire helped highlight the different health threats and firefighting techniques required by various fires. The trainees felt empowered by the lesson and decided to collect all the plastic trash in the camp to reduce the threat that it could add to fires.

“This will be the first time New York City has ever taught its CERT Program outside of the United States and the first time that such a program has been brought to Haiti,” said Mayor Michael Bloomberg. “President Clinton, in his role as the UN’s Special Envoy to Haiti, and former FEMA Director James Lee Witt recommended our program to the Haitian government which in turn asked our instructors to lead the first CERT classes in Haiti. We are honored to do it.”

[The Clinton Foundation also just announced through their Twitter feed @ClintonTweet that it had pledged $1 million for disaster preparedness and hurricane safety in Haiti. An article on the donation is here.]

The 12 member New York City team is comprised of:

Four Haitian-Creole speaking fire fighters, who will be instructing CERT trainees in fire suppression and light search and rescue; two FDNY EMS personnel, who will teach first aid and triage; two Health Department employees, who will run courses in public health; three OEM staff members, who will assist with course instruction and manage the team; and; a senior CERT instructor who will serve as an advisor and help manage the team.

The roughly 400 Haitians who will be trained live in temporary shelters at the Petionville Club, a former golf course that now houses more than 50,000 people displaced by the 7.0 magnitude earthquake that struck near Port-au-Prince on January 12, 2010. Shortly after the earthquake, the group that will be trained volunteered to serve with the fire brigade at the settlement and received training in fire suppression.

The CERT program in Haiti will be taught to classes of 40 to 50 people over a 10-day period. The lessons are based on the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) national CERT curriculum, but they have been modified to meet the needs of Haiti’s population. For example, one lesson will instruct Haitian CERT members about public health issues and drinking water safety.

The concept of developing a CERT program in Haiti came after President William J. Clinton became the United Nations Special Envoy for Haiti in 2009. President Clinton and former FEMA Director James Lee Witt recommended the program to the Haitian government after traveling to the country on series of fact-finding missions. After the earthquake in January, Witt’s firm, James Lee Witt Associates, requested New York City CERT instructors lead the first classes in Haiti. After the first round of training, the curriculum will be evaluated by Haitian officials. The CERT members trained by New York City instructors will then help develop the program in other parts of the country.

Israel is often cited as a model of civil defense and the nationwide Turning Point drill includes significant civilian involvement. But this piece indicates that the Israel government will have to work on addressing public apathy and cynicism as less than half of the population ended up participating.

The sirens that wailed across the country on Wednesday morning, at the peak of the five-day Home Front Command exercise, highlighted a disturbing chasm between the hyperactivity of the authorities and the apathy of the public.

While the authorities spent hours training for dire scenarios and the media provided a background chorus of strident, even scary, commentary, the public remained completely unfazed.

The Home Front Command is planning a relatively comprehensive survey today to assess how many people heard the siren and how many bothered to look for a nearby shelter.

In a poll after last year’s drill last year, 52 percent of respondents said they participated. This year the number appears to be smaller.

The full article can be found here.

Under the scenario being drilled, the IDF has been at war in the North for just over two weeks, and Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilna’i convened top IDF brass Sunday evening to assess the extent of damage to the country and the number of casualties.

As part of the drill, OC Home Front Command Maj.-Gen. Yair Golan informed Vilna’i of his decision to complete the draft of all Home Front Command reservists after close to 200 rockets and missiles, included ones with chemical warheads launched from Syria, landed in the center of the country.

The five-day drill will include the sounding of air sirens nationwide on Wednesday at 11 a.m. Residents are being asked to participate in the drill and to search for the nearest bomb shelter or safe room.

The focus of the drill is on 38 local councils, mostly from the center of the country, which are undergoing a series of simulations to test their ability to continue providing basic services for their residents at a time of war.

Under the scenario, most of the missiles were landing in the Gush Dan region in the center of the country, from which about 200,000 residents decided to flee south. The Eilat Municipality was asked, in the drill, to prepare a plan to absorb some of the refugees.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said citizen preparedness was a key goal of the drill

…in addition to maintaining deterrence, Netanyahu said it was “important to bolster citizens’ awareness vis-à-vis the protection issue – and this is exactly what this exercise will do, starting today and running throughout the week.”…

Defense Minister Ehud Barak characterized the exercise Sunday as “important” and a result of lessons learned from the Second Lebanon War. “We have no intention at all of starting a war in the North,” he said. “We are working toward the opposite, for calm and peace, but a country like Israel has to be prepared, and we are preparing.”

By coincidence, this year’s Turning Point exercise comes at the exact same time as the U.S.’s National Hurricane Preparedness Week. The difference in public involvement, engagement and compliance between these two awareness events is stark.

School children and security forces take part in the Israeli Home Front Command national exercise in a school last year in Tel Aviv.

Students drilling in Donghu Primary School, Nanchang City, Jiangxi Province

This blog has advocated the creation of a specific preparedness day in the U.S. in order to focus attention on citizen readiness. It would be the day each year that briefings would be held, drills would be conducted and emergency kits were filled. In a post last year, I explained why I believe it is the most realistic and effective way to implement officials’ citizen preparedness goals.

Students treating each other during an emergency drill held by Wanshouqiao Primary School, Yichang City

China’s preparedness day does not seem as extensive as Japan’s though there was public involvement. According to the Xinhua News Agency via ReliefWeb, the focus of the day (much in line with the current U.S. focus) was on building community preparedness:

“Communities should be at the forefront of disaster prevention and reduction,” Shi Peijun, vice director of the board of experts of the National Commission for Disaster Reduction (NCDR), said Wednesday. ”The disaster response capacity of communities is crucial to alleviating damage,” said Shi… Peijun also advocated that schools play a bigger role in disaster reduction. “Schools should teach students about disaster prevention and reduction. Schools should also be a place for shelter when a disaster hits.”

In 2007, China incorporated the disaster response into a five year plan, according to which China will establish 1,000 exemplary community networks for disaster reduction across the nation. According to NCDR, residents in such community networks are well informed about exit routes and shelters to go to when a natural disaster strikes. These communities are equipped with emergency aid facilities, and each household in such communities are equipped with torches, first aid toolkits and so forth. To date, 687 such community networks have been established in China, according to NCDR.

Thanks to the CrisisMappers Twitter feed for bringing this to my attention.

In the weeks following the January 12 earthquake, the relief effort in Haiti relied in part on crowdsourcing: an army of volunteers in the United States and elsewhere helped sift through emergency text messages, translated them and send them on to first responders on the scene. According to Rob Munro, a graduate fellow at Stanford who works with the nonprofit Energy for Opportunity, about 40,000 useful text messages came through the system in the first six weeks, meaning that thousands of Haitians received timely requests for food, water or medical help.

At the height of the crisis, texts were arriving every few seconds. But volunteers were able to receive a message, translate it and and send a grid location to teams on the ground within a matter of minutes. But the high-tech Haiti volunteer response also depended in large part on personal connections, and the mobilization of the Haitian diaspora in North America, for it to work. Now development agencies, relief workers and even the U.S. government are looking at ways to reproduce the experiment in the next emergency…

The full article can be found here.

Elran began his remarks by noting two key points. First, that societal resilience plays a vital role in how democracies respond to crises. Second, that it is only in the last few years that resiliency has begun to receive serious attention in both Israel and the United States, and to challenge previous views of homeland security based upon civil defense.

Elran then discussed how terrorism, potential natural disasters, and the realization that none of Israel’s enemies are prepared to engage its defense forces directly, have illuminated the fact that national security is more than physical defense. According to Elran, the primary issue is the defense of society from a mental, social, cultural, and political perspective—a fact recognized by terrorists, who select targets based upon their psychological impact.

According to Elran, societal resilience consists of the capacity to contain major traumas; the capability of the public to ”bounce back”; and the ability of the system to return quickly to (perhaps even exceed) previous functions…Elran argued for the need to engage civilian populations in disaster response. To accomplish this, he stated that more needs to be done to educate, involve, and connect the public to issues of preparedness—and that these efforts ought to be focused at the community level.

And, he underscored the importance of involving the citizenry in this effort: ”…an active public is a resilient public and a passive public is a vulnerable public,” adding that if you can engage people “with the issues of preparedness, they will be exposed to the systems, to the threats, to the responses, and they will be better prepared to participate in the management of the crisis once it happens.”

The audio of the speech can be found here. Elran’s presentation slides are here.

Several of the contributions focus on citizen and community preparedness, including Houston Mayor Bill White on  his city’s response effort in the Katrina aftermath and Boston Mayor Thomas Menino on the creation of his town’s Medical Reserve Corps.

The chapter that I found most thought provoking (especially from a citizen/community preparedness angle) was by Alan Kirschenbaum from the Israel Institute of Technology who has written frequently on his nation’s public readiness efforts. In his contribution, “Disaster Management: Privatization as a Viable Alternative,” Kirschenbaum looks at the use of the “private market to prepare for and respond to disasters” particularly in the area of citizen preparedness (The role of the private sector in homeland security is a theme that runs through much of the book.)

Kirschenbaum reports on a public survey that was conducted by Israel’s Home Front Command earlier in the decade to determine how many households were “Ready to Pay for Disaster-Related Services Provided by Private Organizations.”

The results indicated that almost a third of Israelis were willing to pony up to pay the private sector for products/services, including: “supply food and water,” “prepare children in schools in emergency,” “have electric supply if stoppage” “evacuate to safe place if necessary.” The survey also found that interest in purchasing these services was driven less by economic status by age and family situation (ie. the respondents most interested were young families.)

So, what’s the takeaway from that study for U.S. citizen preparedness? (And, there is a lot that Israel can teach us on this subject.) Clearly, Israelis face a more prevalent threat than Americans, particularly in regard to terrorism, but they also enjoy a more robust citizen preparedness system. The survey results did indicate that at least a third of Israelis would like more than what the government was providing in the area of civil defense. I would venture that the number is at least as high here in the U.S.. The question is how do you (if you do) fill the gap between what the public wants/needs and what government can provide.

One way, as has been discussed on this blog, is to bring the private sector into citizen preparedness in the same way they have been involved in disaster response. There is a need to develop integrated marketing/awareness campaigns on national/state/local level with major consumer brands who are in the preparedness-related product and services business (e.g. personal tech, water, big box stores) to make preparing far easier and far less expensive for the public. 

You can purchase Safeguarding Homeland Security here (n.b. the cost is $139.oo).

Today, the UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR) dedicates its annual International Day for Disaster Reduction to the urgent need to make “Hospitals Safe from Disasters.” Dozens of hospitals and heath facilities each year are themselves impacted by floods, hurricanes, cyclones, earthquakes and other natural hazards because safety measures were not integrated in their design, location or construction.

The “Hospitals Safe from Disasters” theme was also used for the 2008-09 World Disaster Reduction campaign that culminates today. This two-year campaign has been a joint initiative of UNISDR, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Bank aimed at ensuring people’s access to functioning health facilities during and after natural hazards. The ISDR system is using today’s event to highlight the gains made during the campaign and the work that still needs to be done in making hospitals safer from disasters.

“Since the beginning of the campaign, much has been achieved to make hospitals safer but more investments are still needed to improve the functionality of hospital when disasters occur,” says Margareta Wahlström, Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Disaster Risk Reduction. According to a recent WHO survey, only 50% of all country’s health sectors have a budget allocation for risk reduction and emergency preparedness.

For more information, go to the UNISDR website here. (Thanks to friend of this blog, Roberto De Vido who writes the Notes From The Congo blog for bringing the Day to my attention.)

As has been mentioned regularly on the blog, Israel offers a helpful model for the U.S. when it comes to civilian preparedness and engagement, including in its drilling and school-based programs. Of course, Israel’s special circumstances (terror threat, size, militarily-trained populace, etc.) mean that not all its lessons are readily transferable. Yet, these exercises which involve Israelis of all ages help keep the citizenry informed, engaged and prepared.

The Internet has made possible the rapid spread of fear in a crisis, said Deputy Prime Minister and Home Affairs Minister Wong Kan Seng. But he said bloggers and website moderators can help ease public concerns should a terrorist attack occur.

The article notes that since October 2007, bloggers have been invited to the Home Team Academy and the Civil Defence Academy to get preparedness briefings.

On the ground, Mr Wong said grassroots networks are also important. Their roles include ensuring adequate emergency response plans within each constituency and training community leaders to cope with crises…Mr Wong said: “We will not know for certain if all that we have done or are doing will work in a real crisis. We may well fail. But we must do our best to work out practical response plans and exercise them in a realistic way with the players who will be the mobilisers and participants in a real situation. If we do not, we will fail.”

Government officials here in the U.S. have held briefings for journalists to discuss crisis situations. However, there has not been as much outreach to bloggers and other members of the blogosphere for that purpose, and I think it is time think about doing so.

The last things President Obama will want to confront in his first year in office are the bodies of dead Americans and complaints of ineffective government response following a terrorist attack within the United States. His predecessors both faced terrorism in their first year in office: President Clinton on February 26, 1993 at the World Trade Center and President Bush at the same location and at the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. President Obama may well face a comparable attack.

However, a recent Washington meeting co-sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Harvard’s National Preparedness Leadership Initiative…brought together homeland security, public health, and hospital officials from Boston, New York, Washington, Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, U.S. cities with subways and mass transit systems that are “soft targets.” They met with their counterparts from Madrid, London, Tel Aviv, Islamabad, New Delhi, and Mumbai, cities hit by mass casualty conventional attacks that left thousands dead and with preparedness and response systems that learned a great deal from the experience.

Colleagues from Pakistan and India described the panic and resulting chaos that reverberated in hospitals following suicide attacks. They reported on measures taken to restrict hospital hallways to those needing care and limiting the access of anxious relatives and eager politicians who descended on the hospitals and impeded efficient medical care. What should President Obama and other leaders take from these lessons?

Three of the six “lessons” directly involve the public:

3) The real “first responders” are not fire, police, and EMS professionals. They are the second wave of help. It is the crowd of fellow passengers who jump into action, on the scene, and who are able to assist and support victims in those critical first moments following injury. President Obama must ask himself how he can galvanize the populace so that they know what to do if they are present and physically able to help.

4) While official plans outline a well orchestrated series of compliant actions on the part of the population and responders, the immediate aftermath of such a tragedy is pandemonium. People do not wait for ambulances to get to the hospital. The “walking wounded” victims get there on their own, creating a first wave of moderately injured victims. Those who are severely injured and cannot walk, the “horizontal victims,” take longer to get onto stretchers, into the ambulance, and to the hospital. By the time this wave of critically injured patients arrives at the hospital, much capacity has already been consumed. One lesson from abroad: distribute less severely victims to more distant hospitals that are less likely to be overrun by the injured.

5) Think resilience. The intent of these bombings is to bring people down, to destroy our confidence, to foster fear, and to shatter our economy. We know the period after a new President assumes office is one of greater vulnerability. We must all be vigilant. If you find a suspicious package or observe suspicious behavior, report it to authorities. This is a time to be safe, not sorry. Be prepared to get back on your feet if we are hit. It will be difficult. However, returning to normal living is the most defiant of acts following a terrorist bombing. 9/11 was a wake-up call and we have been fortunate that, to date, there has not been a repetition. However, time dulls our memories and complacency sets in with its own dangers. Now is the time for our homeland security, our preparedness, and our response officials to turn their attention to what is a more likely set of threats. While we have little experience here, there is much we can gain from that of our friends abroad, and in the name of humanity, they are generous in their willingness to share what they learned.