The infographic shown at the side reflects a never ending cycle of disaster management. This shows that it is not a one at a time process but instead a parallel multi-process ensuring that whenever and wherever hole appears it should be immediately patched.
The process map below depicts the different elements involved in disaster management: Business Continuity, Emergency Response, Crisis Management and Disaster Recovery. Using the stages normal, incident, disaster and recovery, we are able to show where and how the elements are used or play a role in the stages. In normal situation, considered as pre-disaster phase, the elements are prepared thru documentation, practice drills/ testing, evaluations/ evaluations, and preventive/ corrective actions. When an incident happens, it still does not mean that it is a disaster, what would determine if it is a disaster is the impact. Disaster is defined by loses, so if the incident does not result to loses, it cannot be considered a disaster. During incident, to mitigate the disaster impact, we apply the emergency response. Once there is a disaster, you define the moment as a crisis wherein it is a state of uncertainty on loses; there is a defined disaster situation but undefined extent of impact/ loses. During the crisis phase, we apply Crisis Management Plan to orchestrate the required actions in forecasting and measuring actual impact, in preparing and allotting the required resources, and plotting out the effective response to the disaster. We also apply the Business Continuity Plan to ensure continuity of business, most importantly the basic and required services such as hospital, peace and order, water utilities and other necessities. The Disaster Recovery Plan is also utilized towards the recovery stage of the impacted infrastructure needed to provide the basic services. Once recovered, reports are generated as a result of the evaluation of how well the plans were implemented/ deployed, ensuring better services in the next disaster incident. |