What Can Universities Do...for Cities at Risk?
Don Schramm
Disaster Management Center
University of Wisconsin-Madison USA
As David Butler noted in his introduction to this week's session, universities can provide information, knowledge and training to anyone interested in learning more about disaster management. Through their traditional activities of research, education and public service, universities can transform past experiences into immediate learning for future applications. Moreover, many other organizations and individuals can provide comparable learning opportunities.
Rather than using this as a forum to provide details about the professional development programs of the University of Wisconsin-Disaster Management Center(UW-DMC), I would prefer to move directly to some questions for conference participants on what universities have and have not done, or can and cannot do for cities at risk. I'll also try to keep this short, so you will need less time for reading, and have more time for responding...
BUILD LOCAL CAPACITY
At the start of the conference, Kevin Lyonette (WEEK1,DAY5) reminded us that "Cities per se are not vulnerable, people are vulnerable. Give those people the support and capacity to avoid and prevent disasters as much as possible. That same capacity will enable the vulnerable city communities to cope better with those few disasters which are unavoidable."
QUESTIONS:
Isn't local capacity building an important role for universities?
What are some of the ways that conference participants have seen universities providing that sort of capacity building?
What has been successful?
What has not?
FORM ALLIANCES
In addition to universities, there are may other organizations and individuals involved in local capacity building. Natalie Domiesen (WEEK1, DAY4) said that IDNDR activities are based on building and nurturing "participatory, capacity-building, low-cost, creative alliances and partnerships."
QUESTIONS:
How can universities be part of those partnerships?
What kinds of successful alliances are you aware of?
In your experience, who besides universities provides disaster management learning opportunities?
SHARE INFORMATION
In the past two decades, some of the best natural hazard information exchange has been developed and implemented by the university which is host to the Natural Hazards Research and Application Information Center. That information has been converted into knowledge and learning activities throughout the world. I'm writing this without the benefit of seeing the contents of the rest of this week's papers, so I won't say more about the Hazards Center, since I'm sure this week's moderator will tell us how to access that information.
QUESTIONS:
What other similar information centers have you worked with?
What sort of information is available?
What additional data do local communities need?
What additional data do disaster managers need?
DESIGN LEARNING & TEACHING TOOLS
So, we have all this experience and information available. What more can we do with it? During the conference discussions on planning, Peter Koob (WEEK5, DAY2) closed his presentation with a comment and a question: "Very few people have concrete facts on how emergency plans have saved lives, reduced harm and actually worked...where are these facts and how do we continue to acquire them?"
Has anyone answered the question?
I believe that universities and other organizations which provide disaster management training, can gather and distill such facts and experiences into practical, learning activities. That documentation may take the form of case studies, leading to simple building damage assessment manuals and guides, as in the RADIUS project described by Kenji Okazaki(WEEK6, DAY3). Or the documentation may be used to describe "the territory, constraints and limitations" for a variety of realistic disaster scenarios by creating desktop simulations for use by disaster managers(and others) to help them to "clarify not just their role, but also how they will be able to play," as noted by Claude DeVille( WEEK5, comments).
QUESTIONS:
What are the learning formats (text, lecture, exercises, radio, video, periodicals, WWW, etc.) which you have used successfully to study (and teach) disaster management?
Which do you prefer?
Why?
SHARE MORE INFORMATION NOW
Among the conference participants, there is a wealth of university experience. We have already heard from Peter Anderson (WEEK4, Simon Fraser University), Henry Quarantelli (WEEK5, University of Delaware) and others about some university "roles" in providing solutions for cities at risk. Each of these previous presenters has additional experience to share, as do others in university settings, such as Rayana Buhaka(American University of Beirut) and Teresa Guevara(Universidad Central de Venezuela). Perhaps one of you participants from South Africa know more details about the distance learning certificate program in disaster management for local government officials, inaugurated this year by Technikon, RSA. I cannot see any electronic hands raised asking for the floor, but we can certainly learn more about disaster management training in the UN from either Ricardo Mena or Randolph Kent. From Latin America, Omar Cardona, Jorge Grande or Alberto Maturana can share their experiences in local capacity building from a government or NGO perspective. And we have only scratched the surface of PAHO's years of experience with their regional approach to teaching and learning. From Asia, David Hollister might explain another regional approach used by the Asian Disaster Preparedness Center and N.K. Jain could share his experiences with the Joint Assistance Center, an important NGO in India. And I know there are many more learning and teaching experiences out there...
I hope that some(or all) of you will respond to one or more of these questions.
Archived papers from this 1996 Conference have been removed from the server. However, you can find a summary about this and other UN-IDNDR and QUIPUNET (link exits this site) Internet Conferences.
UN-IDNDR and QUIPUNET Internet Conference
Solutions for Cities at Risk
26 August 1996 - 25 October 1996
Week 7, Day 2
