This Paper was amongst top-10 winning entries in "Opsyrus 2006", the CoolAvenues.com - OIG (IIM Lucknow) Paper Writing Competition held during Oct-Dec 2006.

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Executive Summary

Disaster management needs complete re-look into the normal supply chain operations because of the large scale nature destruction of transportation and infrastructure, disruption of communication facilities and total unpredictability of any type of natural disasters.
If we have to devise a framework for disaster management, it will involve five stages beginning from Planning, to Mitigation, then Detection, onto Response and finally Recovery.

The planning can be defined as three stage process. The first stage will be demand and supply planning. The next one will be the coordination process. In this stage various issues typical of disaster management comes into picture like inventory management, logistics, base station and coordination structure and hierarchy. The third process in planning is the review of the decisions taken in accordance with the previous experiences and unique nature of each situation.

The planning can include supply chain issues as well as coordinated response once the disaster strikes. But, the important part of any framework of this kind is its ability to deliver speedy and effective relief. For providing the speedy relief proper detection facilities like early warning systems for cyclones must be in place.

Thus, it can be seen as forecasting the disaster is the first step towards prevention of large scale causalities. But given the nature of disasters it is not always possible to predict and it becomes imperative to plan and prioritize the activities if such an event happens. Here the implementation of proper supply chain becomes important. Failure to do that will result in dumping of the essential items because of the inability of organizations to supply to the people due to lack of accessibility and non existent distribution channels as was seen in the Sri lanka's tsunami relief. Thus the disaster management will contain elements like disaster prevention, mitigation, preparedness and relief.

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* Contributed by: -
Anshuman Harjai & Ibin Issac Abraham,
Management Development Institute, Gurgaon.