Human suffering and economic losses from vulnerability to natural hazards are high. Munich Re estimated that the year 2005 was the most expensive year on record with an overall loss of US$210 billion with total disaster-related claims at over US$ 94 billion. With these costs rising year-on-year, 168 governments have adopted the Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA) 2005-2015: Building the Resilience of Nations and Communities to Disasters. The HFA strives to build international, regional, national and local activities to galvanize efforts to achieve a reduction of disaster losses in fulfillment of the objectives set for the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR). One important part of the Framework is helping governments and businesses to identify opportunities for collaborative actions that can reduce losses from natural hazards.

Operationalising Public Private Partnerships for Disaster Management
Human suffering and economic losses from vulnerability to natural hazards are high. Munich Re estimated that the year 2005 was the most expensive year on record with an overall loss of US$210 billion with total disaster-related claims at over US$ 94 billion. With these costs rising year-on-year, 168 governments have adopted the Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA) 2005-2015: Building the Resilience of Nations and Communities to Disasters. The HFA strives to build international, regional, national and local activities to galvanize efforts to achieve a reduction of disaster losses in fulfillment of the objectives set for the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR). One important part of the Framework is helping governments and businesses to identify opportunities for collaborative actions that can reduce losses from natural hazards.

Overall, the private sector in South Asia sees itself positioned to provide value for minimizing vulnerability and safeguarding communities in their auspices. The collective involvement of the partners of this conference brought a symbiosis of knowledge on the value of the private sector to the emergency needs of government operations.

Following the Ist International Conference on Public Private Partnership for Disaster Management 2007, the IInd International Disaster Management Conference, 2008 was organized the auspices of the National Disaster Management Authority India, (NDMA) by Responsenet An Aidmatrix Initiative. Aptly titled "Operationalising Public Private Partnership for Disaster Management: Towards Resilient & Sustainability Goals", the Conference was held on 16th & 17th April at New Delhi.

In terms of contingency plans - the most widely discussed topic - many still apply to specific disasters which may be perennial or sudden disruptions due to man-made disasters. Examples of pandemics across borders traveling worldwide disrupt many functions of business and governments had not been taken into consideration as did other less frequent hazards.

Effective incident and crisis management mechanism using the model of Incident Command System for a structure in business for command, control, coordination and communications was discussed and debated at length. New challenges such as mapping country telecommunication infrastructure for effective communication contingencies, resilience of the financial sector for minimal disruptions, data communication route maps for contingency planning, and the cascading effects of data outages were also highlighted.

The Conference was supported by a number of international agencies, multi-national organizations and corporate bodies like USAID- IRG, International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC&RCS), United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UN/ISDR), Sphere India, Tata Teleservices, International Association for Emergency Managers (IAEM), Swiss Re, GeoHazards International, Services International, Grant Thornton, Micro Insurance Academy, Motorola, Steria (India) Limited, British Standard Issues (BSI), IFFCO-TOKIO, AMS Acoustics, DURAN Audio and DIGITEXX. Further, the Conference saw the participation of representatives of various State Governments and Departments like Fire Services, the Health Directorate, Police, Non-Governmental Organizations, academicians, societal actors and stakeholders from all parts of the world.

Disaster management is no longer restricted to the domain of "State Responsibilities". Further, moving beyond disaster management the focus is on "Risk Reduction", ensuring that minimum risk, loss or damage is ensued whilst dealing with disasters. Hence, all efforts to deal with issues of disaster, whether natural or man-made and the management of disaster needs to be a concerted effort between the Government (public) and the private sector. Disasters cannot be inverted however the move towards increasing disaster preparedness mechanisms will help mitigate the associated risks. Taking this view, Ms. Angela Nar's welcome address initiated the need to "evolve public-private partnerships in dealing with disaster management".

To facilitate the operationalization of public private partnerships the Conference laid emphasis on four thematic issues:

Spread over four sessions, the theme's covered case studies ranging from experiences and practices presently employed by different sectors and organizations like the Mumbai Airport Contingencies Plan for Emergency, the Motorola Mission Critical Solution used by the London Police, GeoHazards Bechtel model, IBM's Risk Analysis Framework, Pawan Hans Air Ambulance, Swiss Re in Latin America and others. Significantly, the wide range of issues cut across the Public sector, through IT and IT enabled services, the developmental sector, financial services, manufacturing and business operations, aviation and the tele-communications industry.

At the inaugural address, J K Sinha, Member, NDMA, invited those from the private sector to evolve strategies for Disaster Management with the NDMA. He went on to highlight how it was found that the losses on account of various disasters used to run into thousands of Crores of Rupees. If only a part of that money were to be spent on prevention, preparedness and awareness, the losses would be reduced phenomenally and the progress of the country would not be hampered on that account. He mentioned that if we join hands on awareness, prevention, preparedness and mitigation, it will greatly reduce the ultimate overall costs and would even prevent and reduce the damages.

Citing the examples of Bhopal Gas Tragedy, the Bhuj Earthquake and the Tsunami to see and analyze how much loss and damage could have been prevented he highlighted the point to identify what the corporate world expects from the Government, so that an effective Public-Private-Partnership can be formed. Whenever the budget is prepared by the Finance Minister he calls industry members and discusses issues. This helps greatly in taking more informed decisions. Similarly this sort of exercise in the field of Disaster Management is also required and invited the private sector to engage in a meaningful manner with the National Disaster Management Authority.

The private sector provides value for minimizing vulnerability and to safeguard communities in their vicinities. The collective involvement of the partners of this conference brings a symbiosis of value to the emergency needs to support the government operations. And there is a need to engage in dialogues for continuity plans concluded his inaugural address.

At the valedictory session, Maj.Gen.J. K. Bansal, NDMA also emphasized upon the need to "create a momentum for management of disaster, for the Government cannot work in isolation" and and invited the participants for initiating dialogue and evolve partnership opportunities with National Disaster Management Authority of India.

N K Goyal, Chairman of Telecom Equipment Manufacturers Association at the inaugural session highlighted the criticality of communications and equipments for disaster preparedness and response.

N.M Prusty - Chief of Party USAID - IRG Chaired the session on Corporate Preparedness for Disaster Management and highlighted the criticality for corporate resilience and the need for a well designed preparedness and continuity plan not only for the command system and work flow but also for the communities as integral stakeholders. Attempting at various questions through the session he further emphasized and elaborated on the guidelines of NDMA that are presently in place and those being developed with a core team of expertise at the helm of activities.

The session on Business Continuity for Disaster Management Was chaired by International Federation of Red Cross & Red Crescent Societies, Regional Delegation for South Asia who highlighted the work in progress on Public Private Partnerships for Business continuity and the need for the synergy between Public Private and other stakeholders of society. She emphasized the need for more investments required within companies with an importance to protection of employees, communities and the environment.

Iddo Dror - Director (Operations) Micro - Insurance Academy (MIA) chaired the session on Risk Transfer through Techno Financial Strategies and emphasized on the critical role and need for integration of People without whom PPP would not be possible.

The standards of BS 25999, the new standard for business continuity was presented by Venkataram Arabolu - Managing Director, British Standards Institution (BSI) which has also launched this standard in India for businesses to take advantage of.

The contingency plans as seen today mostly apply to specific disasters which may be perennial or sudden disruptions due to man made disasters. Examples of pandemics across borders travelling worldwide disrupt many functions of business and governments. Geographical distances for Business continuity planning are not the only contingency plan that will help as these are disasters without borders. Disaster mapping has taken a new meaning with the new challenges faced by uncertainties of multi faceted disaster possibilities.

Andreas Bollmann of Swiss Re, highlighted the effects that natural catastrophes have on GDP Growth Rates citing examples of Earthquakes bringing negative GDP in the region affected. Further highlighting empirical evidence he cited how catastrophic events usually retards economic growth, increases external debt, raises inflation and has an impact on real interest rates decrease. Thus emphasizing that strategies adopted for risk transfer, in turn, determines the post event socio economic conditions.

With countries like India, where the un insured touches 93% of the population this also highlights the impact on this population as victims at times of natural disasters. The focus therefore has shifted from post disaster financing to pre disaster initiatives and formulating strategies for financial mitigation by introducing ex ante financing instruments to absorb the losses like insurance, catastrophe bonds, reserve funds or contingent credit instruments thus a need to design reinsurance programs to reduce economic losses.

The benefit of Globe cat which helps in immediate access to funds in time of disasters with a cover of any type of catastrophe was presented by Andreas. This has an ability to leverage donations using investor funds and donations are leveraged as much as 50 to 1. A $2-3 Million donation can provide $100 MM of relief to a country affected by a disaster.

Further insights on the role of Insurance and Re Insurance were provided by K L Naik CEO, J.B.Boda Reinsurance Brokers and Parag Gupta, Vice President, IFFCO-TOKIO. Risk Management and Corporate Governance was an area covered by , Khushroo B Panthaky - National Head of Audit, Grant Thornton

Disaster risk reduction activities were further emphasized by Madhavi Ariyabandu of UN/ISDR who highlighted the Hyogo Framework of Action in which Public Private Partnerships to engage private sector was elaborated upon. Providing an insight on Global Hotspots she highlighted that 25 million kilometers and 3.4 billion people are at relatively high risk areas across the world. UN/ISDR with a mandate to build disaster resilient communities is working towards reducing human, social, economic and environmental losses due to natural hazards and related technological and environmental disasters. She further highlighted that the cost benefit ratio for disaster mitigation is of 4:1 as per a study quoted and to reduce costs, limit exposures, maintain operating continuity, protect employees, property, reputations and build a competitive market place position.

Jayaraj Puthanveedu of Northern Trust highlighted the Effective incident and crisis management mechanism using the model of Incident Command System for a structure in business for command, control, coordination and communications. Daman Dev Sood - Vice President - Quality & Business Assurance, Steria India Limited provided dos and don'ts that can be integrated into everyday life to minimize the affects of climate change.

New challenges such as mapping the entire countries telecommunication infrastructure for effective communication contingencies, resilience of the financial sector for minimal disruptions, data communication route maps for contingency planning, cascading effects of data outage needs a focused understanding.

Sanjeev Dhinda, highlighted the IBM point of view on preparedness, recovery and response for technology and IT enablement for crisis management. He highlighted case studies of various governments and presented a National Incident Management System model for the Government of India.

A key element to all the services that can be leveraged at times of disasters from the private sector is the importance of the right skills for the right people at the right time.

Nathaniel Forbes of the International Association of Emergency Managers highlighted the aspect of how human resources can converge for focused highly skilled careers and leverage credentials of globally recognized and experienced organizations.

Commander Pradeep Dixit of Mumbai International Airport(MIAL) highlighted the importance of contingency planning at infrastructures and elaborated on the Airport Emergency Response plan of MIAL which is working on a PPP model and being prepared for various disasters ranging from natural to man made.

S.L.Chakravorty,OISD emphasized that the Oil Industry in India is well equipped on Health, Safety & Environment matters including Disaster Management Plan. These are in place - well rehearsed and demonstrated.

Partnerships for structural seismic risk reduction was addressed by Hari Kumar of Geo Hazards who highlighted the partnerships being worked upon for structural and risk reduction areas in partnership with the Delhi Government and this was further taken on by Subodh Vardhan Director Sales and Country head, Government and Public Safety Motrola who presented the Tetra model as one of the solutions being provided for disasters. Sanjay Kumar of Pawan Hans Helicopter presented on the criticality of Air Ambulance services which play a vital role at times of disasters for search and rescue operations.

How Emergency Medical Services play a critical role in responding to disasters and the scope for Public-Private Partnership was presented by Sweta Mangal - CEO & Founder, Ambulance Access for All Foundation who is now entering various states of India and highlighted the training programs being conducted to build capacities for emergency preparedness of communities.

Business can converge the available critical services like telecommunications, ambulance and medical services, air services, air rescue, earth moving equipments and many more services which can be used in normal times as commercial activities and can be immediately activated and put to emergency use in times of disasters

In the concluding remarks of the conference, it was found that the private sector can converge with the public sector for critical services like telecommunications, ambulance and medical services, air services, air rescue, earth moving equipments and many more services which are regularly used for commercial activities and activated during emergencies. In this effort, the chair highlighted the need for corporate resilience and the need for a well-designed preparedness and continuity plans not only for the command system and work flow but also for communities and NGOs as integral stakeholders.

Following the conference, participants were invited to continue discussions through a virtual Public Private Partnership in Disaster Risk Reduction Network on Prevention Web. This network consists of mailing list & workspace inviting global professionals, government, private companies etc working in the area of Public Private Partnerships for Disaster risk reduction, to share experiences and challenges for engagement models, challenges, strengthening PPP and innovative ways to nurture ongoing
partnerships.

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