Why coordination is important in Crisis Response Management

Crisis response management had become very important topic that drew attention of scholars and policy makers in the recent decades because of the increase of fatalities and financial losses to disasters, natural or man made.

The debris from the aftermath of Japans 2011 Tohuko earthquake and Tsunami was and still felt around the world as some of its piece made across the ocean to Canada. As a consequence of the rumble a nuclear meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear power station and that was the unexpected part of responding to the events. The whole situation was a chain of unfortunate disasters.

A disaster of such a large-scale required and international response, according to Japan's foreign ministry, 116 countries and 28 international organizations offered assistance. Japan on the other hand, specifically requested assistance from teams from Australia, New Zealand, South Korea and the United States. With that level of foreign aid flowing into the country at a very short notice and time, organizing the aid efforts required tremendous levels of coordination and collaboration to ensure effectiveness of relief efforts delivery to the affected areas. With the nuclear meltdown chain of events, Japan and the international society had to move as fast as possible as contaminated radio-active substances was escaping from the Fukushima nuclear reactor facility to the ocean water.

According to an executive report by the US Heritage Foundation, “the nation of Japan had organized a massive, speedy response”. The Japan Civil Network for Disaster Relief in East Japan served as an overall coordinating body for over 300 organizations, including government offices, non-governmental agencies, and civil society organizations.

The large-scale of the disaster and the huge relief efforts required a great levels of coordination among multi-level parties, the report stresses on the importance of coordination and collaboration with partner organizations and agencies in the midst of chaos. Beside that, one for the recommendations of the report is to the US federal government is that they should focus on catastrophic disaster preparedness and response and decentralized execution to improve levels of collaboration and coordination.

 By Nadia Noori

References: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/11/us-japan-quake-aid-refile-idUSTRE72A71320110311 http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2011/05/the-great-eastern-japan-earthquake-assessing-disaster-response-and-lessons-for-the-us