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InterCEP Releases White Paper on Mobilizing Business Resources to Support Disasters

January 25, 2007 10:17 AM

The International Center for Enterprise Preparedness has released a white paper on the current and potential role of businesses in providing key resources to governments and NGO's for emergency management activities.

InterCEP Director, Bill Raisch, noted that "the resources of even the largest governments and NGOs can be depleted in disaster, our analysis addressed how the substantial resource capacity of the private sector can be more effectively harnessed before, during and after crisis to alleviate human suffering and accelerate economic recovery." Matt Statler, Associate Director of InterCEP, added, "the intersection of the public and private sectors in security and emergency management is a critical one; this white paper is one of several research efforts that we will be releasing in the near term." The paper was authored by Raisch, Statler and Peter Burgi, a collaborating researcher.

The research effort was supported by a grant from the communications company, Avaya, Inc. The research was based in large part on the contributions from dozens of executives and leaders from the private and public sectors, many of whom participated in two Executive Forums in New York City co-hosted by Avaya.

Executive Summary

In recent years, we’ve seen how disasters – both natural and man-made – can overwhelm even the wealthiest governments and the best-funded humanitarian aid organizations. As the 2004 tsunami and 2005 U.S. gulf hurricanes demonstrated, a devastating crisis can stretch public resources and capabilities to the breaking point, prolonging human suffering and slowing the economic and social recovery of neighborhoods, cities, even entire nations.

The business sector, with its substantial resources and logistical capabilities, has the opportunity to play a major role in alleviating suffering and mitigating the effects of disasters. Yet more often than not in times of need, governments and aid organizations fail to tap business resources effectively. At the same time, companies that want to help often have no one to turn to within governments or relief organizations to effectively coordinate provisioning. Without adequate communication and coordination, efforts by businesses to offer aid are often inefficient, ineffective and, in some cases, do more harm than good.

These problems are not insurmountable. By developing a clear program for action in advance of a catastrophe, companies, governments and aid organizations can work together to mobilize private-sector resources when and where they are needed most when disaster strikes. Two basic initiatives must be undertaken. They are:

1. Establish local business resource programs to address local emergencies within each state to enable the mobilization of local business resources for local crises. These networks can build upon and integrate existing efforts where they exist

2. Link these local programs to create a resource network for large scale disaster to enable the marshaling of resources from across the nation if the need arises including wider networks of NGO’s and business associations.

The first initiative, local networks, acknowledges the fact that “all emergencies are local” and that they are generally handled locally with local governments in the lead. Further, businesses are most compelled to address risks in the communities where they are located and where their employees and customers live.

The second initiative, a network of networks, recognizes that large scale disasters can overwhelm local resources and that when catastrophes reach such a level, the wider region and nation stands ready to respond. A wider network could link existing local networks as well as those of NGO’s and national business organizations. This linkage could efficiently allow for impacted areas to communicate their resource needs to the wider network and to identify potential sources of these needed resources in the business community.

Creating such a program for action will require extraordinary levels of coordination, cooperation and planning. No simple task, clearly. But just as clearly achievable given successful completion of certain key foundation steps. These include:

• Define a Common Program Standard: In cooperation with the ANSI Homeland Security Standards Panel, representatives from government, NGOs and business should set baseline criteria for how successful mobilization programs operate. The best practices from recent disaster-recovery initiatives should be used in the creation of a “program standard.” A draft standard has been developed as part of this research effort. A common standard approach will also support the development of common tools and templates and potentially centralized database software to facilitate both local operation and linkage to other networks.