A Disaster Recovery Plan - Essay Example

Disaster Recovery Disaster recovery Introduction Disaster planning is primarily defined as the area of planning that majorly deals with safeguarding a firm or organization from the negative effects of an event. A negative event can be comprised of equipment failures, Crippling cyber-attacks, earthquakes, hurricanes and other natural events. A disaster recovery plan is often developed to speed up the normalisation steps. It consists of procedures, actions and policies to minimize the disruption to a firm or place in the event a disaster happens. Therefore, a disaster recovery plan is the antonym of a disaster. This paper will analyse disaster recovery. Subsequently, the following questions will guide the layout of the paper: How extreme events become disasters? What constitute disaster recovery? What are the economic and social dimensions of recovery? What are the factors that affect a citys resilience? What are the variables and processes affecting social recovery? What are the drivers of recovery outcomes? What are the rules of assistance and understanding local needs? What does long term recovery look like? How does research on planning, mitigation, and management principles in recovery helps establish the comprehensive scope of recovery? Body Swchap (1998) implied that Disaster risk emanates from the interaction of climate / weather events, human risk contributors and the physical factors. An extreme event becomes a disaster when the occurrence of the event surpasses a set threshold value. As such, severe alterations in the usual functioning of a society or community occur due to the hazardous physical events mingling with vulnerable social conditions. This leads to adverse and widespread material, economic, environmental and human effects that require instant emergency reaction to meet critical human wants. The disaster mostly needs an external aid for recovery. Disaster recovery first began in the late 1970s. The concept was adopted by organizations as people became aware of the potential disruption that would occur in the event of a disaster. Swchap (1998) classified disasters into two wide categories. The first is man-made disasters. For example, dangerous spills, bio terrorism, hazardous IT bugs and infrastructure failure. The second classification is natural disasters. It is quite difficult to prevent a natural disaster. However, good planning and avoidance of risks areas can help. Tornadoes, earthquakes and floods are some examples of natural disasters. As discussed earlier in the text, disaster recovery is the process of getting a society, system or organization back to a state of normality after occurrence of a catastrophic event. Disaster recovery is often made up of control measures, and strategies. The control measures represent the mechanisms and steps that can eliminate or reduce some threats facing organizations. The different types of measures that are included in a recovery plan include detective, preventive and corrective measures. Whereas preventive measures are aimed at deterring an event from happening, detective measures are aimed at discovering or detecting unwelcome events. On the other hand, corrective measures are mostly aimed at restoring the damaged system to its normalcy after a catastrophic event. Prior to strategy selection, a recovery planner tends to a business’s continuity plan. The plan indicates the critical metrics of recovery time objective (RTO) and recovery point objective (RPO). Complete RPOs and RTOs bolster the way to recovery Disaster impacts comprise both social and physical/economic impacts. The economic impacts include property damage and causalities treatment costs. The physical impacts are the most obvious after a disaster. Therefore, they are usually easily measured, and are first reported by the media. A very vital aspect of disaster impact is the impact ratio. It is expressed as the amount of damage divided by amount of available community resources. Research reviews undertaken over a 25 year period have concluded that disasters inflict a wide range of mostly negative social responses (Norris et al., 2002). However, a lot of the victims experience mild stress. Unlike social impacts, the economic impact of disasters is usually dire. The property damage results in asset losses. Alesch et al. (2009) found out that some of the economic losses are distributed among insurance firms during the recovery period. Cities in the world today are facing an increase in the severity and frequency of disasters. A resilient city is one that showcases capabilities to adapt when exposed to disasters in order to reduce losses and damages. Management processes and urban planning are the major factors that affect a city’s resilience. A local resilience action plan developed by management focuses on a city’s vulnerabilities. The plan focuses on 4 core inputs. These are the hot spot qualitative vulnerability self-assessment, investigation of specific vulnerabilities, inventorying capital improvement plans and lastly setting priorities among competing demands. Rubin (1991) discovered that social recovery depends on certain variables. These are state conditions and influences, federal conditions and influences, and community based wants and action demands. In a 1985 study, Rubin & Barbee found out that the efficiency and speed of social disaster recovery depended heavily on the local government’s creativity to improvise good recovery strategies. The key factors that have transformed recovery outcomes are resources, incentives, political will, ownership, leadership and vision. These are the significant drivers that enable communities to realize holistic disaster recovery. Disaster recovery administrators have to juxtapose long term and short term needs against the easy and quick fix approaches. They therefore must safeguard the safety, welfare and health of the community. Additionally, the recovery managers should avoid short sighted solutions. Consequently, they have to foster community responsibility in order to have positive long term effects. After a disaster, long term recovery commences when a society begins to replace or repair homes, bridges, stores and roads. Also, long term recovery takes the form of improving transportation corridors and strengthening building codes. Most disaster recovery changes occur in the long term period. Swchap (1998) demonstrated that planning, mitigation and management principles are the key to recovery. The three common approaches taken to recovery are sustainability, hazard mitigation and smart growth. A lot of communities finish their mitigation and recovery plans in a post disaster setting by adhering to FEMA’s mitigation requirements, initiatives and incentives. Through research and planning, a 10 step process has been adopted for local action and planning. These steps are 1o steps are 1. Get organized 2. Public involvement 3. Interagency co ordination 4. Problem identification 5. Problem evaluation 6. Set goals 7. Explore alternatives 8. Plan to take action 9. Get action plan agreement 10. Implement, evaluate, revise References Alesch, D. J., Arendt, L. A., & Holly, J. N. (2009). Managing for long-term community recovery in the aftermath of disaster. Public Entity Risk Institute. Norris, F. H., Friedman, M. J., & Watson, P. J. (2002). 60,000 disaster victims speak: Part II. Summary and implications of the disaster mental health research. Psychiatry: Interpersonal and Biological Processes, 65(3), 240-260. Rubin, C. B. (1991). Recovery from disaster. Emergency Management: Principles and Practice for Local Government. Washington DC: International City Management Association, 224-259. Rubin, C. B., & Barbee, D. G. (1985). Disaster recovery and hazard mitigation: Bridging the intergovernmental gap. Public Administration Review, 57-63. Schwab, J. (1998). Planning for post-disaster recovery and reconstruction (No. 480-484). Federal Emergency Management Agency. Read More