Politics of Disaster Management Thailand Flood 2011

Politics of Disaster Management Thailand Flood 2011 resources: Tavida Kamolvej Thammasat University, Thailand In the occurrence of more frequent and severer natural disasters around the world, Thailand has recently undergone the large impacts of devastation from flood which left the nation with many invaluable lessons. Such consequences raise some questions to whether the decision making in risk analysis was mistakenly done or the knowledge of natural hazard, which believed to be known, was invalid. Or else, the entire process of disaster management has not been appropriately executed. By all means, damages turn the attention to how the government, other sectors, and the people function in disaster management because the more effective and efficient the operations are, the less severity of the impacts is. There are two ways to learn how a community copes with its natural hazards through disaster management. One is to learn how the community response to the unexpected situations in disaster management process while the other is to focus on its structural and non-structural solutions all involving parties chose. On one hand, disaster management can be viewed as a three processes cycle; 1) Pre-disaster which includes preparation and mitigation, 2) During disaster which includes response with search and rescue, and 3) Post-disaster which includes recovery and rehabilitation. In all phases, all involving agencies including the public have their responsibility and duty to enhance the capacity and effectiveness of disaster management in their community. On the other hand, disaster management focuses on alternatives to solutions, structural and non-structural. Structural solutions pay attention on infrastructure, network of data and structure, mathematical simulation, advance technology in forecasting and risk analysis, etc. While, non-structural solutions aim to make use of the understanding of institutions, policies, organizations, collaboration network, compound hazard effects, and culture variation, etc. Both dimensions are significant to the more informed and accurate decisions to manage the crisis in a speed of life and death constraint. Ineffective Disaster Management: Practices to the Principles of Crisis Management (PCM) Flood 2011 was difficult to the account of disaster cycle. The Thai government had to respond to the flood crisis in several areas with various stages. While struggling with the decision making for flood management at the time the water approached Bangkok, the affected areas, north to Bangkok, have already moved toward the recovery and rehabilitation processes. Therefore, to the government, handling the three phases in the same time was not an easy task due to the lack of manpower and equipment, and the difficulties of logistic and unable to respond to compound effects such as chemical leak, waste management, and disease, etc. Through disaster management processes, agencies are trained to hold eight principles, which are Comprehensiveness, Risk Driven, Progression, Integration, Coordination, Collaboration, Flexibility, and Profession, to make sure each operation executed effectively. To scholars, the principles of crisis management (PCM) are in the checklist when examining the level of system competency in response to immediate crisis which Thailand flood management, by far, failed to translate into practices. In order to cope with multiple tasks within the limit of time, the integration of multiple units’ operations to respond to the emergency and crises is needed. However, the use of “integration” in “Thai” organizational culture redirect the attention to only designing a policy and operational plan to have every involving agency included. Without the coherent standard operating procedures (SOPs) to be directed under the incident command system (ICS), the true power of integrated multi-agency management disappears. Setting up Flood Relief Operation Center (FROC) led by the Minister of Justice as a Commander in Chief was a slow and doubtful decision. Such delay showed the incompetency to perceive and understand risk and inability to interpret and design a redundant approach if needed. Disaster is usually uncertain which requires an ability of the leaders or decision makers to alter their building-block to calculate all possible threats. Unfortunately, issue of flood in Thailand relates to multiple data and information retrieved from various organizations which hinder a capacity of decision support system at hand. In addition, the advisory board of FROC, during the first period, contained higher number of politicians than experts. Losing trust toward the ineffective decision making and leadership of the central government, Bangkok Metropolitan Authority (BMA), decided to solely analyze risk and implement flood operation within jurisdiction. Such decision reflects a poor collaboration and unity of command. Under Disaster Prevention and Mitigation Act and Flood Operation Plan, BMA is directly under FROC. Therefore, choices to redirect and alternatives to manage flood have to be mutual but one direction. BMA cannot operate without considering the effects to neighboring area. When the conflict appears to the public, logical decision seems unreasonable. Setting political conflict and partisan aside, disaster, by character, has no jurisdiction. Trust, either among disaster response agencies or between public agencies and the public, is a significant component of collaboration. Being professional helps create and regain credibility among all parties. FROC failed in term of communication not only with local authorities but also to the people. In disaster management, Media liaison is not for anyone or any team to become. This position is designated and reserved for a professional person trained to deal with media and reporters as well as translate the situation for public preparation and response. When communication is bad, conflict usually occurs. Ironically, disaster management theory has said “Disaster is a diplomatic policy”. The government underestimated the power of mass in conflict. The decision to announce the area “to be flooded” and “to be less flooded” or “not allowed being flooded” creates the perception of inequality and “double standard”. Adding with the political conflict from FROC and BMA, all that should make sense are suddenly insensible. Communicating, negotiating, and explaining during disaster usually is much harder than making all happen before hand. Choices were made by the government to areas to be flooded although such decision is to assure the effectiveness of flood management. In correspondent to such decision, the government is accountable for the consequences. Household are flooded unequally which results in unequal damage. The redemption paid by the government should also be varying by the level of damage. Thai government first immediately decided to pay flat rate as a redemption which mistakenly assumed efficiency and equality of payment. The wrong assumption led to the legal case of the people versus government due to an inappropriate flood management requesting redemption to the actual damage cost. Inefficient Disaster Management: Complex Adaptive System with Lack of Socio-Technical Component Coping with disaster requires “structural and non-structural” solutions. Those who are in favor of non-structural one usually are multidisciplinary-social scientists. The Art and Science of Disaster management is a complex system in itself. Multiple agencies are operating multiple tasks to satisfy multiple stakeholders with multiple conditions. Thus, the efficiency of disaster management depends upon the ability to adapt to a complicate situation and respond to more difficult problems. Complex Adaptive System (CAS) can be used for productive ends in order to help managers and policy makers harness complexity in rapidly changing and hard-to-predict environments like disasters. Capacity to adapt is a combination of crucial components in emergency operation. These components include the three dimensions of technical infrastructure, organizational flexibility, and cultural openness. Technical infrastructure refers to the existence of a sufficient level of information and communication exchange regarding risks and operations to enable communities and their emergency response agencies to function effectively. Organizational flexibility is the extent to which emergency personnel are able to reduce complexity in the environment through functional differentiation of tasks among participating organizations and reintegration of sets of related tasks under the basic function of disaster response. Cultural openness is willingness to accept changes, improve performance, correct mistakes, learn new methods of work, and solve conflicts, is a crucial component in developing an adaptive organization and communities. Cultural openness needs to be rooted in every level of stakeholders as a high value and new norm. Common understanding will help guide the agencies to operate and coordinate in a clear and effective direction. Thailand Flood Management of 2011 in all levels shows low technical infrastructure and organizational flexibility which illustrates the lack of preparation and awareness of disaster risk. Sense of security and security culture of Thais strangely affect the efficiency of the disaster management such as underestimated risk perception, intolerance to false alarm, no discipline to the social order, etc. Evacuation centers outside of Bangkok were not used at full capacity due to the fact that the evacuees prefer to stay at immediate temporary shelters closer to home which also located in a risk prone area. On one hand, this is a reflection of low level of cultural openness. One the other hand, it also illustrates the lack of communication and coordination between agencies and communities on the detail of “how to” in a process of evacuation and afterward. CAS uses a three-dimensional model to capture the interaction among technical structure, organizational flexibility, and cultural openness that leads to successful transition for inter-organizational disaster response systems. There are four types of response systems; non-adaptive, emergent adaptive, operative adaptive and auto-adaptive systems, which represent the dominant patterns found in actual cases. These four types of response systems provide a useful illustration of the process of transition, and the characteristics that both facilitate and hinder the emergence of self-organizing processes. A three-dimensional model is used to identify states of emergency response systems and how to make a transition to self-organization. Certainly, “Thai way” of response is evaluated to be just a non-adaptive system where a lot of components exist but not being used and implemented. Until such issues are solved and improved, next disaster is definitely on its way. References ทวิดา กมลเวชช. 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