Workshop and Training for Building Disaster Inventories in Sri Lanka

Workshop and Training for Building Disaster Inventories in Sri Lanka

Colombo, Sri Lanka

June-July 2004.

Experience of Building Disaster Inventory in Nepal

Ganesh K. Jimee, Yadav P. Dhakal and Amod M. Dixit

National Society for Earthquake Technology-Nepal (NSET)

Kathmandu, Nepal

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Abstract

Nepal is known as one of the most disaster-prone countries in the world. Floods, landslides, earthquakes, epidemics, and fires are quite common and frequent in the country. However the country does not have proper system for recording natural disaster events and their impacts. Due to this, there is a lack of systematic and consistent disaster database which ultimately hindering organized and coordinated efforts to disaster risk mitigation and preparedness planning and implementation. To fill in the current gap and help in facilitating disaster risk management planning at the national level, by developing a consistent disaster inventory and formulating a sustainable system for the future, the National Society for Earthquake Technology-Nepal (NSET), with the core support from United Nations Development Programme (UNDP/Nepal), implemented a project “Disaster Inventory/Information Management System in Nepal (DIMS)”. The project has made an inventory of natural disaster over past 33 years (1971 - 2003), using “DesInventar”, developed by the Latin American Network of Social Studies on Disaster Prevention (LARED), as a tool. It has also developed a concept for institutionalization and sustainability of the system.

1.Introduction

Nepal, a small HimalayanKingdom, lies in the middle of the Himalayan arc and covers about a third of its length. It has a unique altitudinal variation from 60 meters from the mean sea level at Terai plain in the south to 8,848 meters at Mt.Everest in the north. Within its short north-south span Nepal has varieties of climate ranging from sub-tropical to alpine and tundra. The country is landlocked surrounded by India from east, west and south, and China from the north. Geological, topographical, climatical and socio-economic conditions have made the country vulnerable to various types of natural disasters. Every year it is suffering from numbers of large to small-scale natural disasters such as floods, landslides, earthquakes, epidemics, fires etc. which are causing a significant loss of life and property each year through out the country.

Although being a most disaster-prone country in the world, Nepal lacks organized system and defined institution for reporting, recording and analyzing the disaster events and their impacts. There are many government, non-government and community organizations working in disaster related fields and they are collecting and recording disaster information as per their own requirements. However, these information, in most of the cases, are not sufficient and even not consistent and uniform with each other. Hence in one hand there is a serious lack of information of the past disasters and on the other hand the available data are also scattered in various institutions and they are not consistent to each other. The data and information of past disasters is key for disaster risk management planning for the future, due to the lack of which Nepal is still not in a stage of comprehensive disaster risk management planning and implementation. World trend of disaster risk management has shifted from ad-hoc response and relief activities to mitigation, preparedness and more recently to incorporation of disaster consideration inherently into the development process, but unfortunately Nepal is still far behind this scenario and is still in response and relief stage of disaster risk management. Further, the trend of considering only the events with big effects has caused thousands of small and medium-scale disasters, that occur every year throughout the country, disappear from the scene and they are not getting sufficient attention from the concerned authorities.

In this complex national scenario, a small step towards making a uniform and comprehensive disaster database through reporting, recording and analyzing the information of past disasters and developing a sustainable system for disaster information management will worth more than millions in the direction of proper disaster risk management planning and implementation system. Realizing this fact, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP/Nepal) and National Society for Earthquake Technology – Nepal (NSET), with the strong technical and moral support from Bureau for Crisis Prevention and Recovery (BCPR) and UNDP/India, developed a preliminary concept of implementing a project on disaster inventory and disaster information management system in Nepal. The concept was further strengthened and polished through a numbers of meetings and workshops among the various national and international institutions working in aspects of disaster risk management. Ultimately, UNDP/Nepal has been carrying out a project called “Disaster Inventory/ Information Management System in Nepal” through NSET with many informal supports and guidance from other national and international institutions.

Main aim of the project is to make an organized and uniform disaster inventory over past 33 years (1971 – 2003) of the country in a systematic manner and develop a concept for sustainability of the disaster inventory and information management system in the long run. NSET has been successfully implementing the project tasks and near to the completion of the project. Till date major project activities have already been completed and the project has come up with many alarming findings and gained tremendous experiences.

This paper tries to describe the conceptualization, methodology adopted, findings and, achievements of the project as well as the lessons learned.

2.Conceptualization of the Project

Latin American Network of Social Studies on Disaster Prevention (LARED) has developed “DesInventar”, a tool for systematic inventory of disaster information. This tool requires a systematic collection of disaster data through standard formats and sound verification of collected data to get correct analysis results. In this sense, DesInventar can also be referred as a methodology for disaster information management. It has got a rich experience of implementation in Latin American countries and more recently it was successfully implemented in Orissa, India. These experiences showed its high replicability potential in a developing and disaster-prone country like Nepal. Hence a preliminary concept of implementing “DesInventar” in Nepal was developed through various formal and informal meetings and talks among UNDP/Nepal, UNDP/India, NSET, BCPR and other related institutions. Further the team and experiences of Orissa encouraged to concretize its replication and promised to assist in its implementation. This helped to materialize the project.

Prior to launching the project, UNDP/Nepal conducted a training program on "DesInventar" for Nepalese institutions/organizations during 20-22 May 2003. The purpose of the training program was to familiarize with the concept, methodology of DesInventar and definition of natural disaster events, data collection and entry processes. Experts from LARED and UNDP/India shared the experiences of implementing DesInventar in Orissa, India and other countries of the world. The regional advisor of BCPR provided the overall guidance. Ten professionals from different institutions/organizations of Nepal, viz. National Planning Commission (NPC), Nepal Red Cross Society (NRCS), Ministry of Home Affairs (MOHA), Kathmandu Metropolitan City (KMC), UNDP/Nepal, and NSET participated in the training program.

After completion of the training programme, several meetings of training participants, institutions and high-level officials were organized to discuss about the possibility of implementing the system in the country. The meetings came up to a consensus to implement it and realized the importance of a focal institution for carrying out the task. Also, the meetings identified NSET as focal institution to finalize the project concept and implement it.

3.Methodology

3.1Preliminary works

3.1.1Formation of Project Team

A project team consisting of a Project Principal, Project Manager and Project Assistant was formulated to run the project smoothly and achieve its goals effectively. During the initial stage, the project team itself carried out data collection, verification and entry of natural disaster events of past few years and found that it is more economical and time-efficient to conduct the data collection in a massive scale by university students. Therefore, the project selected eleven graduate students from different universities to collect the data and before sending them for data collection they were provided a short training on “DesInventar”. Later,

they were also involved in data entry.

3.1.2Definition of Natural Disaster Events

Pertinent natural disaster events relevant to Nepalese context were defined through meetings among the project team and the professionals of different institutions who were the participants of DesInventar training previously. It was found during the definition of disaster events that all events enlisted by the “DesInventar” development team are not relevant to Nepalese context. So, some adaptation was done in the system to suit the local condition. Standard data collection format was developed incorporating the required adaptation. The format allows recording date, location, magnitude and other details of the events as well as the human and property losses. Figure 1 shows the data collection format developed by the project.

Figure 1: Data Collection Format

3.1.3Identification of Main Data Sources

Due to the unavailability of already prepared systematic and consistent disaster inventory, the project aimed to prepare that. Further, there was an obvious lack of appropriate and organized source of data as well. Therefore, the project has to rely upon the secondary sources rather than to collect those from the primary sources.

Media sources like national daily newspapers and periodicals are considered as the main sources of information. Among the newspapers, Gorkhapatra National Daily, the oldest daily newspaper in Nepal, has been taken as the must-see and authentic source. Relevant reports, articles, government records and researches are also identified as the pertinent sources to be consulted and explored. Literatures in the related field has also been collected from different sources including reports, articles, periodicals, newspapers, web sites etc. The project has tried to consult all the possible sources of data as far as possible for high accuracy of the inventory. The Central Library at TribhuvanUniversity, Kirtipur has been identified as the main data collection point since it has got a very good collection of old newspapers, reports, journals and other relevant historical literatures.

3.2Data Collection, verification and entry

The trained data collectors collected data and required information on the disasters of different time periods of last 33 years individually from different sources using the prescribed data collection format. The collectors also consulted other relevant media sources as well as the report and researches visiting different agencies. Later, all the data are synthesized to develop a full set of record.

Data collection activity was regularly monitored and the collected data were crosschecked whether the information is recorded correctly or not. The collected data were then verified before entering them in the DesInventar System. Date, cause, geographical location (region, district, municipality/VDC and ward/place) and magnitude of events; their effect on people and property; and relief provided are checked if there are any mistakes. Supplementary information provided in the sources, which are important but not covered to record in the format are included in the comments. In some cases, same events are reported in different sources with different figures (number of people dead, effected and property). Regarding the newspapers Gorkhapatra is taken as the authentic source for such problems. After the verification, trained personnel enter the data into the DesInventar System. Data were entered in a main server from different computer machines via networking system.

3.3Analysis

After verification, updating and entering the data into DesInventar System, they are analyzed from different aspects. Geographical analysis provides a clear scene that how the events are active or inactive according to geographical variation. Likewise, the temporal analysis provides the seasonal variation of natural events and gives the clear scene how frequently the events are occurring and how the effects are according to the time variation. The analysis results are then presented in the form of charts, tables and graphs. The DesInventar system has in-built system of analysis and presentation of results.

3.4Dissemination of Results and Findings

Results and findings of the analysis are disseminated to the related institutions and individuals through workshops. The outcomes of the preliminary analysis were made available to the related institutions and discussions were carried out in a mid-term workshop organized on 13 May 2004. Participants of the workshop discussed about the overall project activities and the results of the analysis and provided their critical comments which assisted further crosschecking, verifying and refining the data as well as the analysis. Considering the suggestions in the workshop, an extensive data correction is carried out and government records, researches, other specific reports and articles are widely explored to verify the final results. Missing information from the governmental records is added into the system and data are corrected in reference of them as their relevance. A preliminary concept on the institutionalization of disaster inventory system in the country was also presented in the mid-term workshop. The participants realized the need of institutionalization of the system.

Main purpose of such workshops and meeting were to make the stakeholders informed about the results and to get buy-in and consensus from them.

4.Findings

During the period of past 33 (1971-2003) years, it is seen from the inventory that there has been a total number of 12,500 reported disaster events. The preliminary analysis shows out of the total reported disaster events about 32 percent is on fire, 19 percent on epidemic, 15 percent on flood 11 percent on landslide and rest are reported on other events (earthquake, thunderstorm, hailstorm, heavy-rainfall etc.). However, trend of their impacts are different than the numbers of occurrences. The maximum number of death is seen due to epidemics which is 60 percent out of the total deaths during the period. The percentages of death due to other disasters are shown in the figure 2.

Figure 2: Loss of Life due to Different Natural Disaster (1971-2003)

During the period, about 25,000 lives were lost, about 5 million people were affected and more than 200,000 buildings were damaged by natural disasters. Landslides are seen to be active in hilly region of the country and floods are with great damages in terai plains. It is found that floods, landslides, thunderstorms, hailstorms and heavy rain are frequently occurring and with heavy losses in summer season. Frost and snowfalls are found in winter season. Fires are seen to be active in the month April.

The trend of reporting on events is increasing with the passage of time. For early period most of the events from remote areas are not reported because of the lack of effective information system.

5.Limitations

The inventory of natural disaster prepared by the project has some crucial limitations, which can be enlisted as below. Some of the limitations may have significant effects on the analysis and results and have to be properly addressed in the future.

The limitations are:

Because of limited time and budget the project covers only the inventory of last 33 years. It does not cover a long history so that in some cases there may be insufficient data for good interpretation, for example in earthquakes.
For early periods there are no options for sources other than the National Daily Gorkhapatra and very rare reports. Therefore, there was a little option for data verification.
Gorkhapatra National Daily is taken as the conclusive source for the early period and specific government records are for recent years. So the accuracy of the findings largely depends on the accuracy of data source.
Number of data-cards does not reflect the number of events. As the system records by the geographical units of events, single event may be reported in different data-cards as the political divisions. For example 1988 earthquake is reported from different VDCs and exists several data-cards for the single earthquake.
Natural events with same nature are generalized. For example: Debris flow is included into landslide and all types of transferable disease effecting community are included into epidemic.
The qualitative losses are calculated with the current general valuation of the losses to find out the overall losses. So the loss values may not be absolutely true in terms of monetary value.
The reported number of families in case of affected people, victims, relief provided and others are converted into persons using the family size indicators of that particular time.
In case of epidemics, the sick people are included in injuries.

6.Achievements and Lessons

The great achievement of the project is to have consistent and sound database on the historical disasters of Nepal. All natural disaster events with details are recorded into DesInventar System. It will work as a tool for disaster risk mitigation strategy for the country. Such analysis of natural disasters from different angles will help to develop future plans and programs for disaster risk mitigation in the country in one hand and make people aware from the disasters on the other hand.