Radar for disaster management
2010-08-25 12:24
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Cape Town - The Western Cape provincial government released a document titled the Risk and Development Annual Review (Radar) publication, at the Annual Disaster Risk Seminar held at the University of the Western Cape.
The document is designed to provide insight on managing risks associated with extreme weather and environmental dangers that face the province and is expected to be a handbook for disaster management.
"I'm hoping this publication will emphasise the importance of investing in the proactive side of disaster management, like research of this nature and awareness campaigns," MEC for local government Anton Bredell told News24.
The document is not written in the "normal academic style" because its intention is remain accessible to "relevant stakeholders" said the department's Tania Colyn.
Counting the costs
"It was also decided to included a range of techniques in order to get the message through to the readers, namely the use of graphs, tables, maps, pie charts, pictures, did you know boxes; definition pages.
"In both chapters two and three you will find a summary of all the severe weather events that occurred in the Western Cape since 2003 and each of them only consists of two pages," she said.
Key aspects of the document highlight the direct economic losses from disasters and are instructive to disaster management professionals to mitigate against future losses from disasters.
"This is an excellent example of pioneering work and sets the trend for enhancing all aspects of disaster risk reduction initiatives in South Africa," Bredell said.
But Colyn said the document goes further than simply counting the costs of natural disasters.
"Chapter six with the title: 'Emerging resources - linking up with local movers and shakers' illustrates with a few examples how local community members also started to work closely together with the disaster management fraternity in order to enhance the coping capacity of communities during emergencies/major disasters by putting pro-active measures in place," she said.
The department hopes that the Radar document will result in "proactive risk reduction" it said in a statement and that municipalities would implement programmes to limit the impact of natural disasters.
Future infrastructure
"The Department would like to see that municipalities and provincial departments make use of the information contained in Radar, due to the fact that it could also enhance the existing plans pertaining to future infrastructure and other development planning initiatives," said Colyn.
While the document is not mandatory for the private sector, the department appealed for co-operative development between the government and private institutions.
"It would really assist government if the private sector developments could include some of the principles highlighted in Radar pertaining to integrated development planning practices and to reduce possible development risk drivers that might increase the likelihood of future damage," Colyn said.
The publication was developed by the Disaster Mitigation for Sustainable Livelihoods Programme at the University of Cape Town and will be available to the public soon.
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