Disasters Create Opportunity for Active Learning
Date of submission: 01 April 2011
Title: Given that disasters create opportunity for active learning, why do they repeat?
1. Introduction
Natural and manmade disasters are a gloomy recurrent feature of today’s reality. The 1986 nuclear catastrophe in Chernobyl, the 2004 hurricane in Brazil and, the same year, the devastating Tsunami in East Asia; the 2005 earthquake in Pakistan, the BP oil spillage in the Mexican Gulf in 2010; the 2010 earthquake in Haiti; and the latest tragic Tsunami that hit Japan in March of this year along with the subsequent threat of a nuclear calamity, are but a few examples of humankind’s vulnerability to the, often unpredictable, strikes of nature and to the, far more predictable, technological calamities.
During the past sixty years, the number of disasters has significantly increased. The value of properties destroyed by natural disasters in the 1990s was 15 times greater than the one in the 1950s. Approximately 2.6 billion people were affected by natural disasters over the past ten years, compared to 1.6 billion in the previous decade. No country is immune to disaster.
The increasing frequency, intensity, duration and range of today’s disasters, both natural and manmade, are challenging even the strongest of leaders and institutions and pushing them to apply new thinking and approaches to disaster risk reduction and risk management strategies. As part of this new thinking and approaches, “active learning” is growing in popularity. “Active learning” is defined as a process by which an organization, after receiving information from a public enquiry, generates active foresight. By building on lessons learned in past disaster and recovery experiences and by systematically applying them before, during and after a disaster occurs, it should be possible to both minimize its consequences on the people and the environment and , to a certain extent, event prevent it from occurring (at least in the case of
Title: Given that disasters create opportunity for active learning, why do they repeat?
1. Introduction
Natural and manmade disasters are a gloomy recurrent feature of today’s reality. The 1986 nuclear catastrophe in Chernobyl, the 2004 hurricane in Brazil and, the same year, the devastating Tsunami in East Asia; the 2005 earthquake in Pakistan, the BP oil spillage in the Mexican Gulf in 2010; the 2010 earthquake in Haiti; and the latest tragic Tsunami that hit Japan in March of this year along with the subsequent threat of a nuclear calamity, are but a few examples of humankind’s vulnerability to the, often unpredictable, strikes of nature and to the, far more predictable, technological calamities.
During the past sixty years, the number of disasters has significantly increased. The value of properties destroyed by natural disasters in the 1990s was 15 times greater than the one in the 1950s. Approximately 2.6 billion people were affected by natural disasters over the past ten years, compared to 1.6 billion in the previous decade. No country is immune to disaster.
The increasing frequency, intensity, duration and range of today’s disasters, both natural and manmade, are challenging even the strongest of leaders and institutions and pushing them to apply new thinking and approaches to disaster risk reduction and risk management strategies. As part of this new thinking and approaches, “active learning” is growing in popularity. “Active learning” is defined as a process by which an organization, after receiving information from a public enquiry, generates active foresight. By building on lessons learned in past disaster and recovery experiences and by systematically applying them before, during and after a disaster occurs, it should be possible to both minimize its consequences on the people and the environment and , to a certain extent, event prevent it from occurring (at least in the case of
Bibliography: Brian Toft and Simon Reynolds, Third edition published in 2005 “Learning from Disaster, a management approach”, Palgrave and Macmillan Institute of Lifelong learning (2010) MSC in Risk, Crisis and Disaster Management, Module 4, unit 1. [ 2 ]. Turner, 1978:1, University of Leicester, risk, crisis & disaster management module 4, 1-11 [ 3 ] [ 8 ]. Bernard L.Cohen, 1999, “The nuclear energy option” , Plenun Press [ 9 ] [ 14 ]. See “Disaster in Japan. Come back in ten years tine”, The Economist, March 26-April 1st, 2011, p. 55