Survey around 51 Disaster Lessons
At the end of 2008 I conducted a survey of ALNAP members and others of how strongly their experience supported the list of 51 lessons drawn from evaluations of Natural Disasters by twelve different institutions. The lessons were collated by the Independent Evaluation Group at the World Bank.
The survey found that the respondents broadly supported the 51 lessons identified by the World Bank study (the ratio between responses supporting lessons to contradicting lessons was 9:1).
Support was weakest for lessons that specifically referred to IFI issues such as loan policy or where the meaning of the lesson was not very clear. Another area of weak support was lessons in controversial areas such as temporary shelter. However even the weakest supported lesson was supported by twice as many respondents as contradicted it.
Half of the top ten lessons (those attracting the largest numbers of respondents rating the lessons as very strongly supported by their experience) referred to aspects of disaster risk reduction.
The top five lessons, in terms of being strong supported by respondents experience were:
- Special attention should be given to reducing long-term vulnerability in those countries at highest risk (57% said that their experience strongly support this lesson)
- Prevention and mitigation deserve a higher priority than in the past (55%)
- Customize response (tailor response to a country’s specific needs) (50%)
- (Rather than exclude recurrent events) emergency projects should recognize the likely recurrence of disaster and give more attention to identifying vulnerability and mitigating their effects (49%)
- Donor coordination is especially critical to disaster relief and recovery because of the dynamic nature of the situation and/or because disasters typically attract the involvement of numerous donors (46%)
The full survey can be found here.
Reference for the original World Bank Document: World Bank IEG. (2008). Disaster Risk Management: Taking Lessons from Evaluation: Proceedings from the Conference on November 20, 2006 and the Evaluators’ Roundtable on November 21, 2006 (IEG Working Paper 2008/5). Washington: World Bank Independent Evaluation Group.