Quo vadis emergency preparedness?

Abstract

The earthquakes that occurred in early 2001 in El Salvador and Gujarat (India) trained the spotlight once again on problems of disaster prevention and emergency preparedness. Such events, and the responses to them on the part of the world community, raise profoundly disquieting issues about the poor quality of data on catastrophe impacts, the slowness to develop professional standards, and the persistence of misassumptions about disaster. They highlight the need to strengthen democratic values when endeavoring to prevent disasters, and they demand that the profile of the emergency management profession be improved. I will begin by discussing the reliability of data.