University’s key role in disaster preparedness and response

University researchers and scientists are increasingly playing a role in disaster research, analysis and data collection. But the University of the Philippines has gone much further, taking on a central role in planning and response in Asia’s most disaster-prone country.

The Philippines island populations are on the frontline of typhoons, floods, mudslides, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions and other natural disasters. While some universities are content to provide solid data on disaster events, others such as the University of the Philippines have set up a command centre to coordinate response efforts.

At the "Regional Conference on Higher Education-Industry-Community Engagement in Asia: Forging Meaningful Partnerships”, held from 7-9 May in Malaysia, University of the Philippines Vice-president for Public Affairs Prospero de Vera described how, just days after the impact of typhoon Sendong in December 2011, he was charged with coordinating just such a response.

As the typhoon hit the eastern island of Mindanao on 15 December, rainfall increased from 20 millimetres to 200 millimetres an hour in a part of the Philippines that had not previously encountered typhoons, pouring water into the river system.

“What is normally a 50 metre-wide river became a one kilometre-wide river. Water was cascading down with tremendous force, wiping out the areas on both sides, causing utter destruction,” De Vera said, adding that in the urban areas of Iligan and Cagayan de Oro City, “whole communities were obliterated”.

More than 1,000 lives were lost and 700,000 people were affected by the cascades. Yet because typhoons are normally measured in terms of wind speeds, rather than water volumes, existing typhoon data were of little use. A local situation analysis had to be done swiftly by experts from the bottom up, he said.

Mobilising university expertise

“By 18 December reports started trickling in of the devastation. I was asked to put together a task force. The University of the Philippines is the only public university with a public service mandate. We have campuses across the whole country so we could mobilise experts on other campuses,” De Vera said.

This included calling on some of the top forensic experts from the campus in Manila and geophysicists from other campuses.

From the command centre situated at Mindanao State University’s Iligan Institute of Technology, four university-led teams were mobilised – a health team for immediate medical care; a water and sanitation team to help assess water evacuation centres; a forensic team with university experts training local health officials to identify victims’ bodies; and a geohazard team to gather data from devastated areas and assist in post-disaster reconstruction and planning such as resettlement or permanent relocation.

“Universities have a lot of expertise and sophisticated scientific equipment that even government agencies do not have. For example, our medical faculty was able to train people to recover bodies swiftly so that DNA samples could be taken from soft tissue for identification.

“These DNA samples could be tested in university laboratories. Without swift recovery, human tissue decomposes in water, and DNA samples then have to be taken from bones, which is much more difficult to analyse and increases the cost tenfold,” he said.

Disaster preparedness

In the aftermath, the university drew up a major report on the disaster and also held regular disaster management summits, most recently in April. These included the politicians who spearheaded relief efforts and national agencies.

When disaster strikes, it is not just academic staff and students who are mobilised but also the university’s alumni in all walks of life. The university made good use of having a direct line to alumni politicians, to cut through bureaucracy during a severe emergency.

De Vera recommends that universities keep their alumni databases up to date, so that they can be tapped immediately during disasters, particularly those in national and local positions and professional groups like doctors and civil society organisations. “You need people at the highest level to intervene and make decisions.”

No one has time during a catastrophe to deal with swathes of bureaucracy. “So many organisations have to be prepared and among them are the national public universities, which have a mandate to serve their communities. If disaster still strikes you have to be able to get involved,” De Vera said.

“What we found was that universities’ civic engagement has the most impact if it is well targeted, focused, strategic and includes services that have not been done by other institutions so that we do not duplicate.”

For example, the university did not get involved in food and medicine donation because this was already being done by others, particularly non-governmental organisations. But it could play a coordinating role, based on both excellent local knowledge and an analytical overview of the situation.

“What we did was point them to other groups that could help them bring donations to the affected areas.”

De Vera believes universities are more effective when bringing in expertise rather than manpower (such as student volunteers).

“With manpower, the logistical requirements are tremendous. But if you bring in the experts and work with alumni on the ground and work with local government, the cost is managed and the university involvement can be short but fruitful.

“We could put together an assessment in a very short time – just a few days – because of the experts we brought in,” he said.

Some of that information was collated by professionals on the ground. Alumni are already linked up via social media, which can be vital for providing fast, accurate information on affected areas in real time, through SMS text messaging and Facebook, communicating with alumni, partner NGOs and the media.

Disseminating information in real time helps dispel rumours and fast-tracks assistance to affected communities, De Vera said.

It was the university that uploaded photographs of the affected areas onto the worldwide web, because university experts knew how to explain and analyse them. Before-and-after pictures and video shown on national television “all came from us”, he said.

Post-disaster work continues

Months after the destruction, the task of the university has not ended.

Post-disaster, it is part of a US$1.5 million project funded by the UN and Australian development agency AusAid to assist Iligan and Cagayan de Oro cities to revise their land use maps by inputting geohazard data collected by the university such as typhoon maps and earthquake and tsunami data, so that local governments can be better prepared.

And in April the university’s governing body created a public service office at the institution to coordinate the activities of the various campuses and facilitate a swift response in future.

According to the UN Environment Programme, the Philippines is the world’s third most disaster-afflicted after two Pacific island states, and the most prone in Asia.

“We treat disaster preparedness and disaster management equally. You can do preparedness but there are times in a country so prone to natural disaster, when you just cannot avoid disasters,” De Vera said.