Under the terms of disaster resilience, risk management, emergency preparedness, contingency planning, business continuity, there are many organizational strategies and practices. While many of these rely on evidence, others perpetuate the application of traditional approaches whose effectiveness raises questions.
In order to achieve its objectives, the EGIDE Consortium will organize thematic study days enabling community partners to reflect on the main organizational practices in the area of disaster risk reduction. These activities bring together the private, public and institutional actors called by the subject.
Dialogue among researchers, practitioners and policy-makers will aim to identify the available evidence to validate organizational practices. This will maximize the effectiveness of every action and avoid repeating past mistakes. From these meetings will emerge evidence-based organizational strategies and practices.
The use of conclusive data and the strength of evidence will foster critical thinking about current organizational practices and provide a better understanding of the experimental context of research projects and other pilot projects. Resilience-building managers will be able to invest their resources and efforts in value-added developments.
The results of the presentations and exchanges that took place during the study days will be published on the website of the EGIDE Consortium. Study Day Reports will be a reliable source of data to inspire and support stakeholders in pursuing their disaster resilience development efforts at both organizational and community levels.
The identification of specific themes may emerge from the research agenda, the questions raised by members or the emerging issues. The themes will cover all components of risk management, from prevention to recovery, preparedness for intervention, perception to communication, and management to assessment of the process.
All themes targeting a multi-hazard range, specific topics will also be interesting to hazards or particular types of hazards.
Among the topics considered for the first days of studies, we find rescue (light, medium and heavy), management and dissemination of knowledge, design and operation of emergency operations centers, systems alert and stakeholder mobilization, debriefings and other learning feedback.