Planning to learn: an insurgency for disaster risk reduction (DRR)

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijdrr.2016.08.022Get rights and content

Abstract

Disaster management is a paradox: its very name implies that disasters can be managed. Despite this paradox being commonly recognized, current practices and ideology are puzzlingly resilient. In this paper we analyse plans and planning as the underlying basis of disaster management, showing it to be a co-production of ideology-practice. Using direct engagement with disaster managers, the findings expose tensions between the boundaries imposed by planning and the opinions of experienced experts. We show that the over-arching goal of disaster management – enacted through and by planning – remains oriented towards imposing control, which contradicts what the experts believe is needed. Drawing on recent analyses of insurgencies and special forces, we propose a co-system of disaster management attuned to catastrophes. Our proposal offers a pathway to replace ‘command and control’ with ‘command and chaos’, accepting reactive responses by local practitioners as a necessary and valuable component of disaster management in the context of catastrophe. Command and chaos is a description of disaster management that works, we hope that recognizing and naming this circumstance will help practitioners and researchers justify approaches that do not necessarily conform to planning ideology-practice.

Introduction

In the context of large-scale catastrophes, disaster management is shaped by twin premises:

  • 1.

    Plans and planning do not work; and

  • 2.

    Better plans and better planning can improve disaster management.

This planning paradox is recognised in the literature [2,[4], [5], [8], [23]), though its recognition has so far not affected the planning-dominated way that catastrophes are understood and governed. In response to the commonly asked question: ‘why can’t the disaster management sector change’, which follows each major event, we offer a hypothesis that integrates the idiom of co-production, the recent evolution of Western militaries, and the perceptions of disaster managers as they reflect on a catastrophe.

Disaster management, which must deal with events small-to-large, is composed of prescriptive top-down decision-making, predictive models, scenario planning, and command-control approaches: it is a composite of planning ([7], [8],[13], [29], [34], [36]). In addition to practices, the term ‘planning’ simultaneously denotes an ideology. Both ideology and practices form a feedback, which we explore using Jasanoff's idiom of co-production [21], [22]. Co-production emphasises that ‘how something is known’ feeds into and back from ‘what is done’ in ways that confirm, reinforce, and shield from critique. Co-production enables explanation for why systems persist in the face of critique and failure, offering, in this case, an analytic for unpacking the planning paradox. Our aim is not only to contribute to the growing catalogue of failures associated with planning-based disaster management ([8,[24], [49]), but to use co-production to explain why the planning paradox persists despite widespread recognition that planning-based risk management is unlikely to achieve its central premise.

As the basis of disaster management, planning is currently entrenched common-sense, what might be described as a paradigm [26], with all the trappings of a mode of thinking. In this paper we mobilise the 2009 Australian Black Saturday Bushfire catastrophe as an exemplar of large-scale events. We explore experts’ perceptions as a way of analysing the ubiquity of planning, how planning curtails critique, and, once the boundaries of planning are unsettled, what alternative emerges. We argue that failing to recognise planning as co-produced ideology-practice inhibits evolution, trapping the sector into a catastrophe cycle. Like all modes of thinking, planning carries both beneficial and detrimental consequences, but in the context of disaster management, consideration of the detriments are rarely connected to the power of ideology-practices.

Planning has become an unquestionable aspect of disaster management, or as Kendra and Watchtendorf [23] argue: “planning is such an important activity that plans must be written for situations in which the event will almost certainly differ from what is anticipated”. In highly uncertain contexts, such as catastrophes, the value of plans and planning are said to be rhetorical and symbolic, becoming ‘fantasy documents’ that deflect criticisms by assuring people that “exigencies can be controlled” ([8]: 4). In Clarke's [8] view, these fantasy documents and performances, are not necessarily lies or conniving, but part of a process for navigating events that cannot be controlled. To Clarke, planning and plans are justified by the benefits of the planning process. This claim may be accurate but it should not be used to inhibit exploration of the associated detriments of planning-based disaster management. Commonly, and reinforcing our engagement with military literature in the mid-part of this analysis, General Dwight Eisenhower's proclamation that “Plans are worthless, but planning is everything” [14] is commonly used to mollify criticisms of planning. In this way, while the drawbacks of planning are recognized, those drawbacks are cast as unavoidable because it is currently inconceivable that planning not be central. This perspective presents us with little room for reconceptualisation, even when facing repeated catastrophes. We ask what becomes possible if planning is, in the context of catastrophe, not the default basis of disaster management?

We present a two-pronged critique of planning-based disaster management as applied to catastrophes first, we review the evolution of Western militaries as they responded to the chaos of insurgency warfare following the 9/11 attacks; we do this as a way of exploring precedent, and of opening the discussion to the similarities between disaster management and insurgency warfare. Second, we present empirical data from interviews with Australian disaster managers, showing the hold of planning and the impact of the resulting paradox. Together, the changes prompted by insurgencies, coupled with the accounts of success and failure in response to the Black Saturday Bushfire catastrophe, echo one another and inspire our proposition for an insurgent form of disaster management. Our contribution to the discourse is not only confirmation that disasters are chaotic and require innovative approaches, or even that plans fail, but an explanation for why the disaster management sector seems incapable of escaping plans as the basis of coping with catastrophes.

This paper is organised as follows: we begin with a conceptual account of disasters, disaster management, and the centrality of planning. This is followed by a review of post-9/11 military theory, showing that Western militaries have faced a similar challenge (i.e., catastrophes are like insurgencies), which prompted the military to evolve. We then describe our methodology, recounting our engagements with disaster managers several years following the Black Saturday catastrophe in Victoria, Australia. These qualitative findings are organised into three main themes: 1) disasters are unpredictable and therefore upend efforts to impose control; 2) explanations for why plans and planning do not work when disasters become catastrophes; and 3) examples of effective management during chaotic periods of disasters. The findings expose contradictions between the boundaries imposed by planning ideology-practices compared to what experts think is needed. The discussion explores reactiveness and incorporates the concept of subsidiarity [31]. Finally, we develop the idea of an insurgent approach to catastrophe – and the necessary embrace of chaos – which responds to the expert perspectives, to the military's evolution, and to the recommendations common to the inquiries that follow catastrophes. In conclusion, we call for a co-system of disaster management able to oscillate spatially and temporally between control and chaos.

Section snippets

Disaster management and planning

There is no consensus concerning the definition of ‘disaster’ [37], [38] nor is there an accepted way to differentiate ‘disasters’ from ‘catastrophes’, other than by scale. Despite a wide range of interpretations, there are general traits and impacts linked to the socio-physical events and social constructions associated with the idea of ‘disaster’, most of which cross a scale-based threshold to become catastrophes (e.g., costs, fatalities, extent, number of people affected). Disasters are

Methodology

In the following sections, using empirical data from Australia, we explore how planning and the emergence of a ‘modern military’ can inform debate over a ‘modern’ form of disaster management. The findings, which are drawn directly from interviews with disaster managers, are organised into three groups. Each relies on direct citations as a way of representing opinions that were common to the sample (n=24). The experts are drawn from local government, emergency services, and responders: people

Discussion: complementing planning

That disasters are chaotic and uncontrollable is an axiom that, unfortunately, bears repeating. To date, reflection on catastrophes can be summarised as attempts to limit chaos, to confine such periods to the ‘response phase’, and to quickly reassert as much control as possible whenever plans and planning fail. Furthermore, given the linearity implicit in the way that disaster management is understood, the periods in which control is lost represent ‘failures’ [23] in which the default, primary

Conclusion

The title ‘planning to learn’ can be interpreted in at least two ways: it is intentionally ambiguous in that it refers to the use of planning in order to learn, while it also alludes to ‘planning to’ as a reference to a future in which we intend to do something. The title is a reflection of the central importance of planning, but also to it as an aspirational ideal within disaster management. In advocating an insurgent form of disaster management able to switch between ‘control’ and ‘chaos’, we

References (50)

  • W.N. Adger

    Vulnerability

    Global Environmental Change-Human and Policy Dimensions

    (2006)
  • E. Enarson

    Violence Against Women in Disasters A Study of Domestic Violence Programs in the United States and Canada

    Violence against Women

    (1999)
  • B.L. Green et al.

    Children and disaster: Age, gender, and parental effects on PTSD symptoms

    J. Am. Acad. Child Adoles. Psychiatry

    (1991)
  • S. Jasanoff, Future imperfect: Science, technology, and the imaginations of modernity. Dreamscapes of modernity:...
  • R. Tomes

    Schlock and Blah: counter-insurgency realities in a rapid dominance era

    Small Wars Insurg.

    (2005)
  • (a)D. Alexander Confronting: Catastrophe New Perspectives on Natural Disasters,...D. Alexander

    Globalization of disaster: Trends, problems and dilemmas

    J. Int. Aff.-Columbia Univ.

    (2006)
    D. Alexander

    From civil defence to civil protection-and back again

    Disaster Prev. Manag.: Int. J.

    (2002)
  • P.J. Atkins et al.

    Toxic torts: arsenic poisoning in Bangladesh and the legal geographies of responsibility

    Trans. Inst. Br. Geogr.

    (2006)
  • T.A. Birkland

    Lessons of Disaster: Policy Change after Catastrophic Events

    (2006)
  • A. Boin et al.

    Preparing for critical infrastructure breakdowns: the limits of crisis management and the need for resilience

    J. of Conting. and Crisis Manag.

    (2007)
  • D.L. Brunsma et al.

    The sociology of Katrina. Perspectives on a Modern Catastrophe

    (2007)
  • R.J. Burby et al.

    Unleashing the power of planning to create disaster-resistant communities

    J. Am. Plan. Assoc.

    (1999)
  • L. Clarke

    Mission Improbable: Using Fantasy Documents to Tame Disaster

    (1999)
  • T.W. Collins

    Marginalization, facilitation, and the production of unequal risk: the 2006 paso del norte floods

    Antipode

    (2010)
  • B.R. Cook et al.

    The persistence of ‘normal’ catchment management despite the participatory turn: exploring the power effects of competing frames of reference

    Soc. Stud. Sci.

    (2013)
  • S.L. Cutter

    Natural disaster analysis after hurricane katrina: risk assessment, economic impacts and social implications

    J. Homel. Secur. Emerg. Manag.

    (2009)
  • D. Dominey-Howes et al.

    Queering disasters: on the need to account for LGBTI experiences in natural disaster contexts

    Gend. Place Cult.

    (2014)
  • R.R. Dynes

    Problems in emergency planning

    Energy

    (1983)
    (b)R.R. Dynes, Community emergency planning: false assumptions and inappropriate...
  • D.D. Eisenhower, Remarks at the National Defense Executive Reserve Conference. The American Presidency Project, The...
  • C. Eriksen et al.

    The gendered dimensions of bushfire in changing rural landscapes in Australia

    J. Rural Stud.

    (2010)
  • A. Finlan

    Warfare by other means: special forces, terrorism and grand strategy

    Small Wars Insurg.

    (2003)
  • C. Folke et al.

    Adaptive governance of social-ecological systems

    Annu. Rev. Environ. Resour.

    (2005)
  • K. Hewitt

    Interpretations Of Calamity from the Viewpoint of Human Ecology

    (1983)
  • S. Jasanoff

    States of Knowledge: The CO-Production of Science and the Social Order

    (2004)
  • (a)J. Kendra, T. Wachtendorf, Creativity in emergency response to the World Trade Center disaster. Beyond September...J. Kendra et al.

    Improvisation, creativity, and the art of emergency management

    Underst. Respond. Terror.

    (2007)
  • J.M. Kendra et al.

    Elements of resilience after the world trade center disaster: reconstituting New York City’s Emergency Operations Centre

    Disasters

    (2003)
  • Cited by (21)

    • Effectiveness of the policy for organising self-evacuation by private vehicle transport, as verified in microsimulations

      2022, International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction
      Citation Excerpt :

      In the relevant literature one can find two contradictory approaches to disaster management. The first states that policies and planning do not work, while the second argues that better policies and better planning may improve the disaster management [4–6]. Evacuation planning aims to reduce the loss of life and property caused by disasters, including floods [7].

    • Emergency management of self-evacuation from flood hazard areas in Poland

      2022, Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment
      Citation Excerpt :

      There are two contrasting approaches in disaster management. While the first approach highlights the significance of planning, the second approach considers it unnecessary (Cook and Melo Zurita, 2016). This paradox is reflected in the literature, with the assumption that accurate forecasts or effective preparation are somehow impossible or insufficient (Clarke, 1999; McConnell and Drennan, 2006), and therefore much of the effort is aimed at improving the forecasts and means of communication (Cook and Melo Zurita, 2016).

    • The power of connection: Navigating the constraints of community engagement for disaster risk reduction

      2022, International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction
      Citation Excerpt :

      In this paper, we examine the complexities and experiences of doing community engagement for DRR in a neoliberal context. Community engagement for DRR has been pursued as an alternative to hierarchical, top-down command and control approaches that frame publics as homogenous and passive recipients of emergency services and information [9,10]. This transition to engagement promotes ‘people-centred approaches’ and the sharing of DRR responsibilities among the state, private sectors, and publics, often under the banner of disaster or community resilience [4,11].

    View all citing articles on Scopus
    View full text