Kalain Ho­sein

Dis­as­ter man­age­ment of­fi­cials across var­i­ous state agen­cies are now bet­ter equipped to con­duct dam­age as­sess­ment (DANA) and needs analy­sis if a dis­as­ter strikes Trinidad and To­ba­go.

On Thurs­day, the Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment (ODPM) hand­ed over 18 tablets to the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment (MoRDLG) and two to the To­ba­go Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency (TEMA).

These tablets, do­nat­ed by the Unit­ed States Em­bassy’s Mil­i­tary Li­ai­son Of­fice and Miyamo­to, are ex­pect­ed to al­low dis­as­ter man­age­ment of­fi­cials to quick­ly com­plete DANA re­ports and send them to the re­spec­tive state agen­cies.

When a dis­as­ter, like high winds, a flood, or a land­slide oc­curs, a dam­age as­sess­ment and needs analy­sis are done by coun­cilors at­tached to Trinidad’s mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions and by TEMA.

Ac­cord­ing to ODPM’s Cor­po­rate Ser­vice Man­ag­er Ma­jor (Re­tired) Cheva­lier Jack­son, “Be­fore 2019, when per­son­nel from the var­i­ous dis­as­ter man­age­ment units and TEMA col­lect­ed da­ta and needs as­sess­ments, which we call DANA, col­lect­ed those da­ta on pa­per-based forms. The in­for­ma­tion col­lat­ed on pa­per took ap­prox­i­mate­ly 24 to 72 hours to process af­ter an im­pact­ful event.”

These analy­sis re­ports are com­plet­ed to ob­tain a more de­tailed and ac­cu­rate eval­u­a­tion of the dam­age caused to each sec­tor and the eco­nom­ic cost of that dam­age gen­er­al­ly with­in 48 hours af­ter a dis­as­ter. When com­plet­ed and col­lat­ed by re­spec­tive mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions, the in­for­ma­tion is then sent to the ODPM and the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices to fur­ther process dis­as­ter re­lief aid from the state.

Jack­son lament­ed, “This process was lengthy, labour-in­ten­sive and sus­cep­ti­ble to er­rors caused by fur­ther un­due de­lays while re­quests for as­sis­tance were be­ing processed.”

He fur­ther added, “Sev­er­al mul­ti-stake­hold­er meet­ings were held with var­i­ous in­ter­est groups to de­vise a so­lu­tion for this is­sue. Emerg­ing from these dis­cus­sions were rec­om­men­da­tions for the pro­cure­ment of field tablet de­vices and the de­vel­op­ment of a dig­i­tal geo-ref­er­ence form that can re­lay da­ta al­most in­stan­ta­neous­ly.”

The ODPM worked with the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and oth­er agen­cies to es­tab­lish an en­ter­prise ge­o­graph­ic in­for­ma­tion sys­tem plat­form as the back­bone for the new elec­tron­ic DANA re­port­ing sys­tem.