Disaster Recovery and the Road Ahead - IGNOU

SECTION I
DISASTER RECOVERY
‘From sixes and sevens to cloud nine, is a slow but shiny silver line’. Thereby, rehabilitation
is no one-time effort; it is a part of ongoing development process.
(A Reconstructed Phrase)
Disaster recovery is the most difficult and long-drawn disaster management phase. Rehabilitation, an
integral part of disaster recovery; other being reconstruction, could be defined as an overall dynamic
and intermediate strategy of institutional reform and reinforcement, reconstruction and improvement
of infrastructure and services; aimed towards support to the initiatives and actions of the concerned
populations in the political, economic and social domains, as well as reiteration of sustainable
development. It involves three pertinent phases:
Planning
Implementing; and
Ensuring sustainability
Generally, rehabilitation package includes total reconstruction of damaged physical and psychological
infrastructure, as well as economic and social rehabilitation of the people in the affected region. The
rehabilitation package may be classified into:
(a)
(b)
(c)
(d)
Housing and infrastructure redevelopment as physical rehabilitation
Economic rehabilitation programmes
Social rehabilitation structures and processes; and
Stress management as a part of psychological rehabilitation
1.1 CHARACTERISTICS OF REHABILITATION
The priorities in a situation of disaster rehabilitation are:
Operationalization of emergency relief
Mobilization of human and material resources comprising
food security, construction of temporary shelters and
other basic needs
Rehabilitation of all the displaced people, restoration of
basic and alternative means of livelihood along with
community-based infrastructure and institutions; and
Source: Disaster Rehabilitation/Google
Images
Initiation of long-term development interventions, which would lead to sustainable communitybased
actions
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