HUMANITARIAN ENGINEERING

Humanitarian Engineering

Humanitarian Engineering

Introduction

Over the past years, there have been various climate changes due to the human activities, especially due to the burning of fossil fuels and release of toxic green house gases, which has resulted in the melting of glaciers and global warming by approximately 0.75oC (WHO, 2012). Apart from climate change; urbanization, lifestyle, and increase in population have resulted in problems for the humanitarian organizations for management of life, health, social, legal, and various other issues. Lack of proper management and planning result in; waste of funds and resources, problems for the protection of vulnerable groups, like children, women, and disables (Harper, 2009). This requires proper planning, organization for disaster management.

Discussion

Characteristics of Natural Disasters and Complex Emergencies

According to WHO, natural disasters are “weather related”, not man-made, disasters are the sudden onset of events that inevitable and originate from “natural hazards” (WHO, 2012). Natural disasters are non manageable and cause “widespread human, material, economic or environmental losses” that are difficult to control (WHO 2012). As compare to disasters, emergencies occur due to human activities. Emergencies result due to the geographical instabilities, mass migration, lack of accountability and human right abuses; there are also worst situations like wars that result in complex humanitarian emergencies (Weissbecker, 2011). According to WHO (2012), emergency is the “state” that required set of rules and strategies in order to manage and exit from the emergency situations.

Disasters and Emergencies require proper management to deal with the crisis situations, refugees need assistance and aids from the outside resources, victims face worst situations for availability of food, shelter and medication. Violence, mismanagement, human rights abuse, and various other problems need humanitarian assistance to prevent further loss of lives and sufferings such as rape and child trafficking (Skolnik, 2011). Natural disasters and emergencies cause major damages to the infrastructure such as and sanitation, and lack of proper medication leads to the epidemics and various health issues (Skolnik, 2011). Disasters and emergencies also result in affecting mental conditions (Skolnik, 2011).

Operation and Management of Humanitarian Sector

Operational Planning and Disaster Management

Humanitarian Sector plays a major role in operating process of disaster management. It involves a number of different essential steps associated with the proper planning, procedure, and allocation of funds and resources. It is difficult to operate efficiently in the disaster situations and post emergency conditions. Operation of disaster involves organization, management, assessment, planning, implementation, monitoring etc. (Moore, & Lakha, 2006). According to WHO (2012), The Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction-2013, gathered stakeholders from all over the world that includes governments, NGOs, public and private sectors, and all the national and international organizations to deal with the problems of disaster and emergency management. One major concern of this plat form is to deal with the health issues. The priority areas for this program are risk reduction, implementing emergency preparedness programs, implementing strategies based on “All-Hazard / Whole-Health” approach, the department of Health Action in Crises (HAC) has developed several tools for supporting Emergency Health Management (WHO, ...