Biological Disaster Management and Information Technology

Contents: Preface. 1. Biological warfare. 2. Chemical warfare. 3. Agricultural disaster management system. 4. Government initiative. 5. Disaster management cycle. 6. United Nations framework convention on climate change history of formation. 7. Disaster management information system. 8. Terrorist chemical and biological attack. 9. Improving disaster management : the role of information technology. 10. The potential to enhance disaster management. Bibliography. Index.

“Natural disasters impart lessons at a very high cost of life and property. But if those lessons do not lead to learning and knowledge generation then it is a very heavy cost to bear. This lack of learning from the past huts most at the recurrence of disasters. The challenge of disaster management is reducing the harm disaster managers to reduce uncertainty, to calculate and compare costs and benefits, and to mange resources, often on a much larger scale and at a much faster pace than are supported by methods and means for solving ordinary problems.

More robust, interoperable, and priority-sensitive communications. Disaster management requires robust, priority-sensitive communications systems capable of supporting interoperation with other systems. Providing these requires communication networks that are more resilient to disruption than today’s commercial networks, that can last longer without utility power, that can expand capacity to meet emergency needs, that can autonomously reconfigure themselves, that can handle the range of communication needs and environmental conditions that arise in disasters, that have well-defined points of interoperability, and that are able to distinguish between and properly prioritize communications.”