CD Management

The Crisis Management Workshop

Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies
April 9-10, 2011

Among the most difficult challenges that governments, non-government organizations and communities face today is their need to be able to cope with crises and increase their resilience to disasters. Crises are situations that involve threats or realization of discontinuities in the environment that threaten key values of social systems and high levels of uncertainty and risks that require urgent responses. Disasters are crises with bad endings.  

Natural disasters include hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and floods causing over 220,000 deaths worldwide in the first half of 2010 (NRC,2010). Disasters caused by predatory human actions (terrorism) and human errors, though resulting in fewer deaths (when wars are excluded from the calculations), have inflicted severe economic damages and more importantly threatened the sense of security of millions of people worldwide. The incidence of crises triggered by natural and human actions is increasing. Higher complexity and tight coupling of critical infrastructures, supply chains and economic and social systems allow relatively small disturbances to escalate into serious disasters.

The workshop will explore some important questions such as:  Why do we fail to build organizations and systems that are resilient to disasters? Why when coping with crises do individuals, groups and organizations often engage in flawed sense-making, make bad decisions and take the wrong actions? Why do crises and disaster experiences often fail to result in learning and reform? How can we improve crisis management and develop communities that are resilient to crises?

The purpose of the workshop is to share relevant research, get acquainted and explore together the design of a large research grant proposal (a renewable $2.5 million grant over 4 years) on crisis management to be submitted as part of the Partnerships Program to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).

This workshop is funded by the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies with funding from the Distinguished Scholar in Residence program and SSHRC and will be held at the C. K. Choi Building for The Institute of Asian Research (1855 West Mall V6T 1Z2) on the campus of the University of British Columbia on the 9th and 10th of April 2011.