We examined DRL among local government leaders in Thailand, which, in our research, not only referred to municipality mayors, but also included other highly positioned administrators who are directly responsible for or assigned to carrying out disaster management functions, such as deputy mayors, municipal clerks, and emergency managers.
President Bush is right to seek a broadly inclusive Homeland Security Department that incorporates border security, bioterrorism defenses and disaster management functions now scattered across the government.
Respondents consisted of 88% males and 12% females; 42% were mayors, 4% were deputy mayors, 32% were municipal clerks, and 22% held other positions involved with disaster management functions.
This signifies that disaster management has become a regular function of national institutions, with the State Council, National Development and Reform Commission, and Ministry of Finance sitting at the center of the policy subgroups.
A key concept in this research is that communicating a portion of this information to the public should be a core function of any disaster management system.
Considering the significant role of and contributions from non-governmental and community-based organizations in disaster management, it is also important to establish functioning communication channels or two-way data sharing/reporting mechanisms between these organizations and the government's public health departments during pre-disaster times (Bolin and Stanford 1998; Buckland and Rahman 1999).
This article is part of a thematic series on Disaster management edited by J Christopher Farmer.
This article is part of a review series on Disaster management, edited by J Christopher Farmer.
Table 8 summarizes the role public health can play in the disaster management cycle.
Disaster Management (DM) knowledge has long been acknowledged as playing a significant role in reducing the impact caused by disasters.
