As the world today witnesses unprecedented disasters and crises of all types and sizes and at all fronts, it’s imperative to know how to cope with these incidents. It’s also important to know how to make use of the lessons derived from these disasters each and every time they occur, regardless if they are natural, man-made, or technological. Lessons learned are usually underrated due to a variety of reasons. But perhaps one prevailing factor is that in some cultures, disasters are considered inevitable occurrences – or acts of God – during which the only response from the people is total submission and the passive acceptance of the adverse consequences of these events.
Each time a major incident occurs, new lessons can be learned. Experts argue learning from experience is more effective because people are subject to actual circumstances than hypothetical scenarios. This argument applies equally to the societal as well as organizational contexts. Experiential learning allows decisionmakers and policymakers to make more realistic decisions and allocate resources more prudently. This allows them to serve critical business and social functions and enables people to observe, improvise, and become engaged in the scene of the incident more actively.
In this article, I propose learning from disasters and crises should become a systematic and organized process rather than an activity based merely on observation or intuition. It should be made clear that lessons learned are different than damage assessment. Damage assessments focus on identifying the tangible, or physical, damage which has already occurred to infrastructure and the built environment. Lessons learned should be extracted more comprehensively to cover all aspects of the incident, including an autopsy which identifies what went well and what went wrong.
Accordingly, I classify the types of the lessons learned into four distinct categories based on the general impression about the outcomes of the management process and the type of intervention, as shown in the figure below.
In case the outcomes of management went well as planned, the lesson learned is to adopt the intervention(s), or response mechanisms, which have been used as best practices for future purposes. In case the outcomes went well but were the result of unplanned or spontaneous human intervention(s) during the incident, the lesson learned is to further diagnose these interventions in order to validate their long-term appropriateness for future occurrences. In case the outcomes of management went wrong (i.e., undesired outcomes) based on a set of predefined measures, the lesson learned is to correct or redesign these measures in order to better accommodate potential future incidents. In case spontaneous interventions yielded undesirable or destructive outcomes, the lesson learned is such patterns of behavior should be avoided next time an incident occurs. The figure above is expected to provide even more useful information if exercised realistically, regularly, and objectively.
A remarkable case which demonstrates the value of the lessons learned from disasters is the case of the Huang He River in China. In 1933, the river flooded and swept through villages and farmland. It killed thousands of people and left millions homeless. For hundreds of years, the people who lived along the river tried to control the frequent river floods. However, the silt continued to cause the level of the riverbed to rise over the years. According to the conceptual model presented above, such unplanned interventions represent those which should have been avoided since the outcomes of the management process yielded negative outcomes. The flooding used to occur on an annual basis and caused similar levels of damage every year. Finally, people decided to stop the river from overflowing by building up the banks to form high walls, or dikes. Unfortunately, this exacerbated the situation as many of them collapsed. According to the figure above, these planned interventions represent those which need to be corrected or redesigned since the outcomes of management were also negative. After many years, people recognized (by learning from their previous experiences) the best way to prepare for future floods is by planting trees and other vegetation along the river. Plants helped to absorb rainfall and reduce soil erosion that washed silt into the river. According to the above figure, these planned interventions represent those which need to be adopted and those which were actually adopted on real ground as they yielded positive outcomes.
It must be noted that disaster and crisis management are dynamic processes. Full adherence to procedures and standards could sometimes prove to be detrimental. An analysis based on real data and information gathered from the scene of the incident provides more factual and realistic lessons which are not only helpful to understand or clarify the different aspects of an incident but also serve as enablers for future success. One of the drawbacks of procedures is the gap they create between theory and practice. The more lessons that are added to disaster databases means the more capable societies are likely to become in their future encounters. Full reliance on theory to manage disasters and crises is also insufficient. What people and organizations experience and learn is what makes the difference. In the past, the nature, complexity, and dynamics of disasters and crises were simpler and therefore simple procedures were adequate to have a full control over the event. Today, major events are multi-faceted and multi-dimensional due to connectedness and the integration between all sectors, industries, and the economic, political, environmental, and financial factors.
Nowadays, with the help of technology, lessons learned can be fed into disaster management systems, and the social and inter-organizational networks which combine multiple methods and techniques in order to provide more relevant information in hazard events and emergency situations. In the U.S. for instance, disaster management systems rely heavily on networks of partners from the public, private, and nonprofit sectors. Disaster management networks are being used more actively at the local, state, and national levels of government. Lessons learned enable decision support frameworks to prioritize stakeholders' interaction areas and ways of collaboration.
