Enhancing Disaster and Emergency Preparedness, Response, and Recovery Through Evaluation: New Directions for Evaluation, No. 126 (J-B PE Single Issue (Program) Evaluation)

Enhancing Disaster and Emergency Preparedness, Response, and Recovery Through Evaluation: New Directions for Evaluation, No. 126 (J-B PE Single Issue (Program) Evaluation) Review

The first priniciple of humanitarian assistance is "do no harm." The second might be, "do better!" Enter the evaluation of emergency and disaster management. This issue consolidates reflections from evaluation practices in disaster and emergency management. A number of important themes are addressed:

1. systemic assessment of needs
2. interagency coordiantion
3. evaluation of responses in real time
4. evaluation in international and national jurisdictions

Chapters discuss where the evaluation of humanitarian practice and emergency and disaster management currently stands, and where it should be going.

Our humanitarian impulse, as in the aftermaths of the Rwandan genocide, Hurricane Katrina, the Indian Ocean tsunami, and the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti, is an enduring quality. The route from donor to affected population is long and varied. When sudden, unprecedented needs are juxtaposed with expectional levels of charitable responses, the question is whether the responses were good enough. Did supply meet demand? Was it the right thing? Was it done well? Who received support? Was it appropriate? Was the timing right? Can it be improved? All are questions for evaluation. For populations traumatized by disaster, the answers have consequences for protection, for restoration of individual and community efficacy, and ultimately for hope and dignity.

This is the 126th volume of the volume of the Jossey-Bass quarterly report series New Directions for Evaluation, an official publication of the American Evaluation Association.

The proposed fiscal year 2007 budget: enhancing preparedness for first responders: hearing before the Subcommittee on Emergency Preparedness, Science, ... of Representatives, One Hundred Ninth Congre

The proposed fiscal year 2007 budget: enhancing preparedness for first responders: hearing before the Subcommittee on Emergency Preparedness, Science, ... of Representatives, One Hundred Ninth Congre Review

LC Number: KF27 .H573 2006c OCLC Number: (OCoLC)181184218 Subject: Emergency management -- United States -- Finance. Excerpt: ...curity. Indeed, no other administration in the history of our great country has requested more funds for first responders. Since September 11, 2001 the administration and Congress have made an enormous investment, over 28 billion in State, regional and local preparedness programs. Much of this funding, however, remains unspent. If the President's budget request is combined with yet to be awarded funds for 2006 and amounts from prior years that State and local governments have not yet obligated, the result is that more than 5 billion in funding will be available for State and local preparedness activities in fiscal year 2007. Until the problems causing these backlogs are resolved, the reductions in certain homeland security grants programs demonstrate the President's fiscal discipline. So rather than merely continuing to increase Federal funding, the administration's proposed budget attempts to resolve this problem by reforming the grant making system, consistent with the reform contained in H.R. 1544, the Faster and Smarter Funding for First Responders Act. The administration intends to allocate the vast majority of Federal preparedness grants on the basis of risk and need and to assure that States and local governments use such funding to achieve minimum baseline levels of preparedness in accordance with the national preparedness guidance. It is also important to note that the administration's budget request substantially increases funding for certain grant programs. For example, the President's budget includes an over million increase for the Urban Area Security Initiative, a 4 million increase in grant programs dedicated to critical infrastructure protection, and million of increase for the State homeland security grant program. The budget request for the Preparedness Directorat...