Post Disaster Information management: issues related to mitigation activities in Iran

The primary objective of an emergency information system is to improve the capacity of decision makers to take needed action. Effective information management system is the key, although also a very difficult aspect of the emergency management. Emergency information management is defined as the collection, consolidation, analysis and dissemination of the information and to be effective, it needs to be planned, organized and controlled to insure that information is given to the right decision maker at the right time to satisfy their needs to know. The goal of this study was to analyze the importance of information management for increasing the efficiency of post- disaster and also mitigation activities. In this study, 50 managers and experts who are active in the field of disaster management were interviewed regarding their viewpoints about the defects that have adverse impact on effectiveness of their efforts to manage a crisis. The interviewed group included a group of 40 men with average age of 36 and 10 women with average age of 28 , all experienced in disaster management, among which 30 had bachelor degree, 10 had masters and 10 had PHD degrees in related fields. The list of the defects included factors such as the engineering measures, physical planning, institutional management, social/economic barriers and lack of efficient information management system. In this article, we are having a look at these defects especially the lack of efficient information management system and will provide solutions to overcome this problem through activities such as for providing data required for contingency planning in predisaster phase, operation planning during disaster response and creation of reports and utilization of best practices in post-disaster phase.