AUTHORS

Dr. Manzul Kumar Hazarika and Dr. Firman Hadi

​INTRODUCTION

Infrastructure is an important component for economic growth, sustainability, national security, and public health. Critical infrastructures like hospitals, public health facilities, or schools, usually related to a high density of vulnerable population especially living in urban areas. Natural disasters can cause serious damage to these infrastructures, adversely affecting health and educational services. Global reinsurance data indicates that the concentrations of infrastructures in hazard prone areas are the main cause for exponentially increasing damages and losses in recent years. Ensuring the operability of these facilities means reducing their vulnerability and thereby reducing risk.

Critical infrastructures are of vital interest because destruction or incapacitation would disrupt the security, economy, health, safety, or welfare of the public. Many articles and reports reveal that the emergency agencies experience critical problems, such as underestimating the magnitude of the disaster, lack of preparedness, and insufficient disaster mitigation plans for reducing the impacts of disaster. If the prioritization of vulnerable critical infrastructure had been identified prior to a disaster and relevant organizations might be able to take appropriate measures to mitigate the impact and allow quicker rehabilitation of critical infrastructure.

The critical infrastructures are the most important facilities to support industries and communities, and they provide the physical functions for sustaining the services of industries; thus, both the supporting and the affected industries can operate their services. The supporting industries also significantly rely on the functions that the critical infrastructure provides because the infrastructure itself is the main instrument to provide the services that the supporting industries require.

Another aspect related to Critical Infrastructures, especially in the social infrastructures area, is that their operability depends notably on the functional capability of other basic infrastructural services such as electricity, water supply, information and telecommunication technologies, transport and logistics. These interdependencies are a key element for the security of health care facilities in crisis situations.

OBJECTIVES

•    Explain the importance of data and information management of critical infrastructures in health and education sectors.
•    Explain the information requirements and data sources for critical infrastructures in health and education sectors.

DESCRIPTIONS

Critical Infrastructures in Health Sectors

Catastrophic disasters create massive requirements for initial trauma care. Dealing with mass casualties in few hours after an earthquake, represents a formidable data management challenge. The data needs include information on the residual capacity of existing facilities, the hour-by-hour monitoring of the availability (beds, supplies, and so on) of remaining medical care services, a centralized registry of injured patients and the type of care they require, and a system to track patients and victims when they are transferred from hospitals to other facilities. The database should cover the permanent and field hospitals. Such a system for monitoring medical resources and patients does not typically exist before a disaster. Under emergency situations, pre-existing data in hospitals may also collapse.

Data collection for immediate relief is time sensitive. In moderate-severity disasters such as a small earthquake or large flood, United Nations Disaster Assessment and Coordination (UNDAC) usually provides a reasonably comprehensive and accurate picture of the situation within a week. Meeting the most pressing needs (medical care for trauma victims, search and rescue, evacuation, early shelters, and so on) must rely on other, better targeted and more timely sources of information.

Major actors such as donors and NGOs do rely on their own vertical, independent assessments through fact-finding teams. Larger humanitarian organizations also organize effective data collection and assessment mechanisms that are narrowly tailored to their missions and potential resources.

Critical Infrastructures in Education Sector

Among all public facilities, Schools with inadequacies in structure and lack of preparedness measures can have disastrous consequences in the event of a catastrophic disaster event. Schools play a versatile role in the communities and hence the impacts of disasters on schools are pervasive. The location, design and construction of a building can increase or decrease your school’s vulnerability to hazards. If exposure of a school to various hazards and associated vulnerabilities are known, then structural safety measures in the course of school site selection and school construction, retrofit or remodeling can be considered. The School Building Safety Checklist includes location, Load carrying system, building type, building design etc.

KEYWORDS

Critical infrastructures, health, education