Political Science

As all resources are scarce, in case two interests collide, we are always bound to make a technical, professional and even a political decision to settle the issue. In the specific community that we are investigating, we are first bound to choose which of the two types of disaster that we must choose to allot our resources on. Is it the high vulnerability in winter storm or the high risk of tornadoes
From here we are recommending for the allocation of the resources in addressing the vulnerability of the community in a winter storm. In carrying out this decision, we take note of two things that prioritized this vulnerability over the high risk in tornadoes.

Acceptable Risk According to International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (2004), acceptable risk is the level of loss a society or community considers acceptable given existing social, economic, political, cultural, technical and environmental conditions. As stated in the report, the community is less vulnerable to tornadoes despite of the frequency of its occurrence this means that there will be less human and material casualty that shall be induced with the occurrence of this disaster. Single digits casualties for every occurrence of disaster are more acceptable rather than the thousands or hundreds of thousands of casualties that can be induced by the winter storm wherein the community is more vulnerable.

Public Awareness and Coping Capability According to ISDR, these are the capability of the different sectors of government, organizations and the citizens itself in handling the impending disaster. Since tornadoes are more frequent in the region or in the community, it can be assumed that the people together with the different sectors are more educated and more adept in handling the disaster. When compared to the occurrence of a winter storm wherein they are not adept to, we can expect that the population will not likely to cope with this disaster as much as they can in the occurrence of tornadoes.

In this kind decision, it is expectable to see resistance and skepticism in the local community or government. People are naturally forgetful and 20 years is a long time that can erase all the threats and damaged posed by the last winter storm. With this in mind, people may question your recommendation. As a person who sees the threats more clearly, it is important to push our recommendations until the policy and decision makers realize the impending disaster in the future.
It is also important to note that in February 2003, President Bush issued Homeland Security Presidential Directive 5 (HSPD-5), which describes how the federal departments will manage domestic incidents by establishing a single, comprehensive national incident management system (NASDA 2006). It is important to mention the significance of the National Incident Management System in dealing with the occurrence of a winter storm. Of all the features of the NIMS (2010), its communication capability and resource management will greatly help the community in handling the winter storm. Local agencies will benefit greatly in the efficiency and reliability of the communication and information system of the NIMS. In situations wherein usual communications will be disabled by the storm the NIMS can provide an alternative. The resource management will also play a vital part. The resource management of NIMS ensures the proper allocation of personnel. NIMS recording, tracking and keeping tabs are vital in this kind of situation.

Disaster management had been our generations response to the growing number of calamities that is happening today. However, rather than the classic approach which is more commonly known relief and response that cannot cope with the exponential loss of lives and properties due to different calamities todays approach in disaster management shifted to a more preparation and development approach (Yodmani 2001  DoL 2005). A paradigm that is comparable to the cure versus treatment approach in medicine, this kind of approach values preparations, reduction of socio-economic vulnerabilities and development of the community as a whole. This is our response to the growing number of disasters and calamities that is surrounding mankind.