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April 2004                                                                            Volume 6 - Number 3

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Perspectives...

Creating a mitigation project database as a decision-support

tool for mitigation supporters

Alfredo Lagos

Several assumptions must be made explicit if we are going to discuss how mitigation can be successfully marketed to a wide audience including; emergency managers, local elected officials, home owners and business owners. First, each of these groups will have to be addressed in manner unique to their particular self- and community-interests. Second, consensus between these groups must be fashioned to implement and sustain a local mitigation project. Do we have to specify what part of the U.S. we are referring to when considering the audience? Yes, because even with the common thread that disasters affect everyone, the groups may not perceive disasters in the same manner. Especially between those groups that have and have not experienced a disaster. The difference in perception from group to group is another explicit assumption that must underlie a marketing strategy.

Discussing assumptions raises several questions including; can the lessons learned from past mitigation projects be used as the critical elements of a marketing strategy? Just because a particular mitigation project was successful, does that mean it should be the basis for all future strategies?

While past public awareness programs included a general strategy for building consensus mixed with simple highlights of a few particular mitigation projects, this author argues that more historical information on all projects must be readily accessible by mitigation supporters when formulating their marketing strategies. Consideration of successful mitigation projects must be tempered by those projects that have failed or are on-going. It’s obvious that mitigation supporters should review successful projects which have addressed similar circumstances to gain insight and direction. However, currently there is no single source of information for successful, failed and on-going projects and this author believes that mitigation supporters may profit in terms of time and money by using a single database. The goal of this database is to be used as a decision support tool for mitigation supporters. A collection of all mitigation projects in the U.S. since 1979 should be entered into a database which includes many data fields so supporters can quickly and efficiently perform thorough searches. Data fields should also include appropriate space for multi-media attributes of a project, including pictures, websites, sample newsletters, etc.

Such a database must have enough attributes to make it as unbiased as possible. This may help to ensure that the characteristics of projects that have been called a success are not implicitly assumed as the basis for all marketing strategies. A careful review of all mitigation projects may reveal that several strategies should be formulated based on attributes of groups including; population size, size of local government, size of business community, extent of community experience with consensus projects, size of tax-base, size of private insurance market, frequency and cycle of disaster-type, past damage (life and property) indexes, etc. Ultimately, this information may help to focus limited time and resources to produce the best marketing strategies for different groups.