Emergency Management Project Manager’s must combat enormous challenges each day. Identifying those challenges and finding solutions to the challenges will aid in disaster recovery. Effective project managers must research and study natural and man-made disasters in order to develop a plan to begin to recover from these disasters in order to rebuild the community or affected area.
Some of the disasters are caused by natural sources such as hurricanes, tornadoes, electrical storms, flooding, tsunamis, landslides, and earthquakes. There are also man-made disasters such as wars, bombs, transport accidents, and building collapses. Some disasters are a combination of both. Since it appears that these disasters are on the increase, it is important to research and plan for these disasters in order to respond to the disaster effectively (Chang-Richards, 2017).
For example, there were 346 natural disasters in 2015 that occurred in 113 countries. These disasters resulted in 22,773 deaths with over 98 million people that were affected. In addition, these disasters resulted in $66.5 billion in economic losses. In the previous decade, there were 367 natural disasters (Gacasan, 2016).
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) defines emergency management as, “the field of practice responsible for preparing for, preventing, protecting against, mitigating the effects of, responding to, and recovering from all threats and hazards.” This means that the project manager as well as the stakeholders are challenged to work to prevent, respond to, and recover from the disaster (Galastri, 2014).