PROPOSAL OF THE ESTABLISHMENT OF A NATIONAL DISASTER RESEARCH AND MANAGEMENT AGENCY IN THE ALGERIAN GOVERNMENT STRUCTURE: A COORDINATION BODY

In a country which, regrettably is a disaster-prone as Algeria, it is of crucial importance, at the macro-level, for the country to have a well established and well regulated disaster management plan. This will enable the government to avoid undue crisis management when future emergencies occur. It is also of crucial importance, again at the macro-level, to integrate disaster management in all its facets with government’s mainstream policies and plans for national development. Disaster management and economic development are not two separate disciplines that conflicts for resourcing. They are synonymous and their resourcing should be a combined administrative process.To fulfil these goals, the proposal of the establishment of a national disaster research and management agency in Algeria has two objectives (1) to prepare the national disaster management plan and (2) to create a sustainable cadre of disaster management staff at all levels,and to promote institutional and public awareness of disasters, their effects and likely relief activities. The permanently established national disaster management organisation is presented in what follows. The organisation chart describes the structure, the chain of control and reporting, and the main working relationships. It allows to have a permanently established and functioning integrated data collection system to gather information relevant to disaster management in all its aspects. However, it has a wider application and provides an important step forwards an effective national data collection system, and this will require extensive research work. Several partial data bases are already available and these will be drawn upon in the creation of the agency which will attempt to provide a more general view within a single framework. The structure of the agency will then incorporate existing government, nongovernment and community information/data sources in order to provide an overall picture of potential danger zones, multi-sectoral early warning indicators and available resources. This enables particular attention to be paid to problem geographic sectors or problem functions, and the consequent mobilisation and allocation of resources in advance of disasters.