Structuring the resource allocation in response natural disaster phase using the Value-Focused Thinking (VFT)

Abstract

Many countries experiences every year several natural disasters or human catastrophes which takes thousands of millions souls. A lot of mechanisms to predict many kinds of these natural disasters have been developed in the attempt to minimize the amount of victims and it has reached such a successful level. However, even with all these predictive systems, natural disasters still happen and will continue to occur. After a disaster happened the response phase is the mainly way to save affected people. Many countries, organizations and other actors involved in this phase work alone without integration. This way, such phase becomes a difficult and expensive work. This paper aims to suggest a start point to structure and organize the response phase of a disaster, with a systematic application of the Problem Structuring Methods (PSM), focused in the resource allocation for victims rescue.