Boosting disaster resilience through advance public–private–people partnerships

The fast-tracked and multipronged management strategies needed to deal with disasters demand innovative and robust procurement strategies as well as powerful delivery mechanisms. This paper argues that the core management frameworks for disasters should be formulated in advance rather than after the event, when rushed decisions could lead to inappropriate or suboptimal management strategies. Management frameworks, templates and toolkits planned before the event should enable rapid deployment and ensure continuing benefits well beyond the disaster. This paper brings together relevant findings from three streams of research to address growing imperatives for enhanced resilience in the face of increasing natural and human-induced disasters. This includes research-based evidence showing how private finance and expertise can be synergised along with social capital through ‘public–private–people partnership’ framework arrangements set up in advance to identify and mitigate potential disaster risks, focusing on public infrastructure. ‘People’ can then be engaged in advance, rather than in an unstructured way after the event, as indicated in a case study from China. They should include carefully selected representatives of appropriate non-government organisations, community groups, service clubs, academia, professional bodies, trade associations and media.