Mind The Gap

Crisis Management and Disaster Mitigation is an interesting field, one hears about it every other day and yet it is so broad it’s hard to measure its reach. It’s much like the proverbial onion; one understands a facet only to dig deeper and find there’s an entire dimension left uncovered. What’s peculiar is that this discovery is not entirely inviting; rather, it is of putting in its daunting intricacy. A recent instance that provoked such a reflection was the Disasters Expo Europe held in Frankfurt, Germany. The first of its kind to be held in Europe, it was a first attempt at bringing various sections of the Disaster Response sector together and gain visibility vis a vis each other. Although it was centred around technological innovations and advancements in the field as mentioned by the UN representative who hosted the conference, representatives from startups to the finance and regulatory sectors invited dialogue on some of the key debates in their respective niches.

What was especially illuminating was seeing how much competition pervades on every level and how much it dictates outcomes. Take telecommunications for instance. While Early Warning 4 All is well known to the average, well-informed individual, the image of how the chain operates is far from being formed. If such an image exists, it is rather incomplete. Picture an imminent threat of any nature. Instead of national response entities like emergency services and telecommunications being alerted right away, they must win the contract. When asked whether the competition is purely on a price point, the company answered it is not as simple and that market dynamics play an important role that cannot be ignored. This is a case of private sector provision of a critical resource, not functioning under a PPP format.

Financial entities formed but a small portion of the total invitees; either the exhibition was geared towards technical aspects or then it is representative of the common perception that finance operates in its own bubble at times. ElOPA had a strong presence, urging the need for information on disasters and impacts to make its way outside the private sector. Come to think of it, it is quite startling that data on impacts, insured losses are held within a company and never shared with the entities responsible for bailouts in case of unmanaged risk appetite’s or badly formulated risk strategies. All the more so because the public sector plays the role of the line of last defence for the insurance sector and one would think they need to have more of an overview on the actual positioning of these firms in terms of risk diversification and capital adequacy.

Talk of the role of the insurance industry was mentioned in a rather perfunctory manner in the talks given by the financial sector and only when a member of the audience brought it up, further highlighting the gap between the incentives as seen from within the sub-sector and the undue appreciation it enjoys when seen from the outside. When pricing for private sector companies, the focus is on margins and promised premium volumes rather than real diversification of risk for the sake of ensuring continuity of the business beyond the immediate future. Underwriting is often undertaken with a worryingly short horizon in mind; much shorter than that of the risks and their timelines.

On a personal level, comfort has very little to do with trying to live an honest life, it can almost be discarded in the face of a worth opponent like a just cause. In an individual life, one can sometimes trace the stream of motivations that goads itself gently towards one degree, one job, away from one field of expertise or another. These subtle reflections on busy days pass by a mind without leaving any particular mark; deeper exploration leads to questions that demand significant internal space and a vast appetite for discomfort.

On an industry level, money talks, the tide goes where the euros flow. Are we overly complicating things, sectioning off an industry into buzzwords like sustainability and advocacy? On which peripheries of the actual problems do these agendas operate on, on which flimsy premises does their seemingly petty insistence rest upon? And what about attracting the right talent, given the increasing fragmenting of disciplines into more and more niche diplomas, a credential sprawl that siphons off reasoning capacities and leaves one unprepared to tackle issues so complex we now need to consider them multi-disciplinary. Quite apart from degree inflation concerns that naturally arise in sub-industries like these, the main reflection after this event remains more introspective. Does the endless pursuit for position, even if it comes from a desire to be in the right function to have the right impact detract from a deeper search into where impacts should be channeled from? Should innovation come from the private sector that operates on a profit motive or would it be the marker of an effective education system if the best ideas came from academic hubs that had adequate public sector funding to effectively implement their solutions? Who should bear the brunt of disaster response? If it were a natural agenda point rather than intra-governmental structures that highlight the urgency of the issue, would local and national politicians be more forced to address them more explicitly?

Ultimately, rooms such as these prompt us to question the allocation of responsibility for disaster response and the role of profit-driven innovation versus public sector-driven solutions. They prompt a deeper introspection into the motivations driving our professional pursuits and the effectiveness of current educational and innovation frameworks. All this to say, there is a need for rooms that aid in guiding our often unexpressed intentions for work that is meaningful and directed at outcomes worth aspiring to, a work worth having and finding answers to questions worth asking.