A Comparative Study of the Disaster Management Organizations in the Philippines, South Korea, and the United States

Abstract

The Philippines is highly vulnerable to weather-related and other national disasters given its location in the Pacific Ring of Fire. Its disaster organization, the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council or NDRRMC, however, has limited capacity as demonstrated in its handling of natural disasters in the last twenty years. In this paper, we adopt a comparative approach and compare the NDRRMC with the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and South Korea’s Disaster and Safety Management (DSM) in terms of mandate, organizational structure, resources, and technical capacity to identify possible areas requiring reform. We observe that the NDRRMCs working group structure, policy-making, coordination, integration, supervision, monitoring and evaluation mandate, lack of strong leadership structure, and limited resources and capacities hinder it from providing swift and effective response. This warrants a revisiting of policies and benchmarking on other disaster organizations like the U.S. FEMA and South Korea’s DSM. Our findings lead us to recommend that the Philippines consider establishing a separate Department of Disaster Resilience equipped with the mandate, authority, leadership structure, resources, and technical capability to effectively prepare and respond to disasters instead of simply expanding the authority of the NDRRMC.