Focus to Improve Quality of Disaster Alert and Communication Mechanisms

Disasters are unexpected damaging outcomes.  It is essential that there are mechanisms that can alert about a possible disaster well before it happens.   Most times, the human community fails to receive advance alerts and this results in a major catastrophe. Tsunamis that hit various parts of the world in year 2004 and 2011 are such examples.  If we had an effective alert and communication mechanism, the risk could have been mitigated, to a good extent, and the damage controlled.

The lessons learned from the past calamities such as tsunamis, earthquakes, terror attacks should be well studied, researched and acted up on.  These studies should result in coming up with quality preventive and control mechanisms to address any future calamities.  I suggest that we, quality practitioners, must focus on improving the quality of products and services that can improve catastrophe predictions and related alert mechanisms.  These predictions should be effective and can be quickly communicated through various channels to various parts of the world. 

Various valiant efforts are in progress, few examples are, (i) the NASA tsunami prediction system , and, (ii) the project to predict earthquakes .