1st National Workshop & Staff Exercise in Disaster Management

In a series of workshops organized by Iran National Disaster Risk Management Organization, the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction is being introduced to the heads of provinces and senior officers across the country.

The main focus of these workshops is the coordination among the provinces for emergency response and recovery after major disasters. A well-established collaborative approach to emergency response and recovery was developed based on experiences in the Bam earthquake (2003) and since then it has been conducted for large scale disasters such as earthquake of Arasbaran.

The workshops will include introduction to Sendai Framework as well as the fundamental concepts of risk reduction and risk sensitive development (avoiding creation of new risk). Similar series of workshops will be organized next year which will focus on strategies, concepts, and best practices for disaster risk reduction and risk sensitive development at provincial level. Iran is a relatively decentralized country in which the provincial leaders are also in charge of disaster risk management at provincial level.

The workshop will provide training and build capacities for better administration and management of various knowledge networks in disaster management; introduce knowledge management concepts, methodologies and tools; offer skills for the purpose of guiding, leading, cooperating and figuring out issues raised in networks and brainstorming session; explain the principles of development and maintenance of databases for best practices, and provide lessons learnt and a time-table for events and programs are among objectives of the said workshop.

The current training workshop is planned by National Disaster Management Organization of Iran (NDMO) on the experiences gained through the response to several disasters at different stages in the disaster prone country of Iran. This is a valuable experience which Iranian officials are keen to share with international community, especially the neighbouring countries.