The U.S. Government foreign disaster assistance program

First, it summarizes the Committee"s review and assessment of the U.S. government role in foreign disaster relief, one that has resulted in a number of specific recommendations for the improvement of the AID/OFDA"s disaster assistance program. Second, the report outlines in considerable detail a perspective on international disaster assistance. That perspective is both analytical and normative-analytical in the sense that it gives the Committee"s interpretation of the complexities of disasters and international disaster events, normative in the sense that it outlines issues relating to the underlying values and objectives of international disaster assistance. The report is organized into five chapters and an appendix. Chapter I outlines the key technical and value problems that need to be addressed in international disaster assistance programs. Chapter 2 discusses the history of the U.S. foreign disaster relief program and briefly summarizes the more recent development of the United Nations Disaster Relief Office. Chapter 3 discusses both the concept of disaster and its implications for international disaster assistance policies. Chapter 4 outlines the committee"s conception of the information required for effective pre- and postdisaster responses and then describes the various types of information currently being collected by the AID/OFDA. Chapter 5 summarizes the findings and recommendations of the Committee"s first-year studies. An appendix supplements the basic recommendations by providing a detailed set of recommendations on the AID/OFDA information-management system. This presentation should be viewed as the beginning of a process of clarifying the goals of international disaster assistance programs and of insuring a more effective utilization of scientific and technical knowledge in the administration of those programs. The Committee hopes that the perspectives and findings reported here will contribute to the continuing efforts of many public and private agencies to prevent, to mitigate, and to relieve the damaging human, ecological, and physical consequences of disaster. (Author abstract)