Dear Parvaneh, I refer to the matter in detail in our book "Catástrofes y Ayuda de Emergencia" but unfortunately is written in Spanish. I guess it's a language unfamiliar for you.

Dear Cesar, thank you,l but yes, I don't know Spanish and I don't think it's a good idea to refer to a Spanish book in my PhD thesis. But Thanks anyway.

Parvaneh.  This is a good web site for you to conduct research from.    This is where we receive most of out training from.   https://training.fema.gov/is/nims.aspx

Thanks dear Christopher. I am familiar with FEMA. I will search in it. Thanks.

I think you will find it difficult to find any scholar who would argue that any one phase is more critical than the other. I think you might find literature that suggests that investments in some phases of the cycle yield benefits in other cycles. Many have argued that mitigation is where the greatest attention should be paid, although most attention is paid to response. Here's one of many documents that would show that mitigation is important. https://c.ymcdn.com/sites/www.nibs.org/resource/resmgr/MMC/hms_vol1.pdf

Dear Thomas, Thank you for the reply. I will go through the document you sent to me. 

Parvenah: I would agree with Thomas. FEMA has free classes on-line for Emergency Management, and I took several of them, including the basics that covered the different phases. I did not hear how one stage is more important than another.

It is my experience, for which there are no papers, just on-going work near Fukashima I am aware of, Toronto, and starting here, that where it will be critical is to get more granular than mitigation. Get the pocket neighborhoods working together. Get them to own, know, and make their own mitigation story, because that's where the resilience will come from. That's the work I'm doing now with our condo association as the head of the Emergency Preparedness Committee. 

The official Emergency Response Plan, and organizations, will start short of resources in most big disasters that will affect the most people. I call that the Logos. Pocket neighborhoods with sufficient supplies and a plan they practice, will have developed the relationships necessary to help one another. I call them the Mythos. It is out of Mythos that beauty and art will again emerge for sustaining themselves, depending in the nature of the event. Our association happens to contain several very gifted musicians, and I will be counting on them to use their talent in that regard.

This is a significant research question which defies an easy answer.  Those professionals practicing in the field would likely indicate 'response' most important because it eliminates or controls the crisis in some observable manner. The actual extent to which mitigation and preparedness makes a difference depends on the nature of the emergency itself [minor weather crisis vs combined tsunami and earthquake] and many experts would argue that recovery trumps them all because it signals overcoming the initial crisis. Academics would tilt towards the mitigation set of issues although there is scant evidence that mitigation could nullify or dissuade any significant crisis which would randomly appear in any event.  It's not that mitigation doesn't matter instead it is that response and recovery seems to matter much more.

Hi Parvaneh,

Depending on the angle you are interested in, DFID put out a series of papers in 2012 on the economics of early response which is really quite interesting. It is development/humanitarian focussed but has some neat analysis comparing the cost of resilience, early response and late response. I guess it depends how you are defining critical!

Attaching the link to the Ethiopia and Kenya case study but there should also be case studies available for Niger and Bangladesh. http://www.preventionweb.net/english/professional/publications/v.php?id=28368

Hope it helps!

Best wishes,

David

Dear Parvaneh

Actually your question exactly depends on the positions and responsibilities in disaster management cycle. I suggest you to modify your question a little bit. If you put your attention on importance and validation of the logic of disaster management cycles you could understand that there are many forms and formats for these cycles and there are no consensus in one unique cycle disaster management community and these mentioned 4 stages cycles in your question have many different point of view in the world.

So I propose you to take a look at the article wrote by Soheil Asghar entitled: A Comprehensive Conceptual Model for Disaster Management. He reviewed some of the DM cycles that may help you to deeply understand about different point of views and logics in popular models and cycles of disaster management.

And also please take a look at book entitled: Disaster Management- A Disaster Manager’s Handbook-- written by: W. Nick Carter-- chapter 5, to find out something about disaster management cycles and it's importance.

Finally I propose you to take a glimpse at book : SYSTEMS APPROACH TO MANAGEMENT OF DISASTERS written by Slobodan P. Simonovi´. That has a deeper point of view and paradigmic attention to disaster management in chapter two and you may just lightly interpret that prevention and preparedness phases are in a center of attention in many disaster management planning cases.

Best Regards,

Ardeshir

Thank you all for your responses to this question. They are all useful. I really appreciate it. 

Dear Parvaneh

As the other contributors have mentioned this is a difficult question as you need to invest in each stage (before, during and after) of a disaster otherwise you will fail, so there is a mutual dependency at work. This is a link to an interesting paper of the cost-benefit analysis (CBA) of disaster mitigation http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212420914000661 

A good thing about this paper is its discussion on the complexity of comparing events and methodologies when determining the benefits of mitigation initiatives. I suspect you will have a similar problem when trying to find evidence in response to your question.

As an alternative approach we have been looking at what are the components of an effective disaster management system and have come up with a model whereby there is a foundation that supports four key pillars. The foundation consists of evidence, research, inquiries/ Royal Commissions, location and land use. This foundation supports Governance and Leadership; Assurance; Capability and Community.

Regards

Ged

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212420914000661

Thanks dear Ged. Found the paper very useful. :)

Dear Parvaneh,

I do agree with other colleagues' answers. If you look at the Response phase it may be considered the most critical one in terms of "Decision Making versus Available Time versus Risk Management". However, in terms of loss prevention the Mitigation or Prevention phase may be considered the most critical one. Therefore, I would suggest you to try to relate each disaster phase to a set of different questions and reflections.

In such matter, I have completed a research that compares the workload of each agency/cell at each different disaster phase. Instead of searching which phase is the most critical one I've focused on the needs of manpower, time and other required resources for each agency/cell at different stages.

If you are interested in getting more information, please contact me.

Best Regards,

Daniel.