In recent years there was a significant increase in the number of institutions in the world that promoted training courses for operators of civil protection. Is finally taken seriously the problem of how to produce a sufficient number of competent administrators and emergency planners of the disaster. Worldwide
various universities and other institutions have instituted courses in diploma, degree or postgraduate courses in this area. As important examples, the George Washington University in the U.S. and Coventry University in England have degrees in emergency management. The University of California at Berkeley has a degree short of disaster management, and the University of Wisconsin has a diverse range of courses at a distance. New courses are spèesso on the Internet, with unlimited access or limited to students formally enrolled.
Regarding the training of civil protection, the Americans, Australians and Canadians are the most advanced, but the industry is taking the field quickly in India and in several Caribbean nations. Among the various institutions active in this area would include the Emergency Management Australia ( http://www.ema.gov.au/ ), the Australian National University (www.anu.edu.au) and Simon Fraser University of British Columbia ( hoshi.cic.sfu.ca / Epix / ), which are pioneers in the use of innovative World Wide Web for the display of material teaching concerning the civil protection.
In the United States Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has created an office to encourage every state to have at least one university that offers some type of training on emergency management and disaster planning (the data on this initiative are available online at: www.fema.gov/emi/ ). In addition, a weekly update is issued by FEMA (see mail.speccomm.com: 81/guest/RemoteListSummary/HigherEd or send a message to asebring@emforum.org ).
FEMA provides support for the development of courses and encourages the standardization of the material offered by other institutions. To this end, the Emergency Management Institute FEMA has developed an instructional process that consists of 25 courses that will be, or are already freely downloadable from the Internet (see www.fema.gov/emi/ ). Each offers a detailed plan for a course of 40-50 hours, accompanied by bibliographies and exercises to do. The course covers topics such as sociology of disasters, emergency management in the tourism sector, and the intervention specialist to manage the incidents connected with the release of toxic materials.
However, despite these positive aspects, there is no general agreement on the content of a course for the training of disaster managers. There is also a standard type ISO che specifica i livelli e i requisiti dei corsi. Non c'è neanche una posizione concorde su chi dovrebbe essere addestrato, a quale livello e per quale scopo. Questa mancanza di accordo è particolarmente problematica, dato che essa pone limiti sulla condivisione dell'informazione a livello internazionale, o persino tra le rilevanti organizzazioni. Essa probabilmente riflette in parte l'immaturità del campo della protezione civile, gran parte della quale risale in termini operativi da non prima della fine della Guerra fredda (cioè, da dopo il 1989).
Malgrado la mancanza di omogeneità nella qualità e nel contenuto dei programmi di formazione che ci sono in varie parti del mondo, c'è abbastanza consenso per creare a prototype program standardized so as to ensure sufficient coverage to those who must be trained to handle emergencies in person. In other words, the figure of the 'Disaster Manager' (DIMA) has acquired a distinct profile.
For example, a typical 3-year program would consist of 4 parts, respectively: (a) basic academic education in the special sciences, (b) specific training in management techniques and characteristics of emergency (c) a research thesis (for example on reducing the vulnerability or on specific types of emergency response), and finally (d) a period of practical training in the field. Apart from teaching
practical aspects, is essential to provide participants with a broader sense of the cultures that arise and are dealt with emergency situations, as well as an overview of the general trends of the dangerousness of the human environment, its vulnerability to disasters and management of emergencies arising. It is necessary to encourage students to seek information beyond the confines of their learning environment and life: this is essential for a degree of familiarity with English, and therefore this language should be taught in the training for civil protection. For the rest, access to the Internet has made it relatively easy to find information, although it must able to guide the process.
The training should obviously take into account new developments in planning and emergency management. Both these sectors have undergone a revolution in the use of information technology. In the first, this has led to automation of risk mapping, vulnerability and emergency response through geo-referenced information systems. In the second, has the use of computer systems support for emergency decisions. These developments are so important and so indicative of future trends that training courses should include training modules in the appropriate use of computers and GIS, as both are essential to disaster managers in the future.
is difficult to access educational resources in this area, which are quite dispersed. Many of the most useful publications on emergencies are part of the so-called "gray literature", which is difficult to obtain and is available only in certain places and certain times. Good education requires support of bibliographic resources and information that is difficult to put together, given that many of these are not readily available in the libraries of institutes and university departments. You can still improve what you can collect with a guided tour of the extraordinary wealth of Internet sites dealing with civil protection. In this regard, a site summary (American ltpwww.gsfc.nasa.gov / ndrd / disaster / ) provides access to 652 well sites within the World Wide Web dealing with emergency management.
Moreover, the resources made available to students in a course of civil protection can be enhanced by setting up a World Wide Web site dedicated to the course that exposes library materials, photographs, and educational programs and a few more years .
From all these considerations, it becomes clear that the future of education lies in the integration of traditional teaching methods with the so-called "asynchronous learning networks", or distance learning-based Internet and other communications networks.
A good training course for disaster managers should develop the following skills:
(a) knowledge of national and regional legislation on civil protection and the maintenance of environmental safety and labor
(b) expertise in English language to acquire information from international sources and to communicate with people and institutions abroad or from abroad;
(c) the ability to search for specific topics and to develop contingency plans;
(d) the ability to use computerized means to search for information, preparing documents, communicate at a distance, create and read maps, to offer support to decisions, and manage relationships with people outside the protection of civil
(e) the ability to manage relationships with the media and the general public, especially during times of emergency;
(f) the management capacity and 'ability to handle interpersonal relationships, including the basic ability to communicate effectively;
(g) the ability to plan and knowledge of the techniques of planning;
(h) the ability to understand and interpret information geological, scientific, engineering and architectural-related disasters.
From these points it is clear that the formation of the civil protection requires an approach to the subject of type 'horizontal', not 'vertical'. In this regard, the traditional division of academic disciplines into mutually exclusive is a barrier to the development of courses for disaster managers, who need a synthesis of discrete amount of information that may come up with 30 different disciplines and academic fields. Probably the answer to this problem lies not in the organization inter disciplinary approach but not specification, in order to finally defeat the boundaries between academic disciplines, which show how the traditional organization of the sciences has been overcome and how not to get along with the real bisogni moderni. Il problema, non la disciplina, dovrebbe definire la metodologia dell'insegnamento e la scelta del materiale da includere nel programma didattico. Questo richiederà la presenza di insegnanti capaci di adattare la loro conoscenza così da varcare i confini delle varie discipline.
In fin dei conti, il disaster manager deve essere formato in modo tale da poter riconoscere e risolvere efficientemente i problemi di natura urgente e strettamente pratica. Quindi, i corsi devono essere fortemente orientati verso la definizione dei più importanti dilemmi operativi, e devono offrire i giusti mezzi per risolvere le difficili situazioni che gli allievi dovranno affrontare durante il lavoro. Le idee teoriche possono essere particolarmente utili at this level, since the disaster in the midst of chaos theory, specially selected, will serve as a kind of 'road map' to guide the disaster manager. A world-wide, half a century of discoveries in the social sciences and applied research has provided a solid basis for teaching the elements of management, decision making based on technical criteria, and the ability to recognize the various aspects of the hazard.
As it comes to protecting the population against the impacts of disasters, there is need to train a large number of good disaster management. The jobs which are currently not many, will come sooner or later for graduates in this field, as each new disaster afflicting the country will raise an urgent demand for a safer environment and civil protection managed with increasing professionalism. By chance, also the legislative situation will be adjusted so that only candidates with suitable qualifications will be able to plan and manage emergencies. Already now it is essential to prepare for these new opportunities through the setting up of training courses to the flexible nature although rigorous.
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