CRITICAL indicators for assessment of capacity development for disaster preparedness in a pandemic context

Disaster management protocols are applicable to pandemics as they fall under biological category of disasters [1,2]. ?Capacity development for effective response and recovery? [3] is critical to disaster preparedness. The alarming pace at which pandemics spread demands continuous assessment and monitoring of disaster response capacity. Absence of a metric to assess pandemic disaster response capacity calls for identification of measurable indicators of capacity to gauge it. Through a literature review on different assessment frameworks in the realm of disaster management across the globe; six categories of indicators for capacity development from a generic disaster preparedness perspective were drawn. Questionnaire Surveys among 151 expert respondents ascertained the relative weightings and criticality of indicators. Measurable indicator attributes were identified through key informant interviews, and a metric was modelled as a linear function of these variables. To arrive at a fewer set of measurable, manageable and actionable critical indicators sensitive to the pandemic context, model reduction was performed through l2 norm-based sensitivity analysis and using coefficient of variation on pertinent data from 123 districts of India. Results show that critical attributes are number of relief and health service personnel, road density, percentage literacy, efficacy of operational procedures and active NGOs. A case study of Kerala state in India is presented to demonstrate the results. The authors formulate a tool-kit with measurable critical indicators to assess pandemic preparedness of a region; applicable to wider contexts; which would help sensitize decision makers on the capacity of emergency management systems to handle a pandemic.