Dear readers,

At a time when most disaster management resources are becoming more expensive, information technology is perhaps the only resource that is becoming increasingly cost-effective. While the disaster management community has been quick in applying IT for day-to-day operations, it has a long way to go in exploring innovative IT solutions to deal with some of the classic disaster management problems. In this issue we present two articles on IT-based approaches to disaster management concerns. In the theme article, Art Botterell presents ideas for IT application in improving disaster response and recovery, and in the following article, Louise Comfort presents an IT-based decision support system for risk reduction and response operations involving multiple actors. We hope that readers will find these examples useful. If you are aware of similar initiatives in your country or region, please let us know and we will be happy to feature them in following issues.

As always, we welcome your comments on this issue and contributions to future ones.

Kamal Kishore
kamal@ait.ac.th

Themes for Forthcoming Issues of the Asian Disaster Management News:

• Flood Preparedness (Apr-Jun 2002)
• Environment and Climate Variability (Jul-Sept 2002)

Editorial Committee

• Dr Suvit Yodmani (Chair)
• Mr David Hollister
• Ms Zenaida Delica
• Mr Aloysius Rego
• Mr Robin Willison

Editorial Advisor

• Col Brian Ward

Assistant Editors

• Ambika Varma
• William Savage

Circulation Management

• Noramon Sittabut