Developing Information for Disaster and Risk Management in Public Universities of Kenya: An Emerging Role of Information Professionals

Disasters entails factors that are coupled with naturally occurring hazards such as droughts floods, fire, war, terrorism, HIV/AIDS, landslides and epidemic outbreak among others which are risks to human life. Disaster management is the organization and management of resources and responsibilities for dealing with all humanitarian aspects of emergencies, in particular preparedness, response, and recovery in order to lessen the impact of disasters. It usually refers to the management of natural catastrophes such as fire, flooding, or earthquakes. Related techniques for disasters management include crisis management, contingency management, and risk management. Developing an Information for disaster and risk management in universities of Kenya is framed within an environment where senior managers in the university need to integrate with low level staff as they face the pressure to professionalize; explore the world of risk, trust, and the distribution of power to allow confrontation and flow of information as they gather daily intelligence on acts of disasters. Unfortunately this objective has not been realized in public universities. Deficiency in the study of developing an information for disaster and risk management may exist because of the vicarious involvement of the field study option which is not available to researchers in times of disasters. Determining how information flow among organization, before, during and after disasters leads to new paradigms sound decisions disaster and risk management practices. This paper aims on the need to develop Information for disaster and risk management in public universities of Kenya. The specific objectives are ; assess the status and structures of developing Information for disaster management in public universities ; Identify types of information and services for disaster and risk management in public universities of Kenya; Assess policies and programmes that addresses establishment of information for disaster preparedness and mitigations in