Title
A Disaster Is Not a Big Emergency. Planning for Complexity and Self-Organization
Record Type
Video
URL
https://youtu.be/ov29jaylkjk
Contact
Alejandro Liñayo
Year
2,022
Publisher
Imara IHG

Summary
Alejandro Linayo explores the "dark side" of disaster planning, where complexity and nonlinear dynamics often render static documents obsolete. He outlines a practical planning workflow while emphasizing that rigid hierarchies like the Incident Command System have limits. Ultimately, Linayo argues that the most effective "plan" is not a formal template, but a resilient network of relationships capable of self-organizing when local coping capacities are exceeded.
Description
In this guest lecture, Alejandro Linayo shares practitioner-based insights on emergency and disaster planning, drawing on work across Latin America and Europe. The session begins with practical guidance on plan content and format—including why there is no single universal template—and then moves into the “dark side” of planning: how complexity, nonlinear dynamics, and self-organization shape real disaster response.

Key ideas include:
* Why plans must be adapted to each institutional context
* A practical planning workflow (threats → vulnerabilities → risk mapping → resources → mitigation/response → quality control)
* How “hard” (hierarchical) organizations differ from “soft” (informal) environments
* Why Incident Command System (ICS) can help coordination, but has limits in large disasters
* Why disasters exceed local coping capacity in more ways than logistics—especially in situational understanding
* The core shift: in disaster planning, the most important “plan” is often the network of relationships, not the document