title: A CRISIS MANAGEMENT FRAMEWORK FOR INTERPOL TO MANAGE TRANSNATIONAL DISASTERS
Creators: name: Nogueira, JHM
Publisher: name: University of Liverpool Repository
Year: 2016

description: The number of disasters over the past fourteen years (2000-2014) has already exceeded the number of disasters that occurred over the entire decades of the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s. It is estimated that the number of deaths in disasters over the past ten years (2004-2014) has already exceeded the number of deaths that occurred over the previous twenty years (1984 -2004). The total economic damage of disasters over the past ten years (2004-2014) has also already exceeded the damage of disasters that occurred over the previous twenty years (1984 -2004). Transnational disasters may be even more complex because they involve various aspects such as number of countries affected, number of victims, socio-economic aspects, geo-political factors, legal jurisdiction, cultural differences, and the coordination of multiple agencies. In this arena, INTERPOL plays a crucial role since it is the world’s largest international police organisation and a leader in disaster management engaging its 190 member countries and developing a command and control role within the international disaster networks around the globe. Consequently, it becomes crucial to create frameworks to manage transnational disasters. However, up to now INTERPOL does not have a framework to manage transnational disasters under its auspices. Therefore, the main objective of this thesis is to fill this gap and build a crisis management framework for INTERPOL when working with transnational disasters. This thesis is based on case studies: tsunami in the Indian Ocean in 2004; Air France air crash in Brazil in 2009. It was carried out an analysis across cases to figure out similarities and differences in order to identify behaviour patterns (key factors) and use them as a common framework for analogous cases. The key factors affecting all phases of transnational disasters at INTERPOL are as follows: (1) Governance; (2) Service; (3) Resource; (4) Multi-agency Network; (5) Stakeholder; (6) Finance; (7) Barrier; (8) Facilitator. The studies of the cases also identified the main barriers to, and facilitators of effective multi-agency working and transnational cooperation at INTERPOL. 4 The main purpose of this thesis was not to produce a general theory about disasters, although one may emerge incidentally, but to create and use a crisis management framework (called CMF) for the understanding and management of transnational disasters under the auspices of INTERPOL. CMF was compared with other existing international frameworks developed in the research and international organisations. The result of this comparison proved that CMF was the most complete. The study of CMF’s impacts also revealed that it affects all levels of management at INTERPOL: individual, departmental and organisational. In order to ratify the practical use of CMF, this thesis created an information system called CRIMAFIS. It a business intelligence system based on Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques that uses the themes and codes emerged from data analysis and provides relevant information upon transnational disasters. Ultimately, this thesis made forty-two recommendations for INTERPOL to increase and enhance its crisis and disaster management capability.