Introduction
A primary focus of the Lahore University of Management Science (LUMS), a leading research and teaching institution, has been to support October 8, 2005 earthquake recovery and relief efforts through systematic provision of information. Towards this end, LUMS team worked with other partners in setting up Relief and Information Systems for Earthquakes Pakistan (RISEPAK) - an information and coordination tool - within 12 days of the earthquake (www.risepak.com). This site provides unique village level information and was (and continues to be) widely used by relief-actors to provide and coordinate relief.
The LUMS faculty and students have been involved in conducting surveys in the earthquake-affected regions. The first such survey was carried out from November 30th to December 5th, and included 3,210 households. It included information on basic demographics, damage, and relief. The second survey conducted in mid-January 2006 interviewed 193 households and included comprehensive sections on household demographics, disaster, relief and rehabilitation and also covered basic village networks. Although sample sizes in the second survey are smaller, far more information was obtained, with an average survey taking 2 hours to complete for a single household. The presence of female students on the LUMS teams in both instances also allowed women to be interviewed separately from men - this has important implications for thinking of vulnerability and gender issues in the reconstruction process. The World Bank team for South Asia and the Bank's Development Research Group support this work. (News & Broadcast - A New Tool For Relief Operations in Pakistan.).
From a number of conversations with NGOs, INGOs, the Pakistan Army, ERRA and other relief providers, it seems that impressions about relief and reconstruction in district offices and in Islamabad differ considerably from what is found in visits to relief camps and villages. Part of the problem is that the considerable data that is collected in the field seldom finds its way up the ladder to Islamabad - we discuss this in the section below on Data Flows. However, even the data collected in the field may be insufficient for key questions such as the functioning of markets, people's assessments of their short and long-term needs or the use of compensation. The LUMS team strongly believes that some sort of systematic monitoring system whereby a team is sent to pre-specified monitoring sites on a regular basis needs to be immediately setup; the team will be happy to discuss the selection of sites and potential questions that may be asked. For both such an exercise as well as other planned surveys, the summaries below may be useful.
This note outlines observations from the teams on conducting surveys in the area (one explicit aim of the initial surveys was to pilot different ways of eliciting information). A second note details findings from the December survey and preliminary notes from the January survey; more extensive findings will be ready by the end of March.
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