Disaster Management Manual
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4. Response

Response activities react safely and adequately to an emergency caused by a disastrous event, and keep or quickly recover the road function necessary for emergency activities.

Response refers to the activities that take preparedness into action; to save lives in an emergency, to immediately recover road functions necessary for emergency operations, and to prevent secondary impacts on the road. Response is time sensitive. It is very important for the organizations and agencies responsible to road management, in coordination with national, regional, and local agencies, to work to restore road functions based on new and accurate information about the emergency and damage to the road. Response activities take place after an emergency occurs.

Response optimizes the execution of planned preparedness immediately after the disaster, under conditions of limited human and material resources, to secure the life of people and to recover the road function, depending on the circumstances of the emergency. In other words, in the response phase, it is important to understand the emergency and set appropriate timeline targets and implement preparedness activities. For this purpose, it is important to collect up-to-date information on disasters and their effects on roads, to restore road functions based on this information, and to provide such information to the road users. At the same time, it is important to "coordinate and work together" to secure the human and physical resources to do so. Evacuation is also an important component of the response to disasters that can be predicted (planned for) in advance, such as tsunamis and hurricanes, in order to mitigate them.

Response involves the sharing of disaster information on the road network, the connected network and other modes of transport to optimize the response. In general, "response" activities are carried out in coordination with national and local governments.

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