Rob Slade and I wrote an article capturing forty business continuity lessons arising from the massive earthquakes in New Zealand and Japan. It has just been published in EDPACS and is available as a download for $41 (sorry - it is no longer free of charge).
Aside from the specific lessons concerning resilience, crisis management, disaster recovery, and contingency management, our article illustrates a broader point, namely that it is not necessary to experience disasters first-hand in order to learn from them. If you are fortunate enough not to live and work in an earthquake-prone area, there are still valid lessons here to help you survive other natural and unnatural disasters.
Gary Hinson CISSP
Gary, the article can be found at the link but access must be purchased for $41. Could you re-post the link to the _free_ PDF?
Posted by: Scott R. | 02 November 2011 at 09:49 AM
Sorry Scott, looks like you missed the boat: the publishers are charging for it now. I'll try to persuade them to revise their policy but the decision - and the copyright - is theirs. Thanks for your interest in the article though.
Kind regards,
Gary
Posted by: Gary | 06 November 2011 at 12:33 AM
There's certainly no doubt that we learn a lot from disasters and we should continually strive to improve our capacity to respond. However, I share the opinion of one of my colleagues who once told me, "It ain't a lesson learned until you actually do something about it." I'm afraid that he will be proven right again and that we will really learn nothing from the suffering in Japan.
Posted by: Anon | 18 November 2011 at 06:34 AM
Generally speaking when a big Earthquake comes along most people assume that it has relieved pressure that was built up and they are much safer moving forward into the future with all that pressure gone. Well, that isn't always the case and that conventional wisdom as sound as it usually is, doesn't always hold true.
Posted by: urenregistratie jem | 21 November 2011 at 09:35 AM