Japan Tsunami and effective Knowledge Management

I am writing this blogpost from Seoul airport, on my way to the South Korean island of Jeju.

There, I will be spending three days with the Asian Productivity Organisation, Korea Productivity Center, and KM and Innovation experts from Korea, Japan, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, and myself from the UK.

We arranged this expert meeting in January 2011, and a key objective is to write a book, collaboratively, probably entitled 'KM and Public Sector Productivity' in Asia

I was contemplating this meeting from my home in SW France last week, and I thought, 'If only we could direct our meeting focus to effective KM in public emergency and disaster recovery services'.

Japan clearly leads the world with excellence in planning and managing earthquake emergencies and very advanced building design,but nobody predicted the severity of the earthquake or the devastating tsunami. So I am sure that there will be more lessons to be learned in these critical areas.

My interest in effective KM for such situations started when I was asked to assist the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction UNISDR (2009) with HQ in Geneva, Switzerland and working from Bangkok for the Asia Pacific Region. I was introduced to the 'Hyogo Framework' developed at a meeting in Japan to help national governments and agencies minimize disaster reduction through better knowledge and understanding, strategies and tools, to proactively anticipate, and therefore minimize, possible loss of life and economic loss.


Imagine my attention was immediately drawn when one of the experts from Tokyo, Japan, Mr Naoki Ogiwara, from Fuji-Xerox, commented on Facebook that he was looking forward to the meeting in Jeju and, could not think of a more appropriate topic effective 'KM in the Public Sector' considering the emergency situation in Japan.

It begs the question:

How can effective KM contribute even more to critical Public Sector services such as Nuclear Energy Management, Transportaion, Healthcare, Disaster Management, Emergency Social Services and much more in this area.

It will be interesting to see how our discussions go this week. I will keep posting on any significant developments.

Ron Young

More information at

www.knowledge-management-online.com