Dear Dr. Hameed,

There are two aspects of post flood phase;
1. damage assessment and compensation
2. Identification of mistakes of planning and operation phase, so not to repeat in future.

The damage are mainly relevant to economic and social consequences of displaced population. It could be divided into public sector loss and private sector loss. The govt. department already got the record of public sector infrastructure, therefore, it is easy to assess this loss. For example how many hospitals, school, police station, roads, bridges were there before flood and compared with post flood surveys the damage is easily assessed

The private sector loss accounting is the tricky phase. Thanks to high resolution GIS imagery, it is now possible to compare the pre and post flood areal images. These images are used to compare the crops ( different type of crop is identifiable) , houses ( size and type of house is identifiable) and other big areal features of pre and post flood stage.

Now the belonging of these houses and crops are identified by revenue record kept by govt. The Patwari, tahseeldar etc had all these statistics. This help government to determine that who lost how much.

However, the loss of everyday house accessories; TV, car etc are determined on the basis of locality, surveys and interviews. The forms are got filled from the effectors to give stats on their loss, the things which they couldn’t manage to save.

Next thing is the rehabilitation stage and compensation. In developed countries, the houses are insured, so in the case of these calamities, the effector get his whole damage claim to these insurances but as in Pak we don’t have such insurances, therefore, people rely on govt to accommodate their private loss and business.

Normally, govt give small amounts to people to built their houses and to re-establish their business. For example, the seed is given to former for next crop. The subsidies on agricultural tax and on other small business is given. Small loans are given in some cases to get people re-establish. If the treasury of govt. is full, then govt could offer to compensate all the loses to each individual as per his claim, however, after proper scrutiny of his claim. But it seems difficult in this case

The public sector re-development is long lasting phase and govt. start building the basic facilities; health, water, gas, bridges to entire network slowly. But it always starts from cleaning the cities, from the debris of flood.

Here I won’t go into the detail of assessment of mistakes of planning and operational phase of flood and the learning process from these mistakes.

I can tell you that the potential sites of small and large dams have been identified long ago. The pre-feasibility and feasibility of some were also conducted, however, its the problem of political will on the central level.
Unless the decision devolved to local administration and local stake holder, nobody will become serious into it. As the major beneficiary are the locals of that area, therefore, they should be the one to shout for their resource utilization