Identifying the victims of the Indian Ocean tsunami: The role of the private sector

Joseph Scanlon

Journal of Business Continuity & Emergency Planning, 2007, vol. 1, issue 3, 312-323

Abstract: Until the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, identifying victims of a mass catastrophe was done largely by police and forensic scientists who tried to match pre-death and post-death data from paper files. The tsunami brought computer databases into the world of forensic identification and led to major involvement from four private-sector companies from Canada, France, Denmark and Norway. Between them, the firms created a system to improve the handling of missing persons’ calls; an automated fingerprint identification system; a system to generate possible matches between pre and post-death data; and a state-of-the-art morgue in Phuket, Thailand. In the past, there has been private-sector involvement in mass death incidents — for example, most funerals are conducted by private firms — but the tsunami marked a major shift to a public-private partnership in an area that has generally been limited to police and forensic scientists.

Keywords: catastrophes; mass death; tsunami; private sector (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: M1 M10 M12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aza:jbcep0:y:2007:v:1:i:3:p:312-323

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