Spatial Planning and Distribution of Civil Defense and Emergency Centers in the West Bank

The West Bank suffers from weakness in the provision of public services in general, and weakness in the services of civil defense, in particular, where there are residential areas not covered by Emergency services provided by the Palestinian Civil Defense and the Palestinian Red Crescent, its also suffers from the non-observance of the planning standards in the distribution of these services commensurate with needs of the population. This study addressed the issue of planning and spatial distribution of PCD and emergency centers in the West Bank and the analysis and study of the current situation for the distribution centers in the West Bank, as well as a review of the problems and loopholes of this distribution, in addition to proposing strategies for the distribution of these centers. The study will help decision makers to take appropriate steps for the developments of this service are necessary to ensure the protection of lives. Where these incidents and disasters can not be prevented, the role will be to find the integration between planning and programs and methods of PCD in reducing the effects of those accidents, disasters, and try to get to mitigate them whenever possible. The methodology of the study relied on the descriptive and analytical approach using the statistics of PCD and PRCS, and Central Bureau of Statistics, in addition to the observations through field visits to the emergency and CD centers in the West Bank, and the conducted interviews with the officials. The analysis and evaluation of the current spatial distribution of health services was accomplished, through comparing the Palestinian standards of planning for emergency services with those implemented in some of the regional and international countries, and through the study of indicators in the civil defense and PRCS, such as accidents and injuries indicators, safety and prevention indicator, community awareness indicator, human resources indicator, demographical and geographical indicator, and the response time indicator. The Results of the analysis showed that the civil defense and emergency services emergency suffer from poor distribution and inadequate number of these centers, causing pressure on the service centers and adversely affect the population through the increasing number of injuries and deaths. The study also showed the presence of clusters of housing that are not covered by the service, As a result, a proposal was prepared and submitted for the construction of additional 39 PCD center using geographic information systems for the distribution . The study came out with a number of recommendations, most notably the establishment of extra CD centers, and work on the development of these centers of the administrative and human needs and the technical equipment to ease the pressure on these centers and provide better service to residents, and develop the capacity of civil defense, through the identification of roles and responsibilities for responding to disasters and develop these roles at the local and national levels, and to consider disaster risk reduction as a national priority based on a local solid institutional base for the implementation. Moreover, it recommened activating the role of the partners of organizations and associations related to health and medical relief, the Federation of Contractors, and institutions working in the field of assessment of natural hazards and risk management such as the Center for Earth Science and Engineering Seismology at Najah University, which is the only center of scientific research in the field of earthquake engineering. Finally, the study recommended the activation of the Higher Council of Civil Defense to determine the works and duties entrusted to it under the Law No. 3 of 1998.