Contemporary Management

Winter 20109

Case Study #2: Natural Disasters and the

Decisions that Follow

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Answer Model

1. Problem Definition
A natural disaster is a major bad events caused by the natural processes, how to handle such incidents that
depend on are those events are predictable or non-predictable?, also does the management has a relevant
experience for handling similar incident or not?, are the precautions for planning ahead for unpredictable
events are ready at the firm?, if not so what is the alternative available to move forward?, which sectors or
industries can be affected negatively the most or can the firm get benefited from such incidents to
negotiate prices in specific time or to plan for operational activities before or right after the predicable
incident.
2. Justification for Problem Definition
Some resources classify the Natural Disasters types of being predictable or unpredictable, however in all
cases no one can stop them from occurrence, for the predictable events they are more easily to be
managed, cause the repetitive of the events definitely raise solutions over time, while the unpredictable
events take more time and effort to diagnose the case and work how to eliminate the negative impact, the
good governance should be planning for both type of events.
Also, Natural Disaster reflections are various in type and different in pattern on so many different levels,
industrial, economical, and locally and internationally, accordingly planning and precautions could be
adopted to deal with such situations are a must.
3. List of Alternative course of action
How to respond to the natural disasters affect that could be handling this by setting an appropriate
recovery and contingency plan.
3.1 Having Hot Site: Type of back up or a disaster recovery facility, operated commercially, that allows
continuity of computer and network operations in the event of a computer or equipment disaster in a
business.
3.2 Having Cold Site: on the other hand, is a space you have reserved in another location for you to use
if there is a disaster on your site
3.3 Having Warm Site: A warm site is the middle ground of the two disaster recovery options. Warm
sites offer office space/datacenter space and will have some pre-installed server hardware.
4. Evaluate Alternatives
Hot Site:
the hot site is comprised of all gadgetry needed for a company or organization to continue with its
operations. It contains all the software, hardware that your predominant site contains, and it is available
on a 24/7 basis. This suit specific industry that should use the full capacity of their operation systems to
recover the nature disaster effects
Cold Site:
Unlike the hot site, the cold site does not contain any hardware or software pre-installed. One must set in
place all the apparatus needed to ensure that work operation continues as intended. This could be used by

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any company that provide services instead of tangible goods, like customer services, insurance Co. and so
on.

Warm Site:
warm site is that while the hot site provides a mirror of the production datacenter and its environment(s),
a warm site will contain only servers ready for the installation of production environments. but requires a
level of redundancy (ex. Administrative roles)
5. Conclusion & Recommendations
Many various sectors and industries always get affected by the Natural Disasters, how to limit the
negative effect and get back on track economically and on even a local level, this is great challenge
should be planned accurately and precisely. Taking either the Hot Site Recovery Plan or Cold Site, it
depends on the industry, the Firm Financial heath and management rational how to handle such incidents
very efficiently and remotely in the same time if they have to do so, COVID 19 Pandemic is a great
example of natural disaster, it’s sort of fatal disease, which impacted all industries in all directions, this
kind of unpredictable disease due to nature of unprecedented disruption affect not only few countries or
specific region, it affect the whole world, put on every entity’s shoulders a sense of responsibility across
the world to figure their recovery and contingency plan to survive during this COVID 19 time and address
the best alternative to eliminate the financial losses and restore their profit and position in market later.
5.References:

The definition for Cold Site and Hot Site retrieved from Course Hero, also matched with CMA definitions
for both sites:

https://www.coursehero.com/file/40787617/Hot-site-vs-cold-site-2docx/

definition for Warn site and relevant illustration are retrieved from Segue Tech Website

https://www.seguetech.com/three-stages-disaster-recovery-sites/

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