A Disaster Management Network for Indian Railways

Indian railways is one of the busiest rail networks in the whole world. In a single day it runs around 14,500 trains across various terrains covering 63,140 kilometers that transports millions of passengers. It is also participating in a Trans-Asian railway link project. Looking for greater financial success it has deployed information technology in its various commercial activities. However its disaster management plan is far from being an efficient one, every time a crisis has occurred that the lack of an efficient mechanism has come to fore. This paper looks at Indian Railways present disaster management plan and proposes different strategies in using information technology for disaster preparedness and response. It proposes the setup of a disaster management network that has both private and public interface.