Development of Disaster-Type-Specific Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for Private-Sector Cooperation at Disaster Sites

Although the voluntary participation of private organizations serves as an important complement to public disaster response capacity, the Republic of Korea has yet to establish systematic, disaster-type-specific Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for cooperation with private organizations, unlike the frameworks developed by FEMA in the United States and the disaster response guidelines adopted in Japan. As a result, role overlap, service gaps, and safety risks continue to be reported at disaster sites. This study analyzed field conditions through a survey of 24 local government officials and 15 private organizations, supplemented by in-depth interviews with 46 participants from eight institutions. Based on these findings, it developed an initial model of cooperative SOPs for seven major disaster types—floods, earthquakes, wildfires, cold waves/heat waves, droughts, utility tunnel fires, and waterway vessel accidents—using the Korean Community Lifelines Model as the classification framework. The survey results revealed that 62.5% of local government officials found it difficult to coordinate private organizations, while 71.4% of private organizations reported insufficient participation in decision-making and 66.7% identified inadequate capacity during the recovery phase. Each SOP is organized according to the temporal phases specific to each disaster type (e.g., four phases for flood and three for earthquake), with the required competency criteria for responsible entities, core tasks, and associated lifeline functions explicitly specified. The findings indicate the need to codify role standards for private organizations within Korea’s Disaster and Safety Management Basic Act, establish a competency-based registration and management system, and realign the existing 13 cooperative functions toward community lifeline stabilization. Although the SOPs developed in this study represent an initial model requiring further validation, they are expected to provide a foundational framework and baseline data for future validation efforts aimed at improving resource allocation efficiency, reducing role overlap and service gaps, and supporting the standardization of public-private cooperation at disaster sites.