Disaster recovery

Distribution of funds/resources: 
From the top down, distribution of resources is channeled through people who already know their contacts on the next level down, so pathways are already established, and the leaders in each group know who needs the immediate assistance, so the possibility of 'cheating' is much reduced.  Contrast with the current system, where a central office distributes relief funds through some agency like Centerlink, where the officers almost never know the recipients personally, so can only decide on elegibility based on evidence presented at the time, if it exists at all. This leads to delays and frustrations in verification, which would be totally avoided in the group management system.

Consider a case where a disaster affects say 10,000 people in an area. Then in the current system, the agency has to process 10,000 claims for assistance, and verify that each claim is valid before distributing funds. Even if ( say ) 20 trained personnel are available to do this full time, to the exclusion of their 'normal' duties, then they must process 500 people each. At 8 interviews per day, 1 hour each, that takes 60 days of just interview time, plus all the usual background tasks.  So it takes at least 2 months to process all of them.

Now consider what could be done in the group case. Assume the 10,000 people are members of 200 groups ( allowing some people in each group who are not affected ).  Then the relief agency only has to 'deal' with those 200 leaders.  They are elected leaders, accountable both to their members and to their own group of similar leaders, so they can be trusted to distribute funds to only those they know are eligible.  So the agency gives each leader a limited bank fund ( or chequebook, or equivalent ) to distribute for each of his 70 members. That should take no more than the time it takes to make 200 bank deposits, after the funds are made available. At the worst, this could not take longer than 1 day.  And each leader only has to make decisions on eligibility for his 70 members, which should take no more than another few days, at the most.

The difference in response speed and efficiency should be obvious.