Inefficient and ineffective fire management practices are common to most urban areas of developing countries.Nigerian cities are typical examples of high vulnerability and low preparedness level for fire disaster.This study examined the institutional framework for fire disaster risk reduction(FDRR) and explored the roles of key actors in fire disaster preparedness in Ibadan,a large traditional city in Nigeria.The study was anchored on the concept of urban governance.A case study research design was adopted using primary and secondary data.Primary data were obtained through field observation aided by a structured checklist and key informant interview.Interviews were conducted on key officials of the major organs for FDRR-Oyo State Fire Service(OSFS) and Oyo State Emergency Management Agency(OYSEMA).The study identified a disjointed and fragmented approach to fire management.Matters relating to fire risk reduction and disaster recovery were domiciled under the OYSEMA,while emergency response to fire disasters was the prerogative of the OSFS.The results show that only five out of 11 local government areas had public fire stations;only three fire stations had an on-site water supply;three fire stations lacked firefighting vehicles;and distribution of fire stations and facilities was uneven.Two fire stations responded to 80% of all fire cases in 12 years.The study concluded that the institutional structure and resources for fire risk reduction was more empowered to respond to fire disaster,rather than facilitating preparedness capacity to reduce disaster risk.

In many low-income countries, migrant remittances are essential in sustaining people's livelihoods and become even more important during and after disasters.Researchers, policymakers, and practitioners increasingly emphasize the need to better support this people-based mechanism, so disaster risk can be reduced. This suggests the importance of understanding migrants' perspectives on the remittance channels used and the challenges and opportunities of supporting remittances. However, such information is largely missing. Drawing on interviews and a focus group discussion carried out with Pacific Island migrants living in New Zealand, the article identifies the capacity of migrants to utilize different remittance channels and resources to assist those affected in their country of origin. Challenges faced include high transfer fees, lack of information and support from external stakeholders, and limited resources to effectively send both individual and collective remittances. The article concludes that there is a serious need to involve a large array of stakeholders in finding ways to better support remittances for disaster risk management, including migrants, government agencies, the private sector, nongovernmental organizations, and those receiving remittances.

The importance of workplace safety in the ready-made garment(RMG) industry in Bangladesh came to the forefront after a series of disastrous events in recent years. In order to reduce the loss of lives and to ensure sustainable development, an in-depth understanding of the determining factors governing structural vulnerability in the RMG industry is needed. This research explores the key factors influencing the vulnerability of factory buildings under both vertical and earthquake loads. For this purpose,an ordered probit model was applied to 3746 RMG factory buildings to determine the key factors that influenced their vertical load vulnerability. A smaller subset of the original sample, 478 buildings, was examined by the same modeling method in greater detail to assess the key factors that influenced their earthquake load vulnerability. This research reveals that column capacity, structural system,and construction materials are the most influential factors for both types of vulnerabilities. Among other factors, soil liquefaction and irregular internal frame affect earthquake load vulnerability significantly. These findings are expected to enable factory owners and designers to better weigh the appropriate vulnerability factors in order to make informed decision that increase workplace safety. Theresearch findings will also help the designated authorities to conduct successful inspections of factory buildings and take actions that reduce vulnerability to both vertical and earthquake loads.

<正>1 Introduction The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030 shifts the focus from managing disasters to reducing risks.Such a shift requires a better understanding of risk in all its dimensions of environment,hazards,exposure,and vulnerability;a disaster risk governance that ensures

Relocation is not typically considered the best planning option for post-disaster reconstruction and rehabilitation,but it may be necessary if the site has suffered severe damage or is at imminent risk.There is a growing recognition that strong community participation is necessary in the post-disaster relocation decision-making process since relocation can have detrimental effects on a community's livelihood,cultural system,and way of life,among others.However,the realization of this still needs to be improved.As of yet,few studies have examined a comprehensive account of meaningful community engagement in post-disaster relocation and reconstruction,particularly in developing countries.This study investigated what factors influenced local communities' participation in post-disaster relocation and reconstruction works after the 2017Cyclone Dineo flood disaster in the Tsholotsho District of Zimbabwe.Qualitative research methods such as face-to-face interviews,observations,and focus groups were used to collect qualitative data from a purposive sample of 25 community members and 6 stakeholders.This empirical investigation showed that despite the fact that the relocation project was conceived as a community-centered project,there was no meaningful community engagement,due to the absence of a participatory framework or planning guidelines for stakeholder engagement,as well as the lack of political willingness among government officials.The study concluded that the lack of community involvement led to local communities abandoning the reconstruction sites because relocation projects failed to accommodate the cultural beliefs,place attachments,and livelihood concerns of local communities.This study suggested that it is imperative to enhance the awareness of government officials and other stakeholders about the importance of community participation for the effective implementation of post-disaster relocation works.Meaningful community participation can also provide avenues for incorporating local needs and concerns,cultural beliefs,and alternative and sustainable livelihood restoration,which are essential for effective reconstruction after disasters.This research aimed to enrich the academic discourse by providing valuable insights into the intricacies of postdisaster recovery initiatives in the country.

Industrial accidents have shown that many people can be affected,such as in Seveso,Italy,in 1976.Industrial accidents in nuclear power plants have also led to fatalities and evacuations.To better guide preparedness against and mitigation of industrial accidents,an assessment is necessary to evaluate hazard exposure and the type of potentially vulnerable social groups that need to be taken into account.This study conducted a spatial assessment of three types of industrial facilities in Germany:facilities registered under the Seveso Directive,chemical parks,and nuclear power plants.The method consisted of a spatial assessment using a Geographic Information System of exposure around hazardous sites registered under the S eveso Directive in Germany and of census data to analyze social vulnerability.Hazards analyzed included industrial accidents and earthquakes.The results revealed that most industrial sites are in urban areas and that population density,the numbers of foreigners,and smaller housing unit sizes are higher in close proximity to these sites.The buffer zones analyzed in circles between 1 and 40 km show a decreasing vulnerability with more distance.This can guide emergency management planners and other stakeholders to better prepare for major accidents and better devise disaster risk reduction strategies specifically for different social groups.

The third UN World Congress on Disaster Risk Reduction, held in Sendai, Japan in March 2015, agreed on a new framework to guide disaster risk reduction policy and practice for the next 15 years. The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030(SFDRR) leaves important implementation issues unspecified and potentially creates both problems and opportunities for complex,multilevel governance systems in coping with hazards and disastrous events. Early warning systems(EWS), if built into the mainstream of planning for development and disaster relief and recovery, could present a significant opportunity to realize many SFDRR goals. We explore the complexities of using hydrometeorological EWS to prepare for drought and flood disasters in the densely populated communities of Pakistan's Indus River Basin in contrast to the African Sahel's less densely settled grasslands. Multilevel governance systems are often dominated by a topdown, technocentric, centralized management bias and have great difficulty responding to the needs of peripheral and vulnerable populations. People-centered, bottom-up approaches that incorporate disaggregated communities with local knowledge into a balanced, multilevel disaster risk management and governance structure have adramatically better chance of realizing the SFDRR goals for disaster risk reduction.

This article addresses three large earthquake disasters in Iran: Tabas in 1978, Rudbar in 1990, and Bam in 2003. Lessons and "Lessons Learned" from these three earthquake disasters were investigated together with their contributions over time towards earthquake disaster risk reduction in Iran. Many lessons from 1978 Tabas, 1990 Rudbar, and 2003 Bam did not become "Lessons Learned" and they were identified again within the dramatic context of other earthquake disasters in various places of Iran. Both lessons and "Lessons Learned" from Tabas, Rudbar, Bam,and other earthquake disasters in Iran require a sustainable long-term framework—an earthquake culture.

Tropical cyclones(TCs) may cause severe impacts on the activities of coastal fishing vessels. Due to the unavailability or unacceptability of detailed Automatic Identification System(AIS) data that are capable of differentiating fishing activity from navigation, as well as the lack of detailed models and observation data of TC winds, few studies have provided quantitative and reliable assessment of the impacts of TCs on fishing activities. In this study,we modeled snapshots for the TC winds of 52 TCs over the Northwest Pacific(NWP) basin from 2013 to 2018, as well as daily fishing hours and daily hours of presence(hereafter “vessel hours”) of fishing vessels. Based on these data, the spatiotemporal pattern of fishing vessel activity over off-shore China was first analyzed and mapped. Then, a TC wind hazard index and absolute and relative impact indices were proposed to assess the impact of the 52 TCs on fishing and vessel hours. Their relationship was then fitted with the cumulative distribution function(CDF) of the log-normal distribution. The results show that in the 2013-2018 period,the most active fishing areas were located in the South China Sea. In each instance, an increase was first observed in the initial several years; then a decrease followed in the yearly total fishing hours per vessel in the remaining years. The relative impact index was significantly correlated to the TC wind hazard index proposed in this study. Based on the quantitative relationship between the specified TC hazard index and the impact indices, it is possible to implement a pre-cyclone rapid loss assessment due to TC avoidance in the future.

The presence of high indoor radon concentrations, C_x, is a major concern of the public worldwide.Measurements of indoor radon in South Lebanon have been achieved using CR-39 detectors. Cxvalues ranged between 30 and 122 Bq m~(-3) in one of the major towns in the area and are compared with measured atmospheric air Radon.Moderate seasonal variation of Cxindoors has been observed, although 90 % of the obtained indoor Cxmeasurements are below 100 Bq m~(-3). Some homes produced Cxreadings above the permissible limit. Results showed that the ventilation effect played a major factor in reducing radon concentration levels indoors. Health assessment has been considered. Annual effective doses of radon varied from 1.01 ± 0.10 to 8.65 ± 0.50 m Sv a~(-1) in six homes in one of the four cases studied. These dosage values are above the permitted limit of 2.5 m Sv a~(-1). Several types of granite contained in the studied homes were identified and their contributions to radon levels indoors were calculated.

The Millennium Development Goals(MDGs)with their holistic perspective of development are focused on different issues of vulnerability.This article highlights the situation of women in disasters and the challenges in achieving the MDGs with special reference to India.It is accepted that there is no disaster without human engagement and that issues of differential impact on genders is an essential consideration for recovery.The international guidelines on disaster management and intervention have a considerable focus on gender equality,balance,mainstreaming,and sensitive programing,yet the situation is quite grim.India still lacks separate policy guidelines on gender aspects in disaster.In the twenty-first century,India has witnessed a series of disasters in different parts of the country.The author's personal experiences of working in intervention programs of these disasters showed that gender vulnerability depends on various factors like the intensity of the disaster impact,local sociocultural perspectives,effective disaster intervention strategies,the specific focus on issues of women in training of personnel,and gender-sensitive disaster intervention programs in the community.In the context of the MDGs,while development has become a priority concern to end age-old inequalities in society,the added challenge of disasters needs considerable focus on gender inequalities to achieve the goal of gender equity.

Recent seismic events show that urban areas are increasingly vulnerable to seismic damage,which leads to unprecedented levels of risk.Cities are complex systems and as such their analysis requires a good understanding of the interactions between space and the socioeconomic variables characteristic of the inhabitants of urban space.There is a clear need to develop and test detailed models that describe the behavior of these interactions under seismic impact.This article develops an overall vulnerability index to seismic hazard based on a spatial approach applied to Bucharest,Romania,the most earthquake-prone capital in the European Union.The methodology relies on:(1) spatial post-processed socioeconomic data from the2011 Romanian census through multicriteria analysis;and(2) analytical methods(the Improved Displacement Coefficient Method and custom-defined vulnerability functions)for estimating damage patterns,incorporated in a GIS environment.We computed vulnerability indices for the128 census tracts of the city.Model sensitivity assessment tested the robustness of spatially identified patterns of building vulnerability in the face of uncertainty in model inputs.The results show that useful seismic vulnerability indices can be obtained through interdisciplinaryapproaches that enhance less detailed datasets,which leads lead to better targeted mitigation efforts.

One of the most serious resource and health issues in coastal communities of Bangladesh is the scarcity of safe drinking water, triggered by the combined effects of salinity, arsenic, and drought. This article explores community perception of vulnerabilities in daily life, livelihood, and environment, and investigates how communities and institutions cope with or adapt to drinking water scarcity. This study outlines community expectations for support from government and nongovernment organizations to overcome this problem. The findings reveal that nearly all respondents from the drinking water scarcity area perceive that salinity is the primary reason for the lack of safe drinking water compared to arsenic and drought hazards. Despite a number of socioeconomic factors and a geographical location that aggravates the coastal communities' vulnerability, these communities have established their own adaptation mechanism to cope with this crisis.Government and nongovernment organizations have also supported community efforts to cope with the problem. By emphasizing both community adaptation methods and efforts of institutions, this article illustrates an integrated community-based approach, which would be effective for reducing drinking water scarcity in the southwestern coastal region of the country.

To investigate why people live in areas at high risk of floods, a qualitative case study was carried out in the areas around Akuressa, in southwest Sri Lanka. Data collection consisted mainly of semistructured interviews with local residents and government officials. The purpose was to study why people live in areas at high risk of floods, by looking beyond the purely physical aspects of living with hazards and exploring the underlying social factors. Four main factors were identified: an overall good living situation; a sense of place; difficulties relocating; and being well-adapted to the situation. The analysis also examined whether government officials shared the views of local residents. The findings highlighted both areas of consensus and discrepancies related to risk awareness, and the efficiency of risk reduction measures that had been implemented by the government. The case study identified and explored underlying social factors, such as risk normalization, risk trade-offs, and push-and-pull processes, which seem to influence the decision to live in a high-risk area.

The eastern Mediterranean region is an active tectonic setting that includes the Dead Sea Transform Fault, which forms the boundary between the African and the Arabian Plates and crosses Lebanon from south to north, striking in a restraining bend around 25–30°NE. The major structural feature in Lebanon is the Yammouneh Fault, which reaches to Syria and southern Turkey in a north–south direction. Measurements of radon gas concentration and exhalation rates in two locations along the southern segment of the Yammouneh Fault in south Lebanon were performed. Two profiles in the El-Khiam basin and Blat pull-apart basin and perpendicular to the Yammouneh Fault trace were analyzed. An approximate fault width 25–30 m wide was determined in the El-Khiam study area. Temporal increase of radon concentration was measured and correlated with stress/strain tectonic activity and stress drops along the studied fault segment boundary.Anomalous variable radon concentrations were detected during one of the measurements where an earthquake occurred in the region of Tiberias Lake in northern Palestine along the Yammouneh Fault in the study area. Measurements of radon concentration along a station's profile in Blat village did not show any radon anomalous variation due to the discontinuity along the fault(pull-apart), and possible absence of stress and energy accumulation along the Yammouneh Fault line in that location.

To prepare a landslide susceptibility map of Shivkhola watershed,one of the landslide prone parts of Darjeeling Himalaya,remote sensing and GIS tools were used to integrate 10 landslide triggering parameters:lithology,slope angle,slope aspect,slope curvature,drainage density,upslope contributing area(UCA),lineament,settlement density,road contributing area(RCA),and land use and land cover(LULC).The Analytical Hierarchy Process(AHP) was applied to derive factor weights using MATLAB with reasonable consistency ratio(CR).The frequency ratio(FR) model was used to derive class frequency ratio or class weights that indicate the relative importance of individual classes for each factor.The weighted linear combination(WLC) method was used to determine the landslide susceptibility index value(LSIV) on a GIS platform,by incorporating both factor weights and class weights.The Shiv-khola watershed is classified into five landslide susceptibility zones.The overall classification accuracy is 99.22 and Kappa Statistics is 0.894.

To estimate human loss in an earthquake-prone area, it is necessary to analyze the role played by the spatiotemporal distribution of the area's resident population. In order to evaluate earthquake impact, this article focuses on the spatiotemporal distribution of population and five scenario earthquakes that form the basis for loss estimation in the city of Sylhet, Bangladesh. Four temporal contexts(weekday, weekly holiday, the 30 days of Ramadan, and strike days) expand the more typical daytime and nighttime settings in which to examine hazard risk. The population distribution for every 2 hour interval in a day is developed for each type of day. A relationship between the occupancy classes and average space(persons per 100 m~2)is used to distribute people in each building regardless of building locations. A total daytime and nighttime population is obtained for each building and the estimated nighttime population is used to model the population for four temporal scenarios in a year based on different factors and weights. The resulting data are employed to estimate population loss for each of the temporal and earthquake scenarios. This study used building-specific human vulnerability curves developed by the Central American Probabilistic Risk Assessment(CAPRA) to obtain possible loss of life estimates. The results reveal that there is a high positive correlation between the spatiotemporal distribution of population and the potential number of casualties.

This article summarizes and analyzes the Children & Youth Forum and youth participation in the process during and leading up to the Third UN World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction(WCDRR) in2015. An organizing committee consisting of international students and young professionals brought together around200 young professionals and students from around the globe to exchange ideas and knowledge on reducing disaster risk, building resilient communities, and advocating for the inclusion of youth priorities within the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030(SFDRR). The knowledge exchange during the Forum was structured around a Toolbox for Resilience that connected to the SFDRR section on Priorities for Action. This article presents the outcomes of these young people's participation in the disaster risk reduction capacity building eventsand policy-making, as well as the follow-up actions envisioned by the young participants of the Forum. The voices of the younger generation were heard in the SFDRR and young people are ready to expand their actions for the framework's effective implementation. Young people call on technical experts, donors, NGOs, agencies, governments, and academia to partner with them on this journey to create a more resilient tomorrow together.

Climate change adaptation(CCA) and disaster risk reduction(DRR) have similar targets and goals in relation to climate change and related risks. The integration of CCA in core DRR operations is crucial to provide simultaneous benefits for social systems coping with challenges posed by climate extremes and climate change.Although state actors are generally responsible for governing a public issue such as CCA and DRR integration,the reform of top-down governing modes in neoliberal societies has enlarged the range of potential actors to include non state actors from economic and social communities. These new intervening actors require in-depth investigation. To achieve this goal, the article investigates the set of actors and their bridging arrangements that create and shape governance in CCA and DRR integration. The article conducts a comprehensive literature review in order to retrieve main actors and arrangements. The article summarizes actors and arrangements into a conceptual governance framework that can be used as a backdrop for future research on the topic. However, this framework has an explorative form, which must be refined according to site-and context-specific variables, norms, or networks.Accordingly, this article promotes an initial application of the framework to different contexts. Scholars may adopt the framework as a roadmap with which to corroborate the existence of a theoretical and empirical body of knowledge on governance of CCA and DRR integration.

Scholars from environmental psychology,geography, disaster science, and sociology have recently focused attention on evacuation and relocation behaviors and influencing factors in hazard-threatened areas. However, existing studies are mainly focused on developed countries and the influence of individual characteristics,household characteristics, and the perception of risk of urban households on evacuation and relocation behaviors.Few studies examine developing countries and the influence of farmers' sense of place in geological hazardthreatened areas. Using statistics of farming households in an area threatened by landslides, this is a pilot study to explore the relationship of sense of place to the relocation willingness of farming households while controlling for other variables. The results show that:(1) Households with higher scores of place identity and place dependence are less willing to relocate, whereas place attachment has no significant relationship to household relocation willingness;(2) Risk perception dimensions, including probability,threat, and controllability have a significant relationship to household relocation willingness, while worry and fear of the unknown have no significant relationship;(3) Household characteristics, including income, whether a household has experienced economic loss from landslides, and social support are significantly correlated with household relocation willingness, while gender, age, experience, distance to hazard sites, size of household, children, older people, and housing material are not. The results for information and education are not robust. This study contributes to the current literature by improving the understanding of the relationship of sense of place to the relocation willingness of farming households in villages threatened by geological disasters in rural China.

Planning in advance to prepare for and respond to a natural hazard-induced disaster-related emergency is a key action that allows decision makers to mitigate unexpected impacts and potential damage. To further this aim, a collaborative, modular, and information and communications technology-based Spatial Data Infrastructure(SDI)called SIRENE—Sistema Informativo per la Preparazione e la Risposta alle Emergenze(Information System for Emergency Preparedness and Response) is designed and implemented to access and share, over the Internet, relevant multisource and distributed geospatial data to support decision makers in reducing disaster risks. SIRENE flexibly searches and retrieves strategic information from local and/or remote repositories to cope with different emergency phases. The system collects, queries, and analyzes geographic information provided voluntarily by observers directly in the field(volunteered geographic information(VGI) reports) to identify potentially critical environmental conditions. SIRENE can visualize and cross-validate institutional and research-based data against VGI reports,as well as provide disaster managers with a decision support system able to suggest the mode and timing of intervention, before and in the aftermath of different types of emergencies, on the basis of the available information and in agreement with the laws in force at the national andregional levels. Testing installations of SIRENE have been deployed in 18 hilly or mountain municipalities(12 located in the Italian Central Alps of northern Italy, and six in the Umbria region of central Italy), which have been affected by natural hazard-induced disasters over the past years(landslides, debris flows, floods, and wildfire) and experienced significant social and economic losses.

Most policy analyses of both short-term and long-term disasters focus on aggregate impacts of their costs and the benefits of policy remedies. Distributional considerations relating to the costs of these disasters and the benefits of their risk management, however, are very important in many cases. This article examines two broad categories of cases in terms of distributional considerations. The first category is where transboundary considerations strongly affect risk governance, as in the case of climate change. The second relates to ordinary, short-term disasters, which include fewer, but still important, transboundary issues. Climate change policy requires information regarding the distribution of impacts and policy responses across countries because it is a global problem.Conventional disasters involve transboundary considerations much less frequently, so the attention typically shifts to the distribution of benefits and costs within a jurisdiction. In both cases distributional information is needed to evaluate the equity of policies and to provide information for public participation in the policy process. This article offers modeling and policy approaches to address these issues.

Isolated communities on small islands are often characterized as vulnerable and marginalized. We studied the recent history of Laingpatehi, a village on Ruang Island off the north coast of Sulawesi, Indonesia to show that the marginalization-vulnerability nexus can be offset by capacity and social cohesion to enable sustainable livelihoods. The island has been impacted by volcanic eruptions,earthquakes, and competition for marine resources from mainland-based fishermen. The community has shown a remarkable ability to cope and prosper in the face of a series of external hazards. We used a sustainable livelihoods approach to identify the assets that enabled the villagers to cope. Strong social cohesion was central to the ability to organize the community and confront hazards. A diversified livelihood strategy drawing on the small island environment and its coastal and marine resources, income generating activities in a distant satellite village, and significant remittances from employment in other parts of Indonesia underpinned people's capacities to face hazards.Government assistance played a supporting role. The case of Laingpatehi demonstrates how remoteness, rather than being a source of vulnerability, can provide access to existing resources and facilitate innovation. Disaster risk reduction strategies should focus more on reinforcing these existing capacities to deal with hazards and less on physical protection and postdisaster responses.

One relatively novel way of assessing the characteristics and limitations of resilience and vulnerability(R&V)is undertaken in this article by investigating a growing alternative paradigm—loss and damage(L&D)policy.The idea of L&D as an emerging policy may be surprising to many in the disaster risk management community,and so we first outline the origins of this trend,and then explore the potential benefits and pitfalls of adopting it.This short article represents our preliminary opinions and observations regarding this reintroduction of a longestablished concept.We also present results from a very brief peer-group survey on some of the first immediate reactions towards L&D policy.At this early stage,this article cannot offer a full-fledged analysis,but our reflections may serve as a starting point to encourage further discussion.

This article addresses resilience and vulnerability as two prominent concepts within disaster risk science. The authors provide an overview of current uses and bene?ts of and challenges to resilience and vulnerability concepts for disaster risk management(DRM). The article summarizes the evolution of these concepts and of attempts to de?ne them precisely,and addresses the potential bene?ts of conceptual vagueness.The usage and conception of resilience and vulnerability within a selection of strategies and legislations in DRM are compared. Complementing this analysis of disaster risk research and management practice, a survey identi?es some of the bene?ts of and challenges to the concepts of resilience and vulnerability as seen by a peer-community. Synthesizing the three approaches, we conclude that a certain conceptual and methodological ‘‘haze'' prevails, which hampers the transfer of information and ?ndings within disaster risk science, from science to practice, and vice versa. But this vagueness offers opportunities for communication between disaster risk science, policy, and practice. Overall, evaluations of the resilience and vulnerability concepts are lacking, which demands the development of criteria to identify and assess the challenges to and bene?ts of resilience and vulnerability for DRM.

A natural hazard-related disaster event often causes a series of secondary disasters, forming a disaster chain. Modeling the evolution of disaster chains in multihazard scenarios is crucial for risk governance and urban resilience. However, existing multi-hazard models are limited by complex model design and fixed disaster types, making it impossible to ensure flexible reactions to complex and diverse scenarios. This study presents a disaster management system for disaster model service chain(DMSC) to implement interoperable multi-hazard modeling. To achieve efficient model interaction in the DMSC, a management module is designed to normalize heterogeneous single-hazard models based on disaster system theory and the Open Geospatial Consortium standards, enabling them to be accessible,reusable, and interoperable. The normalized models are then adaptively orchestrated through an orchestration module to establish optimal executable DMSCs for different multihazard scenarios. Taking an earthquake disaster chain as a case study, we demonstrate that the disaster management system shows stable and flexible performance for multihazard modeling.

Resilience has become a cornerstone for risk management and disaster reduction. However, it has evolved extensively both etymologically and conceptually in time and across scientific disciplines. The concept has been(re)shaped by the evolution of research and practice efforts. Considered the opposite of vulnerability for a long time, resilience was first defined as the ability to resist,bounce back, cope with, and recover quickly from the impacts of hazards. To avoid the possible return to conditions of vulnerability and exposure to hazards, the notions of post-disaster development, transformation, and adaptation(build back better) and anticipation, innovation,and proactivity(bounce forward) were then integrated.Today, resilience is characterized by a multitude of components and several classifications. We present a selection of 25 components used to define resilience, and an interesting linkage emerges between these components and the dimensions of risk management(prevention, preparedness,response, and recovery), offering a perspective to strengthen resilience through the development of capacities. Despite its potential, resilience is subject to challenges regarding its operationalization, effectiveness, measurement, credibility, equity, and even its nature. Nevertheless,it offers applicability and opportunities for local communities as well as an interdisciplinary look at global challenges.

This article examines the impact of catastrophic hurricane events on income distribution in hurricane states in the United States. Media claims have been made and the perception created that the most damaging impact of hurricanes is on the lowest income population in the affected states. If these claims are true, they may have serious implications for the insurance industry and government policy makers. We develop a panel data, fixed effects econometric model that includes hurricane-impacted states as cross-sections using annual data for a period of almost 100 years. The Gini coefficient is used as a measure of income inequality, and is a function of normalized hurricane economic damages, gross domestic product(GDP), a set of socioeconomic variables that serves as a control, time trend, and cross-sectional dummy variables.Findings indicate that for every 100 billion US dollars in hurricane economic damages there is an increase in income inequality by 5.4 % as measured by Gini coefficient.Political, sociodemographic, and economic variables are also significant. These include such variables as the political party controlling the U.S. Senate, the proportion of nonwhite population by state, and GDP. Time trend is a positive and significant variable, suggesting an increase in income inequality over time. There are significant differences among the states included in the study. Our results demonstrate that different segments of the population are differently impacted by hurricanes and suggest how that differential impact could be considered in future government policies and business decisions, particularly those made by the insurance industry.

The evolution in knowledge and application of disaster risk reduction in the 25 years of global cooperation on this issue has been uneven. While advances in knowledge have improved our understanding of the full nature of risk—the combination of hazards meeting vulnerability—the application of such knowledge has not been conducive to the development of institutional and technical mechanisms to address the full range of risk elements. Governance of risk(policies, legislation, and organizational arrangements) still focuses largely on preparing to respond to the hazards and planning for recovery. This leaves largely unattended the vulnerability component of risk, which is the only component on which change can be effected.Governance arrangements, risk assessments, early warning systems, and other institutional and technical capacities still concentrate on natural hazards and this is the main change that remains to be substantively addressed.

A major challenge in enhancing the resilience of communities stems from current approaches used to identify needs and strategies that build the capacity of jurisdictions to mitigate loss and improve recovery. A new generation of resilience-based planning processes has emerged in the last several years that integrate goals of community well-being and identity into recovery-based performance measurement frameworks. Specific tools and refined guidance are needed to facilitate evidence-based development of recovery estimates. This article presents the participatory modeling process, a planning system designed to develop recovery-based resilience measurement frameworks for community resilience planning initiatives. Stakeholder engagement is infused throughout the participatory modeling process by integrating disaster recovery simulation modeling into community resilience planning. Within the process, participants get a unique opportunity to work together to deliberate on community concerns through facilitated participatory modeling. The participatory modeling platform combines the DESaster recovery simulation model and visual analytics interfaces.DESaster is an open source Python Library for creating discrete event simulations of disaster recovery. The simulation model was developed using a human-centered design approach whose goal is to be open, modular, and extensible. The process presented in this article is the first participatory modeling approach for analyzing recovery to aid creation of community resilience measurement frameworks.

This article addresses the increasing need for participatory approaches to disaster reduction at the community level. Based on the author's 30-year engagement in the mountainous community Chizu Town, Tottori Prefecture, Japan, a unique participatory approach called ‘‘Zeroto-One Movement'' has been strategically studied. The study areas are found to have adaptively increased their coping capacity. Their unique participatory process is shown to be an adaptive process for SMART community governance under persistent disruptive risks—‘‘S'' represents small-sized and survivability-minded, ‘‘M'' modestscale and multiple-stakeholder involved, ‘‘A'' anticipatory and adaptive, ‘‘R'' risk-concerned and responsive, and ‘‘T''is transformative. Finally, the Case Station-Field Campus scheme is proposed to serve as a platform for studying the adaptive processes over a long period of time.

Space systems have become a key enabler for a wide variety of applications that are vital to the functioning of advanced societies. The trend is one of quantitative and qualitative increase of this dependence, so much so that space systems have been described as a new example of critical infrastructure. This article argues that the existence of critical space infrastructures implies the emergence of a new category of disasters related to disruption risks. We inventory those risks and make policy recommendations for what is, ultimately, a resilience governance issue.

Enterprises play a vital role in emergency management, but few studies have considered the strategy choices behind such participation or the collaborative relationship with the government. This study contended that enterprises have at least three strategies regarding emergency management: non-participation, short-term participation, and long-term participation. We constructed a two-stage evolutionary game model to explore the behavioral evolution rules and evolutionary stability strategies of the government and enterprises, and employed numerical simulation to analyze how various factors influence the strategy selection of the government and enterprises. The results show that if and only if the utility value of participation is greater than 0, an enterprise will participate in emergency management. The evolutionary game then enters the second stage, during which system stability is affected by a synergistic relationship between participation cost, reputation benefit, and government subsidies, and by an incremental relationship between emergency management benefit, government subsidies, and emergency training cost. This study provides a new theoretical perspective for research on collaborative emergency management, and the results provide important references for promoting the performance of collaborative emergency management.

This article provides a literature review of economic growth theories and identifies the implications of growth theories in addressing potential impacts of uncertain shocks, that is natural disasters. The extant literature seems inconclusive: some find positive effects of natural disasters on economic growth and others suggest either negative or no effect as such. Using a large panel dataset of 187 countries observed from 1960 to 2010, this article shows that the total number of people affected by floods significantly decreases the annual GDP per capita growth rate, whereas the death toll from floods has no substantial effect on the annual GDP per capita growth rate. One thousand in every one million people affected by floods decrease the GDP per capita growth rate by 0.005 %. This result is plausible, as floods are likely to create havoc in people's livelihoods rather than claim a high human death toll. The article outlines future directions of research in the field of natural disaster augmented growth empirics.

Premium ratemaking is an important issue to guarantee insurance balance of payments. Most ratemaking methods require large samples of long-term loss data or farm-level yield data, which are often unavailable in developing countries. This study develops a crop insurance ratemaking method with survey data. The method involves a questionnaire survey on characteristic yield information(average yield, high yield, and low yield) of farming households' cropland. After compensating for random error, the probability distributions of farm-level yields are simulated with characteristic yields based on the linear additive model. The premium rate is calculated based on Monte Carlo yield simulation results. This method was applied to Dingxing County, North China to arrive at the insurance loss cost ratio and calculate the necessary premium rate. The method proposed in this study could serve as a feasible technique for crop insurance ratemaking inregions that lack sufficient long-term yield data, especially in developing countries with smallholder agriculture.

The World Landslide Forum is a triennial mainstream conference that gathers together the scientific and technological community, policymakers, industry actors, public officials, and other stakeholders, who deal with the understanding and management of landslide disaster risk. The establishment of the ISDR-ICL Sendai Partnerships 2015–2025 for Global Promotion of Understanding and Reducing Landslide Disaster Risk in Sendai during the 2015 World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction(WCDRR) enabled the landslide science and technology community support the implementation of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030 in order to prevent new and reduce existing disaster risk.The 4th World Landslide Forum(WLF4) was held in Ljubljana, Slovenia, from 29 May to 2 June 2017 and discussed the progress of landslide research and risk reduction for advancing the culture of living with natural hazards. A high-level panel composed of United Nations officials, international stakeholders, and national organizations sought to identify the best mechanisms to be developed by the community of the International Consortium on Landslides(ICL). The objective was to advance the implementation of the ISDR-ICL Sendai Partnerships,to achieve a better commitment among partners, and to provide substantive services to developing countries. During the WLF4, the 2017 Ljubljana Declaration on Landslide Risk Reduction was adopted and the concept framework of the Kyoto 2020 Commitment was endorsed.

Communicating meteorological uncertainty allows earlier provision of information on possible future events. The desired benefit is to enable the end-user to start with preparatory protective actions at an earlier time based on the end-user's own risk assessment and decision threshold. The presented results of an interview study,conducted with 27 members of German civil protection authorities, show that developments in meteorology and weather forecasting do not necessarily fit the current practices of German emergency services. These practices are mostly carried out based on alarms and ground truth in a superficial reactive manner, rather than on anticipation based on prognoses or forecasts. Emergency managers cope with uncertainty by collecting, comparing, and blending different information about an uncertain event and its uncertain outcomes within the situation assessment to validate the information. Emergency managers struggle most with an increase of emergency calls and missions due to the impacts of severe weather. Because of the additional expenditures, the weather event makes it even harder for them to fulfill their core duties. These findings support the need for impact-based warnings.

Information sharing systems are a critical component of emergency response—especially in campus attack situations that unfold very rapidly. The design of effective information sharing systems is often difficult,however, due to a lack of data on these assault events. This work takes an agent-based approach to simulate three campus emergency information sharing system design alternatives in the context of a college campus knife attack,and incorporates data from on-campus student surveys and parameter tuning experiments. Alternatives are evaluated according to:(1) improved student attack response outcomes; and(2) effective institutional response to the attack.The results confirm that increased awareness supports rapid emergency reporting, but an important gap exists between students' awareness and their ability to respond effectively,which depends on a number of campus-specific factors. A strong positive impact is seen from safe and efficient information sharing with authorities. This impact depends largely on reporting system implementation qualities, as opposed to campus-specific factors. On a campus in China,WeChat was used as a basis for messaging models. The simulation results show a 9% drop in casualties and a 22%faster police response time from a text-based reporting system using ‘‘base'' WeChat features instead of traditional phone reporting. Our results also project a 30% drop in casualties and 52% faster police response time using a system designed around a WeChat Mini Program or standalone campus emergency reporting app. These outcomes suggest a number of recommendations for improving outdated campus emergency information-sharing systems and response strategies.

A growing body of evidence underscores that social capital mitigates the impact of natural hazards such as floods. But we know less about the distribution of social ties in developing countries regularly hit by shocks. Our study examined the differences between demographic groups in South Punjab, Pakistan affected by the 2010 floods, comparing respondents' levels of social capital measured through proxies such as received social support, perceived community cohesion, accessibility to leadership, and general level of trust. We carried out univariate and multivariate analyses of factors including gender, education, occupation, landholding, family size, annual income, number of livestock, and home stability. Using data collected in face-to-face interviews with 450 flood survivors, our analysis showed no statistically significant difference in the flood victims' scores on all four scales based on gender and family size. However,education, occupation, landholding, annual income, and home stability statistically correlated with levels of social capital. Respondents with high levels of education, high levels of land, higher home stability, and a government job typically had higher scores in all four measurements of social ties. Our results show strong inequality in the distribution of social capital, with better connections and assistance coming to those who already have better socioeconomic positions in society.

This study statistically evaluated the characteristics of induced earthquakes by geothermal power plants(GPPs)and generated a probabilistic model for simulating stochastic seismic events.Four well-known power plant zones were selected worldwide from the United States,Germany,France,and New Zealand.The operational condition information,as well as the corresponding earthquake catalogs recorded in the vicinity of GPPs,were gathered from their commencement date.The statistical properties of events were studied elaborately.By using this proposed database,a probabilistic model was developed capable of generating the number of induced seismic events per month,their magnitude,focal depth,and distance from the epicenter to the power plant,randomly.All of these parameters are simulated as a function of power plant injection rate.Generally speaking,the model,introduced in this study,is a tool for engineers and scientists interested in the seismic risk assessment of built environments prone to induced seismicity produced by GPPs operation.