Natural disaster

Nepal has a complicated geophysical structure that is prone to various kinds of disasters. Nepal ranks the most disaster-prone country in the world and has experienced several natural calamities, causing high property and life losses. Disasters are caused by natural processes, but may be increased by human activities. The overall objective of this paper is to analyze the disaster risk profile and existing legal framework of Nepal. The paper is based on secondary data sources. Major causative factors for floods and landslides are heavy and continuous rainfall, outburst floods, infrastructure failure, and deforestation. Historical data of natural disasters in Nepal show that water-induced disasters have killed hundreds of people and affected thousands every year. Likewise, properties worth millions of US dollars have been damaged. There is an increasing trend toward landslides and floods, which will likely continue to rise if proper intervention is not taken. A positive correlation between water-induced disasters and deaths has been observed. Nepal has a poor Index for Risk Management (INFORM). There are fluctuations in the recording of death data caused by flood and landslides. The Government of Nepal focuses more on the response phase than on the preparedness phase of disasters. The existing disaster management act seems to be weak and outdated. There is a gap in current legal procedure, so the country is in dire need of a comprehensive legal framework. The new proposed act seems to take a much broader approach to disaster management. With a long-term vision of managing disaster risk in the country, the Government of Nepal has begun the Nepal Risk Reduction Consortium (NRRC) in collaboration with development and humanitarian partners. In order to improve the vulnerability of Nepal, an early warning system, mainstreaming disasters with development, research activities, community participation and awareness, and a rainfall monitoring system must all be a focus.

Abstr act The Great East Japan Earthquake and subsequent tsunami on March 11 were a reminder of Japan's huge earthquake risk and need for preparedness. The northeastern part of the country witnessed devastating human suffering and physical damage. The destructive impact of the earthquake has enhanced consumer's earthquake preparedness even in unaffected areas. This paper uses unique survey data collected after the earthquake to study how consumers reacted to this catastrophic event. We find that self-reported, perceived preparedness for natural disasters has significantly improved even among low-income households after March 11, but that post-quake intentions for more specific risk mitigation activities were systematically associated with household income and wealth levels. High income households are more likely to plan purchase of earthquake insurance or to conduct seismic retrofitting following the March 11th earthquake, indicating that the recent events might have widened the gap in disaster preparedness between rich and poor.

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The purpose of this article was to describe a model of clinical/disaster psychology and illustrate how one psychologist applied training in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The primary focus of the article relates to training graduate students of clinical psychology and assisting evacuees, public education and dissemination, and research. Psychologists may find themselves in similar positions when disasters occur in the future, and the linkage of research and theory with anecdotal accounts may provide mental health professionals with ideas regarding avenues of training to pursue and the various roles that may be served in times of disaster. Recommendations are offered to training programs with regard to infusing tenets of clinical/disaster psychology into their curriculum. This article describes a variety of strategies that a psychologist may pursue to assist in the mental health response to natural disasters. It is primarily based on my perspective (SES) 1 as an Assistant Professor in Clinical Psychology at The University of Mississippi who arrived at this position with specialized doctoral training in clinical/disaster psychology from The University of South Dakota's Disaster Mental Health Institute (DMHI). I hope that my experiences will inform training programs and mental health professionals about how clinical/ disaster training may be pursued and applied when a natural disaster occurs. Training in Clinical/Disaster Psychology Training programs and their directors should consider both formal and informal training opportunities for those interested in preparing to provide disaster assistance. Doctoral training in a formal program such as the Disaster Mental Health Institute (DMHI) at The University of South Dakota (http://usd.edu/dmhi/) is an important way to gain preparatory training. The DMHI offers a variety of training programs, including a doctoral Specialty Track in Clinical/Disaster Psychology, which is earned conjointly with the Clinical Training Program's Ph.D. degree. Students take disaster-related coursework, STEFAN E. SCHULENBERG received his doctorate in clinical psychology from The University of South Dakota, where he also specialized in clinical/disaster psychology through the University's Disaster Mental Health Institute. Dr. Schulenberg is an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at The University of Mississippi. His research interests include clinical/disaster psychology, psychological assessment, test validation, and logotherapy. KIRSTEN A. DELLINGER received her doctorate in sociology from the University of Texas at Austin. She is an associate professor of sociology in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at The University of Mississippi. Her research interests include gender and sexuality in the workplace and qualitative methods. ANGELA J. KOESTLER received her doctorate in counseling psychology from the University of Southern Mississippi. She currently works in private practice at the Nordal Clinic in Vicksburg, Mississippi. Her clinical and research interests include the treatment of chronic pain and natural disaster response. ANN MARIE K. KINNELL received her doctorate in sociology from Indiana University at Bloomington. She is an assistant professor of sociology in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at the University of Southern Mississippi. Her current research examines the experience of a team of researchers implementing a survey in the context of a natural disaster. DAVID A. SWANSON received his doctorate in sociology from the University of Hawaii, where he specialized in population studies and worked at the East West Population Institute. He is a professor of sociology in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at The University of Missis-sippi. His research interests include applied demography, forecasting and estimation methods, and mortality differentials.

Over the last century Louisiana has lost an alarming amount of coastal wetlands to coastal erosion. Natural disasters and manmade solutions to problems alike have contributed to this national tragedy. A vast amount of grey literature documenting the history of land loss in Louisiana has been produced, but never collocated for researchers' use. The Louisiana Coastal Grey Literature Project endeavored to locate, organize and provide access to these valuable hidden treasures.

Hurricane Andrew blasted through the southern tip of Florida in August 1992, damaging or destroying tens of thousands of homes and forcing hundreds of thousands of persons to move at least temporarily to different places of residence. The hurricane not only disrupted ...

This study compared the centrifuge and pressure plate methods with appropriate run durations. Samples collected in tropical soils located in Brazil along a 10-km local hydrosequence across the Cerrado-Amazonia transition (Set 1) and along a 350-km regional toposequence across the Cerrado region (Set 2) were selected to compare and discuss statistically the similarity of the soil water retention recorded by using the pressure plate and centrifuge methods. The results showed good agreement (R 2 = 0.99) for the 1:1 comparison of measured pointwise soil water content values (Set 1) as well as for the fitted soil water content curves by the van Genuchten model using data points obtained with the two methods (Set 2). Thus, the centrifuge method should be considered as an appropriate method for determining soil water retention properties not only because of similar results with the pressure plate method but also because it is much less time consuming.

The purpose of this paper is to compare and contrast the experiences from four major recipients of food aid (India, Bangladesh, Ethiopia and Zambia) in normal time and after a natural disaster and draw implications for the design of effective food aid and food security policies in Africa. The study summarizes the food and agricultural policies and medium-term outcomes regarding food production, trade, markets, consumption and safety nets, as well as the policy responses to food emergencies. The experiences of the study countries suggest that food aid that supports building of production and market enhancing infrastructure, is timed to avoid adverse price effects on producers, and is targeted to food insecure households can play a positive role in enhancing food security. However, food aid is not the only, or in many cases, the most efficient means of addressing food insecurity. In many cases private markets can more effectively address shortfalls in food availability and cash transf...

In 2006, Mexico became the first transition country to transfer part of its public-sector natural catastrophe risk to the international reinsurance and capital markets. The Mexican case is of considerable interest to highly exposed transition and developing countries, many of which are considering similar transactions. Risk financing instruments can assure governments of sufficient post-disaster capital to provide emergency response, disaster relief to the affected population and repair public infrastructure. The costs of financial instruments, however, can greatly exceed expected losses, and for this reason it is important to closely examine their benefits and alternatives. This paper analyzes the Mexican case from the perspective of the risk cedent (the Ministry of Finance and Public Credit), which was informed by analyses provided by the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA). The rationale for a government to insure its contingent liabilities is presented along with the fiscal, legal and institutional context of the Mexican transaction. Using publicly available data, the paper scrutinizes the choice the authorities faced between two different risk-transfer instruments: reinsurance and a catastrophe bond. Making use of IIASA's catastrophe simulation model (CATSIM), this financial risk management decision is analyzed within the context of a public investment decision. r

Recoveries after recent earthquakes in the U.S. and Japan have shown that large welfare gains can be achieved by reshaping current emergency plans as incentive-compatible contracts. We apply tools from the mechanisms design literature to show ways to integrate economic incentives into the management of natural disasters and discuss issues related to the application to seismic event recovery. The focus is on restoring lifeline services such as the water, gas, transportation, and electric power networks. We put forward decisional procedures that an uninformed planner could employ to set repair priorities and help to coordinate lifeline firms in the post-earthquake reconstruction.

Introduction: Flood disaster is a natural disaster that has unexpectedly occurred again. Community cooperation in terms of managing flood and focusing on families’ needs has become more systematic. It is important for a household to be prepared in any disaster. One of the preparations that should be done is the stockpiling of emergency supplies or flood supply kits during evacuation. This study aimed to develop a specific disaster kit for households for evacuation during a flood disaster based on cultural context. Methods: Data were collected from 75 key informants from every level of households that really have a great experience during the flood disaster that helping family packing for a living needs before evacuation. The development of the disaster kit based on cultural needs and all their views, needs, experiences, challenges, frustration and happiness was obtained from the interview sessions. Results: There are five themes that emerged from this research related to developing ...

The mitigation of natural disasters essentially depends upon the identification and adjustment of human ecological processes contributing to conditions of vulnerability. The analysis of vulnerability requires the local study of political social and economic processes which have contributed, and are contributing, to a vulnerable condition in a hazardous environment. One of the few similarities between Tonga and Algeria is a continuing experience of natural disaster after independence from previous colonial administrations. In two very different but complementary projects, ways are identified for the adjustment of assumed or inherited priorities for development, to take practical account of continuing hazards. The high vulnerability of rural areas is a factor common to both countries, as well as to many others. The analysis of conditions and systems in two dissimilar countries may have begun a process of implementation, one which must necessarily follow theoretical analysis for the realisation of practical value. The degree and nature of disaster impact is conditioned as much by normally prevailing conditions and systems as by the manifestation of natural hazard. Direct experience of hazardous environments, and of problems caused by disaster, must be made to result in the creation of multi-disciplinary environmental policies for disaster mitigation, inclusive of small scale development and education and training programmes for continued implementation. Comprehensive and simultaneous strategies for disaster avoidance, disaster resistance, and disaster accomodation must be made integral components of local development planning.

Despite a growing literature on the collaborative reminiscing of mothers and children, little is known about the kinds of things mothers and children discuss as they recollect shared traumatic experiences. Do mother-child recollections of a traumatic event differ from their recollections of more benign events? To address this question, mother-child dyads (N ¼ 29) discussed a traumatic event, namely a devastating tornado, and two nontraumatic events (one that preceded and one that followed the tornado). Each dyad discussed all three events 4-months post-tornado and again 6 months later. Whereas conversations about both event types (traumatic and nontraumatic) varied with childrenÕs age, dyadsÕ recollections of the tornado were significantly longer, more narratively coherent, and more complete than their recollections of nontraumatic events. These differences largely endured over the 6-month retention interval.

Natural disaster of tsunami have occurred in Indonesia, Thailand, India, the Maldives and Sri Lanka after an earthquake measuring 9.0 on the Richter scale erupted, on Dec 26, 2004 of Sunday morning centered near the Indonesian island of Sumatra. The tsunamis washed away fishing villages and resorts throughout the region. The biggest tsunami on history has hit Aceh on Dec 26, 2004. In Banda Aceh as well as several coastal cities in Aceh, many people are not aware and care about the sign of nature before wave came. On the contrary, in a small island Simelue, the local people were aware of the sign of nature, and they know how to avoid the incoming wave and where to evacuate. The tsunami warning can be circulated via established communication systems to issue timely alarms to permit evacuation of coastal areas. Such high-technology warning system is surely needed high funding. Moreover, the sign of nature from animal behavior can be used potentially as a low-technology warning system t...

Large-scale anthropogenic changes to the natural environment, including land-use change, climate change, and the deterioration of ecosystem services, are all accelerating. These changes are interacting to generate five major emerging public health threats that endanger the health and well-being of hundreds of millions of people. These threats include increasing exposure to infectious disease, water scarcity, food scarcity, natural disasters, and population displacement. Taken together, they may represent the greatest public health challenge humanity has faced. There is an urgent need to improve our understanding of the dynamics of each of these threats: the complex interplay of factors that generate them, the characteristics of populations that make them particularly vulnerable, and the identification of which populations are at greatest risk from each of these threats. Such improved understanding would be the basis for stepped-up efforts at modeling and mapping global vulnerability...

Vulnerability is the degree to which a system or unit is likely to expierence harm due to exposure to perturbations or stress. The vulnerability concept emerged from the recognition that a focus on perturbations alone was insufficient for understanding responses of and impacts on the peoples, ecosystems, and places exposed to such perturbations. With vulnerability, it became clear that the ability of a system to attenuate stresses or cope with consequences constituted an important determinant of system response, and ultimately, of system impact. While vulnerability can expand our ability to understand how harm to people and ecosystems emerges and how it can be reduced, to date vulnerability itself has been conceptually hampered. It tends to address single stresses or perturbations on a system, pays inadequate attention to the full range of conditions that may render the system sensitive to perturbations or permit it to cope, accords short shrift to how exposed systems themselves may act to amplify, attenuate, or even create stresses, and does not emphasize the importance of human-environment interactions when defining the system exposed to stresses. An extended framework for vulnerability designed to meet these needs is emerging from a joint research team at Clark University, the Stockholm Environment Institute, Harvard University, and Stanford University, of which several authors on this paper are part. This paper is a first attempt to explore the utility of this extended vulnerability framework, by conducting a preliminary application of it to three global coastal cities with regard to their vulnerabilities to climate hazards. While this new framework needs further refinement and testing, and some methodological obstacles remain, our research suggests there is benefit from using the extended framework to guide assessments of vulnerability. The framework illuminated further system characteristics that, in unique combinations, create place-based vulnerabilities to climate hazards. The framework's complexity, however, required us to conduct outside the framework several analyses comparing bundles of stresses to which the systems were exposed, and system characteristics that give rise to vulnerabilities, to uncover some of the most insightful results.

It is generally understood that as a country develops, it devotes greater resources to safety, including implementing precautionary measures designed to reduce the impacts of natural disasters. With the recent devastating human and economic impacts of the tsunami in Southeast Asia ...

I n the aftermath of many natural and man-made disasters, people often wonder why those affected were underprepared, especially when the disaster was the result of known or regularly occurring hazards (e.g., hurricanes). We study one contributing factor: prior near-miss experiences. Near misses are events that have some nontrivial expectation of ending in disaster but, by chance, do not. We demonstrate that when near misses are interpreted as disasters that did not occur, people illegitimately underestimate the danger of subsequent hazardous situations and make riskier decisions (e.g., choosing not to engage in mitigation activities for the potential hazard). On the other hand, if near misses can be recognized and interpreted as disasters that almost happened, this will counter the basic "near-miss" effect and encourage more mitigation. We illustrate the robustness of this pattern across populations with varying levels of real expertise with hazards and different hazard contexts (household evacuation for a hurricane, Caribbean cruises during hurricane season, and deep-water oil drilling). We conclude with ideas to help people manage and communicate about risk.

Assessing the importance of transportation facilities is an increasingly growing topic of interest to federal and state transportation agencies. In the wake of recent terrorist attacks and recurring manmade and natural disasters, significant steps are needed to improve security at both state and metropolitan level. This paper proposes a heuristic procedure using concepts of complex networks science to assess the importance of highway transportation networks using travel time as the performance measure to assess criticality. We demonstrate the proposed technique both in a theoretical network (Sioux Falls network) and in a built-up network to assess the criticality of the major infrastructures that are used to access Manhattan in an AM peak hour. The results demonstrate the efficacy of the procedure to determine critical links in a transportation network.

This paper describes the Project "Educational Notebooks: Natural Disasters and Geotechnologies" which main objective is to develop educational material about natural disasters and geotechnologies in order to inform and qualify decision makers, school teachers and the community about and causes, consequences and prevention actions to monitor, prevent and mitigate the most commons and important kinds of natural disasters in Brazil and South America. There will be developed 21 Educational Notebooks about the different kinds of natural disasters and how to use the geotechnologies to prevent and mitigate them. Up to now three educational bookes were published and they are available for download in the GEODESASTRES-SUL homepage. 2483 4 próximo artigo

This paper examines the relationship between community preparedness and response to natural disaster and their level and pattern of community development. This is done by investigating preparation and response to the 1997 Red River Flood by three rural communities in Manitoba, Canada. The communities were selected because of their different ethnic mix and associated level and pattern of community development. The hypothesis was supported that the level and pattern of community development affect community capacity to respond to flooding. Communities characterised by higher levels of physical, human and social capital were better prepared and more effective responders to the flood. However, where the pattern of community development was characterised by high levels of social capital, decision-making processes were complicated.

Hurricanes are the costliest natural disasters in the United States. Understanding both hurricane frequencies and intensities is a topic of great interest to meteorologists, decision makers and the general public alike. Previous research has suggested that damage has been dramatically increasing within the last two decades, in part due to rapid increase of population and wealth in coastal regions (Blake et al., 2005; Emanuel, 2005;

The National Incident Management System (NIMS) was developed so that responders from different jurisdictions and disciplines could work together to respond to natural disasters and emergencies, including acts of terrorism. The NIMS document provides a set of guidelines about practices but it does not spell of the design requirements for information systems to support the management of critical incidents. Though

In both developed and developing countries, there are basically two main sources of economic instability: exogenous shocks and inappropriate policies. Exogenous shock (terms-of-trade shocks, natural disasters and capital flow reversals) can throw an economy into disequilibrium and therefore require compensatory action. On the other hand, a disequilibrium can be self-induced by poor economic macroeconomic management such as an excessively loose fiscal stance. Therefore, economic crisis are often the result of external shocks and poor management. While the worlds of agriculture are vast, varied and rapidly changing, with the right policies and supportive investments at local, national and global levels, today's agriculture offers new opportunities to hundreds of millions of rural poor to move out of poverty. Similarly, the construction industry is an essential contributor to the process of development. Roads, dams, irrigation works, schools, houses, hospitals, factories and other construction works are the physical foundations on which development efforts and improved living standards are established. This paper there argued that an efficient and functional fiscal policy can have a direct impact on the poor through the distributional implications of tax policy as well as public spending. However, the genuine reformer is distinguished by courage which is that signal that separates th e genuine reformer (undertaking transition) from the weak government (hoping to disguise itself).

Millennium development goals Human development index Data envelopment analysis Principal component analysis a b s t r a c t This research develops a framework to estimate the relative efficiency of developing countries in utilizing both their domestic and external resources to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. The analysis highlights distinct efficiency differences across lending groups and geographic regions e.g. between Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. The performance of regions exposed to natural disasters and political violence need to be analyzed individually and risk management ought to be an integrated part of development policy. The gap between the Millennium Development Goals and human rights approaches is then examined. Finally, we qualify a country's performance level as potentially sustainable in terms of human, social and environmental welfare, in turn searching for realistic benchmarks and intermediate targets for the relatively inefficient countries. Principal component analysis in combination with data envelopment analysis was applied to solve the problem of efficiency overestimation with multidimensional scaling used to present the issue graphically. In summary, the aim of this work is not to rank countries in a league table rather to provide a framework that combines economic, environmental and social issues in order to search for sustainable, pragmatic benchmarks, pushing the boundaries of the Human Development Index.

This article uses the Bradford Hill criteria for assessing causal associations to examine the nature of the relationship between PTSD and alcohol abuse. A series of studies are presented which examine this relationship. A cross-sectional study of 2,501 subjects in a community sample examined the relationship between at-risk drinking and 11 types of traumatic events. The traumatic events associated with at-risk drinking were involvement in life threatening accidents, witnessing severe injury, rape, being the victim of serious physical assault using the CIDI. In a longitudinal study of 469 firefighters exposed to a natural disaster, PTSD was associated with both an increase and decrease in alcohol consumption and PTSD rather than exposure accounted for the changes in drinking behaviour. In three other populations, psychiatric inpatients, motor accident victims and female prisoners, the association between PTSD and alcohol abuse emphasised the clinical and public health importance of this relationship. The available evidence does nevertheless support the causal nature of this relationship. Other risk factors are necessary to predict alcohol abuse following exposure to traumatic events, although exposure to traumatic events can be caused by alcohol abuse.

Bangladesh is li:equently visited by natural disasters such as tropical cyclones, storm surges, floods, droughts, tornadoes, and "norwesters." Of these, tropical cyclones originating in the Bay of Bengal and associated storm surges are the most disastrous. There are various reasons for the disastrous effects of cyclones and storm surges in Bangladesh. Superimposed onthese disastrous effects, climate change and any consequent sea level rise are likely to add fuel to the fire. Arise intemperature is likely to change cyclone activity: cyclone intensity, if not cyclone frequency, may increase. As a result, storm surges may also increase substantially. Sea level rise, an increase in cyclone intensity, and consequent increases in storm surge heights will have disastrous effects on a deltaic country like Bangladesh, which is not much above the mean sea level. This paper examines the climatology of cyclones in the Bay &Bengal for the last 110 years and trends in cyclone frequency and intensity. The phenomenon of storm surges in the Bay of Bengal is examined along with the primary reasons for the severity of storm surges in Bangladesh. The paper discusses both qualitatively and quantitatively the impacts &rises in temperature on tropical cyclone intensity in Bangladesh. With the use of a mathematical model developed for the simulation ofstonn surges along the Bangladesh coast, various scenarios of storm surges are developed. Using lower and upper bounds of sea surface temperature rise of 2 and 4°C and of sea level rise of 0.3 and 1.0 m (according to the Intergovemmental Panel on Climate Change standard), the model simulates the maximum possible surges that are likely to occur under these conditions.

This paper describes an integrated location-distribution model for coordinating logistics support and evacuation operations in disaster response activities. Logistics planning in emergencies involves dispatching commodities (e.g., medical materials and personnel, specialised rescue equipment and rescue teams, food, etc.) to distribution centres in affected areas and evacuation and transfer of wounded people to emergency units. During the initial response time it is also necessary to set up temporary emergency centers and shelters in affected areas to speed up medical care for less heavily wounded survivors. In risk mitigation studies for natural disasters, possible sites where these units can be situated are specified according to risk based urban structural analysis. Logistics coordination in disasters involves the selection of sites that result in maximum coverage of medical need in affected areas. Another important issue that arises in such emergencies is that medical personnel who are on duty in nearby hospitals have to be re-shuffled to serve both temporary and permanent emergency units. Thus, an optimal medical personnel allocation must be determined among these units. The proposed model also considers this issue.

Given a collection of Boolean spatio-temporal(ST) event types, the cascading spatio-temporal pattern (CSTP) discovery process finds partially ordered subsets of event-types whose instances are located together and occur in stages. For example, analysis of crime datasets may reveal frequent occurrence of misdemeanors and drunk driving after bar closings on weekends and after large gatherings such as football games. Discovering CSTPs from ST datasets is important for application domains such as public safety (e.g. crime attractors and generators) and natural disaster planning(e.g. hurricanes). However, CSTP discovery is challenging for several reasons, including both the lack of computationally efficient, statistically meaningful metrics to quantify interestingness, and the large cardinality of candidate pattern sets that are exponential in the number of event types. Existing literature for ST data mining focuses on mining totally ordered sequences or unordered subsets. In contrast, this paper models CSTPs as partially ordered subsets of Boolean ST event types. We propose a new CSTP interest measure (the Cascade Participation Index) that is computationally cheap(O(n 2 ) vs. exponential, where n is the dataset size) as well as statistically meaningful. We propose a novel algorithm exploiting the ST nature of datasets and evaluate filtering strategies to quickly prune uninteresting candidates. We present a case study to find CSTPs from real crime reports and provide a statistical explanation. Experimental results indicate that the proposed multiresolution spatiotemporal(MST) filtering strategy leads to significant savings in computational costs.

Fast-growing, coastal mega cities along China's east coast and the rim of the Cross-Straits region, in particular, are becoming increasingly more vulnerable to potential natural disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis, typhoons, storm surges and floods. The provinces of Shanghai, Guangdong, Fujian, and Zhejiang, as well as Taiwan, are threatened by common disasters. Advancing Cross- Straits ties in mitigating the impact

In the first half of January 2009, the southern Philippine island of Mindanao was overwhelmed by numerous natural disasters caused by the passage of the tail-end of the cold front. This otherwise ordinary weather condition was accompanied by unusually heavy precipitation sustained over a period of several days. This triggered numerous landslides and caused many drainage systems to swell, flooding huge tracts of low lying areas that have not experienced similar events in the recent past. Many communities were caught unprepared for the calamity. The amount and extent of damage reflect both the magnitude of the natural disaster itself and the community's nominal level of disaster-preparedness. In view of the increasing atmospheric moisture levels and the likelihood that global warming will affect the weather patterns, there is a possibility that similar weather disturbances can become more frequent. Therefore, there is an urgent need for disaster risk management programs to be developed or enhanced at the local community level especially in areas most vulnerable to weather-related natural hazards, in light of changing global climatic patterns.

Guía del UsUario Primera parte El riesgo de desastre y estrategias para su reducción Capítulo 1 Reasentamiento de población como medida de reducción de riesgo de desastres Capítulo 1 Para explorar los vínculos entre impacto de desastres y niveles de desarrollo humano ver Bureau for Crisis Prevention and Recovery-United Nations Development Programme (BCPR-UNDP, 2004). El riesgo de desastres y sus estrategias para su reducción Haris Sanahuja Capítulo 1 guía DE REaSENtamiENto PaRa PoBLaCioNES EN RiESgo DE DESaStRE 1. Patrones y tendencias globales en la ocurrencia e impacto de desastres En el ámbito global, existen datos sobre la ocurrencia y el impacto de desastres desde comienzos del siglo xx, gracias a las estadísticas capturadas y sistematizadas en la base de datos Em-Dat (Emergency Events Data Base, por su sigla en inglés) 2. Las estadísticas muestran un aumento creciente en el número de desastres desencadenados por la ocurrencia de amenazas naturales registrados en todo el planeta (gráfico 1.1) 3. 2 La Em-Dat fue iniciada en 1988 por el Centro de investigación en Epidemiología de los Desastres (CRED) con el apoyo de office of US Foreign Disaster assistance (ofda de Usaid). Contiene datos mundiales sobre ocurrencia e impacto de desastres naturales y tecnológicos reportados desde 1900 hasta la actualidad (www.CRED.be). 3 El gráfico 1.1 incluye solo desastres asociados con amenazas hidrometeorológicas y geológicas. Se han excluido del análisis las amenazas biológicas (como epidemias e infestaciones de insectos) por escapar al alcance de esta publicación. gráfico 1.1 Ocurrencia de desastres de origen geológico e hidrometereólogico FuEntE: Em-Dat, the oFDa/CRED international Disaster Database en: www.emdat.be.

On March 11 th 2011, the whole world was taken aback by another tragic experience of Tsunami triggered by a magnitude 9.8 earthquake in Japan. Just few days after that, on March 25 th 2011, another earthquake of magnitude 6.8 hit Myanmar deaths and destructions.

This paper explores the link between human rights and disaster risk reduction. We revisit the notion of a human rights-based approach in the context of natural disasters, analyzing how this concept may contribute to greater accountability and empowerment of those involved in disaster risk reduction. To better understand the processes of empowering rights holders and holding duty bearers into account we adopt legal analytical lenses. By doing so we review four country case studies and their main regulations on disaster risk reduction, taking into account the extent to which they adopt a human rights-based approach. We argue that countries whose legal frameworks allow for community engagement point towards greater community empowerment. Similarly, countries whose legal provisions make possible for holding States accountable for their underperformance in disaster situations suggest greater levels of accountability. We also consider key international human rights instruments binding the...

One of the key roles of a destination marketing organization (DMO) is to portray their destination in such a way that it is both appealing and inviting to their existing and potential tourism market. A challenge faced by a DMO in the regional Victorian destination of Gippsland in Australia, is the fact that they also have to manage unanticipated sudden changes in market perceptions that may occur in response to a disastrous event. The reoccurring natural disasters of this region (fires, floods and drought)—the most recent being the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires, deemed Australia's worst natural disaster in history—make it imperative that DMOs can respond effectively. This article presents the findings of an exploratory research project designed to investigate the tourism market's response to this particular disastrous event. The primary aim of the research was to better understand how a large-scale disaster impacts upon the tourist's destination image and visitation intentions, and the role of the media in these deliberations. Focus group research reveals the post-disaster media interpretations, images, and visitation intentions of intrastate and interstate, regional and metropolitan tourists. Differences are observed in relation to the participants' geographic location and distance from the fires and their understandings of the event, including their reflections on media coverage. Varying perceptions among the participants of the impact of the fires, the travel risk, and subsequent travel intentions are discussed. Managerial implications relating to media management and the refinement of future disaster management strategies are also presented.

This paper presents operational metrics to determine a passenger transportation system's resilience to terrorism. The metrics range from those specific to the number of trips to more holistic measures that include the contribution of these trips directly and indirectly to economic activity. These metrics can aid decision-makers in rendering more informed judgments about resource allocation and how to design a portfolio of security and recovery strategies.