Disasters both natural and human-induced are leading to spiralling costs in terms of human lives, lost livelihoods and damaged assets and businesses. Yet these consequences and the financial and ...human crises that follow catastrophes can often be traced to policies unsuited to the emerging scales of the problems they confront, and the lack of institutional capacity to implement planning and prevention or to manage disasters. This book seeks to overcome this mismatch and to guide development of a more strategic policy and institutional framework.
This updated and revised second edition includes new coverage of climate change adaptation, which has rapidly become central to disaster and emergency planning and management. This is an essential handbook for practitioners across the world seeking to improve the quality, robustness and capacity of their disaster management mechanisms.
There is a growing expectation that volunteers will have a greater role in disaster management in the future compared to the past. This is driven largely by a growing focus on building resilience to ...disasters. At the same time, the wider landscape of volunteering is fundamentally changing in the twenty-first century. This paper considers implications of this changing landscape for the resilience agenda in disaster management, with a focus on Australia. It first reviews major forces and trends impacting on disaster volunteering, highlighting four key developments: the growth of more diverse and episodic volunteering styles, the impact of new communications technology, greater private sector involvement and growing government expectations of and intervention in the voluntary sector. It then examines opportunities in this changing landscape for the Australian emergency management sector across five key strategic areas and provides examples of Australian responses to these opportunities to date. The five areas of focus are: developing more flexible volunteering strategies, harnessing spontaneous volunteering, building capacity to engage digital (and digitally enabled) volunteers, tapping into the growth of employee and skills-based volunteering and co-producing community-based disaster risk reduction. Although there have been considerable steps taken in Australia in some of these areas, overall there is still a long way to go before the sector can take full advantage of emerging opportunities. The paper thus concludes by identifying important research and practice gaps in this area.
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EMUNI, FIS, FZAB, GEOZS, GIS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, MFDPS, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, SBMB, SBNM, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, VKSCE, ZAGLJ
The idea of relocation as a transformative disaster risk reduction, climate adaptation, and development strategy follows the assumption that relocation reduces the vulnerability of communities. Yet, ...it is unclear whose and what kind of vulnerability is reduced through relocation, and which factors are important in determining the “success” of relocation efforts as strategies for development, climate change adaptation (CCA), and disaster risk reduction (DRR). Temporary and short distance relocation is highly likely to achieve increased resilience by reducing exposure, but relocation to a new area and new communities brings a range of issues. CCA and DRR use different timescales and focal points regarding relocation: CCA focuses on future mass permanent relocation and the subsequent potential loss of cultures and identities mainly due to projected sea level rise. The DRR community focuses on temporary relocation as a way to reduce exposure to a range of hazards, although it is also involved in permanent movement as a transformative way to reduce risk and enhance development. We explore these differences in this paper, with examples mainly from the Pacific Small Island Developing States where past relocations have been numerous. Better understanding and articulation of the underlying assumptions and preferences in CCA, DRR, and development discourses on planned community relocation could provide a richer context for future planning and dealing with both slow-onset and sudden disasters.
Need for a national disaster loss assessment - The Bureau of Transport
Economics (BTE) 2001 report, 'Economic Costs of Natural Disasters in Australia' is the only national assessment of the economic ...impacts of disasters in Australia - update of the Report through a National Emergency Management Projects grant - differences between
the BTE report and the 2017 update.
The first framework to specifically integrate climate change adaption and disaster risk management was the Framework for Resilient Development in the Pacific. Despite the intense interest in ...integration and a very large literature on the topic, this Framework and its implementation has largely escaped the attention of commentators. This paper focuses on the experience of Vanuatu as a start in addressing this gap in the literature. Vanuatu is one of the countries most at risk from natural hazards. We show how Vanuatu is progressing the ideals of integration in practice, in its policy and legislation, its institutional arrangements, and the resourcing it is allocating to integrating disaster risk management and climate change adaptation. We conclude that, at the national and formal level, Vanuatu is progressing well in pragmatically implementing the ideals of integration and the Framework for Resilient Development in the Pacific. It stands as a practical example for others.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
Cyclone Pam was one of the strongest cyclones to hit the south-west Pacific. In 2015 it struck some of the most populated parts of Vanuatu, resulting in extensive damage. Remarkably, only 11 deaths ...related to the cyclone were recorded. There has been some media attention to this good news and the logical questions are: why was the death toll low, and are there lessons for other countries? This paper examines the cyclone effects and explores possible reasons for the relatively low loss of life. Considerations include effective warnings and the high degree of self-reliance within communities, as well as aspects of the cyclone, in particular, the absence of a storm surge and major flooding in the area.
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