A cross-disciplinary volume that combines and puts into dialogue perspectives on disasters, this book includes contributions from anthropology, history, cultural studies, sociology, and literary ...studies. Offering a rich and diverse set of arguments and analyses on the ever-relevant theme of catastrophe in the circum-Caribbean, it will encourage debate and collaboration between scholars working on disasters from a range of disciplinary perspectives.
"Disasters cause economic as well as human losses. Indeed, economic losses associated directly with disasters have continued at increasing proportions worldwide since the 1970s, as the 2011 Global ...Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction conducted by the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR) illustrates. Disaster losses due to single geological events sometimes appear much greater in magnitude than those attributed to climate-related disasters. Nonetheless, the overall trend for increasing loss can largely be attributed to the increase in climate-related disasters, which in turn is triggered in part by global climate change. Furthermore, as such disasters increase in frequency, it intensifies vulnerability in the poorest regions of developing countries. In this book, the authors discuss effective approaches to enhancing the local disaster risk management (DRM) capacity of developing countries to combat increasing climate-related disaster impacts. Also provided are ideas and lessons on local disaster risk management, in terms of planning and practice in developing countries, with particular focus on a case study in Costa Rica."
This study investigates the place attachment of the inhabitants of Chaitén, Chile, a community affected by a volcano eruption that destroyed a large part of the city in 2008. The article explores the ...associations of place attachment with the direct experience of disaster and interpersonal trust. To answer this question, a survey was designed which comprised instruments that measure place attachment, residence, and interpersonal trust. For the latter, the instrument measured trust in old and new inhabitants. The survey was administered in 2015 to 188 inhabitants of Chaitén, who were selected from a two-stage sample stratified by sector (north and south of Chaitén). Based on linear regressions, results indicate that direct experience of the disaster increases place attachment and slightly moderates the association between it and interpersonal trust in the community. Trusting old inhabitants increases place attachment only for people who did not experience the eruption. No association was found between trust in new inhabitants and place attachment. This study contributes to scientific knowledge of place attachment by suggesting that disasters have positive long-term consequences for attachment, while also proposing the need to qualify the well-known direct association between social bonds and this concept. Greater knowledge about place attachment in disaster contexts can foster reconstruction and mitigation processes when dealing with new threats.
Communities are at the core of disaster risk reduction (DRR), and community based approaches are getting increasing focus in national DRR plans. In the case of past disasters, communities were always ...the first responders, and took leading roles in the post disaster recovery. The roles of communities in pre- disaster preparedness are also very important. This is the first comprehensive book available on CBDRR (community based disaster risk reduction) which outlines both research and practice, citing field examples and research results. It provides an overview of the subject and looks at the role of governments, NGOs, academics and corporate sectors in community based disaster risk reduction. It proceeds to examine experiences from Asian and African countries, and concludes by looking ahead to the future perspective of CBDRR.
Recognition of projected increases in exposure to large-scale hazard events over the coming decades has identified a need to develop how disaster risk reduction and recovery are conceptualized and ...enacted. This paper discusses some strategies for pursing this goal in both disaster recovery and preparedness settings. The approaches discussed include understanding how communities learn from their hazardous experiences and transform these lessons into beliefs, relationships and capabilities that build future adaptive capacity. The paper draws on examples of transformative learning that illustrate how people can make fundamental shifts in how they think about, prepare for and respond to environmental challenge and change. Regarding transformation in pre-event settings, the paper first discusses why the addition of transformative strategies to disaster risk reduction programs is required. These include a need for rethinking socio-environmental relationships, increasing risk acceptance in the context of evolving hazardscapes, and countering beliefs regarding not preparing. The paper then offers strategies for motivating transformation and consolidating the outcomes of transformation in pre-event disaster risk reduction (DRR) strategies. A preliminary model that could inform the development of research questions on the development of transformative outcomes and their consolidation in enduring adaptive processes is presented.
Drawing on the Pakistan Earthquake Reconstruction and Recovery Project (PERRP), this volume explores the sociocultural side of post-disaster infrastructure reconstruction. As the latter is often ...fraught with delays and even abandonment—one cause being ineffective interactions between construction and local people—PERRP used anthropological and participatory approaches. Along with strong construction management, such approaches led to the rebuilding being completed on time. As disasters are increasing in number and intensity, so too will be the need for reconstruction, for which PERRP has lessons to offer.
Natural disasters, the effects of climate change, and political upheavals and war have driven tens of millions of people from their homes and spurred intense debates about how governments and ...nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) should respond with long-term resettlement strategies. Many resettlement efforts have focused primarily on providing infrastructure and have done little to help displaced people and communities rebuild social structure, which has led to resettlement failures throughout the world. So what does it take to transform a resettlement into a successful community? This book offers the first long-term comparative study of social outcomes through a case study of two Honduran resettlements built for survivors of Hurricane Mitch (1998) by two different NGOs. Although residents of each arrived from the same affected neighborhoods and have similar demographics, twelve years later one resettlement wrestles with high crime, low participation, and low social capital, while the other maintains low crime, a high degree of social cohesion, participation, and general social health. Using a multi-method approach of household surveys, interviews, ethnography, and analysis of NGO and community documents, Ryan Alaniz demonstrates that these divergent resettlement trajectories can be traced back to the type and quality of support provided by external organizations and the creation of a healthy, cohesive community culture. His findings offer important lessons and strategies that can be utilized in other places and in future resettlement policy to achieve the most effective and positive results.
Some leading Japan scholars present new research and thinking on the profound relationship between culture and disaster in Japan, focusing on the triple disasters of March 2011, the great quakes of ...1995 and 1923, and the atomic bombings of 1945.
Fire hazards are an extreme risk to occupants of high-rise buildings. Little attention has been paid to emergency and evacuation preparedness among people living in high-rise buildings. This paper ...reports on emergency fire preparedness among residents of a high-rise building that has experienced multiple fires in the past.
An exploratory qualitative pilot study was conducted using key informant interviews. Six residents participated. Themes on preparedness for fires and emergency evacuation were extracted.
Findings indicated varying levels of preparedness for fires and emergency evacuation among residents. Factors influencing residents' emergency preparedness included fire risk perception, owner or renter status, and building-level emergency preparedness. Fire alarms were considered to be an ineffective evacuation cue. Severe cues such as seeing fire or smoke were more likely to prompt evacuation. Participants provided a series of suggestions to keep high-rise residents safe during fire emergencies.
The study revealed fire preparedness knowledge, decision-making processes, and actual behaviors of residential high-rise occupants who experienced a fire emergency in their building. Main findings of the study are discussed in two themes: influences on fire emergency and evacuation preparedness, and evacuation decision-making and response to fire. Results from this pilot study will be used as the basis for a follow up study involving residents from multiple high-rise buildings.
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