Effective communication of disaster threats to decision makers and at-risk communities is a growing challenge in a people-centred approach to disaster risk reduction. Traditional communication ...approaches tend to involve either top-down risk management practices or bottom-up community health and education practices. But an alternative blended approach emerges from the academic realm of science communication.
In practical terms, the science communication lens focuses attention on a trio of practices for DRR: one-way dissemination of risk information to a broad public; two-way dialogues that identify, engage and consult with specific stakeholders in the risk management process; and three-way participation initiatives that enable informed conversations between communities and decision makers and within communities themselves, to motivate action. The strategic intent of communications – whether that be promotion, persuasion or partnership – ought to be guided by a ‘theory of change’ that delivers clear and coherent DRR goals and by training programmes that recognise the need to integrate a variety of interventions from across the communication continuum.
This paper reviews the practice and research trends in disaster resilience and disaster risk reduction literature since 2012. It applies the rapid appraisal methodology to explore developments in the ...field and to identify key themes in research and practice. In particular, the paper examines how the emerging themes of disaster risk reduction from the Sendai Framework are being integrated into health risk management and disaster governance paradigms. The research findings identify three important emerging themes: socialization of responsibility for resilience; ongoing interest in risk management with an emphasis on public private partnerships as enabling mechanisms; and a nuanced exploration of the concept of adaptive resilience.
The first international conference for the post-2015 United Nations landmark agreements (Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030, Sustainable Development Goals, and Paris Agreement on ...Climate Change) was held in January 2016 to discuss the role of science and technology in implementing the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030. The UNISDR Science and Technology Conference on the Implementation of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030 aimed to discuss and endorse plans that maximize science’s contribution to reducing disaster risks and losses in the coming 15 years and bring together the diversity of stakeholders producing and using disaster risk reduction (DRR) science and technology. This article describes the evolution of the role of science and technology in the policy process building up to the Sendai Framework adoption that resulted in an unprecedented emphasis on science in the text agreed on by 187 United Nations member states in March 2015 and endorsed by the United Nations General Assembly in June 2015. Contributions assembled by the Conference Organizing Committee and teams including the conference concept notes and the conference discussions that involved a broad range of scientists and decision makers are summarized in this article. The conference emphasized how partnerships and networks can advance multidisciplinary research and bring together science, policy, and practice; how disaster risk is understood, and how risks are assessed and early warning systems are designed; what data, standards, and innovative practices would be needed to measure and report on risk reduction; what research and capacity gaps exist and how difficulties in creating and using science for effective DRR can be overcome. The Science and Technology Conference achieved two main outcomes: (1) initiating the UNISDR Science and Technology Partnership for the implementation of the Sendai Framework; and (2) generating discussion and agreement regarding the content and endorsement process of the UNISDR Science and Technology Road Map to 2030.
•This paper tackles the challenges of “resource islands” in disaster response.•It enables multi-discipline multi-actor collaboration for decision support.•Joint exercises and operations in relevant ...institutions demonstrate its capability.•It is a response to the Sendai Framework.
The benefits of geospatial technologies in disaster management have reached a consensus in the international community. However, immediate integration and orchestration of the rich geospatial resources (data, algorithms, computing resources, etc.) in an emergency remain challenging due to the four gaps: encoding gap, source gap, knowledge gap, and network gap. Aiming to bridge the “resource islands”, we propose a service-oriented collaborative approach to disaster decision support by integrating geospatial resources and task chain as domain knowledge into a distributed environment. Data contributors, model contributors, GIS developers, and business experts collaboratively build a spatial decision support system (SDSS) that integrates various resources and knowledge. When disaster strikes, responders collaboratively perform emergency tasks to deliver the right information to the right person at the right time by leveraging the SDSS. The proposed approach is implemented as a Geospatial service platform for Disaster Response (GeoDR). Four joint exercises and the operation in relevant institutions in China demonstrate its capability to facilitate timely and effective responses to natural disasters.
In recent years, there has been a gradual increase in research literature on the challenges of interconnected, compound, interacting, and cascading risks. These concepts are becoming ever more ...central to the resilience debate. They aggregate elements of climate change adaptation, critical infrastructure protection, and societal resilience in the face of complex, high‐impact events. However, despite the potential of these concepts to link together diverse disciplines, scholars and practitioners need to avoid treating them in a superficial or ambiguous manner. Overlapping uses and definitions could generate confusion and lead to the duplication of research effort. This article gives an overview of the state of the art regarding compound, interconnected, interacting, and cascading risks. It is intended to help build a coherent basis for the implementation of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (SFDRR). The main objective is to propose a holistic framework that highlights the complementarities of the four kinds of complex risk in a manner that is designed to support the work of researchers and policymakers. This article suggests how compound, interconnected, interacting, and cascading risks could be used, with little or no redundancy, as inputs to new analyses and decisional tools designed to support the implementation of the SFDRR. The findings can be used to improve policy recommendations and support tools for emergency and crisis management, such as scenario building and impact trees, thus contributing to the achievement of a system‐wide approach to resilience.
2020 has become the year of coping with COVID-19. This year was to be the “super year” for sustainability, a year of strengthening global actions to accelerate the transformations required for ...achieving the 2030 agenda. We argue that 2020 can and must be a year of both. Thus we call for more utilisation of the health-emergency disaster risk management (Health-EDRM) framework to complement current responses to COVID-19 and the patent risk of similar phenomena in the future. To make our case, we examine current responses to COVID-19 and their implications for the SFDRR. We argue that current mechanisms and strategies for disaster resilience, as outlined in the SFDRR, can enhance responses to epidemics or global pandemics such as COVID-19. In this regard, we make several general and DRR-specific recommendations. These recommendations concern knowledge and science provision in understanding disaster and health-related emergency risks, the extension of disaster risk governance to manage both disaster risks and potential health-emergencies, particularly for humanitarian coordination aspects; and the strengthening of community-level preparedness and response.
Thailand has been affected by COVID-19, like other countries in the Asian region at an early stage, and the first case was reported as early as mid-January 2020. Thailand's response to the COVID-19 ...pandemic has been guided by the "Integrated Plan for Multilateral Cooperation for Safety and Mitigation of COVID-19". This paper analyses the health resources in the country and focuses on the response through community-level public health system and legislative measures. The paper draws some lessons on future preparedness, especially with respect to the four priorities of Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction. At the end, the paper puts some key learning for future preparedness. While Thailand's response to COVID-19 has been effective in limiting the spread of the disease, it falls short at being able to address the multiple dimensions of the crisis such as the economic and social impacts. The socioeconomic sectors have been hardest hit, with significant impact on tourism sectors. Sociopolitical system also plays an important role in governance and decision-making for pandemic responses. The analysis suggests that one opportunity for enhancing resilience in Thailand is to strive for more multilevel governance that engages with various stakeholders and to support grassroots and community-level networks. The COVID-19 pandemic recovery is a chance to recover better while leaving no one behind. An inclusive long-term recovery plan for the various impacted countries needs to take a holistic approach to address existing gaps and work towards a sustainable society. Furthering the Health Emergency Disaster Risk Management (HEDRM) Framework may support a coordinated response across various linked sectors rather than straining one particular sector.
Action toward strengthened disaster risk reduction (DRR) ideally builds from evidence-based policymaking to inform decisions and priorities. This is a guiding principle for the Sendai Framework for ...Disaster Risk Reduction (SFDRR), which outlines priorities for action to reduce disaster risk. However, some of these practical guidelines conceal oversimplified or unsubstantiated claims and assumptions, what we refer to as ‘truisms’, which, if not properly addressed, may jeopardize the long-term goal to reduce disaster risks. Thus far, much DRR research has focused on ways to bridge the gap between science and practice while devoting less attention to the premises that shape the understanding of DRR issues. In this article, written in the spirit of a perspective piece on the state of the DRR field, we utilize the SFDRR as an illustrative case to identify and interrogate ten selected truisms, from across the social and natural sciences, that have been prevalent in shaping DRR research and practice. The ten truisms concern forecasting, loss, conflict, migration, the local level, collaboration, social capital, prevention, policy change, and risk awareness. We discuss central claims associated with each truism, relate those claims to insights in recent DRR scholarship, and end with suggestions for developing the field through advances in conceptualization, measurement, and causal inference.
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