All hazards

Citation

(2002), "All hazards", Disaster Prevention and Management, Vol. 11 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/dpm.2002.07311cag.001

All hazards

Public Entity Risk Institute (PERI)www.riskinstitute.org

The Public Entity Risk Institute (PERI) has published a new guide that provides small public entities with a user-friendly process to identify and analyse their risks across the entire organization and all activities. Available from the PERI Web site above, Risk Identification and Analysis: A Guide for Small Public Entities, includes ready-to-use forms and potential loss and impact summaries to aid the risk identification process, particularly among public entities too small to support a full-time risk manager.

FEMA Higher Education Projectwww.fema.gov/emi/edu;www.fema.gov/emi/edu/hec2001.htm

On its Web site, the Federal Emergency Management Agency's Higher Education Project has posted a report on the Emergency Management Higher Education Conference held in early June. Included are copies of slide presentations given as well as an annotated transcript of a presentation by the project's director, Wayne Blanchard.

Visible Earthvisibleearth.nasa.gov

Visible Earth is a searchable directory, produced by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), of high tech images, visualizations, and animations of the earth. The directory is intended to provide a consistently updated central catalogue of earth-science-related visualizations and images. Designed to aid the public, as well as the media, scientists, and educators, the Visible Earth includes images depicting earthquake dynamics, earthquake occurrences, earthquake predictions, and seismic profiles. Additional categories include continental tectonics, crustal motion, and faults.

PAHO/WHOwww.paho.org/disasters (Click on "Disaster Management Tools")www.paho.org/english/ped/supplies.htm

The Pan American Health Organization/World Health Organization (PAHO/WHO) has prepared a new brochure, Humanitarian Assistance in Disaster Situations: A Quick Guide for Effective Donations, available from the first Web site above (along with a half dozen other publications on emergency and disaster management) and a new book, Humanitarian Supply Management and Logistics in the Health Sector, available from the second URL, in both English and Spanish.

RedRwww.redr.org;www.redr.org/training/index.htm

RedR is an international charity with offices around the globe working to relieve suffering in disasters by selecting, training and providing competent and effective relief personnel to humanitarian aid agencies world-wide. The RedR Web site provides complete information about the agency, newsletters and other publications, access to the RedR library and at the second URL above, a comprehensive list of upcoming RedR training programs and other training resources.

Andean Countrieswww.disaster.info.desastres.net/andino/

This Spanish-language Web site is intended to support institutions working on disaster management in Andean countries – Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela. It both provides useful information on disasters and disaster management in the region and promotes information exchange among the various institutions dealing with these risks.

Earth Observatory (NASA)http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) newest addition to its Earth Observatory section features satellite images in near real time of five types of hazards: wildfires, severe storms, floods, volcanic eruptions, and major air pollution events (dust storms, smog and smoke). Future categories may include earthquakes, coastal erosion, and landslides. An icon highlights each current hazard on a world map. Selecting the icon brings up a fast-loading image and a brief explanation of the event. The Web site is managed by the Earth Observing System (EOS) Project Science Office and funded by NASA's Earth Science Enterprise, a long-term research program investigating how human-induced and natural changes affect the global environment. NASA hopes sharing these images will increase understanding of natural events that could be dangerous to human populations, will help visualize when and where natural hazards occur, and will assist mitigation efforts.

Institute for Business and Home Safetyhttp://www.ibhs.org

The folks at the Institute for Business and Home Safety (IBHS) have updated and improved their Web site by expanding the information it contains and incorporating a database-driven server, which makes it possible to search more quickly and easily. The upgrades are the result of a several-months-long project to find ways to provide more information, more readily, to more users in the natural disaster community and beyond.

Benfield Greig Centrehttp://www.bghrc.com

At this site the Benfield Greig Hazard Research Centre at the University College London has posted two more in its series of Disaster Management Working Papers, intended to make new evidence, analysis, and ideas available to disaster researchers and practitioners worldwide. Click on "Disaster Studies."

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  Working Paper No. 3, "Rapid environmental impact assessment: a framework for best practice in emergency response", by Charles Kelly (2001, 16 pp.), starts with the premise that ignoring environmental issues during pre-disaster planning or during response and recovery clearly conflicts with comprehensive disaster management goals of "doing no harm" and "using best practices". The author suggests a way of incorporating a quick assessment of environmental damage and risks in the immediate aftermath of a disaster.

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  Working Paper No. 4, "'Vulnerability': a matter of perception", by Annelies Heijmans (2001, 17 pp.), analyses the role that local and individual perception of risk plays in how disaster-prone communities interpret their circumstances. She argues that relief efforts often ignore local capacity to assess and cope with threats, and that giving the community a voice and role in exploring strategies for long-term, secure livelihoods is crucial to successful disaster response.

Centres for Disease Control and Preventionhttp://www.cdc.gov/mmwr

At this site the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) posts its weekly series, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR). It publishes data on specific diseases as reported by state and territorial health departments and reports on infectious and chronic diseases, environmental hazards, natural or human-generated disasters, occupational diseases and injuries, and intentional and unintentional injuries. Also included are reports on topics of international interest and events of interest to the public health community in general. The 11 January issue, for example, included one article on how survivors' injuries were assessed in the immediate aftermath of the World Trade Centre attack and another discussing how last year's severe winter weather in Mongolia affected the nutritional status of children. MMWR is free in electronic format and sent weekly on Friday. To subscribe, send an e-mail to: listserv@listserv.cdc.gov with the body of the message reading "SUBscribe mmwr-toc."

World Summit for Sustainable Developmenthttp://www.unisdr.org

This site has added two new features. The first is a special section on the upcoming World Summit for Sustainable Development, to be held in Johannesburg, South Africa, in September 2002. Posted there are a variety of background papers prepared for the summit, information about and discussions of issues relating to disaster reduction, and links to numerous sources of information about sustainability and disaster reduction efforts around the world. Also available are descriptions of and reports from the major global conferences of the past upon which the Johannesburg summit's agenda will be built.

The second new feature is a directory of Internet-based resources on disaster reduction, including contacts, institutions, projects, and documentation. The information and links will be added gradually to this Web site, but a thorough sampling is already in place. Information is organized by topic, geographic location, hazard, and organization name. Information and/or links can be found, for example, for all types of natural hazards; the various sub-entities of the United Nations and other national and international organizations; academic institutions doing work in disaster reduction; a range of issues in sustainable development; educational information for children; and discussions on women in disaster reduction.

WorldWatchwww.worldwatch.org;secure.worldwatch.org/cgi-bin/wwinst/WWP0158

More and more of the devastation wrought by "natural" disasters worldwide is unnatural in origin – caused by ecologically destructive practices and an increasing number of people living in harm's way. That was a basic finding presented in a new study, "Unnatural disasters," by Janet Abramovitz of the WorldWatch Institute, a Washington, DC-based environmental research organization. "By degrading forests, engineering rivers, filling in wetlands, and destabilizing the climate, we are unravelling the strands of a complex ecological safety net", according to the report. "We have altered so many natural systems so dramatically, their ability to protect us from disturbances is greatly diminished." Also contributing to the rising toll of disasters is the enormous expansion of the human population and the built environment, which put more people and more economic activities in harm's way.

Although "unnatural disasters" occur everywhere, their impact falls disproportionately on the poor, as they are more likely to live in vulnerable areas and they have fewer resources to deal with disasters. Between 1985 and 1999, 96 percent of recorded disaster fatalities were in developing countries.

At the same time, economic losses from "unnatural disasters" are greater in the developed world. The earthquake that rocked Kobe, Japan, in 1995, for example, cost more than $100 billion, making it the most expensive natural disaster in history. Still, smaller losses often hit poor countries harder, where they represent a larger share of the national economy. The damage from 1998's Hurricane Mitch in Central America was $8.5 billion – higher than the combined gross domestic product of Honduras and Nicaragua, the two nations most affected by the storm.

Besides presenting these issues, Abramovitz suggests measures that could lessen disasters' toll – from economic safety nets to ecological measures, promotion of community-based disaster planning, wise land-use planning, and hazard mapping.

Copies of Unnatural Disasters (61 pp., $5.00) can be downloaded in PDF format from the second URL above. They can also be ordered from the WorldWatch Institute, 1776 Massachusetts Ave, NW, Washington, DC 20036. Tel: (800) 555-2028 (USA) or Tel: (301) 567-9522 (outside the USA).

International Strategy for Disaster Reductionwww.un.org/womenwatch/daw/csw/env_manage/

The International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR) recently hosted a meeting titled "Environmental Management and the Mitigation of Natural Disasters: A Gender Perspective" in Ankara, Turkey. The meeting focused on women as part of the solution instead of emphasizing women's special vulnerabilities to disaster. A Web site has been set up that displays background information about the meeting and also includes downloadable PDF formats of the discussion papers. The examples and case studies cited in the papers span the globe, and their topics include women's grassroots collectives for disaster mitigation; women's technological innovations and adaptations for disaster mitigation; emergency management for women as a tool for change; and gender perspectives on early warning, disaster management, earthquake preparedness, environmental issues, earthquake response, and recovery initiatives.