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The opportunities and potentials of the coastal zone all over the world have not received much attention, and also the disaster mitigation approaches are seen as a curative measure rather than protective, both of which raise questions about sustainable coastal belt planning and development. What is needed is a multidisciplinary approach to tackle the complexity of social systems, and patterns of vulnerability in those systems. The aim of this paper is to attempt to understand those challenges in context of cyclone SIDR 2007 in Bangladesh.

The combination of spatial and socio‐economic data in this study is based on an empirical analysis. After clustering the geographical boundary, a systematic random sampling technique was applied to identify the respondents for a household survey. A total of 47 percent of the respondents were illiterate and thus required the help of data collectors. In‐depth interviews were conducted with the victims of cyclone Sidr to ascertain their experiences during the event.

The heterogeneous characteristics of the respondents show that the impact of disasters varies from individual to individual, group to group and community to community. It is evident that an affected community waiting for relief and reconstruction materials attracts “dependency on relief works” which makes them more “vulnerable” to other calamities. In the long run it increases the poverty ratio and pressurizes them to stay in a “vulnerability trap” in any type of calamity. Furthermore, it reveals a socio‐infrastructural vulnerability and also the overall “social vulnerability” concepts by using a combination of socio‐spatial data.

This paper contains valuable information regarding the adaptation strategies to cyclone hazards resorted to by coastal peoples in Bangladesh.

Development of effective disaster risk reduction (DRR) strategies for communities at risk of being affected by natural disasters is considered essential, especially in the wake of devastating disaster events reported worldwide. As part of a wider research study investigating community perspectives on existing and potential strategies for enhancing resilience to natural disasters, community perspectives on infrastructure and structural protection requirements were investigated. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Patuakhali region in South-Western Bangladesh is a region significantly at risk of multiple natural hazards. In order to engage local communities and obtain their perspectives, focus group discussions were held with local community leaders and policy makers of at-risk communities in Patuakhali region, South-Western Bangladesh.

Infrastructure and structural protection requirements highlighted included multi-purpose cyclone shelters, permanent embankments and improved transport infrastructure. Much of the discussions of focus group interviews were focused on cyclone shelters and embankments, suggesting their critical importance in reducing disaster risk and also dependence of coastal communities on those two measures.

The research design adopted sought to answer the research questions raised and also to inform local policy makers on community perspectives. Local policy makers involved in DRR initiatives in the region were informed of community perspectives and requirements, thus contributing to community engagement in implementing DRR activities.

The concept of multi-purpose cyclone shelters has been found effective in saving various lives during past cyclones. The recent cyclone Amphan, which hit the Indian states of Odisha and West Bengal in the middle of pandemic COVID-19 has posed severe issues related to cyclone shelter management in the rural areas. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the case of Odisha in a pandemic and draw some key lessons of cyclone shelter management, which can be useful for future cascading risks in other parts of the country and the region.

Cyclone shelters are critical infrastructures in the management of cyclones, associated hazards and saving crucial lives. The effective management of shelters during emergencies is dependent on the existing institutional mechanism, local stakeholders and their understanding of the key functions of the emergency shelters. This paper reviews the key challenges through literature, reports and direct interviews of field professionals and practitioners.

In normal times, cyclone shelters are used as schools and their management lies with the local communities and/or elected bodies. Some of the key emerging issues include: the convincing population at risk for evacuation with proper care, existing emergency shelters being repurposed as COVID-19 facilities, need for hygiene and safety material, special arrangement and segregation of population at higher risk of COVID-19 and large destruction of social infrastructures.

During cascading disasters, adaptive governance becomes important. With the study of cyclones during the pandemic period, the paper draws key decision-making and governance points of cyclone shelter management. This case analysis can be useful to other similar situations during the prolonged pandemic time.

The rising threat of tropical cyclones in Zimbabwe is of great importance in establishing the general sources of humanitarian supply chain risks and assessing their negative impact on relief operations. There is a scarcity of studies that collate such evidence toward enhanced humanitarian supply chains in Southern Africa. With this in mind, this study explored scattered evidence on supply chain risks in the delivery of humanitarian aid to victims of Cyclone Idai in Zimbabwe.

This reflective study evaluates supply chain risks associated with Cyclone Idai humanitarian relief operations through qualitative in-depth interviews with relevant actors in the field. The data were triangulated with secondary information from associated publications, blogs and newspapers to reflect the truth about the phenomena under investigation.

The results show that Cyclone Idai disaster response operations were adversely affected by social, economic and political/governmental risk factors. In the same breath, poor or inadequate infrastructure and environmental factors were also contributing factors toward the futility of humanitarian relief operations.

This study is significant as it endeavors to contribute toward humanitarian supply chain management, specifically in assisting humanitarian organizations with suggested strategies that would work toward making humanitarian relief supply chains more resilient. However, more research needs to be done toward optimized implementation strategies for the suggested framework.

It is to the best knowledge of these researchers that this is a unique study carried out to examine humanitarian supply chain risk factors in Cyclone Idai relief operations in Zimbabwe.

This study aims to propose iStage, i.e. an intelligent hybrid deep learning (DL)-based framework to determine the stage of the disaster to make the right decisions at the right time.

iStage acquires data from the Twitter platform and identifies the social media message as pre, during, post-disaster or irrelevant. To demonstrate the effectiveness of iStage, it is applied on cyclonic and COVID-19 disasters. The considered disaster data sets are cyclone Fani, cyclone Titli, cyclone Amphan, cyclone Nisarga and COVID-19.

The experimental results demonstrate that the iStage outperforms Long Short-Term Memory Network and Convolutional Neural Network models. The proposed approach returns the best possible solution among existing research studies considering different evaluation metrics – accuracy, precision, recall, f-score, the area under receiver operating characteristic curve and the area under precision-recall curve.

iStage is built using the hybrid architecture of DL models. It is effective in decision-making. The research study helps coordinate disaster activities in a more targeted and timely manner.

This study aims to propose a novel deep learning (DL)-based framework, iRelevancy, for identifying the disaster relevancy of a social media (SM) message.

It is worth mentioning that a fusion-based DL model is introduced to objectively identify the relevancy of a SM message to the disaster. The proposed system is evaluated with cyclone Fani data and compared with state-of-the-art DL models and the recent relevant studies. The performance of the experiments is assessed by the accuracy, precision, recall, f1-score, area under receiver operating curve and precision–recall curve score.

The iRelevancy leads to a better performance in accuracy, precision, recall, F-score, the area under receiver operating characteristic and area under precision-recall curve, compared to other state-of-the-art methods in the literature.

The predictive performance of the proposed model is illustrated with experimental results on cyclone Fani data, along with misclassifications. Further, to analyze the performance of the iRelevancy, the results on other cyclonic disasters, i.e. cyclone Titli, cyclone Amphan and cyclone Nisarga are presented. In addition, the framework is implemented on catastrophic events of different natures, i.e. COVID-19. The research study can assist disaster managers in effectively maneuvering disasters during distress.

There has been an avalanche of global natural disasters in recent times. In recent years approximately 210 million people were affected, an estimated economic cost of US$153bn was incurred and 68,000 deaths were recorded. This was a work up call that made it imperative for humanitarian actors to impetuously adopt information and communication technologies (ICTs) to timeously assist affected populations in disaster prevention, mitigation response and recovery However, the use of ICTs in the humanitarian field is still at its infancy in most third world countries. The purpose of this study was, therefore, to evaluate the utilization of ICTs in humanitarian relief operations associated with Cyclone Idai in Zimbabwe.

Using a pragmatic approach, the study gathered data using semistructured questionnaires that were triangulated with interviews of humanitarian staff that were involved in Cyclone Idai relief efforts.

An observed suboptimal utilization of ICTs was further disadvantaged by the inequitable distribution of communication infrastructure. However, despite the suboptimal usage, there was a significant positive influence of ICT adoption on effectiveness, efficiency and flexibility in humanitarian relief operations.

Optimal use of ICTs has the potential to revolutionize humanitarian supply chain management. A smooth transition to new technologies is recommended in which personnel are given professional development opportunities on a regular basis.

To minimize risk of coastal communities arising from cyclones, several risk mitigation initiatives have been taken in countries. Cyclone shelters have proven to be an important critical infrastructure in saving lives from cyclones. A large number of coastal critical infrastructure in the form of multi-purpose cyclone shelters (MPCS) are built to provide safe shelter during disasters. Often observed, such critical infrastructures are non-operational during the normal period, which makes them difficult to use during any disaster. Efforts have been made to keep these infrastructures in working condition. This research paper aims to bring together various management practices adopted for the MPCS in the South-Asian region with a focus on Bangladesh, and India. It also suggests ways to improve these practices for sustainable management of the MPCS.

India and Bangladesh are the most vulnerable countries in the South Asian region. As per the Global Climate Index, India and Bangladesh come in the list of “in extreme risk” countries in the world and are vulnerable to several natural hazards, especially climate-induced hydrometeorological hazards. India has a vast coastline and out of 7,516 km of coastline, a large extent, i.e. 5,700 km is prone to cyclones and that keeps 40% of the population vulnerable living within 100 km of the coastline. On the other hand, Bangladesh has a coastline of 580 km, which is equally vulnerable to tropical cyclones. Safeguarding communities from impending coastal risk through coastal cyclone shelters are of prime concern. This paper uses a qualitative approach to analyze secondary data, and literature in the field of critical infrastructure, sustainability, cyclone shelter, and management practice for cyclone shelters.

To provide sustainability and community ownership of the MPCS, various service plans are adopted in different countries. This paper provides insights on service and sustainability efforts made for the proper functioning of the MPCS in India and Bangladesh. It also provides insight into the roles played by different institutions involved in maintaining the MPCSs.

The research reiterates understanding of the cyclone shelter management from different geographic locations in the South Asian region. Various gaps identified in shelter management practices are discussed in the paper and key recommendations are proposed for better management of cyclone shelters.

This paper aims to identify and prioritize key non-economic loss and damages (NELDs) caused by the 2009 Cyclone Aila in Khulna District of Bangladesh and to identify appropriate practices to address the NELDs.

The analytic hierarchy process was applied to prioritize key criteria, NELD indicators and practices that should be integrated into disaster risk reduction decisions at the local level.

The results showed the need for prioritizing NELDs at the local level, and especially for integrating into DRR policy and planning for addressing NELDs. The results indicated that the national disaster management plan could be enhanced to address issues related to inaccessible sanitation, waterborne diseases and mental disorders, and the school discontinuation.

The results are specific to Bangladesh. Readers may find them applicable to other similar country situations.

The suggested risk reduction practices for addressing NELDs are effective for policymakers to prepare for the future extreme cyclone disasters.

The study identifies “compliance with societal value” as an important criterion for decision-making in the affected communities. Societal value can be a basis to determine effective practices to address the NELDs.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the study is the first ever effort to identify and prioritize NELDs of cyclones in the coastal areas of Bangladesh and therefore might have a greater implication for DRR policy of Bangladesh.

This is a case of a crisis project management which showcases the unpredictable nature of the project and the role of management in handling the crisis. It is the case of a very severe cyclonic storm hitting the city of Visakhapatnam plant during October, 2014. The whole city was devastated and so was the situation in the Steel plant as it was under zero power conditions for around 10 days. This case gives need for managing an integrated steel plant in case of very severe cyclonic storm and documents the sequence of events and managing unforeseen uncertainty using NTCP concepts.