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This conversation presents the reflections from four inspirational early career disaster scholars on the opportunities and challenges associated with post-disaster research and disaster studies in general.

This paper is based on the conversations that took place on Disasters: Deconstructed Podcast livestream on the 15th September 2021.

The prominent themes in this conversation include representation, power imbalances and research extractivism and reciprocity.

The conversation contributes to the ongoing discussions around how research is conducted immediately following disasters.

The paper reviews existing literature on South Asian ecosystem-based disaster risk reduction (DRR) and identifies how community participation can be used to plan and implement ecosystem-based DRR approaches.

The literature review methodology involved several stages. Firstly, the research objective was determined. Secondly keywords for the literature search were determined. Scopus, Google Scholar, JSTOR and AUT online library were utilized for the literature search. After the search, the literature was screened. The study design, methodology, results and limitations were identified and documented. After data extraction, the literature was analyzed. The patterns, trends and inconsistencies in the literature were identified based on the research question. Later the gaps, controversies and future research needs were identified. Then, a comprehensive and structured literature review that summarizes the relevant literature, synthesizes the findings and provides a critical evaluation of the literature was documented. After writing the document, it was reviewed and edited to ensure its clarity, accuracy and coherence.

The paper identifies four different themes recurrently emerging in literature on the importance of community participation in ecosystem-based DRR in South Asia. The themes are local community participation in ecosystem-based DRR governance, knowledge production, livelihood enhancement and increased public acceptance.

The paper also illustrates the challenges in integrating community participation with the dominant physical scientific approaches ecosystem-based DRR and proposes a five-element framework to facilitate the integration.

Over the last few years, there has been an increase of research interest on the role of religion in disaster. While some emphasize the positive role of religions during and after disasters, others rather point out that religion may lead to low perception of risk and create a fatalistic attitude in the face of such events. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the vivid debate on the role of religious beliefs and practices in disaster response and recovery, using the earthquake that hit Padang city in Indonesia in 2009.

A review of reports and policy documents published by the government and non-government organizations was done to understand external aid provided during and after the 2009 earthquake. Fieldwork was conducted from April to May 2016 in Padang city. Interviews were done with religious followers and leaders of the Muslim community, as the main religion in the country, and Confucians community, as the biggest minority in the area.

Drawing on interviews done with religious followers and leaders, the study highlights that religious beliefs and practices bond local people together and contributed to successful coping with disasters. It also emphasizes that religious communities can fill response and recovery gaps, such as when external intervention is limited.

Religious beliefs and practices, combined with other mechanisms, should be integrated within disaster risk reduction disaster management and activities as this would help build more resilient communities.

Indonesia is a country where religion is very important, being the biggest Muslim country worldwide. It is also highly vulnerable to natural-hazards related disasters. Yet, little research has been done in Indonesia on the role of religion during and after disasters. This paper aims to explore the role of religious beliefs and practices in disasters in the area where religion plays an important role in people’s everyday life.

Resilience has become a priority of most agendas for disaster risk reduction at different scales leading to an increase demand for measurement of resilience. However, resilience is mostly defined, assessed and measured by outsider experts rather than by those primarily concerned – local people. This article presents the development of people-centred indicators of resilience in New Zealand. It details both the process and outcomes of these indicators.

The study draws from participatory methods to develop a six-step tool kit for people-centred indicators of resilience. The people-centred indicators were implemented with four communities in New Zealand in 2019 and 2020.

The paper highlights that people are capable at defining and assessing their own resilience. The indicators enabled people identify and measure areas of low resilience and foster dialogue between locals and practitioners to strengthen it.

People-centred indicators also have limitations and pose challenges. Their development requires strong facilitation skills; it limitedly enables comparison across communities and implies downward accountability.

The findings should stimulate discussions about who should measure resilience and for whom such measurement is it for. It provides a tool kit that can be used by practitioners and policy makers to measure and strengthen community resilience.

Most resilience indicators is outsider-driven and limitedly involves local people. This study uses a radically different approach placing people at the centre of resilience measurement.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a multidimensional approach for effectively managing natural disasters; this paper has three research objectives. First, it provides an analysis on the hydro-geomorphological effects of the cyclone in the urban context. Second, it proposes an analysis for the vulnerability and resilience recovery of the populations living in urban areas. Third, it specifies the implications for sustainable recovery and longer-term disaster risk reduction.

A detailed case study of the tropical cyclone Pam was carried out to identify hydro-geomorphologic effects and damages in an urban area and specific problems associated with managing natural disaster in Vanuatu.

The investigations reveal that living in an urban area increases a population’s exposure to hydrological, weather and sea-related risks. Whereas advice on cyclones seems to work very well, the coastal risks and floods seem to be underestimated with a very high exposure and vulnerability to risk. Pre-existing vulnerabilities were exacerbated after cyclone Pam. However, other communities have been able to reinforce their resilience through local initiatives. The government and outside aid were very quick to react, despite problems of coordination, exchange of information, communication and long-term strategy.

The bottom-up, top-down, local and global approaches, applied on the time scales, should lead to actions that will reinforce the ability of the people of Vanuatu to adapt to high-energy events and to the effects of climate change.

This paper highlights the importance of understanding how the urban communities are vulnerable to natural hazards and of strategies for increasing their resilience.

In this chapter, we investigate the physiocratic claim that political economy is a new science and shows that it covers a sophisticated and nuanced range of discourses and practices. François Quesnay, the founder of physiocracy, displayed a complex and original conception of science based on the entanglement of abstract knowledge with skilled practices and the importance of rooting science in the realm of bodily sensations. We show how he applied consistently this conception to physics (medicine), political economy, and geometry. We conclude by comparing the epistemology of some of his main disciples, especially Butré and Du Pont de Nemours, to that of Quesnay.

Mentioning car and motorcycle licences on a resume sends a signal of strong mobility, which should increase the chances of getting a job in congested traffic areas. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether this is the case for both women and men.

The authors implement an experimental design in order to test for the existence of gender discrimination. The authors use the first-order stochastic dominance (FOSD) criterion and estimate components models.

The authors find that holding a motorcycle licence leads to a counterproductive selection of female candidates, since the highest commuting mobility meets the lowest hiring rate.

The methodology developed in the paper can be used for all correspondence test data.

The authors examine effects that have not been observed thus far in the literature, namely, the effects of gender crossed with the effects of the class of driving licence that is mentioned on the resume. The authors also advocate the use of the FOSD criterion to discrimination studies.

The purpose of this study is to explore the effect of the demagnetizing field in the Epstein characterization of grain-oriented electrical steels through a finite element method (FEM) simulations.

A 3D finite element simulation has been realized to represent the parallel and X-stacking configurations in the Epstein frame. The numerical results have been compared with experimental measures.

In a parallel configuration, the measured induction is actually the one in the material, whereas the resulting magnetic field differs from the applied one (in magnitude and angle) due to the shape anisotropy (demagnetizing field). In X-stacking configuration, the resulting magnetic field is close to the applied magnetic field (and then the supposed excitation field in the Epstein frame), whereas the magnetic induction has deviated from the axis of the strips.

Both stacking configurations (parallel and cross) of the Epstein frame are analyzed by three-dimensional finite element simulation.

The development of public art in French New Towns in the 1970s and 1980s was one of the most spectacular forms of state intervention in urban policy. Along with the new architecture programmes, the hundreds of works of art that adorn the public realm of the French New Towns help to differentiate them from the grands ensembles. This public art, which was highly publicised at the time, represents a heritage intrinsically linked to the urban history of New Towns but also to the history of French cultural policies at the end of the twentieth century. Artistic and town planning innovations underlie many public art projects. Artists and town planners participated, on a city scale, in the cultural developments that sought to respond to the expectations of the May 1968 crisis. In New Towns, the role of art was not simply to provide a backdrop to beautify the city but also to contribute to the success of new urban neighbourhoods. This involved placing visual landmarks in the urban space, confronting the residents with living art (painted walls, sculpted staircases, light paths, etc.).

The appropriation of these works of art by the public and councils was far from unanimous. It was only at the beginning of the twenty-first century that a heritage reflection emerged and led to a list of works of art being drawn up, with a view to protecting them. With the disappearance of state supervision over certain New Towns (1998–2002), damaged works has become a stigma in the public realm. A policy of restoration is being therefore introduced in certain New Towns, with public art participating in the identity of councils that do not hesitate to present themselves as ‘contemporary towns’ and take on the restoration or achievement of certain works that they now consider to be their heritage.