Search results

The purpose of this paper is to provide a set of policy suggestions for integrating risk management and increasing risk reduction measures and planning.

It bases on a brief description of the disaster risk management programs in Mexico, a review of their recent available assessments as well as it makes a brief economic analysis of their performance to conclude with some policy suggestions.

Despite its novel design, the still low penetration of governmental instruments for disaster risk reduction in Mexico has led to high society’s reliance on post-disaster measures. It has encouraged moral risk among potential victims. Even when crop insurance has increased coverage over the past decade, disaster prevention instruments are still underused. Accessing to prevention funding requires project proposals from national and sub-national governments based on concrete risk assessments. However, the prevailing lack of institutional capacity to elaborate proposals from sub-national governments seems to explain it at a large extent. The paper provides a set of suggestions on this regard.

There is no recent integral assessment of disaster risk in Mexico. Although there is a recent OECD review of the National Civil Protection System, its analysis leaves out the catastrophic agricultural insurance, critical part of comprehensive risk management of a country. On the other hand, there are recent evaluations of programs public for disaster risk management, but these consist of only individual program evaluations, lacking integrative and comparative analysis. Thus, this paper provides a comprehensive view of government risk management and concludes with a series of policy recommendations.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role played by sport organizations in the community recovery efforts in Boston following the 2013 marathon bombings.

Interview questions were created following initial site visits and content analysis of 40 media reports specifically dealing with social recovery efforts following the attacks. Six semi-structured interviews with professional team and organizational leaders were completed and analyzed to gain insight into the leader’s perspectives of the relief process. Finally, the media reports and interviews were reviewed and specific recovery efforts were classified into tangible, emotional, or informational support categories.

The findings of this case study are specific to the disaster relief efforts in Boston, Massachusetts following the 2013 marathon bombings and therefore cannot be generalized beyond this scope. This paper provided focussed analysis of the reactions of several Boston area sport organizations during the immediate disaster recovery period. The long-term impacts of these efforts require further investigation.

The examination of the viewpoints of the sport organization leaders following the disaster may provide insight for other sport organization leaders and civic officials as they prepare for future challenges.

This paper provides a detailed examination of several sport organizations responses following the community disaster in Boston. It also provides unique perspectives from the sport organization leaders.

The purpose of this paper is to show that 2009 H1N1 “swine” influenza pandemic vaccination policies deviated from predictions established in the theory of political survival, and to propose that pandemic response deviated because it was ruled by bureaucratized experts rather than by elected politicians.

Focussing on the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, the paper employs descriptive statistical analysis of vaccination policies in nine western democracies. To probe the plausibility of the novel explanation, it uses quantitative and qualitative content analyses of media attention and coverage in two deviant cases, the USA and Denmark.

Theories linking political survival to disaster responses find little empirical support in the substantial cross-country variations of vaccination responses during the 2009 H1N1 pandemic. Rather than following a political logic, the case studies of media coverage in the USA and Denmark demonstrate that the response was bureaucratized in the public health agencies (CDC and DMHA, respectively). Hence, while natural disaster responses appear to follow a political logic, the response to pandemics appears to be more strongly instituted in the hands of bureaucratic experts.

There is an added value of encompassing bureaucratic dynamics in political theories of disaster response; bureaucratized expertise proved to constitute a strong plausible explanation of the 2009 pandemic vaccination response.

Pandemic preparedness and response depends critically on understanding the lessons of the 2009 H1N1 pandemic; a key lesson supported by this paper is that expert-based agencies rather than political leaders are the pivotal actors.

This paper is the first to pinpoint the limitations of political survival theories of disaster responses with respect to the 2009 pandemic. Further, it is among the few to analyze the causes of variations in cross-country pandemic vaccination policies during the 2009 H1N1 pandemic.

The purpose of this paper is to view the human experiences of the Canterbury earthquakes through a varied set of disciplinary lenses in order to give voice to those who experienced the trauma of the earthquakes, especially groups whose voices might not otherwise be heard.

The research designs represented in this special issue and discussed in this introductory paper cover the spectrum from open-ended qualitative approaches to quantitative survey design. Data gathering methods included video and audio interviews, observations, document analysis and questionnaires. Data were analysed using thematic, linguistic and statistical tools.

The themes discussed in this introductory paper highlight that the Canterbury response and recovery sequence follows similar phases established in other settings such as Hurricane Katrina and the Australian bushfires. The bonding role of community networks was shown to be important, as was the ability to adapt formal and informal leadership to manage crisis situations. Finally, the authors reinforce the important protocols to follow when researching in sensitive contexts.

The introductory paper only discusses the articles in this special issue but it is important to acknowledge that there are other groups whose stories were not shared due to logistical limitations.

This introductory paper sets the scene for the articles that follow by outlining the importance of the human stories of the Canterbury earthquakes, through the eyes of particular groups, for example, medical staff, schools, women, children and refugees. The approach of viewing the experience through different community voices and disciplinary lenses is novel and significant. The lessons that are shared will inform future disaster preparedness, response and recovery policy and planning.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the potential effects of climate change on the habitat and human settlements in Mexico, through an analysis of three regions that are vulnerable to hydrometeorological hazards such as droughts, floods and hurricanes.

The research process included fieldwork in the states of Oaxaca, Tabasco and Yucatán, and a historical study of hydrometeorological events in each region. The authors sought to identify a means of interpreting these events linked to climate variability, on the basis of the history of disasters, the environment and the habitat. The local climatic indications were compared to the IPCC’s global successes, to show that contradictions do not exist but that it is difficult to apply the IPCC’s findings at a local level, given the considerable margin of uncertainty.

The indications of the effects of climate change make it possible to foresee that the most vulnerable populations will be the ones facing the strongest impact in the future.

The research has direct implications on urban and housing policies, offering a roadmap to design climate change adaptation strategies; adaptive capacity not only requires political commitment.

It is also related to social and economic development and an “integral risk management” approach rather than a “civil protection” strategy.

The main interest of this research is to show that a multidisciplinary approach is essential in order to understand the local implications of climate change.

The purpose of this paper is to explicate chaos theory metaphorically from a social science perspective to expand upon a relatively new theoretical framework for crisis communication in the public sector. Using the 2002 Washington, DC, area sniper shootings as a case study, the author unravel chaos theory in terms of a public safety crisis that required crisis communication by government officials.

The author analysed front-page coverage in The Washington Post and The New York Times as well as CNN coverage during the three weeks of the sniper shootings, 2 October through 25 October. In total, 56 (69 per cent) of the newspaper stories were published in The Washington Post, and 78 news segments were used from CNN archives. Each story was reviewed for evidence of chaotic elements and crisis communication responses using a code sheet, and the resulting thematic analysis created a composite description of the case.

This case exhibited the main characteristics of a chaotic system, including fractals, error of scale, bifurcation points, self-organisation, feedback, and strange attractors. The results describe how each element of chaos influenced the crisis communication efforts.

To date, there is no known research on law enforcement's efforts in crisis communication during the DC sniper shootings. There is also limited research in chaos theory and crisis response. This research may aid in communication efforts during future public safety crises and disasters.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the experiences of the USA and other nations with developed veterinary infrastructure and identify the critical factors that led the evolution of the US foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) response strategy.

A thorough literature review was conducted, including official reports of US FMD outbreaks and peer-reviewed articles on outbreaks in previously FMD-free countries. Textual analysis was conducted on past and current publicly available US FMD response plans, identifying the use of the term “vaccination” or “emergency vaccination” indicating the potential use of these strategies.

The USA has shifted from a strategy of exclusively stamping-out to a response strategy that would consider emergency vaccination, including vaccinate to slaughter and vaccinate to live, in any FMD outbreak. The factors that led to this shift in policy include economic factors, the emergence of new vaccine technologies, the changed landscape of the US livestock industry, and the experiences of other typically FMD-free countries.

An outbreak in the USA is likely to rapidly outpace the current capacity for stamping-out. Experience from other FMD outbreaks, and lack of publicly available literature from the USA, indicates that it is critically important that further consideration, sufficient attention, and stakeholder deliberation need to occur to ensure vaccination strategies (to live and to slaughter) are implementable in an outbreak.

Austrian insights on the limits of central planning, the pervasiveness of knowledge problems, and the importance of the entrepreneur in coordinating social change have yielded substantive contributions to the literature on how individuals and communities respond to both natural and unnatural, or manmade, disasters. Austrian economists have examined the political economy of natural disasters, disaster relief and recovery efforts, the economic effects of extended wars, post-conflict societal reconstitution, and the effectiveness of humanitarian aid. This literature advances two main findings: (1) that centralized governments are likely to be ineffective at providing the goods and services that are necessary for community recovery and (2) that decentralized efforts are better suited to address the needs of society, to discover the best course of action for producing and distributing these goods and services, and to adapt to changing needs, circumstances, and technology. This paper examines the Austrian theories utilized to examine disasters, provides a summary of the recent research on both natural and unnatural disasters, and proposes areas for future research.

One of the most critical infrastructures is a data center (DC) because of it having many servers, computers and other equipment. DCs provide online services for various companies in the information technology (IT) industry. DC facilities should provide reliable online services while addressing the required quality and performance level considering maximum reliability and availability. The purpose of this study is to represent and classify the main findings in this area and to identify the main research gaps and shortcomings from the perspective of research.

This paper provides an organized and systematic literature review focusing on topics regarding the operation and maintenance (O&M) management of DCs.

Although there are several studies on O&M management systems for industrial systems and facilities, a limited number of studies with few methods and models have focused on DCs so far and these facilities require more attention. This paper identifies the issues and challenges for DC buildings and facilities and provides a conclusion of the findings to highlight the main research limitations for discovering new potential methods as future research opportunities.

The paper has highlighted the main practical issues of DCs in terms of maintenance management. Several research works have been discussed specifically for DC’s maintenance, which makes this paper a credible source for researchers, maintenance managers and companies involved in the area of DC. Because several of the reviewed literature were based on real case studies, decision-makers in the DC maintenance sector can take advantage of new research on maintenance scheduling to reduce the costs of maintenance.

The paper has presented a comprehensive list of frequent keywords in recent publications related to O&M management for DCs. It has provided a categorized list of publications based on by their topic, methodology and case study. Because this paper has discussed research works specifically for DC’s maintenance, it is a credible source for researchers, maintenance managers and companies involved in the area of DCs.

This chapter introduces the tourism–disaster–conflict nexus through a comprehensive review of the contemporary social science literature. After reviewing conceptual definitions of tourism, disaster and conflict, the chapter explores various axes that link through this nexus. The linkages between tourism and disaster include tourism as a trigger or amplifier of disasters, the impacts of disasters on the tourism industry, tourism as a driver of disaster recovery and disaster risk reduction strategies in the tourism sector. Linkages between tourism and conflict include the idea that tourism can be a force for peace and stability, the niche status of danger zone or dark heritage tourism, the concept of phoenix tourism in post-conflict destination rebranding, tourism and cultural conflicts, and tourism’s conflicts over land and resources. Linkages between disaster and conflict include disasters as triggers or intensifiers of civil conflict, disaster diplomacy and conflict resolution, disaster capitalism, and gender-based violence and intra-household conflict in the wake of disasters. These are some of the conversations that organise this volume, and this introductory chapter ends with a summary of the chapters that follow.