Search results

This paper aims to provide a general overview of the international Tsunami warning system mandated by the United Nations, particularly on cataloging past studies and a strategic focus in the Indian Ocean, particularly on the Bay of Bengal region.

Present research assimilates the secondary non-classified data on the Tsunami warning system installed in the Indian Ocean. Qualitative review and exploratory research methodology have been followed to provide a holistic profile of the Tsunami rarly warning system (TEWS) and its role in coastal resilience.

The study finds the need for strategic focus to expand and interlink regional early warning cooperation mechanisms and partnerships to enhance capacities through cooperation and international assistance and mobilize resources necessary to maintain the TEWS in the Indian Ocean region. The enhanced capacity of the TEWS certainly improves the resilience of Indian Ocean coastal communities and infrastructures.

The study is original research and useful for policy planning and regional cooperation on data interlinkages for effective TEWS in the Indian Ocean region.

The overall objective of this study is envisaged to provide decision makers with actionable insights and access to multi-risk maps for the most in-danger stave churches (SCs) among the existing 28 churches at high spatial resolution to better understand, reduce and mitigate single- and multi-risk. In addition, the present contribution aims to provide decision makers with some information to face the exacerbation of the risk caused by the expected climate change.

Material and data collection started with the consultation of the available literature related to: (1) SCs' conservation status, (2) available methodologies suitable in multi-hazard approach and (3) vulnerability leading indicators to consider when dealing with the impact of natural hazards specifically on immovable cultural heritage.

The paper contributes to a better understanding of place-based vulnerability with local mapping dimension also considering future threats posed by climate change. The results highlight the danger at which the SCs of Røldal, in case of floods, and of Ringebu, Torpo and Øye, in case of landslide, may face and stress the urgency of increasing awareness and preparedness on these potential hazards.

The contribution for the first time aims to homogeneously collect and report all together existing spread information on architectural features, conservation status and geographical attributes for the whole group of SCs by accompanying this information with as much as possible complete 2D sections collection from existing drawings and novel 3D drawn sketches created for this contribution. Then the paper contributes to a better understanding of place-based vulnerability with local mapping dimension also considering future threats posed by climate change. Then it highlights the danger of floods and landslides at which the 28 SCs are subjected. Finally it reports how these risks will change under the ongoing impact of climate change.

Hazard risk communication has arguably been a challenge, especially in communities which are susceptible to multiple hazards. Orewa was specially chosen for this research in order to provide a complete assessment of the effectiveness of communicating New Zealand's early warning strategy in a multi-hazard area. Two categories of surveys were undertaken; experts and academics in emergency management and disaster risk resilience and the Orewa community. A semi-qualitative indicator-based analysis was conducted with the normalization of index values which resulted in four (4) categories; risk perception, risk awareness, risk governance and uncertainty, trust and credibility. The resulting vulnerability index indicated that risk perception and uncertainty, trust and credibility ranked the highest, followed by risk awareness and risk governance. Risk perception had stark differences between what the community perceives as being most at risk from to what the experts deem to be the highest risk for Orewa. This has implications for policy directives as well as funding for risk reduction. Uncertainty, trust and credibility was another area which indicated conflicting sentiments between the community and experts. The community generally trusts decision-makers but the experts think they don't. This shows that the community is aware of their risks, but may not necessarily believe that the experts are providing enough efforts in what is of importance to them. Risk governance is not a vulnerable area to the experts as they have been actively engaging in hazards that they deem Orewa was most at risk from. Any breakdown in communication can have detrimental effects if multiple hazards were to occur at once in the case of Orewa.

Natural disasters profoundly influence agricultural trade sustainability. This study investigates the effects of natural disasters on agricultural production imports in China within 2002 and 2018. This exploration estimates the mediating role of transportation infrastructure and agriculture value-added and the moderating role of government effectiveness and diplomatic relations.

This investigation uses Probit, Logit, Cloglog and Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) models.

The results confirm the mediating role of transportation infrastructure and agriculture value-added and the moderating role of government effectiveness and diplomatic relations in China. According to the findings, natural disasters in trading partners heighten the risk to the agricultural imports. This risk raises, if disasters damage overall agricultural yield or transportation infrastructure. Moreover, governments’ effective response or diplomatic ties with China mitigate the risk. Finally, the effect of disasters varies by the developmental status of the country involved, with events in developed nations posing a greater risk to China’s imports than those in developing nations.

China should devise an early warning system to protect its agricultural imports by using advanced technologies such as data analytics, remote sensing and artificial intelligence. In addition, it can leverage this system by improving its collaboration with trading partners, involvement in international forums and agreement for mutual support in crisis.

This study aims to explain the existing adaptation practices in an urbanized sub-region in the lower Chao Phraya River basin (CPRB) across different scales and dimensions. It offers an overview of water hazards in urban areas along the river basin to discover ways to deal with and recover from hazards via understanding the implications of existing and potential practice for the mitigation of hydrological hazards.

First, this study collected current adaptation strategies and measures from interview, focus group discussion, workshop organization, etc. to get the current adaptation strategies/measures for the whole CPRB and each specific area. Second, this study identified a set of criteria for evaluation from review of current publications and official reports. Then, the current adaptation strategies/measures were examined through a set of criteria to obtain the current situation of existing practices. Finally, analysis of key challenges and opportunities was done to propose supporting guidelines to reduce hydrological risks and incorporate further adaptation measures needed to boost resilience in the area.

Adaptation methods should focus on mixed adaptation, which integrates structural, social, organizational and natural adaptation, and to develop multi-dimensional collaboration. The adaption strategy has restricted the usage of some technologies and technical know-how, particularly in the area of climate change. As a result, intentional adaptation to become more inventive is required, to reduce hazards and improve disaster-response capacity. The various adaptation measures should be more integrated or more adaptive and to achieve greater cohesion and mutual benefit of individual measures, such as community-based adaptation or community-driven slum upgrading.

Hydrological risks are wreaking havoc on social, economic and environmental elements, particularly river flood, flash flood and drought in the Asia-Pacific region. Twenty-two existing adaptation options were evaluated with evaluation criteria such as scales of risks/impacts reduction, benefits of environmental and socio-economic and institutional aspects. The findings highlight the current situation of existing practices, key challenges and opportunities, which emphasized on natural-based solutions, raising knowledge and awareness and lessons learned on adaptation of hydrological risks. The existing adaptation measures will be suggested as supporting guidelines and master plans to minimize the hydrological risks.

The duration of an urban search and rescue (USAR) operation directly depends on the number of rescue teams involved. The purpose of this paper is to simplify the earthquake environment and determine the initial number of rescuers in earthquake emergencies in USAR operation.

In the proposed methodology, four primary steps were considered: evaluation of buildings damage and the number of injured people by exerting geospatial information system (GIS) analyses; determining service time by means of task allocation; designing the simulation model (queuing theory); and calculation of survival rate and comparison with the time of rescue operations.

The calculation of buildings damage for an earthquake with 6.6 Richter in Tehran’s District One indicated that 18% of buildings are subjected to the high damage risk. The number of injured people calculated was 28,856. According to the calculated survival rate, rescue operations in the region must be completed within 22.33 h to save 75% of the casualties. Finally, the design of the queue model indicated that at least 2,300 rescue teams were required to provide the calculated survival rate.

The originality of this paper is an innovative approach for determining an appropriate number of rescue teams by considering the queuing theory. The results showed that the integration of GIS and the simulation of queuing theory could be a helpful tool in natural disaster management, especially in terms of rapid vulnerability assessment in urban districts, the adequacy and appropriateness of the emergency services.

The Sendai framework for disaster risk reduction (DRR) 2015–2030 offers guidelines to reduce disaster losses and further delivers a wake-up call to be conscious of disasters. Its four priorities hinge on science, technology and innovations as critical elements necessary to support the understanding of disasters and the alternatives to countermeasures. However, the changing dynamics of current and new risks highlight the need for existing approaches to keep pace with these changes. This is further relevant as the timeline for the framework enters its mid-point since its inception. Hence, this study reflects on the aspirations of the Sendai framework for DRR through a review of activities conducted in the past years under science, technology and innovations.

Multidimensional secondary datasets are collected and reviewed to give a general insight into the DRR activities of governments and other related agencies over the past years with case examples. The results are then discussed in the context of new global risks and technological advancement.

It becomes evident that GIS and remote sensing embedded technologies are spearheading innovations for DRR across many countries. However, the severity of the Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated innovations that use artificial intelligence-based technologies in diverse ways and has thus become important to risk management. These notwithstanding, the incorporation of science, technology and innovations in DRR faces many challenges. To mitigate some of the challenges, the study proposes reforms to the scope and application of science and technology for DRR, as well as suggests a new framework for risk reduction that harnesses stakeholder collaborations and resource mobilizations.

The approach and proposals made in this study are made in reference to known workable processes and procedures with proven successes. However, contextual differences may affect the suggested approaches.

The study provides alternatives to risk reduction approaches that hinge on practically tested procedures that harness inclusivity attributes deemed significant to the Sendai framework for DRR 2015–2030.

In the event of a disaster, educational institutions like schools serve as lifeline buildings. Hence, it is crucial to safeguard these buildings for the communities that may depend on the school as a disaster shelter and aid center. Thus, this paper aims to conduct a multihazard risk assessment survey at 50 schools (with 246 building blocks) in Dehradun.

The past few decades have witnessed the impact of multihazard frequency in Uttarakhand, India, due to the geographical features of the Himalayas and its neo-tectonic mountain-building process. Dehradun is the capital of Uttarakhand state and comes under seismic zone IV, which is highly prone to earthquakes.

The hazard assessment is divided into two types of surveys: first, building-level surveys that include rapid visual screening, nonstructural risk assessment and fire safety audit, and second, campus-level surveys that include vulnerability analysis for earthquake, flood, industrial hazard, landslide and wind.

This paper will list several gaps and unrecognized practices in the region that increase the schools’ multihazard risk. The study’s outcome will help prioritize the planning of disaster awareness, retrofitting execution, future construction practices and decision-making to minimize the risk and prepare the school for the upcoming disasters.

Physical data were collected by the author to determine the multihazard risk analysis in 50 schools in the Dehradun District of Uttarakhand, India. The building- and campus-level surveys have been used to generate a database for the retrofit and renovation process for each individual school to use their budget fruitfully and in a planned way. The survey conducted is more effort and a more detailed risk evaluation which necessitates effectively mitigating and ensuring the potential safety of the region’s schools.

This chapter presents a research study that examined post-disaster authentic university academic care resilience (PAUACR) at a Historically Black College and University (HBCU). PAUACR is a university’s and its students’ capacity to bounce back from post-disaster educational challenges. PAUACR requires a strong caring response and authentic academic care environments. For the University of the Virgin Islands (UVI), PAUACR following Hurricanes Irma and Maria was crucial to ensure students successfully completed the academic year. To assess UVI’s PAUACR, this study utilized a caring about academic caregiving inventory (CAACI). This 49-item instrument was used to gain students’ discernment of post-disaster authentic university academic care (PAUAC). The research employed a cross-sectional exploratory survey research design. The empirical analysis found associations between the structural workings of UVI’s academic caregiving in the aftermath of hurricanes Irma and Maria. These findings offer distinctive indicators of UVI’s PAUACR. Along with the findings, this chapter offers practical lessons of academic resilience drawn from the experience of conducting post-disaster research.

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.