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The importance of onset speed has been stressed by disaster researchers and inter-governmental bodies for some time, but its meaning and knowledge frontier has not been explored in depth. The purpose of this paper is to contextualise disasters involving slow-onset hazards within the broader literature on disasters, assess the current state of knowledge and identify themes in the literature.

This paper employs a semi-structured review design with the purpose of identifying both scholarship engaging directly with the term and less obvious but related literatures.

The majority of publications that mention slow-onset hazards and their adverse impacts do so only by means of delimitation. The paper finds that there is a great need for empirical and theoretical work on onset and manifestation speed and to test the degree to which existing theories and frameworks of disaster management are also relevant for the study of slow-onset hazard impacts.

The review identifies several gaps in existing research disasters involving slow-onset hazards and proposes research on community, political, policy and practical challenges, including answering the question of how to secure proactive response to emerging slow-onset hazard impacts.

In theory, hazards with a gradual and creeping onset are easier to manage and proactively respond to than that of sudden and unexpected ones. Not only do slow-onset hazards provide more lead time, but also a larger potential for proactive response, which in turn provides ample time to take early action to cushion their impacts. Yet, warnings often go unheard and response is put on hold until impacts become unnecessarily costly to reverse. More research on onset speed and gradual manifestation patterns should therefore be carried out.

Gradually occurring hazards have remained largely absent from the core literature on disasters, including most definitions of the term. This paper represents an initial effort to assess the state-of-the-art on the concept and the phenomenon of disasters involving slow-onset hazards.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how the contingency approach to disaster preparedness inhibits proactive management of slow-onset disasters, such as El Niño, with the purpose of advancing disaster risk theory.

This study draws on fieldwork data from Nariño, Colombia, combined with secondary data and a review of the literature on El Niño and disaster preparedness.

Disaster managers in Nariño do have contingency plans for El Niño events at their disposal. Yet, these plans do not come into play before impacts reach a certain severity. This “contingency approach” to disaster preparedness appears to stem from the assumption that disaster must come before response, effectively inhibiting proactive responses to El Niño impacts.

Attributing observed cases of droughts and oral accounts of impacts to the El Niño phenomenon is methodologically challenging. To overcome this, the aim of this study is not the documentation of subjective attributions. Instead, the focus is on bringing to the fore key dilemmas that preparedness professionals may face when they prepare for disasters with a slow onset.

Developing prevention and preparedness conceptualisations that focus on preemptive measures should ensure a more proactive response to slow-onset disasters.

Whether slow-onset disasters lend themselves to the same types of risk reduction strategies applied to rapid-onset disasters is a theoretical and practical issue that has not been explored sufficiently in the disaster risk literature.

The purpose of this paper is to give an up‐to‐date and structured insight into the most recent literature on humanitarian logistics, and suggest trends for future research based on the gaps identified through structured content analysis.

The authors use a quantitative and qualitative content analysis process to analyse the characteristics of the existing literature, identifying the most studied topics in six structural dimensions, and presenting gaps and recommendations for further research.

It was found that existing humanitarian logistics research shows too little interest in continuous humanitarian aid operations, in slow onset disasters and man‐made catastrophes. While several papers address different phases of disasters, very few focus particularly on the reconstruction following a disaster. Empirical research is underrepresented in the existing literature as well.

While five of the authors’ structural dimensions are inspired by previous reviews, the sixth dimension (situational factors) is derived from a theoretical framework which the authors developed and which has never been tested before. The validity of the study could therefore be increased by testing this framework.

The authors analyse the broadest set of papers (174) ever covered in previous literature reviews on humanitarian logistics. A quantitative analysis of the papers was conducted in order to analyse the situational factors which have mostly been studied so far in literature. This paper is also the first in humanitarian logistics to use content analysis as the main methodology to analyse literature in a structured way, which is of particular value to the academic community as well as practitioners.

It is well recognized that disasters, whether naturally occurring or the result of human invention, affect a region on many levels. Not only are disasters felt within the painful context of human tragedy, loss of life, and physical suffering, but disasters can also destroy the immediate socio-economic fabric of the affected population as well as the ability of a region to sustain itself during the slow process of recovery and reconstruction. As Newton (1997) notes, “disasters are not isolated from the social structure within which they occur; rather, they are social phenomena” (p. 219).

This paper aims to examine and compare extant literature on the application of multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) techniques in humanitarian operations (HOs) and humanitarian supply chains (HSCs). It identifies the status of existing research in the field and suggests a roadmap for academicians to undertake further research in HOs and HSCs using MCDM techniques.

The paper systematically reviews the research on MCDM applications in HO and HSC domains from 2011 to 2022, as the field gained traction post-2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami phenomena. In the first step, an exhaustive search for journal articles is conducted using 48 keyword searches. To ensure quality, only those articles published in journals featuring in the first quartile of the Scimago Journal Ranking were selected. A total of 103 peer-reviewed articles were selected for the review and then segregated into different categories for analysis.

The paper highlights insufficient high-quality research in HOs that utilizes MCDM methods. It proposes a roadmap for scholars to enhance the research outcomes by advocating adopting mixed methods. The analysis of various studies revealed a notable absence of contextual reference. A contextual mind map specific to HOs has been developed to assist future research endeavors. This resource can guide researchers in determining the appropriate contextual framework for their studies.

This paper will help practitioners understand the research carried out in the field. The aspiring researchers will identify the gap in the extant research and work on future research directions.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first literature review on applying MCDM in HOs and HSCs. It summarises the current status and proposes future research directions.

This chapter shows that it is important to avoid descending to either an extreme of naturalizing disasters or sociologizing them. Safety depends on the appropriateness of social constructions for nature's constructions, whether inadvertent or based on sophisticated risk assessment. Worse-case scenarios need to be taken into account even if improbable, because assessments of their probability and timing have serious limitations. This chapter demonstrates that modern technology and organization can increase vulnerability to natural disasters. Antimodern communities avoided disaster in this case by stepping off the treadmill of production and practicing technological triage. The challenge for modern communities is to make an ecologically reflexive triage.

This paper illustrates how weather derivatives indexed to forecasts of famine can be designed and used by operational agencies and donors to facilitate timely and reliable financing, for effective emergency response to climate‐based, slow‐onset disasters such as drought. We provide a general framework for derivative contracts, especially in the context of index insurance and famine catastrophe bond, and show how they can be used to complement existing tools and facilities in drought risk financing through a risk‐layering strategy. We use the case of arid lands of northern Kenya, where rainfall proves a strong predictor of widespread and severe child wasting, to provide a simple empirical illustration of the potential contract designs.

Proactive planning strategies for “slow-onset” disruptions that affect humanitarian supply chains (SC) developed to address chronic pressing societal problems, can have a significant impact on boosting the operational and financial performance of these chains. The purpose of this paper is to develop a methodology that quantifies the impact of a risk mitigation strategy widely employed in commercial SCs, namely emergency sourcing (ES), on the performance of humanitarian SCs taking into account backorders’ clearance time, unsatisfied demand, and cost.

Discrete event simulation is employed in order to evaluate alternative ES strategies based on a total cost criterion, which incorporates inventory-related costs, as well as premium contract costs paid for emergency replenishment. Backorders’ clearance time and time-to-recovery are also employed as a design parameters.

The results document the significant impact of disruptions on expected total cost, and the beneficial role of ES in hedging against disruptions. To that end, the proposed methodology determines the optimal emergency contracted capacity for a given premium, or alternatively the maximum premium cost value that ensures the feasibility of the implemented ES strategy in the long-run, along with the associated cost and time savings, and reduction of the unsatisfied demand.

The fundamental objective is to provide a decision-making support methodology for deciding on whether to implement an ES strategy or not in humanitarian SCs, and the level of the optimal contracted reserved capacity. The results could be of great value to aid providers, policy-makers, and regulators.

This paper aims to assess climate change-related non-economic loss and damage (NELD) through case studies of Bangladesh and Japan, evaluate how NELD are addressed in these countries and provide the ways forward for further improvement.

This paper reviewed the literature to examine NELD and looked into currently available methodologies and their limitations. It reviewed governmental disaster reports and plans and interviewed with communities to understand NELD in each country’s context.

This paper indicates that NELDs are not sufficiently reported in the countries studied. Underestimation of NELD may lead to limited outcomes in disaster risk reduction (DRR) and climate change adaptation (CCA). NELD should be measured and integrated into decision-making, through capacity-building from local to national level.

This paper is based on the literature review and stakeholder consultations in the study countries. The results are specific to these countries. Readers may find them applicable to other country situations.

NELD-related information is directly relevant for preparing countries to achieve their sustainable development, CCA and DRR objectives as suggested by the recent international frameworks such as sustainable development goals (SDGs), Paris Agreement and Sendai Framework for DRR.

This paper identifies several NELD indicators related to societal well-being in the study countries and beyond, and addressing them will have positive impact on the society.

Addressing NELD is a recent topic under United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, and nothing much has been done on how countries can address NELD in their developmental, CCA and DRR approaches. This paper identifies the importance of integrating NELD into decision-making and the ways forward to researchers, governments and policymakers for addressing NELD.