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The question of “why we are in disaster studies” can be essential to reflect on discourses and practices – as students, researchers and professors – in constituting an oppressive disaster science and finding ways to liberate from it.

This paper is based on autobiographical research and institutional ethnography to observe and analyze the discourses and practices about career trajectories as students, researchers and professors in disaster studies.

The paper provides some categories, concepts, theoretical approaches and lived experiences helpful for discussing ways of liberating disaster studies, such as public sociology of disaster.

Few papers have focused on professional trajectories in disaster studies, bringing insights from public sociology and questioning oppressive disaster science.

The objective of this study was to investigate how participatory 3D mapping can promote local intergenerational engagement for disaster risk reduction.

This investigation was carried out in the city of São Luiz do Paraitinga, Brazil, where a low-cost participatory 3D model (P3DM) was used together with secondary methods (semi-structured interviews, round tables, discussions and presentations) to engage three local focus groups (the general public, high school employees and children) to visualize and interpret local hazards, vulnerabilities, capacities and risk mitigation measures.

Participants played with a 3D model, using it to express their memories about land use changes in the city and to share their knowledge about past disasters with children that have not faced them. They identified the impacts of the previous disasters and came up with proposals of risk mitigation measures, mostly non-structural.

When applied in a way that allows spontaneous and open public participation, the participatory 3D model can be a type of disaster imagination game that gives voice to oral histories, local knowledge, and which permits the intergenerational engagement for disaster risk reduction.

This conversation presents the reflections from six international disaster scholars on how disaster capitalism manifested in very different ways in different countries, including Japan, Chile, Brazil, Colombia, India and South Africa, during the COVID-19 pandemic. The purpose of this paper is to address this issue.

This paper is based on the conversations that took place on Disasters: Deconstructed Podcast livestream on the September 15, 2020.

The prominent themes in this conversation include profiteering, oppression and the politics of disasters.

The conversation contributes to the ongoing discussions around disaster capitalism and disaster risk creation.

The purpose of this paper is to study an articulated warning system that provides information about the heritage at risk and encourages a dialogue between the heritage sector, civil defense agencies and local communities.

The databases from the National Heritage Institute, National Civil Defense, National Geological Service and National Early Warning System were investigated and the local community provided input which helped form a participatory risk mapping strategy for a warning system in the heritage sector.

There is little knowledge of the Brazilian heritage that is at risk and a lack of coordination between the cultural heritage and DRR sectors. This means that there is a need to organize the geo-referenced databases so that information can be shared and the public provided with broader access. As a result, there can be a greater production, dissemination and application of knowledge to help protect the cultural heritage.

The findings can be included in the debate about the importance of framing disaster risk management (DRM) policies in the Brazilian heritage sector.

The findings and maps of the case study in the town of São Luiz do Paraitinga involve the heritage sector, civil defense agencies and local people and can be used for disaster risk preparedness.

A DRM program is being formulated in Brazil. However, the kind of strategy needed to incorporate the heritage sector in this program stills needs to be planned, and the knowledge of the cultural heritage at risk is a key factor when faced with this new social and scientific challenge.

The purpose of this study is to encourage graduate students to facilitate a participatory mapping activity with high school students, to have their voices heard in the disaster risk reduction (DRR) agenda.

A participatory mapping, youth-led session, was conducted with 22 high school students, where they had to identify flood and landslide-prone areas. Then, they were asked to propose and plan DRR measures in collaboration with local partners in São Luiz do Paraitinga, Brazil.

The participatory method engaged the graduate students and the high school students in the DRR debate, allowing them to map hazards and vulnerabilities, and to discuss five incubation projects for enhancing DRR in the city.

This research highlights the importance of involving young people in DRR formulation and planning to build local capacities in younger generations. The outputs were shared with the local civil defense and a local non-governmental organization (NGO), who suggested recommendations to improve the five incubation projects.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze some barriers and the “drivers of localism” during the long-term disaster recovery process. The main question is: what types of discourses and practices about localism are being heard and revealed in the frontline?

Fieldwork, which was conducted from January 2010 to June 2013, consisted of participant observation and qualitative data collection. The authors opted for an approach that privileges narrative and observation, dialoguing with participants to gather local knowledge and information. Data were analyzed in light of the disaster recovery literature, focusing on disaster recovery as an expression of power relations.

Localism has been framed in diverse ways according to the interests of social groups placed in contextual meanings and, sometimes, in different phases of risk and disaster management. One important driver of localism is disaster narrative framing that allowed identification of how localism is composed, by whom and how.

One important aspect that needs further research is longitudinal studies to investigate how the barriers are changing between the generations, and how intergenerational dialogues can be promoted to sustain long-term participation and localism.

This study recommends the need to identify who is talking about the importance of local and how localism has been framed in policy and action. It is important to empower localism in order to provide ways for local people sharing what is going on in the frontline. But it is also essential to provide funding and means of implementation for local initiatives regarding advocating, researching and proposing disaster recovery interventions led by people.

Disasters continue to be most prevalent and severe for marginalised communities. To reach those furthest behind first, as the global community pledges in the 2030 Agenda, a critical assessment of equity in disaster risk governance is necessary. Yet, the understanding of factors that mediate the capacity of the governance processes to achieve equity ambitions is limited. This paper addresses this gap by proposing and testing a conceptual framework to assess equity in disaster risk governance.

The framework analyses the extent to which institutional relationships and data in risk governance support inclusion and diversity of voice and enable the equitable engagement of communities. The study applied the framework to key risk policies across governance levels in Brazil and Colombia.

The study finds that institutional awareness of cross-sectoral and -scalar coordination clearly exists. Yet, the engagement of actors further down the governance scale is framed reactively at all scales in both countries. The analysis of the risk data practices indicates that although data integration and sharing are key policy priorities, the policies frame the relations of disaster risk data actors as hierarchical, with data needs determined from the top down.

A key contribution of this framework is that its equity view results in a nuanced analysis, thus pointing to the differences between the two countries concerning the factors that mediate these challenges and providing specific entry points for strengthening equity in risk governance policies.

This article discusses the professional status of civil defense and protection agents and coordinators in Brazil, their working conditions and demands for professionalization in disaster risk management.

Two online surveys with operators and civil defense and protection managers and documentary analysis based this research. The first survey engaged 1,933 participants who provided information about the working conditions at municipal civil defense, while the second involved 1,344 civil respondents who assessed their roles and duties in disaster risk management.

Civil defense and protection agents pointed to the high turnover in these positions as the main factor for setbacks in disaster risk reduction, allied to precarious working conditions, lack of training, and unclear responsibilities in disaster risk management.

This paper contributes to the international debate on the professionalization of civil defense and protection and disaster risk management, bringing some insights from the sociology of professions. It has a policy impact of suggesting pathways to the inclusion of civil defense and protection in the Brazilian Occupational Classification to advance professional patterns and public recognition of disaster risk management careers.

The study aims to identify the gaps and the potentialities of citizen-generated data in four axes of warning system: (1) risk knowledge, (2) flood forecasting and monitoring, (3) risk communication and (4) flood risk governance.

Research inputs for this work were gathered during an international virtual dialogue that engaged 40 public servants, practitioners, academics and policymakers from Brazilian and British hazard and risk monitoring agencies during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The common challenges identified were lack of local data, data integration systems, data visualisation tools and lack of communication between flood agencies.

This work instigates an interdisciplinary cross-country collaboration and knowledge exchange, focused on tools, methods and policies used in the Brazil and the UK in an attempt to develop trans-disciplinary innovative ideas and initiatives for informing and enhancing flood risk governance.