Learning from the China Disaster Reduction Experience

Ｂａｃｋｇｒｏｕｎｄ１．Ｗｉｔｈｔｈｅｅｘｃｅｐｔｉｏｎｏｆｖｏｌｃａｎｉｃｅｒｕｐｔｉｏｎ，Ｃｈｉｎａｈａｓｂｏｔｈｌｏｎｇｅｘｐｅｒｉｅｎｃｅｏｆａｌｆｏｒｍｓｏｆｎａｔｕｒａｌｄｉｓａｓｔｅｒａｎｄｒｅｃｏｒｄｓｏｆｔｈｅｓｅｅｖｅｎｔｓａｎｄ...     

Disaster Situations from May to June in 1996

1WindStorm,HailStorm,StormRainfallandFlood-waterloggingDamageDuringMay6~7,1l,26,Yanqing,ChangpingandMiyuncountiesinBeijingexperiencedstormrainfallandhaildisastersinvaryingdegree,affecting85,0O0peopleandseverelyaffecting44,O0Opeople19l67Oha0fcropswereaffected,0utofwhich4,540hasufferedan0utputreductionby30%.Thedirecteconomicl0ssestotaled28.699millionyuan(RMB)-DuringMay22and24,stormrainfall,hailandhighwindhitBijie,T0ngren,Anshun,thesouthwestGuizhouandLit1panshuiareas,affecting165townshi…     

Lessons Learnt from the 1998 Flood and Future Strategy

Thesummerof1998hasseenanexceptionallyseriousfloodinthehistorywhichhasstrickenthreevalleysoftheYangtzeRiver,theNenjiangRiverandSonghuajiangRiver.UndertheleadershipoftheChineseGovernment,peoplethroughoutthecountrymadejointeffortsandhavefinallywonthefig...     

Disaster Situation from January to June in 1998 in China

JanuaryEarthquakeDisasterAt11:50a.m.Jan.10,anearthquakeof6.2MsoccurredinZhangjiakuo,HebeiProvince.Itsepicenterlocatedat41.12°N,114.337°E.Zhangbei,Shangyi,WanquanandKangbaocountieswereseverelyaffected.471000peoplewereaffected,417000wereseriouslyaffe...     

The Natural Disaster Situations from August to December in 1997

１．ＤｒｏｕｇｈｔＤｉｓａｓｔｅｒｓＦｒｏｍｔｈｅｍｉｄｄｌｅｔｏｔｈｅｅｎｄｏｆＡｕｇｕｓｔ，ｒｅｇｉｏｎｓａｌｏｎｇｔｈｅｕｐｐｅｒａｎｄｍｉｄｄｌｅｒｅａｃｈｅｓｏｆｔｈｅＹａｎｇｔｚｅＲｉｖｅｒｗｅｒｅａｆｌｉｃｔｅｄｗｉｔｈｓｕｓｔａｉｎｅ...     

Situation of Natural Disasters from July to December in 2000

Drought1 June～August( 1 ) Region affected:L iaoning ProvinceDaily water shortage:1 .7million m3Casualties:1 .86million persons faced with shortage of drinking waterMaterial damage:2 .53 million ha of crops affected,2 .65million ha damaged;0 .88million headof livestock faced with shortage of drinking waterEstimated damage:7billion yuan RMB( 2 ) Region affected:Jilin ProvinceDaily water shortage:60 0 0 0 0 m3/ citiesCasualties:2 .6million persons faced with shortage of drinking waterMater…     

Disaster Situation from July to December in 1998 in China

SeismicDisastersAt12:51a.m.,July28,anearthquakeof5.5Ms,whichwasaccompaniedbylandslide,shockedtheBaichengCountyofAksuPrefectureandcausedseriousdestructiontothebuildingsofthecounty,withtheepicenteroftheearthquakelocatedat81.19°E,41.49°N.At12:40a.m.,A...     

Summary Account of Natural Disasters from July to September 1994

ＳｕｍｍａｒｙＡｃｃｏｕｎｔｏｆＮａｔｕｒａｌＤｉｓａｓｔｅｒｓｆｒｏｍＪｕｌｙｔｏＳｅｐｔｅｍｂｅｒ１９９４Ｆｒｅｑｕｅｎｔｎａｔｕｒａｌｄｉｓａｓｔｅｒｓｏｃｃｕｒｒｅｄｉｎｔｈｅｔｈｉｒｄｓｅａｓｏｎｏｆ１９９４，ｃａｕｓｉｎｇｈｅａｖｙｌｏｓ...     

The Risks from Flooding: Which Risks and Whose Perception?

Four main groups are considered in relation to the risk from flooding: the engineers involved in the design of flood alleviation schemes, emergency planners, the public, including both the population at risk from flooding and the rest of the population who will bear all or most of the cost of flood alleviation schemes and the researchers, such as geographers and economists concerned with flood hazards and scheme appraisal. It is argued that these different groups vary significantly in their selection and definition of risks from flooding as a focus of concern and that their definition of risk influences their expectations about future events and the appropriate response to those events. But the different groups share two tendencies: the expectation that the future will be a replication of the past; and the neglect of "uncertain uncertainties" in favour of known uncertainties of risk.     

Normalised insurance losses from Australian natural disasters: 1966–2017

ABSTRACT

The paper updates normalisation of the Insurance Council of Australia’s Disaster List in the light of debate about the contribution of global warming to the rising cost of natural disasters. Normalisation estimates losses from historical events in a common year, here ‘season’ 2017 defined as the 12-month period from 1 July 2017. The number and nominal cost of new residential dwellings are key normalising factors and post-1974 improvements in construction standards in tropical cyclone-prone parts of the country are explicitly allowed for. 94% of the normalised losses arise from weather-related perils – bushfires, tropical cyclones, floods and severe storms – with the 1999 Sydney hailstorm the most costly single event (AUD5.6 billion). When aggregated by season, there is no trend in normalised losses from weather-related perils; in other words, after we normalise for changes we know to have taken place, no residual signal remains to be explained by changes in the occurrence of extreme weather events, regardless of cause. In sum, the rising cost of natural disasters is being driven by where and how we chose to live and with more people living in vulnerable locations with more to lose, natural disasters remain an important problem irrespective of a warming climate.     

L'Aquila's reconstruction challenges: has Italy learned from its previous earthquake disasters?

Italy is an earthquake‐prone country and its disaster emergency response experiences over the past few decades have varied greatly, with some being much more successful than others. Overall, however, its reconstruction efforts have been criticised for being ad hoc, delayed, ineffective, and untargeted. In addition, while the emergency relief response to the L'Aquila earthquake of 6 April 2009—the primary case study in this evaluation—seems to have been successful, the reconstruction initiative got off to a very problematic start. To explore the root causes of this phenomenon, the paper argues that, owing to the way in which Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has politicised the process, the L'Aquila reconstruction endeavour is likely to suffer problems with local ownership, national/regional/municipal coordination, and corruption. It concludes with a set of recommendations aimed at addressing the pitfalls that may confront the L'Aquila reconstruction process over the next few years.     

The Situation of Natural Disasters from January to April in 1997 in China

ＴｈｅＳｉｔｕａｔｉｏｎｏｆＮａｔｕｒａｌＤｉｓａｓｔｅｒｓｆｒｏｍＪａｎｕａｒｙｔｏＡｐｒｉｌｉｎ１９９７ｉｎＣｈｉｎａＬｉＸｉａｎｒｕｉ（ＤｉｓａｓｔｅｒＲｅｌｉｅｆｏｆｔｈｅＭｉｎｉｓｔｒｙｏｆＣｉｖｉｌＡｆａｉｒｓ）１．ＳｅｉｓｍｉｃＤｉｓａ...     

Humanitarian aid and local power structures: lessons from Haiti's ‘shadow disaster’

This paper investigates the confluence of humanitarian aid, centralisation, and politics. The 7.0 magnitude earthquake in Haiti on 12 January 2010 led to more than USD 16 billion in pledges. By contrast, Hurricane Matthew, which made landfall in Haiti on 4 October 2016, stayed in the shadows, attracting about one per cent of the amount. While the earthquake exhibited one face of centralisation, the Category 4 storm laid bare rural vulnerabilities shaped by postcolonial state neglect, and reinforced by the influx of non-governmental organisations in the ‘Republic of Port-au-Prince’. The study draws on data from four case studies in two departments to illuminate the legacies of hyper-centralisation in Haiti. Compounding matters, Matthew struck in the middle of an extended election that the international community attempted to control again. The paper argues that disaster assistance and politics are uncomfortably close, while reflecting on the momentary decentralisation of aid after the hurricane and its effectiveness.     

Then and now: A 30-year journey from the ‘leading edge’

A fledgling disaster management organization in 1984, Jamaica's Office of Disaster Preparedness (ODP) hosted the pioneering international disaster mitigation conference to share information and to contemplate how vulnerability to disasters from natural hazards could be reduced. Over the period 1979–2009, the overall focus of the agency was response, given the plethora of extreme events, and the priority of the Government of Jamaica. The organization was associated with several efforts at disaster mitigation, but the need for building the agency's capacity to lead national efforts to integrate mitigation planning into development did not seem to gain traction among the policy makers. Growing losses since 2004, the evidence of climate change and the need for adaptation, and the regional and international disaster risk management agenda have brought attention to the need for review and development of Jamaica's disaster risk management capacity. This paper examines highlights of the 30-year journey of disaster management in Jamaica, and highlights proposals for strengthening the national framework and the organizational structure of ODPEM.     

Commuting patterns of Czech households exposed to flood risk from the Bečva river

Using unique data collected in October–December 2012 we estimate the link between commuting for work and level of individual exposure to floods. We find that commuters on average have higher earnings than non-commuters. Individuals affected by one flood commute by 11.2% more than unaffected individuals. We conjecture that the increase is linked to intentions to cover flood-related losses, decrease households' vulnerability to flood risk or out-migrate from the risk areas. Individuals affected by at least two floods are by 20.2% less likely to commute relative to those unaffected. We explain this non-linear effect by the fact that many households out-migrate after the first flood. Stayers commute less, because they are different from non-stayers in some underlying characteristics related to education, employment and family circumstances, which strongly affect commuting behaviour. We further find that in a commuting family an individual is by 53.8% more likely to commence commuting relative to a non-commuting family. Choice of commuting destination is often similar to that of other family members.     

Resilience from the ground up: how are local resilience perceptions and global frameworks aligned?

Numerous resilience measurement frameworks for climate programmes have emerged over the past decade to operationalise the concept and aggregate results within and between programmes. Proxies of resilience, including subjective measures using perception data, have been proposed to measure resilience, but there is limited evidence on their validity and use for policy and practice. This article draws on research on the Decentralising Climate Funds project of the Building Resilience and Adaptation to Climate Extremes and Disasters programme, which supports communities in Mali and Senegal to improve climate resilience through locally controlled adaptation funds. It explores attributes of resilience from this bottom‐up perspective to assess its predictors and alignment with food security, as a proxy of well‐being. We find different patterns when comparing resilience and the well‐being proxy, illustrating that the interplay between the two is still unclear. Results also point to the importance of contextualising resilience, raising implications for aggregating results.     

Statement from the WMO/UNESCO Sub-Forum on Science and Technology in Support of Natural Disaster

OneoftheoutstandingachievementsoftheInternationalDecadeforNaturalDisasterReduction(IDNDR)hasbeenitsmajorcontributiontoincreasedinteractionandcooperationbetweenthenaturalandsocialsciencecommunitiesworkingindisasterreductionandthencetoenhancedapplicati...     

Should all disaster risks be reduced? A perspective from the systems concept of the edge of chaos

The field of disaster risk reduction (DRR) has risen to prominence since the declaration of the International Decade of Disaster Risk Reduction between 1990 and 2000. This decade provided the impetus for a change from the predominant paradigm of disaster response to that of disaster risk reduction as a means of addressing the underlying drivers that lead to disasters. In an effort to promote risk reduction, the UNISDR (the principal agency for disaster risk reduction within the UN structure) formulated policies and strategies to provide both conceptual and practical guidance as to how risk should be reduced. However noble the efforts, this paper contends that the current approach to and understanding of risk within the international community might not be cognisant of complex adaptive systems (CAS) concepts such as the edge of chaos. Specifically, this concept argues that risk (or chaos) within a system is actually a fundamental requirement to the functioning of all resilient socio-ecological systems. Therefore, the reduction of risk without an understanding of the role of that risk within the larger socio-ecological system might actually end up reducing the system’s overall level of disaster resilience. This paper aims to explore the concept of edge of chaos through a literature review of key theoretical works on the topic, followed by a discussion on its implications for the predominant paradigm of risk reduction within disaster risk management policy and practice.     

Journal of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation Engineering (Originated from Journal of Seismology)Vol. 23 2003 CONTENTS

No.lPreface··············,···························································································,··········……M八Zong一Jin(1)A Brief Introcluetion to the International Movement for Natural Disaster Reduetion in the New Century and China Assoeiation for Disaster Prevention·······································……C…