Natural disaster

Hurricane Andrew blasted through the southern tip of Florida in August 1992, damaging or destroying tens of thousands of homes and forcing hundreds of thousands of persons to move at least temporarily to different places of residence. The hurricane not only disrupted ...

The purpose of this paper is to compare and contrast the experiences from four major recipients of food aid (India, Bangladesh, Ethiopia and Zambia) in normal time and after a natural disaster and draw implications for the design of effective food aid and food security policies in Africa. The study summarizes the food and agricultural policies and medium-term outcomes regarding food production, trade, markets, consumption and safety nets, as well as the policy responses to food emergencies. The experiences of the study countries suggest that food aid that supports building of production and market enhancing infrastructure, is timed to avoid adverse price effects on producers, and is targeted to food insecure households can play a positive role in enhancing food security. However, food aid is not the only, or in many cases, the most efficient means of addressing food insecurity. In many cases private markets can more effectively address shortfalls in food availability and cash transf...

Introduction: Flood disaster is a natural disaster that has unexpectedly occurred again. Community cooperation in terms of managing flood and focusing on families’ needs has become more systematic. It is important for a household to be prepared in any disaster. One of the preparations that should be done is the stockpiling of emergency supplies or flood supply kits during evacuation. This study aimed to develop a specific disaster kit for households for evacuation during a flood disaster based on cultural context. Methods: Data were collected from 75 key informants from every level of households that really have a great experience during the flood disaster that helping family packing for a living needs before evacuation. The development of the disaster kit based on cultural needs and all their views, needs, experiences, challenges, frustration and happiness was obtained from the interview sessions. Results: There are five themes that emerged from this research related to developing ...

Natural disaster of tsunami have occurred in Indonesia, Thailand, India, the Maldives and Sri Lanka after an earthquake measuring 9.0 on the Richter scale erupted, on Dec 26, 2004 of Sunday morning centered near the Indonesian island of Sumatra. The tsunamis washed away fishing villages and resorts throughout the region. The biggest tsunami on history has hit Aceh on Dec 26, 2004. In Banda Aceh as well as several coastal cities in Aceh, many people are not aware and care about the sign of nature before wave came. On the contrary, in a small island Simelue, the local people were aware of the sign of nature, and they know how to avoid the incoming wave and where to evacuate. The tsunami warning can be circulated via established communication systems to issue timely alarms to permit evacuation of coastal areas. Such high-technology warning system is surely needed high funding. Moreover, the sign of nature from animal behavior can be used potentially as a low-technology warning system t...

Large-scale anthropogenic changes to the natural environment, including land-use change, climate change, and the deterioration of ecosystem services, are all accelerating. These changes are interacting to generate five major emerging public health threats that endanger the health and well-being of hundreds of millions of people. These threats include increasing exposure to infectious disease, water scarcity, food scarcity, natural disasters, and population displacement. Taken together, they may represent the greatest public health challenge humanity has faced. There is an urgent need to improve our understanding of the dynamics of each of these threats: the complex interplay of factors that generate them, the characteristics of populations that make them particularly vulnerable, and the identification of which populations are at greatest risk from each of these threats. Such improved understanding would be the basis for stepped-up efforts at modeling and mapping global vulnerability...

It is generally understood that as a country develops, it devotes greater resources to safety, including implementing precautionary measures designed to reduce the impacts of natural disasters. With the recent devastating human and economic impacts of the tsunami in Southeast Asia ...

Assessing the importance of transportation facilities is an increasingly growing topic of interest to federal and state transportation agencies. In the wake of recent terrorist attacks and recurring manmade and natural disasters, significant steps are needed to improve security at both state and metropolitan level. This paper proposes a heuristic procedure using concepts of complex networks science to assess the importance of highway transportation networks using travel time as the performance measure to assess criticality. We demonstrate the proposed technique both in a theoretical network (Sioux Falls network) and in a built-up network to assess the criticality of the major infrastructures that are used to access Manhattan in an AM peak hour. The results demonstrate the efficacy of the procedure to determine critical links in a transportation network.

Hurricanes are the costliest natural disasters in the United States. Understanding both hurricane frequencies and intensities is a topic of great interest to meteorologists, decision makers and the general public alike. Previous research has suggested that damage has been dramatically increasing within the last two decades, in part due to rapid increase of population and wealth in coastal regions (Blake et al., 2005; Emanuel, 2005;

The National Incident Management System (NIMS) was developed so that responders from different jurisdictions and disciplines could work together to respond to natural disasters and emergencies, including acts of terrorism. The NIMS document provides a set of guidelines about practices but it does not spell of the design requirements for information systems to support the management of critical incidents. Though

Fast-growing, coastal mega cities along China's east coast and the rim of the Cross-Straits region, in particular, are becoming increasingly more vulnerable to potential natural disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis, typhoons, storm surges and floods. The provinces of Shanghai, Guangdong, Fujian, and Zhejiang, as well as Taiwan, are threatened by common disasters. Advancing Cross- Straits ties in mitigating the impact

This paper explores the link between human rights and disaster risk reduction. We revisit the notion of a human rights-based approach in the context of natural disasters, analyzing how this concept may contribute to greater accountability and empowerment of those involved in disaster risk reduction. To better understand the processes of empowering rights holders and holding duty bearers into account we adopt legal analytical lenses. By doing so we review four country case studies and their main regulations on disaster risk reduction, taking into account the extent to which they adopt a human rights-based approach. We argue that countries whose legal frameworks allow for community engagement point towards greater community empowerment. Similarly, countries whose legal provisions make possible for holding States accountable for their underperformance in disaster situations suggest greater levels of accountability. We also consider key international human rights instruments binding the...

One of the key roles of a destination marketing organization (DMO) is to portray their destination in such a way that it is both appealing and inviting to their existing and potential tourism market. A challenge faced by a DMO in the regional Victorian destination of Gippsland in Australia, is the fact that they also have to manage unanticipated sudden changes in market perceptions that may occur in response to a disastrous event. The reoccurring natural disasters of this region (fires, floods and drought)—the most recent being the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires, deemed Australia's worst natural disaster in history—make it imperative that DMOs can respond effectively. This article presents the findings of an exploratory research project designed to investigate the tourism market's response to this particular disastrous event. The primary aim of the research was to better understand how a large-scale disaster impacts upon the tourist's destination image and visitation intentions, and the role of the media in these deliberations. Focus group research reveals the post-disaster media interpretations, images, and visitation intentions of intrastate and interstate, regional and metropolitan tourists. Differences are observed in relation to the participants' geographic location and distance from the fires and their understandings of the event, including their reflections on media coverage. Varying perceptions among the participants of the impact of the fires, the travel risk, and subsequent travel intentions are discussed. Managerial implications relating to media management and the refinement of future disaster management strategies are also presented.