Narrow Results

Large-scale natural disasters, such as earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, and typhoons, occur worldwide. After the Great East Japan earthquake and tsunami, our medical support operation’s experiences suggested that traditional medicine might be useful for treating the various symptoms of the survivors. However, little information is available regarding herbal medicine treatment in such situations. Considering that further disasters will occur, we performed a literature review and summarized the traditional medicine approaches for treatment after large-scale disasters. We searched PubMed and Cochrane Library for articles written in English, and Ichushi for those written in Japanese. Articles published before 31 March 2016 were included. Keywords “disaster” and “herbal medicine” were used in our search. Among studies involving herbal medicine after a disaster, we found two randomized controlled trials investigating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), three retrospective investigations of trauma or common diseases, and seven case series or case reports of dizziness, pain, and psychosomatic symptoms. In conclusion, herbal medicine has been used to treat trauma, PTSD, and other symptoms after disasters. However, few articles have been published, likely due to the difficulty in designing high quality studies in such situations. Further study will be needed to clarify the usefulness of herbal medicine after disasters.

The Great East Japan Earthquake, which occurred on March 11, 2011, triggered the Fukushima nuclear power plant accident. This study estimates the economic damage caused by the radioactive contamination from the plant using a hedonic approach. Our estimation results show that an increase of 1$\mu Sv∕h$ decreases the land price by 3.39% on average in Fukushima and Miyagi prefectures. Specifically, damage due to the radiation effect is estimated to cost approximately 64.1 billion yen in Fukushima. In addition, our result shows that commercial and business areas are more sensitive than residential areas to the radiation quantity.

Disasters result in disruptive effects on various aspects of community in different scales and disaster relief is important in understanding negative effects from the shock. Using unique dataset after the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami, the decision return to the original residence is analyzed in this study. We find that having jobs related to the original region and ownership status have the largest impact on the return decision. Furthermore, these results are different for each age group.

This paper uses data compiled by John Lossing Buck from his rural China survey conducted between 1929 and 1933 to analyze the impact of weather calamities and conflict on agricultural productivity, farm wages and nutrition intake. Our results support the conditions required for a Nutritional Poverty Trap (NPT) to be present, while anecdotal evidence points to the potential presence of a nutritional poverty trap for large segments of China’s agricultural economy. We find a lagged effect of climate shock on nutrition, but find no evidence that the many conflicts of the day affected nutrition. This is more likely due to the avoidance of conflict zones by surveyors, but may also support the notion that the effects from conflicts were local and short-lived due to the resilience of farmers.

Air temperature records in 34 cities of China are used to construct an area relation network. A new strategy to construct relation networks is proposed. The areas are clustered into mainly four modules, which may behave differently in disaster occurrences and may be helpful in compilations of accident emergency program of anti-disasters.

Disasters: Preparing for the Unpredictable.

Interview with Professor Gilbert M. Burnham.

Interview with Assoc. Prof. Lim Meng Kin.

Studies on disaster have been criticised as putting too much emphasis on individual therapy. The community perspective highlights the significance of the sociopolitical factors in causing disasters and intervention at the community level. This paper, examining the contribution of community development services during the SARS epidemic in Hong Kong, reveals the significance of establishing an extensive network of vulnerable groups and community organising groundwork in times of crisis. Intervention during the SARS crisis included crisis intervention, providing community education, promoting community care, community participation and supporting the unemployed. After SARS, the focus was on reinforcing the spirit of mutual help, anti-discrimination and reconstructing positive shared meanings of the disaster. In mobilising community resources, the concept of the "strength" community has been confirmed. The SARS experience has revealed that, although disasters are becoming complex and global, remedies can be found in the local community. Community is an important disaster resource.

本文檢視社區發展服務在“非典型肺炎”期間的貢獻：危機介入、社區教育、社區照顧、社區參與及支援失業人士。“非典”之後，服務集中於強化互助、反歧視及建構災難的正面意義。介入的過程引證了“力量”社區的概念。

A disaster is a devastating incident that causes a serious disruption of the functions of a community. It leads to loss of human life and environmental and financial losses. Natural disasters cause damage and privation that could last for months and even years. Immediate steps need to be taken and social media platforms like Twitter help to provide relief to the affected public. However, it is difficult to analyze high-volume data obtained from social media posts. Therefore, the efficiency and accuracy of useful data extracted from the enormous posts related to disaster are low. Satellite imagery is gaining popularity because of its ability to cover large temporal and spatial areas. But, both the social media and satellite imagery require the use of automated methods to avoid the errors caused by humans. Deep learning and machine learning have become extremely popular for text and image classification tasks. In this paper, a review has been done on natural disaster detection through information obtained from social media and satellite images using deep learning and machine learning.

Humanitarian logistics is regarded as a key area for improved disaster management efficiency and effectiveness. In this study, a multi-objective integrated logistic model is proposed to locate disaster relief centers while taking into account network costs and responsiveness. Because this location problem is NP-hard, we present a genetic approach to solve the proposed model.

The tsunami which devastated Japan in 2011 highlighted the consequences of natural disasters on an area considered to be "best prepared" for such an event. Learning from the direct environmental, social and economic impacts and temporally and spatially displaced indirect global impacts, is important. When seeking to identify and mitigate the impact of proposed developments the process is carried out from two distinct perspectives: "before" and "after" implementation with environmental impact assessment and environmental management the main "instruments" on either side. Drawing on examples from financial institutions and disaster response agencies, this paper explores the theory that coupling the two "instruments" can aid disaster risk reduction and management. It concludes that there is no simple answer and that further research is needed to inform practice.

Changes in the problems addressed and the modes of interpretation employed by one hazard researcher during a lengthy professional career are identified and analyzed. These illustrate an ongoing dialogue between personal experience and professional engagement that moves toward broader framing of problems and increased synthesis of findings over time. This trend parallels the general evolution of interdisciplinary hazard research in recent decades. The emergence of ambiguity as a study problem that requires urgent attention is discussed against a background of burgeoning hazards and inadequate progress toward the reduction of losses, as well as an increasingly permeable boundary between the knowledge of experts and laypersons. Concepts of encounter and context are identified as promising rubrics under which researchers might undertake an expanded engagement with hazards and examples of topics on the author’s current inquiry agenda are provided.

The impacts of COVID-19 and efforts to stimulate recovery from the pandemic have highlighted the need for information about how disasters affect the real economy: temporal and spatial dynamics, cascading risks of disruption to employment, debt, trade, investments, bond markets, and real estate markets, among others. This commentary explores what information on the economic dimensions of climate change is needed to inform decisions about adapting to and effectively averting, minimizing, and addressing climate risks. We review the economic information presented in special reports from the IPCC AR6 cycle (SR1.5, SROCC, and SRCCL). We find that the information presented in these reports expands beyond costs of mitigation options, and potential negative GDP effects of climate impacts to include real economic dimensions in food production and land use (forestry and agriculture), coastal areas and fisheries, among others. This reflects an emerging literature which addresses a wider spectrum of economic and financial aspects relevant to climate change and national and regional priorities. Five emerging areas of work related to climate impacts on the real economy and on financial services provide essential additional information for decisions about efforts at all levels to achieve the objectives of the Paris Agreement and the overall objective of the UNFCCC Convention. Insights from economic analysis of the coronavirus pandemic—a sustained, complex disaster with global consequences across the real economy and financial services—can help highlight useful areas of research and discussion for policy makers considering climate impacts, vulnerabilities, and risks.

Volunteers are playing a significant role in interacting with ongoing societal shocks and stresses, such as mobilizing resources and supporting responses to extreme weather events. Their actions contribute to the pursuit of local climate resilience by shaping the local level and influencing socio-ecological systems. Therefore, academics, communities, practitioners and policymakers responsible for understanding, encouraging, developing and sustaining volunteering activity can benefit from critical reflections on volunteering in extreme weather events in order to support ongoing research initiatives, future research and policy agendas, and the development of funding strategies and public programs for climate resilience. This Policy Forum paper critically reflects on the current status of volunteering for extreme weather events and local climate resilience, using experiences from flood risk management, to identify key challenges and opportunities for the future. It builds on the ESRC CASCADE-NET project in discussing both academic puzzles and practical challenges faced in volunteering for local climate resilience in an attempt to bridge gaps and foster further debates between theory and practice. These insights are drawn from a series of dialogic exchanges that reflect the authors’ diverse perspectives and lived experiences of volunteering that emerge in their research and practice in England, the Czech Republic, and The Netherlands. We identify and share ten urgent challenges, followed by discussion of four cross-cutting themes that exist: volunteers as a renewable energy source, stakeholder narratives of volunteering, learning from other contexts, and transformative resilience. In exploring the futures of volunteering, this Policy Forum challenges existing thought by proposing the need to move beyond traditional narratives of “the volunteer” and “volunteering” to a more inclusive and nuanced understanding. Through this, we believe that volunteering can play an essential role in pursuing a just transition, with volunteers being able to challenge the status quo to contribute to transformative climate resilience practice and policy.

With growing exposure to extreme events, there is a pressing need to identify effective strategies for mitigating and coping with losses. Two widely implemented policies — subsidized insurance and ex post compensation — are compared in this paper. First, a conceptual framework is presented and provides insight into the net benefits and distributional effects of these programs. Then, a case study of flood insurance and compensation uses a benefit–cost analysis (BCA) to illustrate the distribution of net benefits across stakeholders. Findings from the conceptual framework and BCA suggest that an intervention to increase uptake of subsidized flood insurance does not deliver net social benefits relative to the status quo compensation program. Furthermore, subsidized insurance delivers subsidies to wealthier households, while increasing taxpayer burden that can be disproportionately borne by the poor. These results imply that aid and insurance programs should be better coordinated since interactions between these two strategies influence household decisions and the cost of disaster policy. Overall, findings suggest that means-tested or lump sum aid payments could shift benefits to less wealthy households and are reasonable policies in cases where the alternative is a voluntary insurance program with subsidized premiums.

This study aims to explore the use of Twitter by Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD) in 2021, which is determined as the year of disaster education. Within the scope of this study, the tweets of the AFAD Presidency in the media section between January 1, 2021, and December 31, 2021, were examined. The tweets were categorized considering hazard types (geological, hydrological and climatological, biological, technological accidents and Chemical Biological Radiological Nuclear (CBRN), forest fires, migration, and other) and phases of the disaster management cycle (pre-disaster (mitigation, and preparedness), response, and post-disaster recovery). Five hundred and eighty tweets related to disasters were identified including the number of 88 disaster irrelevant tweets. Most of the tweets were related to hydrological and meteorological hazards. Regarding the biological disaster-induced COVID-19, only two tweets specific to the response process were identified. This study provides an overview of the characteristics and the potential role of social media in risk communication. These institutions can provide the risk information and work closely with the media to reach and share with the community.

In the humanitarian assistance sector, the primary objective of inter-organizational networks is to ensure that there are efficient and effective humanitarian response efforts that meet the needs of the affected population to the maximum extent possible (Drabek, 1987; Zhao et al., 2009). However, theoretical perspectives on humanitarian organizational networks and effective disaster response have remained relatively modest and confined to developing basic typologies of coordination arrangements and identifying the challenges encountered in the disaster management process. (Bennett, 1999) There also seems to be limited academic endeavor to use network, complexity, chaos and systems theories for disaster research not only for large-scale emergencies worldwide but also in developing countries. Most research works concentrate on an approach limited to a much smaller scale of nodes (organizational actors). In the preceding section, a review of relevant theories is presented in the context of humanitarian organizational network and disaster response.

This study examined the response of crop yield (maize, rice, soybean, and wheat) in the Asian monsoon region to meteorological drought during 1981–2016. The meteorological drought index was developed based on multiple timescale SPEI (Standardized Precipitation-Evapotranspiration Index) using a global dataset. The crop yield response was assessed using de-trended crop yield based on the global dataset of historical yields in a 0.5 grid resolution. Monthly indices were then obtained in the harvest month of each crop to consider the crop growing period annually. Then the crop yield response to drought was estimated by Pearson correlation and linear regression analysis. Results show that crop yield anomaly is more associated with the 9-month precipitation aggregation of SPEI than the other time scales used in this study (1–12 months). The drought events variations explain approximately 15, 11, 22, and 10% of the total crop area for maize, rice, soybean, and wheat crop, respectively, in the region (p-value < 0.1). By country, China, India, and Indonesia, the three largest crop producers account for around 76% of the region’s total significantly affected crop area. Based on this historical analysis, this study implies that droughts affect crop yield in this region, whose climatic conditions are strongly driven by various global phenomena (e.g., El Niño–Southern Oscillation). This study is also essential for understanding crop-drought vulnerability, particularly for the Asian monsoon region.

This paper analyzed urban rainstorm water logging disaster in Tianjin city based on statistics and numerical simulation. Firstly, the basic theory of the urban rainstorm water logging mathematical model was introduced and used to simulate various rain process conditions according to the features of the rainstorm and the draining rules. Secondly, the water logging disaster distribution and its influences on traffic were primarily evaluated. Finally, some management and mitigation measures of the urban rainstorm water logging disaster were discussed.

Disasters, predicted to increase in intensity and frequency in the near future as a result of climate change, are cross-scale in their impact, disrupting functioning across multiple levels of socio-cultural systems in which individuals’ lives are embedded. Governments all over the world need policies to plan support for community preparedness and recovery from disasters and to this end they need to understand and model disaster resilience as accurately as possible. Disasters can be either rapid or slow onset events, requiring differing responses to facilitate resilience. These might be at community and/or individual scales. The interconnectedness of resilience at individual and community scales requires multilevel preparedness, responses and mitigation strategies. A useful lens with which to investigate these interconnections for policy creation is Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological theory. This chapter describes research conducted in four disaster impacted regional Australian towns using Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological theory to assess and model disaster resilience. The four sites experienced flood, cyclone, bushfire and drought respectively, resulting in damage running into many millions of dollars. The research validated the use of Bronfenbrenner’s theory for modeling disaster resilience. Results highlighted several important areas for targeted government policy to promote disaster resilience, manage risk and reduce individuals’ vulnerability in diverse settings.

The hospitality industry has subsequently been struck by a range of disasters. Either; globally or regionally, natural or man-made disasters. Reflecting the hospitality and tourism industry’s vulnerability to hazardous events in the internal and external environment, they have caused dramatic fluctuations in Tourist arrivals and revenue. The chapter investigates the impact of these disasters and crises on hospitality and tourism industry. Aims to review some attempts to investigate the impact of disasters, how emergency planning could mitigate these impacts, and how to recover from it. Furthermore, it reviews the theories and models which could be used as an effective strategies to cope with uncertainty, how to plan, manage, and recover from such events. Emergency plans used by industry players to overcome the effect of such events and quick return to normality. Emergency planning could mitigate the effect of such events and recover from such disasters. The finding also emphasizes the power of media in clearing the ambiguity, which helps marketing efforts towards tourists to change their attitudes and visit safe rather than visiting hazardous destinations. Effective planning and the urgent need for better cooperation, coordination and awareness efforts among the industry stakeholders, government agencies, and local communities could mitigate the negative impact of hazardous events, allowing organizations to learn from the past to prevent the same effects in the future.