Narrow Results

This chapter examined historical occurrence of natural disasters, policy frameworks related to disasters, implementation arrangements and challenges, national and household resources to natural disasters in Malawi. It is found that Malawi has an updated national disaster risk reduction (DRR) policy that is coordinated by the Department of Disaster Risk management and Affairs within the Office of President and Cabinet. The policy is linked to various related sectoral policies and to national growth and development strategy. There are various committees established at various levels that deliberate on issues related to disaster risk reduction and management. At national level, priority areas have been identified. In addition, the chapter concluded that household strategies such as crop diversification, irrigation farming and income generating activities have positive and significant contribution on reducing disaster risk to household food production and let alone welfare.

While Digital Libraries (DLs) are moving towards universally accessible collections of human knowledge, considerable advances are needed in DL methodologies and technologies to make this happen. Interoperability between DLs is a crucial requirement to achieve this goal. The European project, DL.org, is focused on advancing the state of the art in this area by proposing solutions, fostering best practices and shared standards, drawing on the knowledge acquired during the DELOS Network of Excellence, and harnessing the expertise of DL domain stakeholder communities. By serving this goal, DL.org is paving the way for the embedding of new research achievements into real-world systems, opening up new cross-domain research perspectives and supporting the advancement of the European Information Space for the knowledge-based economy.