Disasters最新文献

Rising temperatures are mainly associated with wildfires, but the incidence of fire may also increase in the urban context. Yet, fire in Delhi, India, as elsewhere in the towns and cities of the Global South, remains largely invisible, despite the nearly 11 million people each year who are burnt severely enough to require medical attention. This paper focuses on whether summer temperatures in Delhi are rising and whether higher temperatures and lower humidity contribute to a greater number of fires in urban areas. The data strongly suggest a relationship between the warming city, a growing number of summer fires, and mounting temperatures around the world. Delhi, however, is only one example of an urban reality that is common to much of the Global South. Similar questions about the incidence of fire and whether the number is increasing need to be asked of other towns and cities that share the same vulnerabilities.

How does male out-migration impact women's experience of post-disaster reconstruction? This paper employs survey data collected by Nepal's Housing Recovery Reconstruction Platform in 2018 to establish robust associations between male out-migration and three indicators of women's participation in rebuilding their private houses after the 2015 Gorkha earthquake: (i) knowing where to consult for information; (ii) visiting a local government official by oneself; and (iii) signing a rebuilding agreement with the local government. Twenty-six semi-structured interviews conducted in 2022 further revealed that women whose husbands were abroad undertook roles that they would not have performed had their spouse been present, including in relation to management and decision-making. However, the interviews also highlighted challenges that women had to overcome, such as a lack of knowledge of procuring materials and difficulties leading the process as a woman. This study advances the literature by establishing a relationship between male out-migration and variation in women's post-earthquake rebuilding experiences.

Liminal periods of disaster solidarity in the aftermath of disaster are a common experience of many survivors. These periods have a specifically ethical component in that people spontaneously engage in collective, altruistic action and magnanimously expand their ethical focus beyond normative social distinctions and hierarchies. Inevitably, however, such solidarity seems to wane, and people return to pre-disaster patterns of interaction. Nevertheless, some individuals move beyond opportune acts of assistance to more extensive reorganisations of their lives during the recovery period and reshape their ethical commitments in new and durable directions. These individuals help make visible marginalised ‘others’ and draw collaborators to share new ethical visions. Based on observational and interview data collected after Hurricane María (2017) in a mountainous Puerto Rican municipality and employing the framework of virtue ethics, this paper examines the differential effects of disaster solidarity on survivors' ethical responses and the different contributions these make to society.

Emergency declarations are important legal tools for the state to protect itself and its citizens during times of crisis. Such declarations permit the exercise of extraordinary powers to address an emergency or disaster. They present an opportunity to explore policy learning in crises, through the ability to examine emergency declaration instruments and the detail of post-emergency inquiries and reviews. This paper briefly assesses Australian law that provides for emergency declarations and places it in the context of theories of policy learning and change. Two case studies reveal evidence of policy learning in emergency declaration practice in Australia. There is an emerging practice of using declarations primarily or purely as tools to communicate the seriousness of an emergency. This policy learning has occurred both within and between jurisdictions, including the federal government. This paper also probes opportunities for future research on policy learning and emergency legislation, especially in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Researchers across disciplines have long sought to collect ‘perishable data’ in the context of disasters. Yet, this data type is neither consistently defined nor discussed in specific detail in the literature. To address this gap, this paper defines perishable data and provides guidance on ways to improve both how it is collected and shared. Here, perishable data is conceptualised as highly transient data that may degrade in quality, be irrevocably altered, or be permanently lost if not gathered soon after it is generated. Perishable data may include ephemeral information that must be collected to characterise pre-existing hazardous conditions, near-miss events, actual disasters, and longer-term recovery processes. This data may need to be gathered at multiple points in time across varying geographic scales to accurately characterise exposure, susceptibility to harm, or coping capacity. The paper considers ethical and logistical challenges and discusses opportunities to advance equitable perishable data collection and dissemination.

Despite increased research on ‘multiple hazards’ and ‘cascading effects’, ambiguity remains concerning terminology. This paper reviews the literature to explore how these two concepts are defined in relation to critical infrastructures and their vital societal functions. Next, it investigates how the concepts are operationalised in Swedish disaster risk management. Findings indicate that regardless of a wealth of methodologies assessing multiple hazards and their cascading effects, these are rarely used by local planners, suggesting a gap between scientific approaches and practical implementation. Research mainly captures multiple hazards and cascading effects through technical parameters related to the severity of a hazard or the direct physical impacts on infrastructure. Less focus has been placed on the wider or knock-on effects across sectors and how these translate into societal risk. Future research should move beyond traditional understandings of social vulnerabilities as only pre-existing, to analyse how cascading effects on infrastructure and services can put new social groups at risk.

Natural hazards can turn into disasters when not managed well. An important part of disaster risk reduction is to understand how well communities are prepared for natural hazards and how well they can cope with and recover from shocks in the long term. This research assesses self-reported community resilience and asks what makes a community resilient, using Australia as a case study. It reports on an Australian-wide online survey which included questions related to the Conjoint Community Resiliency Assessment Measurement, a subjective indicator, as well as questions about risk perception, well-being, and self-efficacy. Community resilience was found to be moderately high but scores for community leadership and preparedness were low. Perceived community resilience was positively correlated with age and those with high scores for self-efficacy and well-being. There was, as expected, an inverse relationship between reliance on external support during natural hazards and self-efficacy. The results complement previous studies which used different measures of community resilience.

Disasters and conflicts are both widely recognised as ‘drivers’ of internal displacement. Yet, despite a growing body of research and policy, there has been little consideration to date of how the different features of each ‘context’ shape the micro-level dynamics of internal displacement. Where and why are these dynamics similar across the two contexts and how do they differ? This paper draws on general concepts from the disaster field to develop a comparative analytical model of internal displacement dynamics in the disaster and conflict contexts. Based on inferences from the patchy extant data across the two contexts, it identifies and explains points of convergence and divergence between internal displacement dynamics in both the disaster and conflict contexts. This ‘contextual’ model of the micro-level dynamics of internal displacement has implications for academic debates, as well as for policy and practice, in the disaster, conflict, peace, climate change, and forced migration/displacement fields.

Space is a feature of all disasters, and it is through decisions on how space is developed, used, and reproduced that disasters manifest themselves. Critical urban theory sees urban space—cities—as an arena of contestation expressed through the relationship between people, power, and the built environment. Cities allow for an unpacking of this process of contestation through the interpretation of various temporal, spatial, social, and physical elements that together create complex issues and ‘wicked problems’. In these urban spaces in all their complexity, disasters reveal both the worst injustices and inequalities present in a society. By drawing on three well-known cases—Hurricane Katrina in 2010; the Haiti earthquake in 2010; and the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami in 2011—this paper not only explores the opportunities that critical urban theory presents for gaining a deeper understanding of disaster risk creation, but also it encourages disaster scholars to engage with it.