Jamba-Journal of Disaster Risk Studies最新文献

Integrating disaster risk reduction (DRR) and climate change adaptation (CCA) has gained traction among scientists and development practitioners, given their complementary benefits of reducing vulnerabilities and enhancing the resilience of ecosystems, livelihoods and protection of assets while concomitantly enabling the achievements of the Paris Agreement, Sustainable Development Goals and the Sendai Framework on DRR. However, guidance on integrating climate and disaster risk is poorly understood because of insufficient scholarship. Although common concerns exist, the effective integration of DRR and CCA faces diverse challenges in various countries and contexts, and no study has addressed this topic in the Indian Ocean Region and Seychelles. To address this knowledge gap, a content analysis of relevant policies and strategies and in-depth interviews with 40 stakeholders were conducted to identify the challenges of integrating DRR and CCA alongside their proposed strategy for improvement. Barriers that impede the effective mainstreaming of DRR and CCA include issues about (1) governance and politics; (2) policy integration; (3) competing actors and institutions; (4) coordination and collaboration; (5) resources and funding mechanism; (6) scale mismatches; (7) implementation and mainstreaming; (8) community involvement; and (9) information, communication and knowledge sharing. This study reveals that structural coherence was weak on the strategic rather than conceptual levels, leading to poor institutional, operational and financial coordination. This led to incidental integration and collaboration happening on an ad hoc basis with the Disaster Risk Management Division positioned towards emergency preparedness and response. Proposed recommendations to enhance DRR and CCA integration are provided.

Contribution: This study serves as a guide for Seychelles and other countries on how to effectively link DRR and CCA to minimise duplication of efforts and enhance the efficient use of human and financial resources while concomitantly achieving the objectives of DRR - to reduce vulnerability and enhance resilience.

Improved drought and flood management in semi-arid transboundary basins requires a better understanding of the connections between dry and wet extremes, surface water and groundwater, upstream and downstream, and local communities and formal governance actors. This study describes a multi-disciplinary and mixed-methods research in the Limpopo River Basin, southern Africa. The methodology included hydrometeorological data analysis to identify drought and flood events, group discussions with 240 local community participants about drought and flood processes, impacts and preparedness, and interviews with 36 (inter)national and regional water managers and policymakers about drought and flood governance, early warning and communication. Additionally, we co-created drought and flood management scenarios through transboundary and national workshops and modelled these with an integrated surface water-groundwater model. We found that floods are crucial for aquifer recharge, providing baseflow during droughts, but also impactful for communities, who receive less training and support for floods than for droughts. Flood early warnings (if provided) are often not acted upon because of cultural values or limited resources. Drought and flood adaptation strategies were simulated to be effective, but factors like investment and maintenance costs, technical capacity and community uptake impact implementation. Furthermore, technical measures alone are inadequate to reduce community risk if underlying vulnerabilities are not addressed. Therefore, strengthening connections between communities and formal governance actors and better transboundary management of surface water and groundwater connections could yield significant benefits.

Contribution: This study provides 11 distinct recommendations for managing drought and flood risk, focussing on the four connections analysed.

The series of evacuation drills implemented for flood disasters were mostly through monotonous traditional pedagogical methods. The application of these methods was observed to be ineffective because of the inability to realistically represent the actual dangers and have a significant impact on behavioural changes. Therefore, this research aimed to develop and test the effectiveness of Immersive Virtual Reality (IVR) Flood Evacuation to improve knowledge and self-efficacy regarding flood disasters. This was achieved through the adoption of a one-group pretest-posttest design as well as the selection of 45 students as participants. The results showed that IVR significantly improved the knowledge of the best evacuation practices and self-efficacy (T-test, p < 0.005) with long-term influence on the memory of the participants. These observations supported the previous studies that reported the ability of virtual reality in ensuring longer knowledge retention compared to traditional learning methods.

Contribution: Immersive virtual reality was found to have the potential to be applied as an interesting pedagogical tool for flood evacuation training. The application of the method for drills was discovered to be more efficient, cost-effective, and provide enhanced knowledge retention for users. This research shows the significance of seamlessly incorporating knowledge with flood evacuation practices through IVR in disaster education programmes. The integration is important in the transformation of knowledge into actionable steps, thereby enhancing overall preparedness.

Disaster Safe Education Unit (SPAB), also known globally as Comprehensive Safe School (CSS), aims to improve school residents' resilience. Three pillars of SPAB have been established, but their implementation, to date, has not shown satisfactory results. This study aims to evaluate the implementation of the SPAB programme in the disaster-prone area (KRB) of Merapi Vulcano in Sleman, Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Data collection was conducted using a field survey combined with in-depth interviews. Overall, the study focussed on the 32 schools in the KRB Merapi. The SPAB implementation was evaluated by considering the Pressure-State-Response (PSR) indicator. The study results showed that not all schools in KRB Merapi implemented the SPAB programme. Safe schools have not fully implemented the three pillars of SPAB. Pillar 3 had the highest rate (96.40%) of implementation in safe schools, whereas Pillar 1 had the lowest (54.5%). Legality, funding and human resources are the critical plausible explanations for why the SPAB pillars have not been implemented well. These problems affect school infrastructure, the capacity of educators, consistency and school motivation in implementing SPAB programme.

Contribution: The response to overcome these issues is strengthening regulations related to SPAB implementation. Strong regulations will provide space for funding components to increase the capacity of school residents, improve infrastructure, as well as increase school motivation. Stakeholders can utilise these findings to formulate more robust regulatory formulations for implementing SPAB in other KRB zones with similar typologies.

This study presents the systemisation of lessons learned from the urban sector in which the measures based on the guiding principle of risk-informed development (RID) have been implemented in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region at the national and/or sub-national levels. Despite notable risks in the region, these are not adequately considered in urban development planning and programming. Aiming at strengthening RID in the SADC region, the objectives of this peer-to-peer exchange were achieved through virtual workshops, roundtables and briefings on a cloud-based and open-source BigBlueButton Web conferencing system. Risk-based decision frameworks were used as footprints throughout the moderation phases. Peer-to-peer exchanges totalled 25 events and 80 registered individual members. About 14 SADC member states and 26 cities represented by city officials, local governments and academia participated in this process. Results along the risk-based decision frameworks lead to a clustering of recurring topics during the peer-to-peer exchange, which are presented along legal and organisational setups; budget and funding; risk assessment and mitigation options; and data and information flows considerations.

Contribution: Aligned with the 'Regional Assessment on Urban Vulnerability and Resilience in SADC Member States' by conclusions provide a series of recommendations for risk-informed urban development in the SADC region.

The present study seeks to identify disaster-prone areas and socio-economic impacts to investigate the mechanism of the post-disaster management in East Java, Indonesia. The data was collected from three disaster-prone areas, i.e. Lumajang, Malang, and Bojonegoro regencies in East Java. This study applied the mixed method approach; hence, quantitative (survey) and qualitative (interviews) data have been gathered. The results show that disasters have several implications for human life, such as health, economic life, and socio-cultural and psychological conditions, which have several impacts on communities, such as human settlements, health, economic life, and socio-cultural and psychological conditions. Therefore, efforts are required to manage disaster victims and provide them with social protections related to mental, economic, and social activities and health services.

Contribution: In disaster-affected areas, to restore the community's economic condition, local governments provide multiple kinds of assistance, including business capital (grants), low interest rates, production equipment, community empowerment activities, job opportunities and business partnerships with the local market. Furthermore, such strategies for disaster management should be implemented in an integrated manner, and the inclusion of local community members for prevention, mitigation, preparedness, and emergency response to recovery phases are also highly recommended.

The role of indigenous knowledge in disaster risk reduction (DRR) and climate change adaptation cannot be underestimated. It acts as a preparedness and response tool to climate change-related impacts such as floods, droughts and strong winds. However, inadequate studies about indigenous knowledge in Malawi is a major challenge when dealing with extreme climatic conditions. Learning from indigenous knowledge systems, by investigating first what local communities know and have, can improve the understanding of local conditions and can provide a productive context for activities designed to help communities reduce vulnerability to climate change impacts. This paper assessed the role of indigenous knowledge systems in DRR and climate change variability and adaptation strategies in Chikwawa district. The study used a participatory research approach involving interactive research methods such as focus group discussions (FGDs), key informant interviews and participant observations. Data from key informants and FGDs were analysed thematically. The study revealed various indigenous knowledge which communities in the Chikwawa district use to respond to climate-related impacts such as floods. Some of these include hippopotamus relocating from the river to the village, extreme hissing of pythons in nearby forests, buffaloes and zebras wreaking havoc in the villages and crocodiles flocking to the village.

Contribution: The study concludes that indigenous knowledge provides the basis for problem-solving approaches for local communities, hence, a need to document it at a wider scale.

Preparedness for natural disasters is crucial for people living in high-risk areas along the Ring of Fire, such as people in Indonesia. Although Spatial Disaster Learning using Geospatial Technology (SDL-GeoTech) has been developed, its effectiveness in enhancing students' preparedness remains unproven. This study examines the impact of SDL-GeoTech on junior high school students' readiness using a quasi-experimental, time-series, single-group pre-post-test design. The research involved students from three schools: SMA 1 Grati Pasuruan (flood-prone), SMA 1 Puncu Kediri (volcanic eruption-prone), and SMA 3 Mataram Lombok (earthquake-prone). Data were collected through tests on knowledge, skills, and attitudes, followed by t-test analysis at a 0.05 significance level. The results of this study show SDL-GeoTech was significantly able to improve students' preparedness, including their knowledge, skills, and attitudes. These findings highlight SDL-GeoTech as an innovative tool for disaster education, with the potential to enhance curricula and teaching strategies, especially in vulnerable areas.

Contribution: This research teaches students to use techno-geospatial learning through SDL-GeoTech, equipping those in the Ring of Fire region to be better prepared for potential natural disasters such as earthquakes and floods. The proven analysis of SDL-GeoTech has shown that it enhances students' knowledge, skills and attitude in preparedness in dealing with disasters.

Temporal trend analysis of the Google-search volumes and terms related to water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) in South Africa was performed using a computer plugin between January 2004 and June 2022. This study was conducted as WASH has played an important role in the containment of the recent coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, and it is also one of the most effective and easiest-to-deploy tools in decreasing risk from infectious diseases. For the WASH-related terms, the monthly search volumes ranged from the minimum average of 480 for pit latrines to the maximum of 30236 for diarrhea or diarrhoea for the studied period. The Spearman correlation coefficients ranged from -0.29462 to 0.96647, with the p-values ranging from 0.00001 to 0.28789. On a yearly basis, there was a direct correlation between the WASH-related search volumes extracted and the access of the South African population to basic water and sanitation. There was an inverse relationship between the WASH-related search volumes extracted on an annual basis and the death rates from diarrhoeal diseases among children under 5 years of age in South Africa between 2004 and 2020. Results of the current study indicate that a Google-derived search volume can be useful in the assessment of the public's interest in WASH-related topics in South Africa.

Contribution: Therefore, the study findings could be used to optimise the design and targeting of public awareness campaigns on WASH during the coronavirus pandemic or similar infectious disease burdens and related disaster risks.

Legislation provides a framework for effective and coordinated disaster preparedness and response. This article evaluates the strengths and shortcomings of South Africa's disaster risk management (DRM) legislation in guiding the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Since its promulgation in 2002, South Africa's DRM legislation has been hailed as one of the most progressive legislations globally. However, the severe respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, commonly known as the COVID-19 pandemic, exposed inadequacies in most existing DRM legislation worldwide, including in South Africa. This led to an inadequate response to the pandemic. A content-based literature review was conducted. Forty-nine peer-reviewed articles, reports, op-eds and newspaper articles were included in the review. The review highlighted significant inadequacies of South African DRM legislation, including the placement of the National Disaster Management Centre and the establishment of new structures for COVID-19 response. Based on the findings of this study, disaster managers, as the primary implementers of the disaster management legislation, must motivate the constant review of the disaster management legislation as a way of mitigating social, economic, political and environmental impacts of disasters, which emanate from the inadequacies existing in the disaster legislation.

Contribution: The study's findings contribute to the effective management of the disaster management fraternity by suggesting amendment of the legislation based on the experience during the pandemic. The recommendations made to disaster managers will assist with responding appropriately to future pandemics and other disasters.