Disaster Risk Reduction

2020 has become the year of coping with COVID-19. This year was to be the “super year” for sustainability, a year of strengthening global actions to accelerate the transformations required for achieving the 2030 agenda. We argue that 2020 can and must be a year of both. Thus we call for more utilisation of the health-emergency disaster risk management (Health-EDRM) framework to complement current responses to COVID-19 and the patent risk of similar phenomena in the future. To make our case, we examine current responses to COVID-19 and their implications for the SFDRR.

The indomitable spirit of growth of mankind has led to rapid urbanisation, steered by industries and corporates. While globalisation and development mark the good face of the consequential coin, increased frequency of extreme events and disaster risks along with the phenomenon of climate change, marks the dark face of the same coin. Each time the society takes a catastrophic hit, humanity begs to question the role of corporate in disaster mitigation, management and rehabilitation.

The impacts of natural disaster occurred in coastal area have pushed environmental damage and threatened its sustainability as well as the existence of community livelihood. Accelerating risks from coastal hazards add the disadvantages for communities living in coastal areas, especially those who are very dependent on natural resources. The objectives of the research are the research is intended to measure the resilience of coastal community through collective resilience assessment and bottom-up approach in community level.

The cities in Southeast Asian and Small Island Developing States have distorted the natural environment by haphazardly constructing roads, buildings, and other infrastructures. Such massive changes in the environment are altering the ecology, creating sustainable development challenges such as climate-related extreme weather events. Super Typhoon Haiyan devastated portions of Southeast Asia, particularly the Philippines, on November 8, 2013, that caused physical and psychological illnesses to the affected.

This study aims to design and validate a comprehensive assessment tool that measures the coastal cities' resilience toward coastal hazards. Instrument development process adhered to the research and development methodology that involves: i) literature review, ii) design of the assessment tool, and iii) instrument validity test using Content Validity Ratio (CVR) and Content Validity Index (CVI). Fourteen experts were involved in the validity test.

Bangladesh is currently hosting more than one million stateless Rohingya refugees, who fled from the Rakhine State to avoid genocide and serious crimes against humanity persecuted by the Myanmar Army. The newly arrived Rohingyas were accommodated in overcrowded refugee camps in Cox's Bazar District (CBD). The camps are highly vulnerable to landslides, tropical cyclones, flash-flooding, and communicable disease outbreak. Although a number of improvement measures are ongoing, however, no study to date has addressed Rohingyas' self-adopted strategies to mitigate disaster risks.

In developed countries, public-private partnerships involving insurance companies and governments often provide security against the human and economic losses of disasters. These partnerships, however, are neither available nor affordable in most highly exposed developing countries. In this paper we examine recent innovations in financial risk management that extend traditional public-private partnerships to include NGOs, international financial institutions and other donors.

Despite the tremendous human suffering caused by natural disasters, their effects on economic growth remain unclear, with some studies reporting negative, and others indicating no or even positive effects. To reconcile these seemingly contradictory findings reported in the literature, this study explores the effects of natural disasters on growth separately by disaster and economic sector. Applying a dynamic generalized method of moments panel estimator to a 1961-2005 cross-country panel dataset, three major insights emerge.

Due to the increase in natural disasters in the past years, Disaster Response Organizations (DROs) are faced with the challenge of coping with more and larger operations. Currently appointed Information and Communications Technology (ICT) used for coordination and communication is sometimes outdated and does not scale, while novel technologies have the potential to greatly improve disaster response efficiency.

Novel approaches to improving disaster response have begun to include the use of big data and information and communication technology (ICT). However, there remains a dearth of literature on the use of these technologies in disasters. We have conducted an integrative literature review on the role of ICT and big data in disasters. Included in the review were 113 studies that met our predetermined inclusion criteria. Most studies used qualitative methods (39.8%, n=45) over mixed methods (31%, n=35) or quantitative methods (29.2%, n=33).