Natural disaster

About: Natural disaster is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 5456 publications have been published within this topic receiving 104808 citations. The topic is also known as: natural calamity & natural hazard.

Scenario-based preparedness plan for floods

Abstract: The increasing trend of disaster victims globally is posing a complex challenge for disaster management authorities. Moreover, to accomplish successful transition between preparedness and response, it is important to consider the different features inherent to each type of disaster. Floods are portrayed as one of the most frequent and harmful disasters, hence introducing the necessity to develop a tool for disaster preparedness to perform efficient and effective flood management. The purpose of the article is to introduce a method to simultaneously define the proper location of shelters and distribution centers, along with the allocation of prepositioned goods and distribution decisions required to satisfy flood victims. The tool combines the use of a raster geographical information system (GIS) and an optimization model. The GIS determines the flood hazard of the city areas aiming to assess the flood situation and to discard floodable facilities. Then, the multi-commodity multimodal optimization model is solved to obtain the Pareto frontier of two criteria: distance and cost. The methodology was applied to a case study in the flood of Villahermosa, Mexico, in 2007, and the results were compared to an optimized scenario of the guidelines followed by Mexican authorities, concluding that the value of the performance measures was improved using the developed method. Furthermore, the results exhibited the possibility to provide adequate care for people affected with less facilities than the current approach and the advantages of considering more than one distribution center for relief prepositioning.

Trial by Fire: A Natural Disaster’s Impact on Support for the Authorities in Rural Russia

Abstract: This study aims to explore the micro-foundations of political support under a non-democratic regime by investigating the impact of a natural disaster on attitudes toward the government. The research exploits the enormous wildfires that occurred in rural Russia during the summer of 2010 as a natural experiment. We test the effects of fires with a survey of almost 800 respondents in 70 randomly selected villages. Our study finds that in the burned villages there is higher support for the government at all levels. Most counterintuitively, the rise of support for authorities cannot be fully explained by the generous governmental aid. We interpret the results by the demonstration effect of the government’s performance.

The Development of Collaboration of Response to Hurricane Katrina in the Dallas Area

Abstract: Hurricane Katrina placed tremendous stress on America's emergency response systems. No single agency possessed the capacity required to address the needs of those affected by the hurricane. One element seen lacking in the immediate response to the hurricane was a well-coordinated effort taking advantage of the outpouring of support from distant jurisdictions and organizations. This article looks at some of the theories of how collaborative relationships like these sought in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina emerge in disaster situations and what factors influence the development of stable emergency response collaborative partnerships. Two case studies in the disaster response in the Dallas/Fort Worth area serve to illustrate the importance of communication and interaction in the development of disaster response networks. The article concludes with thoughts about what questions remain from the case studies and potentially fruitful avenues for research on collaboration and disaster response.

The impact of volcanic eruptions during the 1990s

Abstract: The 1990s were proclaimed International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction by the General Assembly of United Nations. We constructed a database in order to evaluate the global impact of volcanic eruptions during the decade. During the 1990s, between 560 and 1,300 lives were lost because of volcanic activity. Two cities were completely devastated. More than 520,000 people were displaced and the economical loss exceeded one billion U.S. dollars. The majority of eruptions were announced by recognized precursors. The increase in awareness after the dramatic volcanic disasters of the 1980s lead in most cases to a more structured crisis management program and early evacuations that saved thousands of lives, which demonstrates that mitigation planning pays. The most devastating eruptions in term of fatalities and economic loss were from volcanoes that remained quiet for several centuries. This clearly demonstrates that late quaternary volcanic edifices close to populated areas should be identified, mapped, and monitored.

Understanding sustainable disaster mitigation of stakeholder engagement: Risk perception, trust in public institutions, and disaster insurance

Abstract: Many rural settlements in China's western mountainous regions are affected by mountain disasters, such as landslides and mudslides. For residents living in landslide-prone areas, behaviors related to disaster risk mitigation (such as purchasing disaster insurance) are inevitably affected by disaster risk perception. Due to the substantial differences in disaster occurrence patterns, landslide-related insurance research is relatively rare compared with insurance research focused on other types of natural disasters (e.g., floods and droughts). Based on the results of questionnaires administered in landslide-prone areas in Chongqing, China, this paper uses partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) to investigate the relationships among the questionnaire respondents' risk perception, trust in public institutions (TPI), and willingness to buy disaster insurance (WBDI). The results reveal that risk perception and TPI directly affect WBDI. Here, competence, participation, possibility perception, and fear perception are significantly positively correlated to WBDI, whereby fear perception has the largest impact, followed by possibility perception, competence, and participation. In addition, TPI indirectly affects WBDI through risk perception. Here, competence reduces fear perception and indirectly reduces WBDI. The implications of these results for theory are discussed. This study introduces a new method to support disaster risk mitigation-related decision making that can be useful to governments and individuals.