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.

Disaster impact analysis based on inter‐relationship of critical infrastructure and associated industries

Abstract: Purpose – Natural disasters, such as Hurricane Katrina (the most destructive natural calamity in US history), have destructive impact on residents, critical infrastructure, as well as, functions and services of associated industries in the affected areas In addition, due to a lack of both understanding of natural disaster impacts and preparedness to the hurricane, it was revealed that the emergency‐related organizations were not prepared to maximize the use of the critical infrastructure to mitigate the impacts The purpose of this paper is to help those organizations have more understanding of disaster impacts and facilitate their decision making in order to prepare better mitigation plansDesign/methodology/approach – A disaster impact mechanism and inter‐relationships based on the main functions of associated industries are derived through an extensive literature review and case analyses Based on these inter‐relationships, a decision support system is developed and evaluated using a winter flood disa

Forecasting the Conditional Probabilities of Natural Disasters in Canada as a Guide for Disaster Preparedness

Abstract: A variety of natural disasters occur in Canada. Yet apart from simple ``return period'' calculations, no apparent research seems to have made systematic use of the OCIPEP database on all natural disasters in Canada over the period of 1900 to 2000. This paper (a) describes the main characteristics of natural disasters in Canada, and (b) presents a methodology that is a first attempt to use the database to forecast conditional probabilities of each type of natural disaster. The forecast probabilities can then be used to work out the expected social costs of each type of natural disaster. The expected costs in turn suggest what kind of policy priorities are indicated for disaster preparedness. The key results of this methodology are that Hydrometeorological Disasters are increasing over time and of these, the ranking in order of priority for preparedness should be droughts, heat waves, floods and ice storms.

General overview of the disaster management framework in Cameroon.

Abstract: Efficient and effective disaster management will prevent many hazardous events from becoming disasters. This paper constitutes the most comprehensive document on the natural disaster management framework of Cameroon. It reviews critically disaster management in Cameroon, examining the various legislative, institutional, and administrative frameworks that help to facilitate the process. Furthermore, it illuminates the vital role that disaster managers at the national, regional, and local level play to ease the process. Using empirical data, the study analyses the efficiency and effectiveness of the actions of disaster managers. Its findings reveal inadequate disaster management policies, poor coordination between disaster management institutions at the national level, the lack of trained disaster managers, a skewed disaster management system, and a top-down hierarchical structure within Cameroon's disaster management framework. By scrutinising the disaster management framework of the country, policy recommendations based on the research findings are made on the institutional and administrative frameworks.

The Dynamics of Recovery: A Framework

Abstract: Each disaster reminds us that, from an economic standpoint, losses do not occur instantaneously, but are accumulated over the course of a sometimes long and complex recovery process. Moreover, disasters are spatial events that impact some places and some groups within those places more heavily than others. These effects can be observed in both natural disasters and human-induced events. Thus in the September 11th tragedy of 2001, the loss of the World Trade Center towers and the thousands of human lives do not in themselves constitute the economic impact of the disaster. Neither does the loss of gross regional product (GRP) on the 11th itself. Rather, the economic impact of the disaster is strongly influenced by the multitude of decisions made in the days and months following — decisions regarding whether to relocate an office to New Jersey and for how long, whether to lay off workers and how many, and whether to inject stimulus spending into the New York City economy and how much. Similar post-event decisions strongly influence recovery in natural disasters such as floods or earthquakes. In other words, the process of disaster recovery is critical to understanding the spatial economic impacts of disasters, yet the recovery process itself is extremely complex and uncertain.