Disaster Studies

""Related articles: http://www.materialworldblog.com/2012/07/memory-and-photographs-reflections-on-the-aftermath-of-the-3-11-disaster/ & http://toglobalist.org/2012/08/returning-the-memory/

In this narrative, I reflect on the relief/recovery activities that I was involved with in Utatsu in Minamisanriku, Miyagi, northeastern Japan, from late May until late August 2011, in the aftermath of the 3.11 Great East Japan earthquake and tsunami. Minamisanriku was one of the towns swept away by the tsunami. The debris was all around, which included not only the wreckage of buildings and ships, but possessions belonging to the victims. All these items were battered and left exposed to the open air. I focus on one of the relief activities – that of rescuing ‘objects of memory’, especially photographs, from the debris. In doing so, I consider the relationship between objects, images, and memory when people have lost virtually everything, as they did in this disaster."

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-8322.2012.00874.x/abstract"

The "Great Frost" of 1740 was one of the coldest winters of the eighteenth century and impacted many countries all over Europe. The years 1740–1741 have long been known as a period of general crisis caused by harvest failures, high prices for staple foods, and excess mortality. Vulnerabilities, coping capacities and adaptation processes varied considerably among different countries. This paper investigates the famine of 1740–1741 in Ireland applying a multi-indicator model developed specifically for the integration of an analysis of pre-famine vulnerability, the Famine Vulnerability Analysis Model (FVAM). Our focus is on Ireland, because famine has played a more outstanding role in Irish national history than in any other European country, due to the "Great Famine" of 1845–1852 and its long-term demographic effects. Our analysis shows that Ireland was already particularly vulnerable to famine in the first half of the eighteenth century. During and after the experience of hardship in 1740–1741, many Irish moved within Ireland or left the country entirely. We regard migration as a form of adaptation and argue that Irish migration in 1740–1741 should be considered as a case of climate-induced migration.

The article first describes characteristics of major infrastructure projects. Second, it documents a much neglected topic in economics: that ex ante estimates of costs and benefits are often very different from actual ex post costs and benefits. For large infrastructure projects the consequences are cost overruns, benefit shortfalls, and the systematic underestimation of risks. Third, implications for cost–benefit analysis are described, including that such analysis is not to be trusted for major infrastructure projects. Fourth, the article uncovers the causes of this state of affairs in terms of perverse incentives that encourage promoters to underestimate costs and overestimate benefits in the business cases for their projects. But the projects that are made to look best on paper are the projects that amass the highest cost overruns and benefit shortfalls in reality. The article depicts this situation as ‘survival of the unfittest’. Fifth, the article sets out to explain how the problem may be solved, with a view to arriving at more efficient and more democratic projects, and avoiding the scandals that often accompany major infrastructure investments. Finally, the article identifies current trends in major infrastructure development. It is argued that a rapid increase in stimulus spending, combined with more investments in emerging economies, combined with more spending on information technology is catapulting infrastructure investment from the frying pan into the fire.

"OBJECTIVES: We assessed the levels and correlates of posttraumatic stress reactivity (PTSR) of more than 20,000 adult tsunami survivors by analyzing survey data from coastal Aceh and North Sumatra, Indonesia.

METHODS: A population-representative sample of individuals interviewed before the tsunami was traced in 2005 to 2006. We constructed 2 scales measuring PTSR by using 7 symptom items from the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Checklist-Civilian Version. One scale measured PTSR at the time of interview, and the other measured PTSR at the point of maximum intensity since the disaster.

RESULTS: PTSR scores were highest for respondents from heavily damaged areas. In all areas, scores declined over time. Gender and age were significant predictors of PTSR; markers of socioeconomic status before the tsunami were not. Exposure to traumatic events, loss of kin, and property damage were significantly associated with higher PTSR scores.

CONCLUSIONS: The tsunami produced posttraumatic stress reactions across a wide region of Aceh and North Sumatra. Public health will be enhanced by the provision of counseling services that reach not only people directly affected by the tsunami but also those living beyond the area of immediate impact."

This article seeks a queering of research and policy in relation to natural disasters, their human impacts, management and response. The human impacts of natural disasters vary across different social groups. We contend that one group largely absent from scholarly and policy agendas is sexual and gender minorities, or lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender/transsexual and intersex (LGBTI) populations. To demonstrate that these minorities have particular experiences that need to be addressed, we critically review five case studies that comprise the limited scholarly and policy research on LGBTI populations in disasters to date. Building on this, we offer some specific ways forward for queer disaster research that accounts for the vulnerabilities, needs and resilient capacities of LGBTI populations. In doing so, we recognise and urge researchers, policy-makers and aid agencies to acknowledge that LGBTI populations are not homogeneous and have different needs wrought by intersections of socio-economic resources, gender, race/ethnicity, age and regional or national location.

The objective of this study is to document the reaction of international students to the 11 March 2011 emergency in order to inform and improve disaster management strategies, both public and institutional. The study is based mainly on a questionnaire survey carried out in August 2011 and follow-up interviews with students and other stakeholders. It describes the background of Tohoku University’s School of Engineering and covers six different stages in the evolution of the emergency: (1) immediate response; (2) taking shelter in Sendai; (3) life in the city during the aftermath; (4) sheltering outside Sendai; (5) coming back; plus (6) an overview of the experience. Major findings include: the process of evacuation and safety confirmation was successful, yet the subsequent phases (2 and 3) went on mostly unmanaged; students relied mostly on secondary sources of information to make decisions, mainly family and friends of the same nationality, most of whom probably were not better informed than the students themselves. Based on the findings, suggestions for future disaster planning are advanced, as well as a discussion on the challenges of information provision during crisis.

In 1809, a major fire destroyed a number of thatched cottages in a Waterford suburb. The fire, its effect on the cottagers, and the response of the townspeople in putting out the blaze and in helping its victims are considered, suggesting the social class priorities of those involved. Little can be said about the poor who dwelled in the cottages, but how the property changed hands following the fire is scrutinised in detail, indicating how close political and family ties underlay the process. Concludes that archaeology can help elucidate the way of life of the poor that once dwelled there.

In this paper, we describe the issues surrounding the use of various hashtags by Twitter users who are attempting to exchange information about recent natural disasters. During these disasters, hashtag usage was somewhat mired by inconsistent formats, spellings, and word ordering. This paper argues for systems that can help bridge this issue by creating participant-centered data streams that can collect and re-route these conversations.

""This paper investigates how risk coping strategies differ between idiosyncratic and covariate income shocks using evidence from a nation-wide flood in Bangladesh. It is found that availability of coping strategies significantly depends on the covariate-idiosyncratic characteristic of shocks. The main strategies for idiosyncratic and moderate covariate shocks
are interest-free informal credit and additional labor supply for fishing, but they are not utilized to cope with the severe covariate shocks. Instead, people must resort to borrowing
with high interest as a last resort.""