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"Disasters - economics"
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From Disaster Response to Community Recovery: Nongovernmental Entities, Government, and Public Health
In this article, we examine the role of nongovernmental entities (NGEs; nonprofits, religious groups, and businesses) in disaster response and recovery. Although media reports and the existing scholarly literature focus heavily on the role of governments, NGEs provide critical services related to public safety and public health after disasters. NGEs are crucial because of their ability to quickly provide services, their flexibility, and their unique capacity to reach marginalized populations. To examine the role of NGEs, we surveyed 115 NGEs engaged in disaster response. We also conducted extensive field work, completing 44 hours of semistructured interviews with staff from NGEs and government agencies in postdisaster areas in Texas, Florida, Puerto Rico, Northern California, and Southern California. Finally, we compiled quantitative data on the distribution of nonprofit organizations. We found that, in addition to high levels of variation in NGE resources across counties, NGEs face serious coordination and service delivery problems. Federal funding for expanding the capacity of local Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster groups, we suggest, would help NGEs and government to coordinate response efforts and ensure that recoveries better address underlying social and economic vulnerabilities.
Journal Article
The resilience dividend : being strong in a world where things go wrong
\"New York. Athens. Boston. Tohoku. Newtown. Oslo. West. Wenzhou. New Orleans. Dhaka. Moore. Nairobi. These communities are just a few among the many that have been hit hard by one of the \"wicked problems\" of today's world: natural catastrophe, disease and contagion, systems or social collapse. If you haven't been directly touched by one of these disruptions yourself, you are sure to have been affected by them in some way. They harm people, destabilize communities, and threaten organizations and even whole societies. These problems have become such a part of our world that knowing how to prepare for them, how to respond when they happen, and how to recover from them should be essential skills of modern life for all of us. We have certainly made progress in this regard, especially in the years since 9/11, but we are still at greater risk than we should be. We can't anticipate every disruption that might come our way, but we can develop an overall approach for dealing with the wicked problems, and formulate specific plans for areas where we and our communities are particularly vulnerable. The Resilience Dividend is both timely and important important as both the severity and frequency of disruptions are increase. It develops both a way of thinking and practical tools for taking action for protecting the world's people and communities and shows how to create a blueprint for change. \"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Understanding the economic and financial impacts of natural disasters
This report explores the macro-economic and public finance implications of natural disasters, including the role of information and mechanisms for risk spreading, and drawing in particular on evidence from Bangladesh, Dominica and Malawi.Major natural disasters can have severe negative short-run economic and budgetary impacts. Disasters also appear to have adverse longer-term consequences for economic growth, development and poverty reduction. However, negative impacts are not inevitable: sensitivity to natural hazards is determined by a complex, dynamic set of influences. Vulnerability can shift rapidly, especially in countries experiencing economic transformation - rapid growth, urbanization, and related technical and social changes. The report concludes that in order to stem the rising cost of natural disasters globally, hazard risk management concerns need to be integrated into longer-term national investment policies and development strategies and appropriately reflected in the allocation of financial resources, including medium-term financial planning. The generation and dissemination of quality, reliable scientific information should be supported as part of this process. In addition, assessment of the economic and financial impacts of disasters should be extended to include a full reassessment 18 to 24 months after an event, generating vital information on the nature of impacts and underlying causal factors.
eBook
BP blowout : inside the Gulf oil disaster
\"BP Blowout is the first comprehensive account of the legal, economic, and environmental consequences of the disaster that resulted from the April 2010 blowout at a BP well in the Gulf of Mexico. The accident, which destroyed the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, killed 11 people. The ensuing oil discharge- the largest ever in U.S. waters-polluted much of the Gulf for months, wreaking havoc on its inhabitants and the environment. Daniel Jacobs tells the story that neither BP nor the federal government wants heard: how the company and the government fell short, both in terms of preventing and responding to the disaster.\"--book flap
Book
Regional anesthesia in resource-limited and disaster environments: a daring discourse
Regional anesthesia (RA) is commonly used in perioperative settings of developed and well-resourced environments. RA has significant potential benefits when used in resource-limited environments, including disaster, mass casualty, and wartime environments. RA offers benefits over general anesthesia and opioid-based analgesia, including decreased risk of complications, decreased reliance on mechanical ventilation, improved cost efficiency, and others. The decreasing cost of ultrasound matched with its smaller size and portability increases the availability of ultrasound in these environments, making ultrasound-guided RA more feasible. This daring discourse discusses some historical examples of RA in ultralow resource environments, both man-made disasters and natural disasters. Future investigations should increase the usefulness and availability of RA in resource-limited environments.
Journal Article
Fragile futures : the uncertain economics of disasters, pandemics, and climate change
\"This book revisits a distinction introduced in 1921 by economists Frank Knight and John Maynard Keynes: that between statistically predictable future events (\"risks\") and statistically unpredictable, uncertain events (\"uncertainties\"). Governments have generally ignored the latter, perceiving phenomena such as pandemics, natural disasters, and climate change as uncontrollable Acts of God. As a result, there has been little if any preparation for future catastrophes. Our modern society is more interconnected and more globalized than ever. Dealing with uncertain future events requires a stronger and more globally coordinated government response. This book suggests a larger, more global government role in dealing with these disasters and keeping economic inequalities low. Major institutional changes, such as regulating the private sector for the common good and dealing with special harms, risks and crises, especially those concerning climate change and pandemics, are necessary in order to achieve any semblance of future progress for humankind\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Global risks: Pool knowledge to stem losses from disasters
Public awareness, rigorous risk research and aligned targets will help policy-makers to increase resilience against natural hazards, say Susan L. Cutter and colleagues.
Journal Article
Playing against nature
Defending society against natural hazards is a high-stakes game of chance against nature, involving tough decisions. How should a developing nation allocate its budget between building schools for towns without ones or making existing schools earthquake-resistant? Does it make more sense to build levees to protect against floods, or to prevent development in the areas at risk? Would more lives be saved by making hospitals earthquake-resistant, or using the funds for patient care? What should scientists tell the public when – as occurred in L'Aquila, Italy and Mammoth Lakes, California – there is a real but small risk of an upcoming earthquake or volcanic eruption? Recent hurricanes, earthquakes, and tsunamis show that society often handles such choices poorly. Sometimes nature surprises us, when an earthquake, hurricane, or flood is bigger or has greater effects than expected from detailed hazard assessments. In other cases, nature outsmarts us, doing great damage despite expensive mitigation measures or causing us to divert limited resources to mitigate hazards that are overestimated. Much of the problem comes from the fact that formulating effective natural hazard policy involves combining science, economics, and risk analysis to analyze a problem and explore the costs and benefits of different options, in situations where the future is very uncertain. Because mitigation policies are typically chosen without such analysis, the results are often disappointing. This book uses general principles and case studies to explore how we can do better by taking an integrated view of natural hazards issues, rather than treating the relevant geoscience, engineering, economics, and policy formulation separately. Thought-provoking questions at the end of each chapter invite readers to confront the complex issues involved.
Readership: Instructors, researchers, practitioners, and students interested in geoscience, engineering, economics, or policy issues relevant to natural hazards. Suitable for upper-level undergraduate or graduate courses.
Additional resources can be found at: http://www.wiley.com/go/Stein/Playingagainstnature [http://www.wiley.com/go/Stein/Playingagainstnature]
eBook
Limits to Social Capital: Comparing Network Assistance in Two New Orleans Neighborhoods Devastated by Hurricane Katrina
Sociological research emphasizes that personal networks offer social resources in times of need and that this capacity varies by the social position of those involved. Yet rarely are sociologists able to make direct comparisons of such inequalities. This study overcomes this methodological challenge by examining network activation among residents of two unequal neighborhoods severely devastated by Hurricane Katrina. Results indicate that local network capacities of Lower Ninth Ward residents relative to those of the more affluent Lakeview neighborhood dissipated before, during, and after the disaster to erode the life chances of individual residents and the neighborhood they once constituted.
Journal Article