Overview of the Special Issue on the Development of Disaster Statistics Part 2

Abstract

A year has passed since the first special issue on the development of disaster statistics was published in the Journal of Disaster Research. The attempt to improve and utilize disaster statistics throughout the world is still in progress, although it is steadily moving forward. Under such circumstances, the Global Centre for Disaster Statistics (GCDS) at Tohoku University has also made advances in this area. The Centre participates in the Sendai Framework Voluntary Commitments (SFVC) launched by the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR). This second special issue on the development of disaster statistics aims to publish the research results from the latest studies related to this topic. For the SFVC, the GCDS has committed to publishing this special issue of the Journal of Disaster Research towards the development of disaster statistics as for academic contributions. In addition, the publication of the special issue itself has a positive impact on the acceleration of research activity at the GCDS. In this issue, there seems to be two main categories of research questions; namely “development of the existing disciplined-based research,” and “analyzing various issues by means of questionnaire surveys.” Under the umbrella of the development of the existing disciplined-based research by means of disaster statistics, two disciplines are covered: river engineering, and international studies. The large number of studies based on questionnaire surveys acts as an excellent reminder of the effectiveness of a questionnaire survey when adopted as a methodology of disaster statistics. The guest editors hope that this second special issue on the development of disaster statistics would also contribute to the literature of disaster statistics and accelerate their development.