Anthropogenic Disaster Research Articles

Extractivism and the engendering of disasters: disaster risk creation in the era of the Anthropocene

PurposeThis paper argues that extractivist logic creates the environmental conditions that produce “natural” hazards and also the human conditions that produce vulnerability, which combined create disasters. Disaster Risk Creation is then built into the current global socio-economic system, as an integral component not accidental by-product.Design/methodology/approachAs part of the movement to liberate disasters as discipline, practice and field of enquiry, this paper does not talk disasters per se, but rather its focus is on “extractivism” as a fundamental explanator for the anthropogenic disaster landscape that now confronts us.FindingsApplying a gender lens to extractivism as it relates to disaster, further highlights that Disaster Risk Management rather than alleviating, creates the problems it seeks to solve, suggesting the need to liberate gender from Disaster Risk Management, and the need to liberate us all from the notion of managing disasters. Since to ‘manage’ disaster risk is to accept uncritically the structures and systems that create that risk, then if we truly want to address disasters, our focus needs to be on the extractive practices, not the disastrous outcomes.Originality/valueThe fundamental argument is that through privileging the notion of “disaster” we create it, bring it into existence, as something that exists in and of itself, apart from wider socio-economic structures and systems of extraction and exploitation, rather than recognising it for what it is, an outcome/end product of those wider structures and systems. Our focus on disaster is then misplaced, and perhaps what disaster studies needs to be liberated from, is itself.

Penguin Parables: Picturebooks, Interspecies Companionship, and Ecoliteracy

Abstract: The erasures and evasions that characterize picturebook retellings of the true story of Dindim and João Pereira de Souza are instructive of the ways in which some children’s literature understates, distorts, and displaces human impacts on the environment. By reframing anthropogenic disaster as animal rescue, the story of interspecies companionship effectively mutes and disarms the story of environmental catastrophe. In the process, it forestalls eco-critical awareness of and solutions to problems such as chronic pollution, habitat destruction, species extinction, and climate change. By decontextualizing complex origin stories, erasing uncomfortable facts, and romanticizing interspecies relationships, the picturebooks discussed reveal the challenges to environmental consciousness imposed by the imperative to moral or emotional uplift in children’s literature.

Wildland-urban interface wildfire increases metal contributions to stormwater runoff in Paradise, California.

The 2018 Camp Fire was a large late-year (November) wildfire that produced an urban firestorm in the Town of Paradise, California, USA, and destroyed more than 18 000 structures. Runoff from burned wildland areas is known to contain ash, which can transport contaminants including metals into nearby watersheds. However, due to historically infrequent occurrences, the effect of wildland-urban interface (WUI) fires, such as the Camp Fire, on surface water quality has not been well-characterized. Therefore, this study investigated the effects of widespread urban burning on surface water quality in major watersheds of the Camp Fire area. Between November 2018 and May 2019, 140 surface water samples were collected, including baseflow and stormflow, from burned and unburned watersheds with varying extent of urban development. Samples were analyzed for total and filter-passing metals, dissolved organic carbon, major anions, and total suspended solids. Ash and debris from the Camp Fire contributed metals to downstream watersheds via runoff throughout the storm season. Increases in concentration up to 200-fold were found for metals Cr, Cu, Ni, Pb, and Zn in burned watersheds compared to pre-fire values. Total concentrations of Al, Cd, Cu, Pb, and Zn exceeded EPA aquatic habitat acute criteria by up to 16-fold for up to five months after the fire. To assess possible transport mechanisms and bioavailability, a subset of 18 samples was analyzed using four filters with nominal pore sizes ranging from 0.22 to 1.2 μm to determine the particulate size distribution of metals. Trace and major metals (Al, Ba, Co, Cr, Cu, Fe, Hg, Mn, Ni, Pb, and Zn) were found mostly associated with larger grain sizes (>0.45 μm), and some metals (Al, Cr, Fe, and Pb) also included a substantial colloidal phase (0.22 to 0.45 μm). This study suggests that fires in the wildland-urban interface increase metal concentrations, mainly through particulate driven transport. The metals with the largest increases are likely from anthropogenic disaster materials, though biomass ash also is a major contributor to water quality. The increase in metals following WUI burning may have adverse ecological impacts.

Chamoli flash floods of 7th February 2021 and recent deformation: A PSInSAR and deep learning neural network (DLNN) based perspective

The February 7, 2021, Joshimath flood scenario was one such event that caused widespread damage and led to complete washout of the many hydroelectric power projects located on the course of Dhauliganga River. The physical monitoring and mapping of such events is a difficult task that often involves deployment of labour force in inhospitable terrains. Therefore, remote sensing techniques are used for the mapping and machine learning model-based predictions for future scenarios. Synthetic Aperture RADAR (SAR) remote sensing has been widely used over the years for accurate estimation of many natural and anthropogenic disaster events. This study utilizes Persistent Scatterer SAR interferometry (PSInSAR) technique to map the surface displacement of the 2021 flood scenario and make predictions for future displacement using a Deep Learning Neural Network (DLNN) model. 16 images of both ascending and descending pass were taken for the estimation of Line of Sight (LOS) displacement velocity mapping between January 2020 and April 2021 for Tapovan area. Further, 36 images from January 2020 to December 2022, in ascending and descending passes were used for prediction and validation of future LOS surface displacement using a DLNN model for Joshimath town to see the possible impact of February 7, 2021 event. The PSInSAR LOS displacements were found to be −1.2 ​cm–1.2 ​cm between January 1, 2020 and April 14, 2021, for Tapovan region where the floods had occurred on February 7, 2021. The predicted LOS displacement was observed to be −10 cm–10 ​cm for December 2022 for Joshimath town. These observations clearly indicate the impact of the event to Joshimath town and as one of the causative factors of recent observations of widespread cracks in the buildings in the region.

Exploring the Invisibility of Women’s Resilience in Facing Anthropogenic Disasters

The intensity of anthropogenic disasters increases with the pace of climate change, but on the other hand, the invisibility of women’s experiences has negated women’s capacity to build disaster resilience. This study aims to determine the factors that support women’s participation in anthropogenic disaster management. The Publish or Perish (PoP) application is used to review and retrieve articles on the Google Scholar database and find 15 relevant articles on women’s resilience. Based on the results of the article review, it was found that there were two important factors related to one another, namely, community support for women and access to resources, which provide space, opportunities, and appreciation for women as important agents in disaster management. In addition, there are also individual factors and their influence on women’s resilience, namely the level of spirituality, optimism, and hope that women bring to their domestic experiences. Thus, this paper has shown that women’s participation in public space is an important part of disaster management schemes.

Assessment of air quality and damage caused after an anthropogenic disaster in the city of Beirut

Air pollution is an important cause of concern and has a significant impact on health as well as the environment. Air pollutants are released into the atmosphere by various sources, and the concentration in cities is mainly due to anthropogenic sources like emissions from industries, factories, vehicles, fossil fuel combustion, waste production, etc. But certain high episodes of air pollution can be witnessed in cities which can cause serious threats to human beings and the environment. Remote sensing is one of the sustainable measures, which allows the integration and presentation of useful information at various temporal and spatial scales. This tool can be helpful in understanding and managing natural disasters and man-made risks contributing to air pollution. Analyzing the cause of such high pollution episodes can help to take necessary steps to reduce the emissions, and damage or to take precautions to avoid man-made disasters. One such incident of an explosion of ammonium nitrate in a port had a long-lasting impact on the air quality in Beirut where the average concentration of air pollution already exceeds WHO threshold limits. This paper explores the concentration of aerosols and NO2, before and after the incident of an explosion that took place in Beirut. Assessment of the damage near the port caused by the explosion in Beirut was done using a change detection technique for which an algorithm was developed. Due to the non-availability of field data for the study area of Beirut, the algorithm was developed and validated for Chennai city and extended to Beirut. The aerosol and NO2 concentration data were extracted from sentinel-5p/TROPOMOI and validated with ground data through regression analysis. The results obtained from this study can be used as an early warning system and decision support system for mitigating loss due to the explosion.

Forest fire disaster events in Himalayan state Uttarakhand: An analytical study

Disasters are unacceptable and casual occurring events that cause livelihood, environmental and economic losses. Forest Fire is one of the biggest anthropogenic disaster events in the study area viz., Uttarakhand which is a cause of loss of human beings, flora, and fauna. Personal, intentional and accidental anthropogenic causes triggered forest fire. The study area facing almost every year devastating forest fires in the open forest and near the settlements which are very harmful for livelihood and forest ecosystem. Forest provides shelter and food to human beings, wild animals, birds, reptiles etc. Forest is a home of fresh air, fresh water, medicinal herbs and plants etc. The people of Uttarakhand state are not well aware of the techniques of forest fire mitigation. Due to lack of forest fire mitigation awareness, every year several people lost their life in forest fire events. Present study reveals that the forest fire events are increasing in Uttarakhand state due to global warming and climate change. In 2011, there are total 72 forest fire events were recorded which has increased to 3738 in 2009. The present study shows the pattern and trend of forest fires events in the Uttarakhand and an attempt has been made to find out its consequences and causes. Based on this study a detailed mitigation strategy has been worked out which may be useful for the government for management of forest fire disaster events in future.

Penanaman Karakter Peduli Lingkungan Melalui Pengajaran Fikih Ekologi Pada Anak Usia Dini

This research is a library research, with the title Cultivating Environmentally Concerned Characters through Teaching Ecological Jurisprudence in Early Childhood. This research uses library materials as the main data source, and the main references in this research are ecological and Islamic books, character education and books on early childhood. The purpose of this study is combining two materials at once, namely environmental fiqh material and its role in shaping the character of early childhood. The results showed. First, environmental damage or the current ecological crisis is not actually due to ecological succession factors. However, the damage occurred precisely because of an anthropogenic disaster by human activities. Second, in environmental fiqh it contains material that is very important to study, namely maqoshidu shari'ah, especially hifdzu al-bi'ah. Thirdly, environmental care character is very urgent, especially given to early childhood, and for now studying this section is an obligation.

Did The 2019 Fire Events in South Sumatra Occur Predominantly on Peatlands?

The haze disaster in Indonesia is an anthropogenic disaster that recurs during the dry season. The current haze disaster is driven by a fire event that is divided into forest fires and peat fires. This study aim is identifying the fire events that have occurred in the South Sumatera region for the 1995-2019 period. The fire events that occur in the study area were analyzed using hotspot data during the observation period. Meanwhile, the peat distribution data is obtained from the Indonesian Ministry of Environment and Forestry. To attain the research aim, the spatial analysis method using geographic information system technology was applied to the observation data. The results showed that the fire events in The South Sumatera were dominated by peat fires. During the observation period, approximately of all peat hydrological units in the study area experienced fires in varying intensity. Based on the result, until 2019 the fire events were recurring, especially in the peatlands of Sumatera. More precise and efficient needed to prevent and handle forest and land fires are needed.

Thermal Conductivity for Anthropogenic Disaster Identification

Thermal Conductivity for Anthropogenic Disaster Identification

Environmental Concerns for Emergence and Reemergence of Novel Viral Infectious Diseases: Implications for SARS-CoV-2 and Other Pathogens

The existing COVID-19 pandemic is an anthropogenic disaster which looked inevitable, because despite repeated natural warnings no attention was paid to them. Recently many viral zoonotic infections – caused by SARS-CoV-1, Ebola and Nipah, to name a few – happened that became public health emergency. The most recently discovered zoonotic SARS-CoV-2 is responsible for the contemporary humanitarian disaster. When a virus undergoes zoonotic transmission, the humans begin to respond urgently to its testing and treatment, giving least attention to the actual cause behind the transmission. To prevent future outbreaks, and possible pandemics, it is indispensable to understand the reasons behind emergence of new infectious diseases in human beings. Some most likely reasons for emergence and reemergence of novel zoonotic infections include deforestation, land use change, wildlife trade, bush-meat consumption and rapid increase in international travel. This article attempts to explore and discuss the factors that trigger emergence and reemergence of novel infectious diseases, with special emphasis on SARS, in human beings.

Audio Data Mining for Anthropogenic Disaster Identification: An Automatic Taxonomy Approach

Disasters are undesirable and often sudden events causing human, material and economic losses, which exceed the coping capability of the affected community or society. In recent years, with significant advancement in information technology, various intelligent systems have been developed to support various aspects of disaster management, including emergency prediction, timely response and aftermath recovery. This paper addresses the anthropogenic disaster identification issue by exploiting ambient sound data. Specifically, a novel and efficient acoustic event classification scheme is proposed, which is based on unsupervised acoustic feature learning and data-driven taxonomy. The proposed framework could accurately identify anthropogenic disaster events, e.g., gun shot, explosion, scream cry, etc. from dynamic audio data. and it consists of three major stages as follows. First, predominant acoustic patterns are characterized by dictionary learning algorithms, which can generate robust acoustic feature representations for recognition under noisy conditions. Second, hazard sound event taxonomy is created by exploiting probabilistic distances between extracted class-wise dictionaries. Finally, taxonomy structure is embedded into hierarchical classification algorithm to improve event identification performance. The Proposed approach is evaluated using real-world dataset with 10 emergency sound categories and 3,275 clips. According to extensive experimental comparisons, proposed approach achieved state-of-the-art performance in anthropogenic disaster identification.

Land Cover Classification using Random Forest Technique and DEM Auxiliary Data

This article has been written based on findings and results of author’s master thesis. Nowadays, every month/year changes occur on the surface of the Earth from a small build ups till large-scale natural disasters that destroyed entire settlements. Observations and analysis using satellite data can help to improve and prevent any natural or anthropogenic disaster, plan and calculate beneficial usage of the land cover. Remote Sensing and Spatial Analysis tools are one of the approaches for them. This study tries to sustain one of the advantageous approaches for extracting information from semi-automatic mapping. Besides, article provides semi-automatic methodology of extracting information from multispectral image for large areas. For that, the Sentinel-2a (S2) optical data with 10 m resolution for Land Cover Classification System (LCCS) classification and as auxiliary data to extract the urban and industrial areas DEM and build up indices were used. Object-based image classification with random forest classification techniques using LCCS classes was done with an accuracy of 88%. Moreover Salzkammergut was chosen as a study area. The Salzkammergut is a historical and recreational area part of Austria, consisting of 52 districts from three federal states and with no official administrative boundaries.

The Countryside in Indonesian Contemporary Art and Media

Abstract This article analyses explorations of social and environmental problems and solutions in artistic representations of the Indonesian countryside and rural society, culture, and wisdom. It focuses on urban–rural creative collaborations that combine traditional culture and knowledge with modern technology and media, such as drones and the Internet, to empower local communities, promote artistic innovation, and enhance environmental sustainability. It seeks to demonstrate that contemporary art and media strengthen the urban–rural network and the accessibility and exchange of creative ideas and information. At the same time, the author argues that some of the causes of cultural conflict and anthropogenic disaster are embedded in forms of audio-visual representation itself. The display of urban–rural encounters in art festivals and social media can even instigate new forms of surveillance, and power and knowledge hierarchies, or reinforce regimes of consumer culture, partially responsible for the very problems the audio-visual representations and collaborations seek to address.

Discursive instantiation of conceptual metaphors with the referent RADIATION in the documentary series "Chernobyl": An ecolinguistic approach

This article considers discursive instantiations of conceptual metaphors in the multimodal dynamic environment of a movie. It analyses conceptual metaphors with the referent concept RADIATION realized in the audio (oral speech and music) and visual (dynamic image) modes in the documentary series "Chernobyl" (the English version). The work belongs to the sphere of ecolinguistics that analyses linguistic phenomena taking into account a broad range of factors that influence the process of sensemaking in discourse without prioritizing any of them, in particular, the anthropic one. Ecolinguistics studies how a person’s speech and his/her life as a whole are connected, how linguistic means and the environment of their use are related; how a person’s attitude to the environment is embodied in language and discourse, which linguistic forms provoke environmental destruction and which can inspire people to protect the environment. Perceiving multimodal instantiations of conceptual metaphors with the referent concept RADIATION, viewers of the "Chernobyl" documentary series have an opportunity to re-define for themselves the essence of the largest anthropogenic disaster in history, to reveal new aspects of the respective concept, which is so important for the collective survival of humankind. Because of the complexity of its content, the explanatory potential of simple conceptual metaphors is insufficient. Thus, they interact with conceptual metonymy and with one another, forming meta-metaphors that permeate the entire filmic text. Multimodal instantiation of the conceptual metaphors under study makes their cinematic realizations more vivid and expressive, as well as creates a single tonality of their perception by the viewer.

CRIMINALISTIC TASKS WHILE CRIMINAL PROCEDURE REFORMATION

This article examines specifics trends of conceptual changes in the system of modern criminal proceedings regarding the use of criminalistic means and techniques as a cognitive tool in criminal procedure in Ukraine. Authors analyzed the reform impact of domestic criminal procedural legislation on definition of goals and objectives of criminalistics; in particular, the emphasis is on the significant expansion of competitiveness in pre-trial investigation and legal proceedings. Proposals of certain criminalists concerning allocation of separate subsystems of knowledge and recommendations directed at different subjects of criminal proceedings in modern criminalistics are analyzed. Characteristic of the conceptual approach of allocation Criminalistic Advocacy Studies is offered in Criminalistics. In this regard, types of advocacy activities in the context of solved tasks by means of сriminalistic knowledge are considered. It is noted that attorney while performing his professional duties – the protection of a person who is subject to criminal prosecution, or the implementation of the representation of the victim, really uses сriminalistic knowledge but for different purposes. In last case, the purpose and scope of the сriminalistic knowledge used by a lawyer actually coincide with the purpose and scope of knowledge of the body of pre-trial investigation. Activity of a lawyer regarding a representation office while the criminal proceedings of the victim's interests is illustrated investigation materials of anthropogenic disaster entailing loss of life. Against this background, a conclusion is drawn on the contradiction and uncertainty of the proposal regarding the formation of "criminalistic advocacy" as a subsystem of criminalistics. According to the performed analysis of an author's vision of modern integration of сriminalistic and criminal procedural knowledge is proposed. It is summarized that use of сriminalistic knowledge can be carried out by each participant in the criminal proceedings in the scoop he thinks fit to achieve his goal, but this does not give grounds for the division of criminalistics into specific subsystems depending on the used subjects. It is emphasized that in view of the radical change regarding domestic criminal procedure, nowadays some scientific norms and practical recommendations of criminalistics need to be reviewed or corrected.

Coherence Change-Detection with Sentinel-1 for Natural and Anthropogenic Disaster Monitoring in Urban Areas

Rapid, reliable, and continuous information is an essential component in disaster monitoring and management. Remote sensing data could be a solution, but often cannot provide continuous data due to an absence of global coverage and weather and daylight dependency. To overcome these challenges, this study makes use of weather and day/light independent Sentinel-1 data with a global coverage to monitor localized effects of different types of disasters using the Coherence Change-Detection (CCD) technique. Coherence maps were generated from Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images and used to classify areas of change and no change in six study areas. These sites are located in Syria, Puerto Rico, California, and Iran. The study areas were divided into street blocks, and the standard deviation was calculated for the coherence images for each street block over entire image stacks. The study areas were classified by land-use type to reveal the spatial variation in coherence loss after a disaster. While temporal decorrelation exhibits a general loss in coherence over time, disaster occurrence, however, indicates a significant loss in coherence after an event. The variations of each street block from the average coherence for the entire image stack, as measured by a high standard deviation after a particular disaster, is an indication of disaster induced building damage.

Identifying the driving forces of urban expansion and its environmental impact in Jakarta-Bandung mega urban region

The socio-economic development in Jakarta-Bandung Mega Urban Region (JBMUR) caused the increasing of urban expansion and led to a variety of environmental damage such as uncontrolled land use conversion and raising anthropogenic disaster. The objectives of this study are: (1) to identify the driving forces of urban expansion that occurs on JBMUR and (2) to analyze the environmental quality decline on JBMUR by producing time series spatial distribution map and spatial autocorrelation of floods and landslide as the proxy of anthropogenic disaster. The driving forces of urban expansion in this study were identified by employing Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR) model using 6 (six) independent variables, namely: population density, percentage of agricultural land, distance to the center of capital city/municipality, percentage of household who works in agricultural sector, distance to the provincial road, and distance to the local road. The GWR results showed that local demographic, social and economic factors including distance to the road spatially affect urban expansion in JBMUR. The time series spatial distribution map of floods and landslide event showed the spatial cluster of anthropogenic disaster in some areas. Through Local Moran Index, we found that environmental damage in one location has a significant impact on the condition of its surrounding area.

Creation of a Model for Social Defense in Case of Disasters for the Citizens of the Republic of Bulgaria

Abstract In Bulgaria there is a great need for a scheme for social defense and protection in case of natural or anthropogenic disasters. Our country has a relatively good social politics, covering a great deal of society’s social illnesses. But our financial capabilities for natural and anthropogenic disaster prevention and handling present a great financial difficulty for our country’s budget. In great deal of cases aid-money are being spend for covering material damage caused by natural disasters, but the aspect of affected citizens gets neglected and remains in the background. Our country comes as far as securing them with a one-off humanitarian or/and financial help for damaged property. In a great deal of cases though our country’s help is inadequate in amount or gets postponed in time due to administrative procedures.

Coming Back from Disaster: Progress to Date and Next Steps at Elliot Lake Public Library

ABSTRACTIn this article, I do two things. First, I describe and evaluate progress that has been made to date on implementing five recommendations made by the author to the leadership of Elliot Lake Public Library in 2014, intended to assist in disaster recovery efforts following the destruction of the library in an anthropogenic disaster in 2012. Second, I provide three revised recommendations, this time intended to assist library leadership address some continuing challenges that are preventing the complete recovery of the library, and ultimately, negatively impacting the effectiveness of the library within the community.