Rapid-onset Disasters Research Articles

What Blocked the UN’s Response to the Earthquakes in Northwest Syria? Reflections on a Humanitarian System Premised on Government Consent

Abstract This article reflects on the UN response to the earthquakes in Türkiye and Syria in February 2023, and specifically the fact that while the UN responded immediately in southern Türkiye, it did not do so in non-government-controlled northwest Syria. The UN explained that its ‘longstanding position’ was that aid could not be delivered across an international border without host government consent or Security Council authorisation. This article seeks to understand this position. It reviews the law applicable to cross-border humanitarian assistance, and the guidelines and tools that shape the UN’s emergency response. It argues that international law allows cross-border humanitarian assistance without host State consent; however, that the UN’s guidelines and tools do not facilitate the provision of assistance in such a scenario. The article concludes by calling for a review of the law, policies and guidelines that shape the way the UN responds to rapid-onset disasters in conflict contexts.

Mapping the Multi-Vulnerabilities of Outdoor Places to Enhance the Resilience of Historic Urban Districts: The Case of the Apulian Region Exposed to Slow and Rapid-Onset Disasters

Recent critical events brought attention to the increasing exposure of urban environments to both slow and rapid onset disasters, which arise from both anthropogenic and natural causes. These events have particularly severe effects on historic centres, which are characterized by high levels of vulnerability and valuable assets exposed to risk. To minimize the impact on tangible and intangible cultural heritage values, especially in outdoor public areas such as squares and streets, it is crucial to establish coherent mitigative and adaptive solutions for different types of hazards. This research presents a methodology aimed at defining levels of multi-vulnerabilities in historic districts in the Apulia Region (Italy), considering the recurrent hazards to which the latter is prone. It uses a multi-step process based on structured and non-structured methodologies and tools for single risks, examined in combination, to determine the main properties characterizing the vulnerability assessment. The dataset was analyzed in a GIS environment to evaluate the selected Apulian case study (Molfetta) in Multi-Asynchronous Hazard scenarios, showing the compounded levels of criticalities for open areas and streets. This information is intended to support authority and emergency managers in identifying priority interventions and increasing the resilience of the outdoor public places.

Disasters and the diminishing of women's economic empowerment.

This paper examines, both theoretically and empirically, the relationship between rapid-onset disasters and women's economic freedom. Rapid-onset disasters create difficulties for all involved, but without proper discussion of and changes to women's economic status in society, they will continue to suffer disproportionately. The study answers the following question: 'how do disasters impact women's economic empowerment?'. It argues that there are underlying factors contributing to unequal economic opportunities that are exacerbated by disasters. Current literature discusses how disasters affect women's economic and political rights, but often it does not account for variables that may not have been captured in contemporary indices. The paper assesses women's burden of care, restrictions on mobility, formal economic employment, and access to recovery resources with respect to their economic empowerment. And it analyses 180 countries and territories that experienced disasters between 1981 and 2019 to uncover their effects on women's economic freedom. This research could facilitate and help to alter the overall narrative on women's empowerment.

Wildfire Threat to Inpatient Health Care Facilities in California, 2022.

Objectives. To assess wildfire risks to California inpatient health care facilities in 2022. Methods. Locations of inpatient facilities and associated inpatient bed capacities were mapped in relation to California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection fire threat zones (FTZs), which combine expected fire frequency with potential fire behavior. We computed the distances of each facility to the nearest high, very high, and extreme FTZs. Results. Half (107 290 beds) of California's total inpatient capacity is within 0.87 miles of a high FTZ and 95% (203 665 beds) is within 3.7 miles of a high FTZ. Half of the total inpatient capacity is within 3.3 miles of a very high FTZ and 15.5 miles of an extreme FTZ. Conclusions. Wildfires threaten a large number of inpatient health care facilities in California. In many counties, all health care facilities may be at risk. Public Health Implications. Wildfires in California are rapid-onset disasters with short preimpact phases. Policies should address facility-level preparedness including smoke mitigation, sheltering measures, evacuation procedures, and resource allocation. Regional evacuation needs, including access to emergency medical services and patient transportation, must also be considered. (Am J Public Health. 2023;113(5):555-558. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2023.307236).

How Do Left-Behind Families Adapt to the Salinity-Induced Male Out-Migration Context? A Case Study of Shyamnagar Sub-District in Coastal Bangladesh

The knowledge regarding male out-migration due to climate change and large-scale, rapid-onset disasters and their impacts on the left-behind families is well known. However, research on the adaptation strategies for the families left behind due to disaster-induced male-out seasonal migration is rarely carried out. Thus, this study attempts to explore the coping and adaptation strategies adopted by the left-behind families in the salinity-induced male out-migration context. Analyzing the factors affecting the adaptation behaviors is also a major objective of this study. The study was carried out in Shyamnagar sub-district of coastal Bangladesh, where male-out seasonal migration for both rapid and slow-onset disasters is evidenced. The data regarding the adaptation measures were explored through different participatory rural appraisal techniques. Primary data were collected from 213 women from the left-behind families through a semi-structured questionnaire. Descriptive statistics as well as multiple linear regression for analyzing the factors affecting adaptation behaviors were applied. The results revealed that the left-behind families, especially the women and children, adopted a total of 35 coping and adaptation strategies in five different aspects, such as economic adaptation, social adaptation measures, environmental measures, educational measures, and health-related measures. Migrant husbands’ age and their education, the household’s alternative income sources’ availability, receiving loans, disaster history, and migration history variables contributed most significantly to the adaptation behavior. This study provides a new perspective on seasonal male out-migration and the adaptation strategies of the left-behind families, which could be helpful for disaster-induced human migration management and enhancing the resilience of vulnerable communities.

Pet Loss in an Urban Firestorm: Grief and Hope after Colorado's Marshall Fire.

Although much of the literature on pets in disasters associates the failure to evacuate pets with a weak or absent human-animal bond, rapid-onset disasters challenge the foundations of that claim. Colorado's Marshall Fire, which occurred on 30 December 2021, took the lives of more than 1000 pets. The fire began in open grassland and quickly became an "urban firestorm" when it spread into densely populated areas. Due to the timing of the fire's onset, owners could not return home to rescue their pets. Although first responders, volunteers, and other evacuees rescued some animals, many died inside their homes. Analysis of qualitative interviews with a small sample of pet owners whose animals died in the fire reveal the factors that prevented owners from rescuing their pets. Through analysis of traditional and social media, and emergency notifications, this research presents a timeline of events on the day of the fire and examines pitfalls in evacuation notification. Participant observation and field conversations provide insight into the impact of the fire on veterinary clinics. The study concludes with suggestions intended to reduce future mass deaths of animals.

The Production of Safety School Space from Climate Disasters in Doi Mae Salong Forest, Upland Northern Thailand

This research is conducted in Santikhiri, a hilltop village on the highest peak in the Doi Mae Salong forest, where climate change increases the intensity and frequency of natural disasters that immensely affect the local children in the mountainous area in Chiang Rai province, northern Thailand. There is only one secondary-level school in this forest landscape educating around 900 schoolchildren from various minority hill-tribe ethnic groups. This paper examines everyday life experiences recentering the village school's role as the producer of safe space for the forest children from climate disasters. School safety is a global framework for recognizing the importance of child-centered efforts in building disaster resilience for the education sector. Parameters and variables used to measure the disaster resilience of schools are adapted from the Climate Resilience Model and School Safety Model by Tong et al. (2012), covering three dimensions: 1) institutional issues, 2) physical conditions, and 3) external relationships. Lefebvre's Spatial Triad Framework is applied to dialectically interconnect dimensions to produce a safe space at the village school to protect the students from climate disaster threats. A mix-method method is applied with several techniques to collect data, including participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and content analysis. Furthermore, a scale Likert survey examined statements on school safety from educational practitioners in the rural forest area. The research argues that the production of safe space at the school is intertwined with budget allocation for disaster preparedness and response (institutional issue as l'espace concu), environmental protection campaign to create a hygienic school environment (physical conditions as l'espace percu), and support from the local community (external relations as l'espace vecu). However, the school is also two contradicting spaces of conceived and lived. Through the critical examination of the production of safe space, the school is a planned space of hierarchical power relations in institutional issues focusing on impacts from rapid-onset disasters. Concurrently, the forest children are still marginalized from external relationships and natural conditions' slow-onset climate change impacts.

Cost–benefit analysis to appraise technical mitigation options for earthquake-induced liquefaction disaster events

PurposeRecent earthquake-induced liquefaction events and associated losses have increased researchers’ interest into liquefaction risk reduction interventions. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, there was no scholarly literature related to an economic appraisal of these risk reduction interventions. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the issues in applying cost–benefit analysis (CBA) principles to the evaluation of technical mitigations to reduce earthquake-induced liquefaction risk.Design/methodology/approachCBA has been substantially used for risk mitigation option appraisal for a number of hazard threats. Previous literature in the form of systematic reviews, individual research and case studies, together with liquefaction risk and loss modelling literature, was used to develop a theoretical model of CBA for earthquake-induced liquefaction mitigation interventions. The model was tested using a scenario in a two-day workshop.FindingsBecause liquefaction risk reduction techniques are relatively new, there is limited damage modelling and cost data available for use within CBAs. As such end users need to make significant assumptions when linking the results of technical investigations of damage to built-asset performance and probabilistic loss modelling resulting in many potential interventions being not cost-effective for low-impact disasters. This study questions whether a probabilistic approach should really be applied to localised rapid onset events like liquefaction, arguing that a deterministic approach for localised knowledge and context would be a better base for the cost-effectiveness mitigation interventions.Originality/valueThis paper makes an original contribution to literature through a critical review of CBA approaches applied to disaster mitigation interventions. Further, this paper identifies challenges and limitations of applying probabilistic based CBA models to localised rapid onset disaster events where human losses are minimal and historic data is sparse; challenging researchers to develop new deterministic based approaches that use localised knowledge and context to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of mitigation interventions.

Disasters and the dynamics of interstate rivalry

This article examines how disasters influence conflict dynamics in interstate rivalries. Building on insights from the disaster, rivalry, and diversionary conflict literatures, the authors argue that disasters act as political shocks that disrupt a rivalry relationship. Hostility levels in rivalries are stable over time and shift only through major shocks. While the rivalry literature suggests that some shocks may lead to peace, the authors argue that disaster shocks are more likely to be associated with increased conflict. Disasters often strain the state’s capacity to provide security for its people, while leaders who fail to prepare or respond can face domestic costs. To avoid potential removal from office, leaders have incentives to divert the public’s attention away from poor disaster response by adopting a more aggressive foreign policy. The authors hypothesize that the time between militarized disputes is shortened when pairs of states experience rapid onset disasters. However, the conditions for diversionary conflict depend on the degree of intrastate turmoil and the number of interstate rivalries, with disaster diversionary conflict happening most frequently in rivalry dyads with significant internal strife and multiple rivalries. Duration model analyses from 1900 to 2010 provide strong support for the theory and highlight the limits of disaster diplomacy in rivalry contexts. Given the increased frequency and severity of disasters globally, the findings suggest that environmental shocks are likely to increase interstate hostilities in conflict-prone regions.

Prepositioning and Local Purchasing for Emergency Operations Under Budget, Demand, and Supply Uncertainty

Problem definition: Considering a mix of prepositioning and local purchasing, common to cover humanitarian demands in the aftermath of a rapid-onset disaster, we propose policies to determine preposition stock. These formulations are developed in the presence of demand, budget, and local supply uncertainties and for single-items delivery. Academic/practical relevance: The immediate period aftermath of a disaster is the most crucial period during which humanitarian organizations must supply relief items to beneficiaries. Yet, because of many unknowns such as time, place, and magnitude of a disaster, supply management is a significant challenge, and these decisions are made intuitively. The features and complexities we examine have not been studied in the literature. Methodology: We derive properties of the optimal solution, identify exact solution methods, and determine approximate methods that are easy to implement. Results: We (i) characterize the interplay of supply, demand, and budget uncertainties, as well as the impact of product characteristics on optimal prepo stock levels; (ii) show in what conditions the prepo stock is a simple newsvendor solution; and (iii) discuss the value of emergency funds. Managerial implications: We show that budget level is a key determinant of the optimal policy. When it is above a threshold, inventory increases in disaster frequency and severity, but the reverse is true otherwise. When budget is limited, the rate of savings from improved forecasts is amplified (attenuated) for critical (noncritical) items, reflecting opposing directional effects of mismatch cost and cost of insufficient funding. Our model can also be used to estimate the value of initiatives to mitigate constraints on local spend (e.g., a line of credit underwritten by large donors that is available during the immediate relief period).

The optimization of warehouse location and resources distribution for emergency rescue under uncertainty

China is one of the countries that suffer the most natural disasters in the world. The situation of emergency response and rescue is extremely tough. Establishing the emergency warehouse is one of the important ways to cope with rapid-onset disasters. In this paper, a mixed integer programming (MIP) model based on time cost under uncertainty is proposed, which help solve the emergency warehouse location and distribution problem. Comprehensive consideration of factors such as time cost, penalty cost for lack of resources, alternative origins of resources from both suppliers and emergency warehouses, different means of transportation and multiple resources types are involved in our study. We also introduce uncertain scenarios to describe the severity of the disaster. Particle swarm optimization (PSO) and variable neighborhood search (VNS) are designed to solve the MIP model of different scales of instances. Numerous examples have been tested to compare two heuristics with commercial solver (CPLEX). Both of two algorithms can obtain the exact solution same as CPLEX in small-scale instances while show great performance on larger instances with 10 candidate warehouses, 25 disasters and 50 scenarios.

When Disasters Hit Civil Wars: Natural Resource Exploitation and Rebel Group Resilience

AbstractExisting literature on the relationship between natural disasters and conflicts provides mixed findings. In this article, we argue that whether natural disasters hurt rebel group resilience depends on their funding source and the mode of resource extraction. Rebel groups that obtain their funding from natural resources are more susceptible to natural disasters because this funding source could be easily disrupted by rapid-onset disasters. How rebel groups exploit natural resource wealth also conditions the effect of natural disasters on rebel group resilience. Rebel groups that depend on extorting resource production, despite having a seemingly stable revenue stream, are more likely to face funding cuts after a severe natural disaster. In contrast, rebel groups that rely on smuggling natural resources, due to a higher level of flexibility and mobility, are more likely to survive natural disasters. We test our arguments using data on armed groups, natural disasters, and rebel contraband, and the results of the logit models with interaction terms support our hypotheses. Our findings bridge the environmental conflict literature and the resource curse literature, and offer important policy implications.

Understanding Community Collective Behaviour Through Social Media Responses: Case of Sunda Strait Tsunami, 2018, Indonesia

The Sunda Strait Tsunami which occurred on 22nd December 2018 is one among too many examples of a rapid on-set disaster that attracted public attention through Twitter. This sudden event had a massive impact on parts of the west coast of Banten Province, Indonesia. Therefore, this research aimed to evaluate the collective response reflected on Twitter due to the 2018 Sunda Strait Tsunami. Previous studies shows the utilization of crowd sourcing data from social media for community capacity and quick assessment of disaster impacts. Therefore, the characteristics of people’s responses on social media based on spatio-temporal attributes needs to be understood first to build better understanding about the information that can be used for emergency response strategies consideration. This research method involved a spatial statistics approach, while data collection and descriptive analysis were carried out based on Twitter word cloud data. This analysis showed that temporally, the highest number of tweets was generated at the beginning of the disaster period with downward trend into the end of phase. As for spatially, people in directly affected areas by the disaster tend to give negative sentiments as their expression of sadness and fears towards the disaster. The content of the tweets involved asking for help, reporting on the current situation, and confirming the news on accounts belonging to government agencies. Furthermore, people in areas that were not directly affected produced tweets with more positive sentiment with expressions of condolences, sympathy, gratitude and invitations for volunteers and social actions.

Droughts, cyclones, and intimate partner violence: A disastrous mix for Indian women

India has reported a high prevalence of Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) against women over the years. Previous Western research has found an increased IPV risk among women in the aftermath of natural disasters, underscoring the need for such studies in India. We could not locate any study focusing on the impact of slow-onset versus rapid-onset disasters, which might have differing impacts on the vulnerable, especially on the incidence of IPV in India. Using data on ever-married women from the National Family Health Survey-4 (2015–16), we investigated the association of residing in districts exposed to a drought (N = 31,045), and separately, to two cyclones (N = 8469), with three forms of self-reported IPV against women (emotional, physical, and sexual). Survey-adjusted logistic regression models showed that exposure to cyclone was positively associated with emotional IPV (AOR: 1.59, 95% CI: 1.20, 2.10) after adjusting for sociodemographic covariates. Although not statistically significant, exposure to cyclone was also positively associated with physical and sexual IPV, and drought with physical IPV. However, we did not find an association of drought with emotional and sexual violence. We corroborated previous findings that women from wealthier households, with greater education, and whose husbands had no history of alcohol consumption, were less likely to experience any form of IPV independent of the influence of other factors. These results highlight the potential increased risk of IPV following natural disasters. In patriarchal societies such as India vulnerable to climate-change, these sobering results highlight the need to prepare for the social disasters that might accompany natural disasters.

Inventory Policies for Disaster Relief Operations: A Mix of Reactive and Proactive Alternatives

The aftermath of a rapid-onset disaster is the most crucial period, during which health and humanitarian organizations (HOs) must distribute critical relief items at quickest possible time. Yet, supply management is a significant challenge due to many unknowns such as time, place, type, and magnitude of disasters. Taking supply, demand, and budget uncertainty, we propose an inventory policy for a single-relief item, and extend it to multiple-relief items. We combine two common alternatives — {proactive} and {reactive} — and analyze policies that minimize expected costs under a budget constraint and budget uncertainty. Our analyses illustrate that: (i) finding an optimal level of pre-positioning inventory is more complex when the landed cost of pre-positioned item is less than purchasing relief item aftermath of a disaster; (ii) budget limitation is the underlying source of complexity to determine optimal inventory level; (iii) pre-disaster investment saves more compared to emergency funding, and (iv) the kitting of multiple relief items is not supported unless the criticality level, demand and supply characteristics of all items in the kit are homogeneous.

Natural Disasters, Forced Migration, and Conflict: The Importance of Government Policy Responses

AbstractUnderstanding the connections between environmental change, migration, and conflict is urgent as natural disasters increase in frequency and intensity. Countries that experience natural disasters face greater risks for intrastate conflicts, especially for rapid-onset disasters. Migration is one response to these environmental changes. Existing literature suggests that environmental migration can cause violent conflict as migrants lose livelihoods, move to new areas, or compete over scarce resources. However, the path through which migration leads to conflict—and the policy responses that either fuel conflict or promote stability—is not well understood. Some countries develop adequate proactive (e.g., infrastructure) and reactive post-disaster (e.g., reconstruction) policies to mitigate grievances and conflict risks from forced migration. Other countries fail to respond adequately to disasters, opening the door for insurgent groups to garner support. We argue that we must analyze government policies related to relocation programs, restrictions on movement, and post-disaster reconstruction to identify trigger situations where disasters and migration are most likely to produce violence.

Adapting Care Groups to Urban Slums: A Case Study of a Church-Based Effort to Improve Maternal and Child Health Outcomes in Mathare, Nairobi, Kenya

Progress on maternal and child health has been slow and uneven in Africa, with widening geographic and socio-economic disparities despite economic growth and continued investments in health systems. In Kenya, modest national-level gains mask wide disparities in progress, with near stagnation among the very poor, those with the least education, and those living in either extremely rural contexts or dense informal urban slums. Progress toward Kenya’s maternal and child health Sustainable Development Goals will depend on finding new ways to work effectively in dense urban slums where poverty and ill-health are increasingly concentrated. Effective approaches require addressing significant knowledge, behavior, and trust gaps, especially with the most vulnerable residents of slum communities like Nairobi’s Mathare. Care groups were designed to address these gaps but have only been effectively tested and scaled in rural and peri-urban environments. The Center for Peacebuilding and Nationhood’s Maternal and Child Health Care Group project supported by Mennonite Central Committee in Mathare, one of the largest informal settlements in Kenya, was one of the first to adapt the Care Group model to an urban slum. Adapting the model was necessary in this challenging context characterized by high population density, crowding, extremely transient and unstable populations, low social trust, lack of traditional social structures, high crime, political disruption, and frequent rapid onset disasters. This study shows the pilot’s success and challenges in adapting care groups to the realities of a dense African urban slum, the innovative strategies the project has used, and the unique benefits of doing this work on a small scale rooted in a local church organization.

Environmental hazards, rigid institutions, and transformative change: How drought affects the consideration of water and climate impacts in infrastructure management

Climate change necessitates major changes in infrastructure siting, design, and operations. Successful adaptation of infrastructure management requires overcoming thorny institutional challenges including path dependency and isomorphic pressures that inhibit major shifts in norms and practices. Hazards have been posited as a potential trigger for changing long-standing institutions because they can upend stable system states. However, research on the ability of hazards to shift norms and practices is still nascent and focuses on rapid-onset disasters like floods, hurricanes, or fires. This paper uses the 2012–2016 California drought to assess the potential for slow-onset hazards to lead to institutional change. We assess whether it yielded a shift in institutional norms, namely agency application of existing regulations toward enhanced socio-ecological resilience in the face of climate change. We focus on the environmental impact assessment process under the National Environmental Policy Act and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's process for licensing hydropower dams. Using computational text analysis of Environmental Impact Statements and participant observation of infrastructure licensing negotiations, we assess whether, over the years of the drought, agencies placed more emphasis on drought issues or climate resilience in analyzing infrastructure siting and design. In EIS documents, we observe a short-term spike in consideration of drought-related impacts and a longer-term increase in water security, suggesting some shifts in institutional practice; however, consideration of climate impacts decreased over the time period. In FERC licensing, there was no consideration of future climate impacts, despite managers’ recognition that this posed a problem for projects’ future operations. Although these results do not preclude the ability of slow-onset hazards to shift institutional norms, they suggest that doing so is challenging.

Assessing the risk of pre-existing grievances in non-democracies: The conditional effect of natural disasters on repression

Every disaster carries the risk of destruction but not every disaster prompts violent political process in a country. This article examines the popular argument that natural disasters can lead to higher state violence if resulting shocks caused by a disaster add to pre-existing grievances. If economic inequality or political instability is prevalent before a disaster occurs, disasters are expected to exacerbate the perceived threat to government's survival in office. Consequently, repression is expected to be higher in the aftermath of a disaster. I test the existence of the expected conditional effect of pre-disaster stability and disasters using cross-national data on natural rapid-onset disasters in non-democracies between 1976 and 2013. As indicators for pre-existing grievances this article focuses on ex ante economic inequality and political dissent. While a natural disaster as such is not associated with a violation of human rights, empirical evidence suggests that the probability of an increase in post-disaster repression is higher when a country has previously experienced grievances.

Prioritizing the sexual and\xa0reproductive health and rights of adolescent girls and young women within HIV treatment and care services in emergency settings: a girl-centered agenda

BackgroundExtensive documentation exists on a range of negative sexual and reproductive health outcomes and rights violations occurring during humanitarian emergencies. We explore two central questions: Do existing policies, services, and research adequately address the SRH rights, priorities and HIV risks of adolescent girls and young women in emergency settings? What are the missed opportunities for holistically addressing the vulnerabilities experienced by those living with HIV during rapid onset disasters and long term, protracted emergencies? Authors review considerations informing real-time decision making, and highlight missed opportunities to apply a gendered lens in the delivery of AGYW-centered SRHR/HIV services.MethodsA scoping review identified studies on HIV intervention and outcomes in emergency settings, published in the peer-reviewed literature (2002–2017). This exercise was complemented with a desk review of normative guidance, frameworks, and implementation guidelines on HIV and SRH in emergency responses, and by consultations with subject matter experts.ResultsThe existing frameworks and guidance pay scant attention to the sexual reproductive health and rights of young women living with HIV (WLHIV), focusing mainly on prevention of mother to child transmission (PMTCT), antiretroviral therapy (ART), HIV testing services, and linkage to treatment services. Applying a gendered sexual and reproductive health lens to the response offers opportunities to identify critical implementation questions, and highlight promising practices, to better tailor current services for AGYW.ConclusionsA plurality of competing needs crowds out dedicated time and space to effectively integrate HIV and sexual and reproductive health interventions in emergency settings. Political will is required to advance multi-sectoral cooperation, through joint planning, rights-informed learning and integrative responses, and to promote creative solutions for ART continuation, drug supply and HIV testing, treatment and care. Recent advancements in policy and practice would suggest that a more AGYW-centered response is feasible.