Slow Disasters Research Articles

Slow Disasters and Adaptive Archiving

The Journal of the Plague Year: A COVID-19 Archive (JOTPY) is a digital, crowdsourced archive collecting pandemic stories from around the globe. It encourages students and the public to submit stories of personal experiences during the pandemic. The project builds on the rich work of rapid-response archives in museum studies, oral history, anthropology, and disaster studies. JOTPY reconceptualizes the COVID-19 pandemic as a “slow disaster”: not a singular crisis, but an ongoing calamity provoked by deep historical, sociopolitical, and cultural processes that COVID-19 both reflects and highlights. In order to address the challenges of documenting a slow disaster, we propose employing the rolling-response archive model. We argue that the current pandemic has changed our understanding of crises and of how to document them ethically and equitably.

ICT-Based Lombok Disaster Management Communication Model in Indonesian

When a natural disaster occurs, information and communication technology (ICT)-based disaster communication must be carried out, especially from the government to the affected community. The needs for information on the location and the number of victims and data collection on their needs are highly required to ease officers and volunteers to assist disaster victims. When an earthquake occurred on July 29, 2018, the community was in a state of panic, anxiety, and fear, making it prone to the confusion of information, resulting in slow disaster management. This study aims to determine the communication model of Lombok earthquake disaster management based on ICT carried out by the Public Relations of the North Lombok Regency Government to the people of Gangga Village, North Lombok. This research utilized a descriptive qualitative method by conducting in-depth interviews with the Public Relations of the North Lombok Regency Government, the people of Gangga Village, North Lombok Regency, and the North Lombok Regional Disaster Management Agency (BPBD). The results disclosed that the ICT-based disaster communication model during the July 29, 2018 earthquake integrated related Regional Work Units (SKPDs), such as the Public Relations, BPBD, Public Works Service, and Health Service through Handy Talky (HT), Hand Phone (HP), websites, and social media. The North Lombok Regency Government also explicitly coordinated with the Ministry of Communication and Information, who asked the NTB Regional Frequency Spectrum Monitoring Center to continuously coordinate with telecommunications operators, ORARI, and RAPI in NTB to ensure excellent telecommunications services for the community

PELATIHAN SIAP MENGHADAPI BENCANA DI SD MUHAMMADIYAH 1 DENPASAR BALI

Disasters can be caused by natural events or man-made. Factors causing disasters include natural hazards and man-made hazards, which can be grouped into geological, hydrometeorological, biological, technological, and environmental quality degradation. The territory of Indonesia is located in a tropical climate region with two seasons, hot and rainy, which are characterized by extreme changes in weather, temperature, and wind direction. These climatic conditions, combined with diverse topography and soil types, result in fertile soil conditions. High population growth is not balanced with equitable and adequate economic, social and infrastructure policies and development, gaps in several aspects and sometimes social jealousy arises. This condition has the potential to cause conflicts in society that can develop into national disasters. Facing disasters requires the application of disaster preparedness education in schools with training. Disaster preparedness training is necessary for the school from the principal, teachers and students to understand how to evacuate themselves during a disaster so as to minimize casualties. The results of this community service activity are not in the form of objects but in the form of understanding and response to actions when facing disasters. Disasters cannot be predicted precisely because the nature of the occurrence of disasters is fast and there are slow disasters. There are also disasters that occur due to natural factors and occur due to human intervention

What is needed to effectively communicate risk during a health crisis? A qualitative study with international experts based on the COVID-19 pandemic

ObjectiveTo identify a framework for risk communication during health crises by using the current pandemic as a case study.DesignA qualitative study based on individual interviews.SettingDifferent countries with diverse levels of...

A Slow Disaster Historical Experiment

Looking at the pandemic in the long historical view of “slow disasters” shows how it is a continuation of previous health emergencies rather than a discrete event. The tendency of politicians to prematurely declare an end to the pandemic has not helped improve public trust in health policy.

CATASTROPHE NOW

ABSTRACTLiterary scholar Eva Horn's The Future as Catastrophe: Imagining Disaster in the Modern Age investigates why modern Western culture so often imagines its own end. Through insightful readings of modern literature, film, and philosophical and sociological discourses, Horn argues that our hunger for apocalypse narratives—chief among them those about the so‐called Last Man—is rooted in a deep‐seated but diffuse mood of risk and crisis that has been generated by contingent and often imperceptible threats, such as impending nuclear disaster and climate change. Without concrete events to anchor it, this anxiety grows and paralyzes action. Representing these possible catastrophes through fiction provides us with cathartic, vivid, and plausible depictions of discrete events. Imagining such scenarios also serves as a practical means of preparing ourselves individually and collectively for possible threats, in turn helping to make them self‐defeating prophecies. One of Horn's central claims is that fiction's capacity to imagine and capture affect, nuance, and detail offers a uniquely powerful means of thinking about the future. This essay challenges that position by arguing that fiction (though it is, as Donna J. Haraway has quipped, often the best political theory) on its own lacks the capacity for critique that connects imagined future catastrophes to their latent causes in presently catastrophic social conditions. Horn illustrates that imagined future catastrophes often illuminate the latent vulnerabilities of the societies that produced them, but her focus on apocalyptic scenarios reproduces, rather than challenges, cultural patterns that obscure more quotidian and destructive forms of “slow violence” and “slow disaster.” If historians and critics are to achieve the consciousness of catastrophic threats against which Horn seeks to mobilize apocalypse fiction, such narratives must also be folded back into a critical history of the present that asks a more pointed political question: for whom is life already catastrophic?

Urban Infrastructures & Environmental Risk in Medieval England

ABSTRACT Medieval city walls, bridges, and harbours stood at the interface between the worlds of man and nature. Wind, ice, rainwater, scour, tidal flows, littoral drift, erosion, silting, micro-organisms, and the growth of vegetation compromised the integrity of structural fabrics and choked up ditches, rivers, and harbour basins. These ‘slow disasters’ of incremental degradation were periodically punctuated by ‘fast disasters’ such as devastating floods or violent gales. To keep their public works from falling into ruin, civic authorities had to devise regular maintenance regimes and tackle intermittent large-scale repairs. Infrastructure sustainability became a particularly acute problem during the late middle ages. Climate change accelerated the intensity and frequency of environmental stressors, while urban populations declined in the wake of the Black Death. Economic disruptions were driving up the costs of building materials and labour while the customary sources of infrastructure incomes were shrinking. The growing mismatch in scale between rising infrastructure costs and falling resources was not just another wobble that could be corrected by a renewed mobilisation of traditional recovery mechanisms.

Slow Disaster in the Anthropocene: A Historian Witnesses Climate Change on the Korean Peninsula

Despite their seeming reluctance to engage in the politics of the now, historians have a crucial role to play as witnesses to climate change and its attendant social injustices. Climate change is a product of industrialization, but its effects are known in different geographical and temporal scales through the compilation and analysis of historical narratives. This essay explores modes of thinking about disasters and temporality, the Anthropocene, and the social production of risk – set against a case study of the Korean DMZ as a site for historical witnessing. Historical methods are crucial if we are to investigate deeply the social processes that have produced climate change. A “slow disaster in the Anthropocene” approach might show the way forward.

Post-Coronavirus Disease 2019 Health Care and University: From Efficiency to Resilience.

After the initial emergency responses deployed to control the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic in the first half of 2020, we should now start thinking about long-term strategies and concepts for pandemic and disaster governance such as resilience. In this context, COVID-19 health care and education are especially important because they are essential public goods that determine what kind of a society we live in, during the pandemic and afterward. So for, the focus has been a tactical efficiency perspective that prioritized instrumental, logistical, or pragmatic aspects in planetary health and university education, with much less attention paid to social justice, history of inequity, and power asymmetries that affect the pandemic impacts in society. For a resilient COVID-19 response, we need to address not only medical, technical, and logistical challenges, but also the social disparities that are inherited from the prepandemic world that are negatively affecting the current pandemic outcomes.

Annobón 1988. Slow Disaster, Colonialism, and the Franco Dictatorship

In 1988 plans to dump “toxic waste from Europe” on the island of Annobón were uncovered. This article analyzes the “slow disaster” these plans set into motion, revealing the ways in which it was made possible by the ongoing legacies of Francoist and other colonialisms. It explains how the Annobonese population was put at risk by the scheme and connects it to the 1966 nuclear incident of Palomares. Moreover, it demonstrates how the racist othering of Africa(ns)—which was a presupposition of the plan—was reproduced in some accounts of it published in Spanish and German print media.

A procedure to support the distribution of drinking water for victims of drought: the case of the Brazilian semi-arid region

Although there has been an increase in the number of researches involving humanitarian logistics, few studies address slow disasters, such as drought. Although this phenomenon is one of the worst types of disaster in terms of casualties, water distribution to those affected by the drought still lacks academic development, and few studies guide local public managers regarding the efficient use of available resources, guaranteeing a high service level to the population. This paper presents a procedure for the implementation of transport and routing of water delivery. By this procedure, we can evaluate the strategy of complementary use of the water supply of drilled artesian wells. It also provides a contextualized routing tool for the practices and policies of motorized water distribution, commonly found in scenarios of water shortages. The algorithms have been implemented considering the capacitated vehicle routing problem (CVRP), providing a friendly-user tool that helps choosing water sources to be activated and in the definition of the routes between these and the points supply. Results have been validated in the Brazilian Semi - arid region, showing improvement in the current logistical performance of drought coping, in advantageous scales of operation in terms of costs and efficiency.

Acts of God: Continuities and change in Christian responses to extreme weather events from early modernity to the present

AbstractScholars, activists and others increasingly acknowledge that religion—whether conceived in terms of ideas, rituals or institutions—can help us cope with climate change and make sense of extreme weather events. Churches provide moral lessons in times of crisis, they spread awareness of climate change and, through community ritual, religious institutions can nurture a sense of collective responsibility. Much has been written on how contemporary faith groups have understood and acted on climate change and extreme weather events. Yet this literature is often not historically rooted and makes only superficial reference to the complex relationships between climate, extreme weather and religion in the past. Without an historical awareness we cannot understand the extent to which present‐day religious discourses on the environment—from those articulated by “greener faith” advocates to fundamentalist skeptics—connect with how past societies understood climate and, more specifically, extreme weather events. A survey of the literature on Christian responses to extreme weather events, whether these be slow disasters (droughts) or isolated events (storms), suggests that histories that emphasize ruptures in attitudes to the natural world are problematic. Extreme weather events have long been regarded as omens and signs, and as divine judgments on sin. It is still thought that weather disturbances reflect disorders in human society. This literature survey introduces these continuities in Christian responses to extreme weather by ranging broadly across the English‐speaking world from early modernity, though special attention is given to current work on Anglophone settler societies.This article is categorized under: Climate, History, Society, Culture > Ideas and Knowledge

Caribbean Reconstruction and Climate Justice: Transnational Insurgent Intellectual Networks and Post-Hurricane Transformation

The devastating impacts of Hurricanes Irma and Maria across the northeastern Caribbean not only bring closer a world of immediate climate disaster and halting recovery, but also cast a long shadow of slow disasters and impossible futures for small island states in the face of significantly unstable and unpredictable climate patterns. In contrast to the mainstream idea of just “building back better” the paper underscores the need to also better account for the root causes of disaster risk and violent histories that still influence recovery processes at present. The paper draws on the recent debates over Caribbean reconstruction in the aftermath of Hurricanes Irma and Maria, but sets this immediate crisis in the context of longer debates over Caribbean reconstruction, reparations and climate justice. Revisiting arguments in W.E.B. DuBois’s classic sociological study of “Black Reconstruction in America”, this commentary also foregrounds Aldon Morris’s concept of “insurgent intellectual networks” to analyze the emergence of transnational “liberation capital” in the Caribbean region. These approaches help not only to ask how should we recover from or adapt to such storms, but how should major contributors to global warming pay for rebuilding, reparations, and restitution? What forms of deliberation, participation, procedural processes, and capabilities are necessary to make these determinations? Should restorative justice be linked to the Caricom demand for the European Union to pay reparations for slavery? And finally, what forms of epistemic justice are needed to recognize and support the work of insurgent intellectual networks?

Photographing Slow Disaster: Zoe Strauss’s Grand Isle Beach

Previous articleNext article No AccessGalleryPhotographing Slow Disaster: Zoe Strauss’s Grand Isle BeachEllen StroudEllen Stroud Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Volume 21, Number 4October 2016 Published for the American Society for Environmental History and the Forest History Society Views: 15Total views on this site Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1093/envhis/emw062 Views: 15Total views on this site HistoryPublished online September 06, 2016 © 2016 The Author. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Climate Change Hazard Mitigation and Disaster Policy in South Louisiana: Planning and Preparing for a “Slow Disaster”

Our climate is in a constant state of flux and disaster policy and hazard mitigation measures must anticipate and adapt to these and other changes. This is especially true in the parishes of South Louisiana where a combination of factors have created a highly dynamic landscape where residents must react to anthropogenic and non-anthropogenic forces simultaneously. Major policies and mitigation efforts along Louisiana's Gulf Coast as they relate to disaster management and/or climate change were chronicled to determine how they have incorporated the unique vulnerabilities of South Louisiana. In addition to exacerbating disasters, changes in climate can create a “slow disaster” because of far-reaching impacts on multiple natural processes. A “slow disaster” is difficult to encourage communities to prepare for because the impact is usually realized over the course of years and decades instead of a few hours or days, as is the case with most disasters. Proactive planning and inclusion of potential climate change impacts in hazard mitigation plans is a positive step in reducing the impact of future disasters.

Linking social structure, fragmentation, and substance abuse in a resource-based community

Drawing on case-study research from a rural, resource-based community in Alberta, Canada, this paper explores the social and economic context of substance abuse. Specifically, the linkages between social structure, community fragmentation, and family dysfunction offer a way of understanding differential resistance and susceptibility to substance abuse. Five thematic areas were linked to susceptibility in this study: (1) an economy based on multiple divergent sectors, which gives rise to income disparity and social inequality; (2) a highly transient population, which results in social distancing and lack of social support; (3) shift work, which prevents opportunities for consistent and productive family and community relationships; (4) high incomes, which lead to material competition and financial stress; and (5) a culture of entitlement, which produces certain expectations and perceived privileges among some workers and their families. Our findings are consistent with previous research on the link between substance abuse and shift work, work environments, and the social conditions in boomtowns. But this paper also identifies novel themes, such as high incomes and a culture of entitlement, and introduces the notion of slow disasters and cumulative risk histories to help explain susceptibility to substance abuse within this rural community.

Editor's desktop

The new media, including the 24/7 cable news networks, leave us all uncomfortably aware of the many disasters, natural and otherwise, that occur around the world and of the problems associated with information in such events. We witness the difficulties in sorting fact from rumor or initial impressions when sudden, complex events occur. As first responders scramble to reach victims and determine priorities for aid and assistance, communication and information are critical factors – thus, the emerging field of crisis informatics, which is the subject of this month's Bulletin. Our guest editor, Christine Hagar of Dominican University, has assembled a broad spectrum of papers in this area in terms of geography, problems and media studied. From Africa and Indonesia to Europe and the United States, from emergency preparedness to emergency response and from community radio to tweeting and cell phone video, the articles provide interesting examples of both human and the technological challenges. We also have two opinion pieces in this issue, one of which has some relationship to the crisis informatics section. Karen Hovde of the Northern Illinois University Libraries is concerned with “slow disasters” and the preservation of our cultural heritage. In another opinion piece, Deanna Hall extends our ongoing discussion of information professionals by considering the corporation as a stakeholder in LIS education. ASIS&T President, Gary Marchionini, and IA columnist, Thom Haller, both address recent ASIS&T activities. In “Possibilities Abound,” Thom Haller describes Richard Saul Wurman's keynote address at the 11th ASIS&T IA Summit held in Phoenix in April, which featured an unusual prop and an inspirational message. However, as Marchionini reports, the IA Summit was not the only one in Phoenix this year, as ASIS&T also concurrently sponsored its first Research Access and Preservation Summit. Marchionini also reviews the discussion from his first “teleconversation” with members, and welcomes an important new member of the ASIS&T Headquarters staff, director of communications Melissa Dawn Weaver.

Environmental disasters: anthropogenic and natural

Natural and anthropogenic environmental disasters: The problem of risk Natural and anthropogenic disasters in the history of civilization Natural disasters and their consequences Some anthropogenic disasters and their consequences Global and regional slow disasters Satellite monitoring of natural and anthropogenic disasters.

Les presses canadiennes et les crises sahéliennes. Problématique sur le traitement médiatique des désastres lents

The Sahel famines form an instance of slow disaster. This raises problems, not only for their "newsworthiness," but also for the form of their coverage. If drought is defined as a climatic constant, the logic of the fatalist drought-famine paradigm will dominate spot coverage of the situation. If drought is posed as a social problem resulting from socioeconomic and political structures, a systemic paradigm would be invoked in explanations. The coverage of two recent famines in the Sahel are discursively analysed throught this problematic.