Slow-onset Hazards Research Articles

Exploring the relationship between climate change events and migration decisions: Evidence from a choice experiment in Bangladesh

Bangladesh is a low-lying deltaic nation with high vulnerability to climate-related hazards. Hatiya Island is located in Southern Bangladesh, and residents rely significantly on fishing and agriculture for their livelihoods. However, the island's primary production systems face a threat from intense and frequent sudden onset environmental hazards such as river erosion, cyclones, and flooding, as well as slow onset environmental hazards like saline intrusion, tidal inundation, and rising temperatures. Little is known about the effect sudden onset and slow onset hazards have on the migration patterns of Hatiya's residents. The aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between climatic events and the migration decisions of residents on Hatiya Island. To explore this link, we collected empirical data from 337 respondents on Hatiya Island using a choice experiment survey. The five attributes were used to construct migration scenarios, including climate events at Hatiya Island, the distance of migration, the migration type, the social network at the potential destination, and the difference in income between Hatiya Island and the potential destination. The findings from the mixed logit model indicated that climate events at Hatiya, migration distance, and income gap affected residents' migration decisions. Extreme slow onset change and extreme sudden onset change were less likely to induce migration compared to the moderate level of slow and sudden onset change. However, residents were more likely to migrate as the income difference between Hatiya and the prospective destination increased. Residents were willing to migrate at a 9.4 % increase in income for extreme sudden onset change, while residents required a 14.19 % increase in income to migrate in response to extreme slow onset change. As such, policies are needed to support migrants in receiving areas through improved social protection systems, to support migrant-sending households' transformative adaptation in origin areas, and to bolster community-driven adaptation initiatives in Hatiya. The findings from this study can contribute to the existing literature on the relationship between environmental hazards and mobility and inform policymakers on how to design policies that support vulnerable populations.

A Vulnerability Assessment Framework for Cultural Heritage Sites: The Case of the Roman Ruins of Tróia

This article contributes to developing an indicator-based vulnerability assessment framework for cultural heritage sites. It provides a vulnerability index for heritage sites potentially exposed to multiple hazards, including sudden-onset and slow-onset hazards, while considering climate change influences. Through determining particular criteria and indicators, the Cultural Heritage Vulnerability Index incorporates structural and non-structural factors of the heritage site and its local and national settings. The assessment procedure was applied to the case of the Roman Ruins of Tróia in Portugal. The findings highlight those areas of sensitivity (e.g., the existing deterioration patterns and types of foundation) and coping and adaptive capacities (e.g., institutional setting and response plan) that significantly contribute to the level of vulnerability and risk. The results of vulnerability assessment will further enable determining priorities and developing risk mitigation and preparedness measures, in particular reducing structural sensitivity and promoting coping capacities.

Societal disruption as a disaster. Exploring suicide, drug addiction and domestic violence in Australia through a disaster risk reduction lens

Societal disruption and hazards can result in health threats and impacts that are not usually recorded as events in disaster management databases or associated with emergency or disaster management risk reduction activity. Current disaster recording databases are commonly aligned to disaster definitions oriented towards predefined rapid or slow onset hazards causing disasters. Consequently, disaster risk reduction activity is predominantly tailored to these event types. This paper applied a disaster risk reduction lens to the impacts of drug addiction, domestic violence and suicide in Australia. We found that these events meet national and international classifications of disasters according to thresholds and definitions; and propose that contemporary health emergency and disaster risk management (HEDRM) practice can inform disaster risk reduction and support action to reduce the impact of these events.

Learning from the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy to advance multi-hazard disaster risk management

COVID-19 challenged all national emergency management systems worldwide overlapping with other natural hazards. We framed a ‘parallel phases’ Disaster Risk Management (DRM) model to overcome the limitations of the existing models when dealing with complex multi-hazard risk conditions. We supported the limitations analysing Italian Red Cross data on past and ongoing emergencies including COVID-19 and we outlined three guidelines for advancing multi-hazard DRM: (i) exploiting the low emergency intensity of slow-onset hazards for preparedness actions; (ii) increasing the internal resources and making them available for international support; (iii) implementing multi-hazard seasonal impact-based forecasts to foster the planning of anticipatory actions.

Local knowledge and practice in disaster relief: A worldwide cross-cultural comparison of coping mechanisms

There is a growing interest and urgency in understanding and incorporating local knowledge and strategies into sustainable climate change adaptation. This is particularly important because as populations age and new technologies come on the scene, much local knowledge is lost to newer generations. For this reason, we have systematically examined 90 societies from the ethnographic record to explore and document the strategies that people in the past have implemented in response to serious natural hazards. Our review reveals a rich diversity of coping mechanisms and contingency plans used by societies around the world in response to different hazards, particularly floods and droughts. We collect, classify, and compare different types of coping mechanisms, focusing on four major types: technological, subsistence, economic and religious. We find that most societies employ multiple types of coping mechanisms, although our data suggest that technological coping mechanisms are the most common coping mechanisms in response to fast-onset hazards, whereas religious coping mechanisms are the most common mechanism used in response to slow-onset hazards. We also find that religious and nonreligious coping strategies are not antithetical to each other. In fact, an increased number of religious coping mechanisms is associated with an increased number of “practical”, nonreligious coping mechanisms.

Prosociality as response to slow- and fast-onset climate hazards

Non-technical summaryMore and more people around the globe experience climate hazards. For vulnerable populations, these hazards not only cause significant physical damages, but can also affect the way people interact with each other. How such interactions are affected by climate hazards is particularly important for understanding the vulnerability of communities. Prosocial behavior is key for communities that heavily rely on informal social support to deal with these threats and for cooperative solutions to provide and maintain public goods. To investigate these effects, we talk to people living on the front lines of climate change and measure their prosociality using behavioral tasks. Our results show that both fast- and slow-onset hazards increase prosociality, underscoring the importance of well-functioning social relationships for dealing with hardship and uncertainty in a variety of contexts.Technical summaryPeople's willingness to engage in prosocial behavior can affect how vulnerable and resilient populations are to climate hazards. We study how different types of climate hazards, fast-onsetting cyclones and slowly rising sea-levels, might affect peoples' prosociality using incentivized behavioral tasks. We sample people who are at the forefront of climate change and either experienced Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines (study 1;n= 378) or are from sea-level rise hotspots (study 2;n= 1047) in Solomon Islands, Bangladesh, and Vietnam. We experimentally manipulate the salience of these hazards through recall or informational videos. Results from study 1 show that increases in prosociality are (i) independent of whether supportive behaviors or conflicts are recalled, (ii) are not only targeted to a narrow in-group, and (iii) do not come with increases in antisocial behaviors. In study 2, we also find that people behave more prosocial when they are informed about the impacts of rising sea-levels. Our survey evidence suggests that people who already perceive the threat of displacement due to rising sea-levels are also more prosocial. Overall, peoples' responses to both types of hazards are geared toward collective action, which could strengthen their adaptive capacity to deal with climate risks.Social media summaryPeople severely affected by sea-level rise and rapidly emerging climate hazards are responding with increases in prosocial behaviors to fellow villagers.

Strategies for building community resilience against slow-onset hazards

Over the recent years, community resilience has been the center of attention in many theoretical approaches and policies against hazards and creeping environmental changes. However, the issue of how to achieve resilient communities has received less attention. The present study aims to develop a framework for devising strategies in order to improve community resilience, particularly to slow-onset hazards such as drought. Hence, the relevant literature was reviewed in order to establish a conceptual framework. Afterwards, the researchers investigated the framework in the context of two local communities (Barazandeh and Abbas Abad neighborhood) in Iran, i.e., Isfahan, against drought as well as drying up of Zayandehrood River and its aqueducts using a qualitative research design and retroductive strategy. For data gathering, semi-structured in-depth interviews were used and data analysis was performed through qualitative content analysis using ATLAS-ti software. Totally, 32 interviews with authorities, experts, researchers, and other stakeholders were conducted in two local communities of Isfahan. Findings indicated that any policy making regarding community resilience should not be restricted to local community level and should be expanded to multiple scales of local, regional, urban, and national community levels, even considering the two major disaster risk reduction (DRR) and climate change adaptation (CCA) categories.

Communication Structures and Decision Making Cues and Criteria to Support Effective Drought Warning in Central Malawi

Early warning systems trigger early action and enable better disaster preparedness. People-centered dissemination and communication are pivotal for the effective uptake of early warnings. Current research predominantly focuses on sudden-onset hazards, such as floods, ignoring considerable differences with slow-onset hazards, such as droughts. We identify the essential factors contributing to effective drought dissemination and communication using the people-centered approach advocated in the WMOs Multi-Hazard Early Warning System Framework (MHEWS). We use semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders and focus group discussions with small-scale farmers in the Mangochi and Salima Districts of Malawi. We show that the timely release of seasonal forecast, the tailoring of the drought warning content (and its timing) to agricultural decision making, and the provision of several dissemination channels enhance trust and improve uptake of drought warning information by farmers. Our analysis demonstrates that farmers seek, prepare, and respond to drought warning information when it is provided as advice on agricultural practices, rather than as weather-related information. The information was found to be useful where it offers advice on the criteria and environmental cues that farmers can use to inform their decisions in a timely manner. Based on our findings, we propose that by focusing on enhancing trust, improving information uptake and financial sustainability as key metrics, the MHEWS can be adapted for use in monitoring the effectiveness of early warning systems.

Risk and experience drive the importance of natural hazards for peoples’ mobility decisions

Since global warming between 2 and 4.9 °C by 2100 is unlikely to be avoided, humans will have to live with and adapt to the impacts of climate change. Migration has long been touted as a strategy for adapting to climate change, but there is limited understanding of which aspects of climate change will have greatest influence on peoples’ decision to move somewhere they consider safer or stay somewhere safe. Here, we present results from two online surveys about mobility decisions from one low (Philippines) and one high (Australia) income country within the Asia-Pacific region with similar vulnerabilities to natural hazards. Online surveys with about 1100 respondents each were conducted in both countries. Results showed that natural hazards played a strong role in the mix of reasons for mobility, particularly in the Philippines. Sudden onset hazards had the greatest influence. Results of ordered probit models showed that the perception of personal damage from hazards was strongly positively associated with mobility decisions of respondents in both countries. Mobility decisions of people in Australia were further influenced by their experience with the specific hazards: those with greater experience of slow onset hazards were more likely, and those who had experience with sudden hazards less likely, to consider these when moving or staying somewhere. People in Australia might only react to sudden onset hazards with temporary relocation since experience had shown that they can adapt to them. This suggests that slow onset climate change related impacts such as heat waves and sea level rise, as well as environmental degradation and pollution, may have more sustained effects on long-term mobility than sudden events. In the Philippines, personal characteristics such as gender, income, and health had the greatest impact while experience with hazards had almost none.

Heat, cold, and floods: exploring farmers’ motivations to adapt to extreme weather events in the Terai region of Nepal

Smallholder farmers in Nepal are vulnerable to climate change-related extreme weather events. Adaptation in the agriculture sector is needed to mitigate social, economic, and ecological impacts from increasing levels of hazard activity. To examine this issue, a household survey of 350 farmers in the Terai region of Nepal was carried out to assess farmers’ risk perceptions towards three common extreme weather events (floods, cold spells, and heat waves) and to explore their intended responses to cope with future impacts. The intended common adaptation strategies include changes in farm management, seeking off-farm employment, emergency management planning, purchasing crop insurance, and the raising of awareness. Threat appraisal is the strongest predictor of the number of intended adaptation strategies adopted in response to slow-onset hazards (heat waves and cold spells), while coping appraisal is the major predictor of the number of intended adaptation strategies adopted to mitigate flood risk, a rapid onset hazard. Crop insurance and off-farm employment are farmers’ most preferred flood adaptation strategies, while crop insurance is the most preferred adaptation strategy for heat waves and cold spells. Other variables such as the number of past implemented strategies, experience with extreme events, community organisation membership, and access to credit and extension services were also significantly associated with farmers’ choices for adaptation strategies in response to the three extreme events. This information can be used to tailor community-centred communication about potential threats from different extreme weather events and government technical and financial support, which will be crucial for farmers to adapt effectively to climate change-related weather extremes.

Assessing farmers’ preparedness to cope with the impacts of multiple climate change-related hazards in the Terai lowlands of Nepal

Climate change-related natural hazards severely affect farmers' livelihoods. This study explores how farmers in the vulnerable western lowlands of Nepal are affected by floods, heatwaves, and cold spells, how they adapt, and the factors influencing their risk perception and intended adaptation behaviour. Data were collected through a survey of 350 randomly selected farming households from the Banke and Bardiya districts in the Tarai region. Farmers identified environmental risks as the most severe risks to their agricultural production, and their main adaptation strategies, including changes to planting dates and crop varieties and increasing the use of fertilisers and pesticides. Following protection motivation theory and using structural equation modelling, we found that farmers' risk perception and adaptation behaviour in response to three specific hazards (floods, heatwaves, and cold spells). The flood impact model showed that self-efficacy, perceived responsibility, response cost, trust, and concern partially influenced flood risk perception. These, in turn, mediated affected farmers’ intended flood adaptation strategies. Flood damage experience thoroughly explained flood adaptation behaviour and was mediated by flood risk perception. Risk perception of flood has the significant mediation effects in the flood model, but heatwave and cold spell risk perception did not have any mediation effect in neither the heatwave nor the cold spells models. We attribute this discrepancy to the fact that slow and rapid onset hazards are perceived differently. These problems were compounded by farmers also lacking both awareness and the requisite knowledge of how to deal with the impacts of the climate change related slow-onset hazards that will become more frequent as climate change continues, unabated. These differences will need to be accommodated in sustainable was in community awareness and disaster management programs to increase adaptive and resilient community capacity for the future.

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.

Integrated Assessment of Natural Hazards, Including Climate Change\u2019s Influences, for Cultural Heritage Sites: The Case of the Historic Centre of Rethymno in Greece

Within the framework of disaster risk management, this article proposes an interdisciplinary method for the analysis of multiple natural hazards, including climate change’s influences, in the context of cultural heritage. A taxonomy of natural hazards applicable to cultural heritage was developed based on the existing theoretical and conceptual frameworks. Sudden-onset hazards, such as earthquakes and floods, and slow-onset hazards, such as wetting–drying cycles and biological contamination, were incorporated into the hazard assessment procedure. Future alteration of conditions due to climate change, such as change in heat waves’ duration, was also taken into account. The proposed hazard assessment framework was applied to the case of the Historic Centre of Rethymno, a city on the northern coast of the island of Crete in Greece, to identify, analyze, and prioritize the hazards that have the potential to cause damage to the center’s historic structures. The assessment procedure includes climate model projections, GIS spatial modeling and mapping, and finally a hazard analysis matrix to enable the sharing of a better understanding of multiple hazards with the stakeholders. The results can facilitate decision making by providing the vulnerability and risk analysis with the nature and spatial distribution of the significant hazards within the study area and its setting.

Appraising slow onset hazards for loss and damage: Case studies in Southeast Asia

Slow onset processes were investigated in five pilot areas in Southeast Asia, i.e., Kampong Speu Province (Cambodia), Selangor State (Malaysia), Thatdama Kyun Village (Myanmar), Kanan Watershed (Philippines), and Quang Ngai Province (Vietnam). Pilot areas with low-lying coasts are exposed to floods,

Determinants of Adaptation for Slow-Onset Hazards: The Case of Rice-Farming Households Affected by Seawater Intrusion in Northern Mindanao, Philippines

This study aimed to address the knowledge gaps on adaptive capacity of rural farming households to slow-onset hazards such as seawater intrusion. It defined household?level variables that can potentially explain adaptive capacity by using a principal component analysis and a regression model. In addition, it aimed to develop a measure-based index (MAI) to account for adaptation processes. The developed measure-based adaptation index addressed a number of shortcomings in previous studies and captured the variation in adaptation measures that rice farmers implement. The results indicated that adaptation takes place at different levels based on the propensity to adapt, the variety and diversity of adoption of various measures, the feasibility of the various measures, and the varying conditions of seawater intrusion. The research established a model of adaptation for seawater intrusion largely influenced by the rice farmers' economic capacity, which is crucial in optimizing the adaptation measures employed.

Progress, traditions and future directions in research on disasters involving slow-onset hazards

PurposeThe importance of onset speed has been stressed by disaster researchers and inter-governmental bodies for some time, but its meaning and knowledge frontier has not been explored in depth. The purpose of this paper is to contextualise disasters involving slow-onset hazards within the broader literature on disasters, assess the current state of knowledge and identify themes in the literature.Design/methodology/approachThis paper employs a semi-structured review design with the purpose of identifying both scholarship engaging directly with the term and less obvious but related literatures.FindingsThe majority of publications that mention slow-onset hazards and their adverse impacts do so only by means of delimitation. The paper finds that there is a great need for empirical and theoretical work on onset and manifestation speed and to test the degree to which existing theories and frameworks of disaster management are also relevant for the study of slow-onset hazard impacts.Research limitations/implicationsThe review identifies several gaps in existing research disasters involving slow-onset hazards and proposes research on community, political, policy and practical challenges, including answering the question of how to secure proactive response to emerging slow-onset hazard impacts.Practical implicationsIn theory, hazards with a gradual and creeping onset are easier to manage and proactively respond to than that of sudden and unexpected ones. Not only do slow-onset hazards provide more lead time, but also a larger potential for proactive response, which in turn provides ample time to take early action to cushion their impacts. Yet, warnings often go unheard and response is put on hold until impacts become unnecessarily costly to reverse. More research on onset speed and gradual manifestation patterns should therefore be carried out.Originality/valueGradually occurring hazards have remained largely absent from the core literature on disasters, including most definitions of the term. This paper represents an initial effort to assess the state-of-the-art on the concept and the phenomenon of disasters involving slow-onset hazards.

Sustained Observations of Changing Arctic Coastal and Marine Environments and Their Potential Contribution to Arctic Maritime Domain Awareness: A Case Study in Northern Alaska

Increased maritime activities and rapid environmental change pose significant hazards, both natural and technological, to Arctic maritime operators and coastal communities. Currently, U.S. and foreign research activities account for more than half of the sustained hazard-relevant observations in the U.S. maritime Arctic, but hazard assessment and emergency response are hampered by a lack of dedicated hazard monitoring installations in the Arctic. In the present study, we consider a number of different sustained environmental observations associated with research into atmosphere-ice-ocean processes, and discuss how they can help support the toolkit of emergency responders. Building on a case study at Utqiaġvik (Barrow), Alaska, we investigate potential hazards in the seasonally ice-covered coastal zone. Guided by recent incidents requiring emergency response, we analyze data from coastal radar and other observing assets, such as an ice mass balance site and oceanographic moorings, in order to outline a framework for coastal maritime hazard assessments that builds on diverse observing systems infrastructure. This approach links Arctic system science research to operational information needs in the context of the development of a Common Operational Picture (COP) for Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA) relevant for Arctic coastal and offshore regions. A COP in these regions needs to consider threats not typically part of the classic MDA framework, including sea ice or slow-onset hazards. An environmental security and MDA testbed is proposed for northern Alaska, building on research and community assets to help guide a hybrid research-operational framework that supports effective emergency response in Arctic regions.

Beyond the Sendai indicators: Application of a cascading risk lens for the improvement of loss data indicators for slow-onset hazards and small-scale disasters

The implementation of the Sendai Framework offers an opportunity for expanding the global application of standardized loss accounting systems for recording disaster impacts. However, the Sendai indicators and existing global disaster databases offer limited utility in achieving the aims of the Sendai Framework through the creation of a knowledge base relevant for informed risk reduction strategies in varied hazard and vulnerability contexts. Using cascading analyses and systems thinking, this paper explores new approaches for improving methodologies for loss and damage data. It focuses on the subset of small-scale disasters and slow-onset hazards, and demonstrates how a systems approach to cascading risk can improve the utility of disaster databases from reactive and static measures of economic loss, to tools for assessing risk and vulnerability across temporal and spatial scales.

An Evaluation of Global Hazard Communication with Ethical Considerations.

Introduction: Despite the large number of hazards occurring every year, it is often only the most catastrophic and rapidly occurring hazards that are covered in detail by major news outlets. This can result in an under-reporting of smaller or slowly evolving hazards such as drought. Furthermore, the type or country in which the hazard occurs may have a bearing on whether it receives media coverage. The Public Health England (PHE) global weekly hazards bulletin is designed to inform subscribers of hazards occurring in the world in a given week regardless of location or type of natural hazard. This paper will aim to examine whether the bulletin is reporting these events in a way that matches a number of international disaster databases. It will also seek to answer if biases within media outlets reporting of an event is impacting on the types of hazards and events being covered. Through the analysis of data collected, it is hoped to be able to consider the ethical implications of such a bulletin service and provide recommendations on how the service might be improved in the future.Methods: The study used a year’s worth of global hazards bulletins sent by Public Health England. These bulletins aim to communicate hazards in the form of compiled articles from news outlets around the world. Data from these bulletins was collected and analysed by hazard type and the country in which hazards occurred. It was then compared to recognised hazard databases to assess similarities and differences in the hazards being reported via media or through dedicated hazard databases. The recognised hazard databases were those run by the Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT), European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (ECHO) and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) respectively.Results: The PHE bulletin overall was found to be comparable to other global hazard or disaster databases in terms of hazards included by both country and type of hazard. The PHE bulletin covered a greater number of unique hazard events than the other databases and also covered more types of hazard. It also gave more frequent coverage to the United Kingdom and Canada than the other databases, with other countries appearing less frequently. More generally, the PHE bulletin and the databases it was compared to appear to focus more on hazards either occurring in developed countries or fast-onset ones such as landslides or floods. On the other hand, slow-onset hazards such as drought or those occurring in developing countries appear to be under-reported and are given less importance in both the bulletin and databases.Discussion and recommendations: We recommend that the resources compared review their inclusion criteria and assess whether the discrepancies in hazard type and country can be ratified through changes in how hazards are assessed for inclusion. More research should be undertaken to assess whether similar findings arise when comparing databases in other areas within the remit of public health.

NOAA Radios and Neighbourhood Networks: Demographic Factors for Channel Preference for Hurricane Evacuation Information

This paper reviews literature on information channel type and disasters, and presents results on hurricane evacuation information gathering. Results show that respondents reported they would use television and radio most frequently for gathering information about hurricane evacuation. Minority respondents reported more preference of the use of community or local government as information sources than white respondents, females gathered information from multiple channels more than males, and younger residents gathered information from multiple channels more than older respondents. Implications include areas for future research in how channel utilization occurs during slow onset hazards in predominantly black communities, how age and gender relate to channel preference, and how channel preferences affect length of time to make decisions and engage in protective actions.