Suchergebnisse

This work addresses the long-overdue imbalance in disaster management: an over-emphasis on post-disaster assistance and a lack of attention to vulnerability reduction. It seeks to answer the fundamental question in this debate: how can we mould pre-disaster development initiatives to become the most appropriate means for vulnerability reduction? The book reasserts and reapplies some of the basic concepts and issues which emerged in the 1960s and 1970s, with the message that development is a prime medium both of vulnerability and its reduction.

Purpose
Considered alone, risk is static; the purpose of this paper is to illustrate risk not as static but as a fluid condition dependent, for example, upon circumstances of its context in changeable vulnerability and behavioural responses of people facing risk.


Design/methodology/approach
Psychology provides strong evidence of behavioural response when facing hazards; technological disasters providing more evidence of behavioural responses to hazards and risk than response to disasters assumed to be "natural". Initial and subsequent behavioural responses may critically affect ultimate outcomes. Post-event inquiries into technological disasters have revealed actions and inactions which created or aggravated subsequent consequences and their aftermath.


Findings
Decisions taken at a Japanese school between the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, and details of the 2017 fire at a tower-block in London, UK, indicate, in spite of training, that rigidity, uncertainty, hesitation or waver may affect critical decisions and their consequences. Pre- and post-disaster behaviour may not follow preferred patterns. Fear of imagined or real events may induce unanticipated denial of the reality of risk. Physical changes made after assessments of risk may not be recognised as affecting risk.


Research limitations/implications
Few published examples exist of public inquiries following disasters assumed to be from natural causes.


Practical implications
Reports of inquiries into technological disasters provide significant examples of behavioural responses which, if replicated, may influence outcomes of disasters labelled as "natural".


Social implications
Awareness of risk as a fluid condition will facilitate realisation of effects upon risk of uncompleted or ongoing works, inappropriate behavioural responses, undeveloped resilience and of the need for regular reassessments of risk.


Originality/value
This study encourages comprehension of risk as an evolving and fluid condition.

Corruption at all levels of all societies is a behavioural consequence of power and greed. With no rulebook, corruption is covert, opportunistic, repetitive and powerful, reliant upon dominance, fear and unspoken codes: a significant component of the 'quiet violence'. Descriptions of financial corruption in China, Italy and Africa lead into a discussion of 'grand', 'political' and 'petty' corruption. Social consequences are given emphasis but elude analysis; those in Bangladesh and the Philippines are considered against prerequisites for resilience. People most dependent upon self-reliance are most prone to its erosion by exploitation, ubiquitous impediments to prerequisites of resilience – latent abilities to 'accommodate and recover' and to 'change in order to survive'. Rarely spoken of to those it does not dominate, for long-term effectiveness, sustainability and reliability, eradication of corrupt practices should be prerequisite to initiatives for climate change, poverty reduction, disaster risk reduction and resilience. ; http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/jamba.v9i1.391

La cybersécurité est un champ d'études compliqué car de nombreuses informations nécessaires à une analyse objective sont confidentielles. Néanmoins, il est possible de tirer des conclusions précises de données incomplètes, mais cela dépend des hypothèses et des modèles choisis pour interpréter ce qui est connu et nécessite d'adopter des méthodologies rigoureuses. Une question initiale et fondamentale est de savoir si le cyberespace a transformé de manière significative le comportement des États. Ainsi, cet article analyse les effets réels de l'affaire Snowden sur les négociations visant un accord international sur la cybersécurité. Il montre que, depuis ces révélations, les positions des États sur la recherche d'un accord international varient selon leurs intérêts respectifs, mais qu'aucun d'eux n'envisage sérieusement de rompre les pourparlers avec les États-Unis.

Purpose– This intentionally short paper considers the wide range of interpretations of "vulnerability" since its 1979 adoption in disaster studies and proposes some necessary separation and re-categorisation of its current applications.Design/methodology/approach– The short history of the use of "vulnerability" in disasters studies is examined, contrasting present day contexts with those of its earliest use.Findings– "Vulnerability" is retained for its conventional place-based role, whilst superimposed social and political constraints are allocated to "susceptibility", a term often used to define "vulnerability"; the two terms taking on equal mutually supportive roles. Separation of the two terms is supported by on example of their realities in war and post-war conditions, together with other examples not in contexts of war. Separation of terms suggests the issue of whether manifestation of vulnerability brings about additional personal susceptibility.Research limitations/implications– Implications are that both vulnerability and susceptibility may become better understood in disaster studies and its applications in the field.Practical implications– The media is seen as a possible eventual target for a published version of this short paper so that, in time, public as well as academic readership may be reached.Originality/value– Dissatisfaction occasionally expressed regarding uses of "vulnerability" has, so far, received little radical attention.

Purpose
– The aim of this paper is to explore community resilience during the short-term stages of recovery of Wittenberge in 1945, surrender in the final months of the Second World War and the commencement for the town of Soviet administration; with comments on longer-term contexts of continued resilience and recovery to the present day. The paper examines origins and current use of the term "resilience" for comparison with its realities that are identified.


Design/methodology/approach
– Translated extracts of a chronology of events in Wittenberge during 1945 (Muchow) are the basis of an exploration of social impacts for a town in wartime of exhaustion, defeat, surrender, political change and impoverishment.


Findings
– Current interpretations of social resilience frequently do not match its reality, largely due to overuse of the word. Resilience is conditioned by circumstances that cannot be assumed, sudden change here being part of the war experience, not a consequence.


Research limitations/implications
– Whereas other research (e.g. Hewitt) has considered the social impact of mass bombing during the second World War, this paper takes the example of a single town in an exposed geographical situation which is described.


Originality/value
– Whereas Second World War military history continues to be repeatedly re-examined, its social impacts are comparatively understated. This paper offers a rare example in English of the experience of a small town in Germany in 1945.