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The objective of this study is to analyze the causal impact of natural disasters on municipal budget choices, using a original database that allows us to study a sample of several thousand municipalities, 22,972 of which were affected by a natural disaster between 2000 and 2019. This quasi-experimental setting allows us to use panel regression models to estimate municipalities' responses to a shock and with respect to their prevention strategies. We find evidence of increased spending for about 10 years after the disaster, together with increased in revenues and debt. Furthermore, it appears that prevention allows municipalities to effectively mitigate the effect of the disaster in terms of public spending, as municipalities with a natural hazard prevention plan in place did not increase their spending and their debt in the long run.

Climate-related disasters affect different dimensions of children's health and well-being both directly and indirectly. Reducing children's vulnerability and exposure to climate-related disasters is crucial to protect them against risks. Children as climate-change agents and future leaders at local, national and international level can obviously contribute to reduce vulnerabilities in families and communities and transfer knowledge to them. Moreover, children can advocate for climate change mitigation. In the long term, participation of children in the climate change mitigation programmes may lead to fewer disasters and, consequently, less risk to their health. As government policies have failed to fully address and respond to the drivers of climate-related disasters, disasters preparedness and education for children should be considered an essential activity to protect children from disaster's risks. Main factors in shaping children's behaviour and response to disaster are increasing the risk perception and knowledge of the children. When a child perceived likelihood, susceptibility and severity of a disaster (such as earthquake), then they would be able and willing to learn how to prepare for that. So far, disaster education programmes for children have mostly relied on offline school-based training. Different innovative approaches can be applied to continue education within online and digital formats including virtual reality, digital games and online platforms. However, an advocacy support by influential entities such as companies engaged in entertainment industry is required to raise the awareness of public and particularly the children about disaster preparedness.

This is an author-produced PDF of an article accepted for publication following peer review. The publisher version is available on its site. ; Do different types of natural disasters – droughts, earthquakes, floods, storms, and others – trigger political instability? This study engages with this question. It revisits an ongoing debate over the nature of association between disasters and conflict and re-assesses this relationship using the model of conflict developed by the Political Instability Task Force as well as its data, measures of political instability, and methods of assessment. The study finds only marginal support for the impact of certain types of disasters on the onsets of political instability. The pre-existing country-specific conditions, including the resilience of a state's institutions to crisis, account for most of the variance in the dependent variable. Once the characteristics of a state's political regime are taken into account, the effect of disasters weakens or disappears completely suggesting that natural disasters become catalysts of political instability in only those states, which are already prone to conflict.

Natural disasters are frequently exacerbated by anthropogenic mechanisms and have social and political consequences for communities. The role of community learning in disasters is seen to be increasingly important. However, the ways in which such learning unfolds in a disaster can differ substantially from case to case. This article uses a comparative case study methodology to examine catastrophes and major disasters from five countries (Japan, New Zealand, the UK, the USA and Germany) to consider how community learning and adaptation occurs. An ecological model of learning is considered, where community learning is of small loop (adaptive, incremental, experimental) type or large loop (paradigm changing) type. Using this model, we consider that there are three types of community learning that occur in disasters (navigation, organization, reframing). The type of community learning that actually develops in a disaster depends upon a range of social factors such as stress and trauma, civic innovation and coercion.

Natural disasters are frequently exacerbated by anthropogenic mechanisms and have social and political consequences for communities. The role of community learning in disasters is seen to be increasingly important. However, the ways in which such learning unfolds in a disaster can differ substantially from case to case. This article uses a comparative case study methodology to examine catastrophes and major disasters from five countries (Japan, New Zealand, the UK, the USA and Germany) to consider how community learning and adaptation occurs. An ecological model of learning is considered, where community learning is of small loop (adaptive, incremental, experimental) type or large loop (paradigm changing) type. Using this model, we consider that there are three types of community learning that occur in disasters (navigation, organization, reframing). The type of community learning that actually develops in a disaster depends upon a range of social factors such as stress and trauma, civic innovation and coercion.

During recent decades, international humanitarian organizations and the governments of countries affected by natural catastrophes/disasters and climate change have highlighted the fact that more women lose their lives and suffer other effects of such events than men. This disparity in victim numbers is a phenomenon that is caused by – and inherently linked with – the unequal socioeconomic status of women. In alleviating disaster risks, women and men are limited to the roles and responsibilities they are afforded at home and in society. Gender roles constructed in an exclusive manner result in different personal and group identities and potentials, social responsibilities, behaviours and expectations. Thus, gender-based differentiation leads to gender inequality in all socio-economic processes, including different roles and opportunities: reductions in vulnerability and disaster risks, improved disaster management, anticipation of possible damages, and recovery from these. Due to all these differences, it is clear that women and men must participate equally in determining ways to reduce the risks of a disaster at the community level (national, regional and international) without discrimination and exclusion. The inclusion of gender experts (and aspects) in the development of gender-sensitive policies and program guidelines should be ensured. This creates a valid prerequisite for gender equality while reducing the risk of catastrophes/disasters and climate change and making community-based adaptation more effective. It is necessary to integrate gender sensitive aspects/criteria into the initiatives and processes of planning, designing, implementing, monitoring and evaluating risk reduction programs and projects. In order to adapt to climate change and mitigate the consequences stemming from this, but also to reduce the risk of catastrophes/disasters, parameters must be established pertaining to the needs and interests of women. These needs are a prerequisite for supporting women's independent initiatives and for the financing of environmentally-friendly technologies for the sustainable use of natural resources.

This book focuses on the challenges of living with climate disasters, in addition to the existing gender inequalities that prevail and define social, economic and political conditions. Social inequalities have consequences for the everyday lives of women and girls where power relations, institutional and socio-cultural practices make them disadvantaged in terms of disaster preparedness and experience. Chapters in this book unravel how gender and masculinity intersect with age, ethnicity, sexuality and class in specific contexts around the globe. It looks at the various kinds of difficulties for particular groups before, during and after disastrous events such as typhoons, flooding, landslides and earthquakes. It explores how issues of gender hierarchies, patriarchal structures and masculinity are closely related to gender segregation, institutional codes of behaviour and to a denial of environmental crisis. This book stresses the need for a gender-responsive framework that can provide a more holistic understanding of disasters and climate change. A critical feminist perspective uncovers the gendered politics of disaster and climate change. This book will be useful for practitioners and researchers working within the areas of Climate Change response, Gender Studies, Disaster Studies and International Relations.

Climate-related disasters affect different dimensions of children's health and well-being both directly and indirectly. Reducing children's vulnerability and exposure to climate-related disasters is crucial to protect them against risks. Children as climate-change agents and future leaders at local, national and international level can obviously contribute to reduce vulnerabilities in families and communities and transfer knowledge to them. Moreover, children can advocate for climate change mitigation. In the long term, participation of children in the climate change mitigation programmes may lead to fewer disasters and, consequently, less risk to their health. As government policies have failed to fully address and respond to the drivers of climate-related disasters, disasters preparedness and education for children should be considered an essential activity to protect children from disaster's risks. Main factors in shaping children's behaviour and response to disaster are increasing the risk perception and knowledge of the children. When a child perceived likelihood, susceptibility and severity of a disaster (such as earthquake), then they would be able and willing to learn how to prepare for that. So far, disaster education programmes for children have mostly relied on offline school-based training. Different innovative approaches can be applied to continue education within online and digital formats including virtual reality, digital games and online platforms. However, an advocacy support by influential entities such as companies engaged in entertainment industry is required to raise the awareness of public and particularly the children about disaster preparedness.

Throughout much of its history, the sociological study of human communities in disaster has been based on events that occur rapidly, are limited in geographic scope, and their management understood as phased stages of response, recovery, mitigation and preparedness. More recent literature has questioned these concepts, arguing that gradual-onset phenomena like droughts, famines and epidemics merit consideration as disasters and that their exclusion has negative consequences for the communities impacted, public policy in terms of urgency and visibility and for the discipline itself as the analytical tools of sociological research are not brought to bear on these events. We agree that gradual-onset disasters merit greater attention from social scientists and in this paper have addressed the two most significant ongoing disasters that are gradual in onset, global in scope and have caused profound impacts on lives, livelihoods, communities and the governments that must cope with their effects. These disasters are the coronavirus pandemic and global climate change both of which include dimensions that challenge the prevailing definition of disaster. We begin with an examination of the foundational work in the sociological study of a disaster that established a conceptual framework based solely on rapidly occurring disasters. Our focus is on several components of the existing framework for defining and studying disasters, which we term "borders." These borders are temporal, spatial, phasing and positioning, which, in our view, must be reexamined, and to some degree expanded or redefined to accommodate the full range of disasters to which our globalized world is vulnerable. To do so will expand or redefine these borders to incorporate and promote an understanding of significant risks associated with disaster agents that are gradual and potentially catastrophic, global in scope and require international cooperation to manage.

Last year, Ben Bernanke published a blockbuster paper whose importance to the emerging field of law and macroeconomics would be hard to overstate. Titled The Real Effects of Disrupted Credit: Evidence from the Global Financial Crisis,' the paper gets to a vital threshold question for financial stability policy: through what channel or channels do financial crises crush the real economy? Bernanke pits what he calls the "household leverage" narrative of the Great Recession of 2007 to 2009 against what he calls the "financial fragility" narrative. His empirical analysis comes down firmly on the side of the latter narrative. In this Article, I use Bernanke's blockbuster as a springboard to make several points that are germane to law and macroeconomics as a field of study. First, understanding acute macroeconomic disasters should be central to this field. It has been said that the Great Depression gave birth to macroeconomics. Law and macroeconomics is likewise the product of a macroeconomic catastrophe: the Great Recession. Sharp contractions in output and employment are a source of incalculable human costs and are politically destabilizing.' Better understanding their causes and cures remains as urgent as ever.

Natural and technological disasters impact thousands of families in the United States each year. Catastrophic events leave homelessness, unemployment, injury, and death in their wake. The cost to society is usually measured in homes destroyed, jobs lost, casualties, and expected dollar expense of recovery. There are the social, psychological, and family consequences of catastrophic stressors. Anecdotal reports suggest that among these consequences is an increase in family violence, including child abuse. This dissertation tests the hypotheses that reported and confirmed child abuse increases in the wake of natural disasters. Child Protective Services (CPS) records of several jurisdictions that have experienced natural disasters during the past decade were examined. Data were collected from counties in South Carolina impacted by Hurricane Hugo in 1989, counties in California affected by the Loma Prieta Earthquake in 1989, and parishes in Louisiana impacted by Hurricane Andrew in 1992. The numbers of reports and confirmations for a one-year period following each of these events were compared with those for the year prior to the disaster. Analyses of these data indicated statistically significant increases in child abuse reports during the first 6 months following Hurricane Hugo and the Lama Prieta Earthquake, but showed no statistically significant change following Hurricane Andrew. The study concluded that reactions to natural disasters vary for a number of different reasons. The findings from California and South Carolina indicated that there are changes in patterns of reporting and/or confirmation of child abuse following catastrophes. CPS workers in each of the impacted areas were interviewed to obtain their impressions regarding the extent and causes of these changes in reporting and substantiation. Recommendations that governmental and social service agencies dedicate resources and develop programs to address this specific problem following catastrophes were included. Future research that replicates this study and the development of methodologies that do not depend on official reports and investigations were recommended.

These papers present the economic issues debates that arise when natural disasters strike. Better mechanisms for coping with disasters through better preparation and mitigation efforts are addressed. The authors discuss insurance and risk and suggest long-term insurance arrangements and government policy action. The themes addressed also include the ability of potential disaster victims to accurately assess the risks they face, the role of incentives in ensuring that mitigation efforts are undertaken, the adequacy of the evaluation of the impact of disasters on economies, and discussion of the effectiveness of current government policies toward disaster prevention and relief. ; https://research.upjohn.org/up_press/1220/thumbnail.jpg

Climate induced disasters can be considered as an outcome of a triggering agents (often known as the hazard) and vulnerability factors. Within the context of climate-induced disasters, humans do not have the control over the triggering agents. Even though it is difficult to control the triggering agent, the level of its exposure to a vulnerable community or system would determine the severity of its impact. Within this context, by reducing the vulnerability the impact of climate-induced disasters can be minimized. Accordingly, this study evaluates the disaster vulnerability factors in Malaysia with particular reference to the climate-induced disaster- floods. A workshop has been carried out with the involvement of practitioners and professionals who are linked with the disaster management activities to identify the key vulnerable factors from the context of Malaysia. The findings identified Social Vulnerability as the main vulnerability factor that affect the Malaysian community followed by Operational/Managerial, Technological, Economic and Political. The findings of the study revealed the need of addressing vulnerability factors at different levels such as at the community, institutional and policy levels and how the vulnerability factors are interconnected with one another.

Background: Community organizations active in disasters play a vital role in community disaster response and recovery, but academic understanding of this organizational population is limited by untested and imprecise typological differentiations. An organizational taxonomy would better quantify and define this population and subgroups within it. This would allow for contextualizing research and findings against a validated framework that relates organizational groups and subgroups within the broader population. Taxonomies also serve a role similar to theory by enabling the development of new research questions and hypotheses. Objectives: This dissertation proposes a taxonomy to classify the organizations of interest, and the taxonomy uses typological benchmarks that ensure coherent classificatory groups to provide meaning-in-context and salience to the needs of its users. The taxonomy evaluated the utility of structural/operational, functional, and financial traits for classifying the organizations. The taxonomy can guide research and policy development, and it can also provide utility to the community organizations themselves and their collaborative networks. Methods: A novel study population of 660 organizations was created from a stratified non-probability quota sample of 28 Voluntary Organizations Active in Disasters (VOAD) networks. The 660 organizations cover the full range of organizational subtypes/subgroups of interest, and the results are not meant to be generalizable to the VOADs themselves without additional and planned validation. Two sets of hierarchical clustering results were produced and compared using both polythetic and parsimonious trait selection. Iterative and heuristic modeling procedures assessed and compared the results of several important permutations and methodological choices. Findings: The best set of results classified the population based on a parsimonious set of structural/operational traits: charitable/religious and faith-based/not faith-based. The results from both approaches were robust and congruent with the typological understanding of these organizations, but up to one-fourth of the organizations in the study population exhibited noteworthy deviation from common typological distinctions. The results were expanded into a taxonomy with three branches and three tiers to create a combined total of 26 clusters and subclusters. The best set of results also used a modified unit of analysis that classified 47 coherent organizational subgroups, akin to "species", rather than 660 individual organizations.

This paper discusses disaster risk reduction (DRR) in the context of emerging geographical ideas about topologies and assemblages. It focuses on the role of expert advice in DRR and the resulting political and epistemological issues. The critical geography of disasters still struggles to communicate with persistent scientific technical-rational approaches to hazard assessment. Furthermore, recent studies have shown the potential for expert advice to be (mis)used for political purposes. Assemblage theory might be useful in opening up this hybrid area of research, as it allows a nuanced view of disasters and DRR that can incorporate complex human-environmental relationships and diverse knowledges.