Natural Hazards Observer

March 2005

Volume XXIX | Number 4

2004 PERISHIP Fellows Announced

The Natural Hazards Center and the Public Entity Risk Institute are pleased to announce the 2004 PERISHIP Fellows in Hazards, Risk, and Disasters. The PERISHIP program was designed to foster the advancement of knowledge in the interdisciplinary field of hazards, which relies on a continuous influx of young scholars committed simultaneously to their own disciplines and to the more practical, applied aspects of the field. The program recognizes this unusual combination and encourages pursuit of these interests by providing financial support that enables scholarly work that will ultimately serve to advance knowledge in the hazards field.

A rigorous review process resulted in 10 recipients across 10 disciplines and 8 universities. The 2004 PERISHIP Fellows in Hazards, Risk, and Disasters, along with their disciplines, affiliations, and dissertation titles, are:

Patricia Alvarado
Geosciences, University of Arizona
"Crustal Seismicity in the Back-arc Region of the Southern Central Andes from Historic to Modern Times"

Aurélie Brunie
City and Regional Planning, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
"Natural Disasters, Poverty, and Sustainable Development"

Oyuntsetseg Chuluundorj
Health and Behavioral Sciences, University of Colorado at Denver and Health Sciences Center
"Natural Hazards and Risk Management among Pastoral Herders in Mongolia"

Danny de Vries
Anthropology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
"The Influence of Culture Models in Mitigation Decision Making Among Property Owners in Five Historical U.S. Floodplain Communities"

Li-ju Jang
Social Work, University of Denver
"The 921 Earthquake: A Study of the Effects of Taiwanese Cultural Factors on Resilience"

Earl E. Lee, II
Decision Sciences and Engineering Systems, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
"Assessing Vulnerability and Managing Disruptions to Interdependent Infrastructure Systems: A Network Flows Approach"

Stephanie Mizrahi
Political Science/Criminal Justice, Washington State University
"From Panic to Policy: The Relationship Between Terrorist Incidents and Policy Change"

Lori Peek
Sociology, University of Colorado at Boulder
"The Identity of Crisis: Muslim Americans After September 11"

Elizabeth Scoville
Civil Engineering, Clemson University
"Investigation of the Cyclic Response of Roof-Wall Systems Under Combined Shear and Uplift Loads for Low-Rise Wood-Frame Buildings"

Mohan Seetharam
Geography, Clark University
"Modeling the Vulnerability of Social-Ecological Systems to Environmental and Economic Change in the Deccan Plateau, India"

Learn more about the fellows, the program, and future funding possibilities at http://www.cudenver.edu/periship/.

Three New Quick Response Reports from the Natural Hazards Center

The following Quick Response reports have been posted on the Natural Hazards Center’s Web site at http://www.colorado.edu/hazards/qr/qrrepts.html.

QR169 The April 2004 Tornado in North-Central Bangladesh: A Case for Introducing Tornado Forecasting and Warning Systems , by Bimal Kanti Paul and Rejuan Hossain Bhuiyan. 2004. The objectives of this study were to explore the nature of formal and/or informal warnings that residents of the villages impacted by the April 2004 tornado received and how they responded when they learned about and/or personally observed the tornado. The researchers found that there were no tornado forecasting/warning systems in the area or in Bangladesh in general, despite an evident need as well as desire from the public, and made recommendations about how such systems could be implemented.

QR170 Community Response to Hurricane Isabel: An Examination of Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) Organization in Virginia, by Mary E. Franke and David M. Simpson. 2004. In their examination of the degree to which community emergency response teams affected community level preparedness and response as it related to Hurricane Isabel in Virginia, these researchers found that the programs were still in the early stages of development and have yet to create a clear role for themselves. Nevertheless, the programs were well regarded and their potential is recognized.

QR171 Providing for Pets During Disasters: An Exploratory Study, by Leslie Irvine. 2004. This research examined how pets were provided for in the wake of Hurricane Charley in Charlotte County, Florida. Findings indicate that the treatment of animals post-Charley was significantly better than the treatment animals received post-Andrew primarily because of the county’s well-developed animal response plan and established interorganizational networks.

New Homeland Security Center of Excellence

On January 10, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced the selection of the University of Maryland (Maryland) to lead the new Homeland Security Center of Excellence for Behavioral and Social Research on Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism. DHS anticipates providing Maryland and its partners with a total of $12 million over the course of the next three years to address these topics.

In responding to the DHS request for proposals, Maryland assembled a team of experts from across the country and around the world. The major partners include the University of California at Los Angeles, the University of Colorado at Boulder, Monterey Institute of International Studies, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of South Carolina. Scholars and researchers from Israel, Italy, Kazakhstan, and other countries will also be involved in the research efforts.

The research and educational focus of this new center will span both international and domestic issues. Topics that will be addressed include the sources of and responses to terrorism, the dynamics of terrorist groups, psychological and psychosocial impacts of terrorism, and ways of increasing societal resilience in the face of terrorism-related threats. Research, education, and outreach activities will place a special emphasis on the information and preparedness needs of our socially and culturally diverse population. Investigators will employ a variety of methodological approaches to explore the behavioral and social dimensions of terrorism, including survey research, field research, focus groups, spatial social science methods, and modeling and simulation.

Activities will be organized around three major working groups focusing, respectively, on the societal origins of terrorism and recruitment into terrorist networks; the dynamics of groups employing terrorism tactics, including growth, decline, and cessation of terrorist actions; and issues related to risk communication and societal preparedness and response. The Natural Hazards Center will assume a coordinating role for the third working group, which will study risk perception and communication, public responses to the terrorism threat and actual events, community preparedness, and school preparedness. Members include scholars from the fields of hazards, disasters, and risk.

Other Homeland Security Centers of Excellence:

The Homeland Security Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events, led by the University of Southern California, aims to evaluate the risks, costs, and consequences of terrorism, and to guide economically viable investments in counter-measures that will make the nation safer and more secure.

The Homeland Security National Center for Food Protection and Defense, led by the University of Minnesota, is focused on defending the safety of the food system through research and education, and works to establish best practices, develop new analytic tools, and attract new researchers to manage and respond to food contamination events.

The Homeland Security National Center for Foreign Animal and Zoonotic Disease Defense (FAZD), led by Texas A&M University, emphasizes animal management protection against foreign animal and zoonotic diseases, including prevention, emergency management, and recovery.

DHS has released a Broad Agency Announcement for a fifth Center of Excellence, the Center for the Study of High Consequence Event Preparedness and Response, which will research preparation for disasters with special emphasis on terrorism (see p. 10 of this Observer).

More information is available in the press release, http://www.dhs.gov/dhspublic/display?content=4274, and at http://www.dhs.gov/centersofexcellence/.

Survey of the Natural Hazards Library at the Natural Hazards Center

To better serve your needs, the Natural Hazards Center is conducting an assessment of the Natural Hazards Library (http://www.colorado.edu/hazards/library/). As part of this assessment, the Center is surveying both producers and users of research and knowledge on extreme events. The survey is extremely important and will provide answers to questions regarding user needs, library usage, and how the existing resources and services can be augmented and improved. It consists of eight questions and should take approximately two minutes to complete.

To make this as simple as possible, the Center has posted the survey on the Web, where it will remain through June 30, 2005, at http://www.colorado.edu/hazards/library/survey/. Please note that you do not have to be familiar with the Natural Hazards Library to take the survey. If you have any questions about the survey or the library, please contact the Natural Hazards Library at hazlib@colorado.edu or (303) 492-5787.

Comments on the World Conference on Disaster Reduction

The United Nations’ (UN) World Conference on Disaster Reduction (WCDR), held in January in Kobe, Japan, could not have come at a better time. Only three weeks after the devastating 9.0 earthquake and resulting tsunami in the Indian Ocean, the world’s attention was intensely focused on natural hazards and human vulnerability. Originally planned to coincide with the 10th anniversary of the 1995 Kobe earthquake, the Indian Ocean tsunami provided an opportunity to once again highlight the need for sensible, strategic policies and initiatives aimed at reducing vulnerability around the world. Set against the backdrop of ongoing recovery in the affected region, increasing pledges of aid from governments and lending institutions, and calls for more tsunami warning systems, delegates became concerned about how the tsunami would affect the conference. Would the WCDR be able to place recent events into the broader context of disaster risk reduction and management or would the original program be overshadowed by the tragedy?

Fortunately, the tsunami sessions and discussions were well integrated into the existing conference program. New sessions were formed to address specific tsunami issues, and presenters in many of the thematic sessions were able to incorporate tsunami-related concerns into their presentations and discussions.

The most noticeable impact of the Indian Ocean tsunami became clear in the discussions on warning systems. A general declaration seemed to emerge quickly from the intergovernmental segment that the development of a tsunami warning system in the Indian Ocean would prevent a similar catastrophe in the future. The agreement to deploy a tsunami warning system also provided a relatively easy way for governments and donor agencies grappling with the unfolding crisis to take seemingly substantive action. Some delegates and numerous nongovernmental organizations were quick to point out that a complete warning system was not simply a quick technological fix, but a lengthy and difficult public education effort as well. Nevertheless, commitments were made to rapidly organize a tsunami monitoring network in the Indian Ocean similar to the one in the Pacific Ocean (see p. 12 of this Observer).

Despite the prominence of the Indian Ocean tsunami in the news and its clear implications for the global hazards community, the issue that seemed to dominate the conference was global climate change. Already a highly contentious issue, the impact of climate change appeared to be the most significant obstacle in the official deliberations. The United States, primarily, along with Australia and Canada, argued strongly against the inclusion of climate change in the Kobe declaration. In sessions, in corridor conversations, and during receptions, the discussion often seemed to drift back towards whether climate change warranted attention at a disaster conference. The consensus seemed to be that the impacts of climate change, while not fully understood (or perhaps even understandable), would prove to be the single most important emerging issue in hazards management. It was the very unpredictable nature of the effects and impacts of climate change that caused some people and delegations to reject its inclusion in discussions of disaster management while it also provided the rationale for others who felt that it provided the impetus for more immediate adaptive action and mitigation.

During the thematic session devoted specifically to climate change, panelists stressed the increasing conceptual and programmatic overlap between climate change analysis and disaster risk management. Although it was acknowledged that few tools exist to incorporate climate change analysis directly into the current disaster risk management framework, given the high probabilities that climate change will continue to modify risk patterns, a comprehensive strategy in the context of development should be supported. Barriers to adopting an integrated approach were also addressed. Funding structures and differing mandates were identified as problems that could be overcome by using the right incentives and creating an appropriate institutional framework. Towards the end of the session, audience member Pascal Peduzzi, head of the Early Warning Unit of the UN Environment Programme, was able to tie the issue of warnings and climate change together, “We have had our early warning on climate; the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) and others have been telling us about the potential impacts for years. We are choosing to ignore the warnings.” Interestingly, what is missing from the climate warning system is similar to that of the proposed Indian Ocean tsunami warning system: effective and meaningful public education.

Like other conferences of this kind, the deliberations are predictable, long on talk, and short on action. By the end of the thematic segment, it was difficult for public participants to know exactly what had been achieved at the intergovernmental level. Nevertheless, the conversation and debates were worth having. They will help the international community chart a new course and begin to elevate difficult issues to the forefront of the public agenda. Only time will tell how the WCDR will impact disaster management in the coming decades, but it is encouraging that nations were willing to openly debate even the most controversial of issues.

Greg Guibert
Natural Hazards Research and Applications Information Center

The WCDR secretariat is currently reviewing all conference documents. These documents, which include official documents as well as presentations made during the thematic segment and the high-level roundtables, are gradually being posted on the conference’s Web site. Access these documents and more at http://www.unisdr.org/wcdr/.