Links

Africa: New improved disaster response tool

The Food Security Analysis Unit of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation in Somalia developed a comprehensive situation analysis early warning tool to help humanitarian agencies and donors analyse a disaster situation, make a comparison with another disaster that might be unfolding in a different part of the globe, and plan and prioritise their response to a particular crisis accordingly. (IRIN, November, 2007)

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=75303

(Added: Mon Nov 19 2007   Modified: Thu Nov 29 2007   Hits: 51)

Destroy and profit: wars, disasters and corporations (pdf)

This 121 page publication addresses some of the key issues and challenges that accompany post war and post disaster reconstruction programmes. The collection of articles in this publication range from analysing the economic and political restructuring of occupied Iraq, the links between war and disaster profiteering in Hurricane Katrina, the Asian Tsunami, Iraq, Afghanistan and Haiti, and investment agreements in Central Asia, and show some of the common elements among post war and disaster reconstruction programmes. The publication highlights that periods following wars, conflicts and disasters offer an opportunity for national and foreign governments, and multilateral agencies to establish new rules and policies for the provision of goods and services, infrastructure development and investment, and to reshape the geographical, economic and political map of a post-conflict country. It also demonstrates how in many cases foreign governments and companies benefit from reconstruction efforts, rather than local and national populations. (Walden Bello et al, Focus on the Global South, January 2006)

http://www.focusweb.org/pdf/Reconstruction-Dossier.pdf

(Added: Tue Jul 11 2006   Modified: Fri Sep 01 2006   Hits: 224)

Disaster Diplomacy

Disaster Diplomacy is one radical interpretation of disaster, as it asks: Do natural disasters induce international cooperation amongst enemy countries? This site includes case studies, publications, an implementation and application index and the ability for you to contribute your view.

http://www.disasterdiplomacy.org/

(Added: Mon Jun 10 2002   Modified: Mon Sep 11 2006   Hits: 262)

Disaster Dispatch

An online bi-monthly on South Asian Disasters from the South Asia Media Group on Disaster Mitigation.

http://www.syberwurx.com/jrc/disaster.html

(Added: Thu Oct 04 2001   Modified: Fri Jul 14 2006   Hits: 249)

Disaster Finder

Search Service provided by NASA. If you're looking for the latest links in disaster information, the Disaster Finder finds them for you, and even lets you preview your selections with brief site descriptions. All sites are clickable from the Disaster Finder's category screens. The Disaster Finder also allows you to perform quick or detailed searches of its links database. Disaster Finder is a service developed and maintained by the NASA Solid Earth and Natural Hazards Program (Code YO), NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C., USA. This service was created for the disaster community at-large so that the best links in disaster information could be found quickly and easily.

http://earthsciences.gsfc.nasa.gov/metadot/index.pl?iid=1979&isa=Category&op=show

(Added: Wed Sep 04 2002   Modified: Fri Jul 14 2006   Hits: 266)

Disaster Resources - Preparation and Recovery

from the University of Illinois. Guidelines for disaster situations.

http://www.ag.uiuc.edu/~disaster/infor.html

(Added: Mon Nov 05 2001   Modified: Fri Jul 14 2006   Hits: 247)

Humanitarian Accountability Partnership (HAP)

The Humanitarian Accountability Partnership is the humanitarian sector's first international self-regulatory body. Its work is based on the findings of the Humanitarian Accountability Project, an inter-agency action research initiative that started in 2001. The vision of HAP International is of a humanitarian system championing the rights and the dignity of disaster survivors.

http://www.hapinternational.org

(Added: Tue Nov 27 2007   Modified: Wed Nov 28 2007   Hits: 89)

Indonesia: natural disasters or mass murder?

Another day, another unnecessary loss of lives: 16 people killed and 16 still missing in floods and landslides on a small island Tahuna off Indonesia's Sulawesi. At an alarming rate, Indonesia is replacing Bangladesh and India as the most disaster-prone nation on earth. It is absurd to discount them simply as nation's bad luck or as the wrath of gods or the nature. Some of these disasters are man-made; almost all of them are preventable. Corruption, incompetence and simple indifference of ruling elites and government officials are mostly to blame. It is poverty, lack of public projects and kleptomania that kills hundreds of thousands of desperate Indonesian men, women and children. (Andre Vltchek, Znet, 11 January 2007)

http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2007-01/11vltchek.cfm

(Added: Mon Jan 15 2007   Hits: 107)

Infrastructure, Natural Disasters, and Poverty

By Paul K. Freeman (1999), International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Laxenburg, Austria. This paper discusses natural catastrophes and poverty (PDF).

http://www.iiasa.ac.at/Research/RMS/june99/papers/freemansolo.pdf

(Added: Thu Feb 21 2002   Modified: Wed Oct 25 2006   Hits: 378)

Natural disasters and adaptive capacity (PDF)

(Eldis) By Dayton-Johnson, J. OECD Development Centre, 2004. The ability of countries to manage risks associated with natural disasters - their vulnerability before disaster strikes and their resilience after the fact - is a pressing concern for development agencies and developing-country governments. Indeed, the extent to which resources are effectively applied to mitigating and coping with disasters has immediate consequences for growth and development. This report explores the inter-relationship between this adaptive capacity and economic and social conditions pointing out that poverty and weak governance can render a society much more vulnerable and less resilient to any given shock. The authors argue that, given the limited scope for diversifying against such risks at the household or community level, there is a strong case for public action.

http://www.eldis.org/cf/search/disp/DocDisplay.cfm?Doc=DOC17269&Resource=f1

(Added: Tue Jan 11 2005   Modified: Wed Oct 25 2006   Hits: 251)

Once Burned, Twice Shy? Lessons Learned from the 1997-98 El Niño

This 19-month, 16-country team assessment reviewed forecasts and impacts of the 1997-98 El Niño, as well as the climate-related early warning and natural disaster preparedness systems in 15 countries (Bangladesh, China, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, Ethiopia, Fiji, Indonesia, Kenya, Mozambique, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines and Vietnam) and the Panama Canal Zone. (UNU, 2000)

http://www.ccb.ucar.edu/un/index.html

(Added: Mon Nov 05 2001   Modified: Wed Oct 11 2006   Hits: 570)

Pay To Be Saved: A Future of Disaster Apartheid

The Red Cross has just announced a new disaster-response partnership with Wal-Mart. This, apparently, is the lesson learned from the government's calamitous response to Hurricane Katrina: Businesses do disaster better. But before this new consensus goes any further, perhaps it's time to take a look at where the privatization of disaster began, and where it will inevitably lead. The first step was the government's abdication of its core responsibility to protect the population from disasters. Money promised to depserate people, from Baghdad to New Orleans, from Kabul to tsunami-struck Sri Lanka, has instead gone to private contractors. Unless a radical change of course is demanded, New Orleans will prove to be a glimpse of a dystopic future, a future of disaster apartheid in which the wealthy are saved and everyone else is left behind. (Naomi Klein, Znet, 29 August 2006)

http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2006-08/29klein.cfm

(Added: Thu Aug 31 2006   Hits: 87)

The currency of humanitarian reform [PDF]

The year 2005 has seen an unprecedented appetite for dialogue on reform of the international peace, security and aid architecture, reaching a peak around the World Summit in September 2005. This has included both UN/IASC- and donor-led initiatives. Although conceived independently of each other, these processes are linked by a common concern with improving the timeliness, appropriateness and equity of crisis response. This Briefing Note by the Humanitarian Policy Group, in collaboration with the Center on International Cooperation (CIC), examines the various strands of the humanitarian reform agenda and the relationship between them. It assesses the prospects for substantial change in the international system, and for better humanitarian outcomes as a result. Humanitarian Policy Group, November 2005.

http://www.odi.org.uk/hpg/papers/Humanitarian_reform.pdf

(Added: Wed Mar 01 2006   Hits: 102)

The Sphere Project

The Sphere Project has developed a Humanitarian Charter and a set of universal minimum standards in core areas of humanitarian assistance: water supply & sanitation, nutrition, food aid, shelter & site planning and health services.

http://www.sphereproject.org/

(Added: Wed Jun 06 2001   Modified: Wed Jan 17 2007   Hits: 281)

The strange, slow-motion disaster of the mud volcano

Early in 2007 an Indonesian energy company drilling for natural gas accidentally opened a fissure in the ground from where hot, viscous mud began erupting. The unstoppable stinking ooze has since swallowed up 11 towns, destroying homes, factories, schools, and farms, and forcing some 16,000 people to uproot. (The Christian Science Monitor, November 2007)

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1128/p01s04-woap.html

(Added: Thu Nov 29 2007   Hits: 43)