From Market Watch, some details about a new journal: Elsevier Launches New Journal: International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction.
The direct line is here; for the time being access to the journal is free. Figuring out how to do the download is not as clear as it could be.
Human Error Triggers Rise in Catastrophe Cost. Article in CFO.com, June 19. The economic losses from natural disasters and other extreme events have dramatically increased in each of the past three decades. But industry and governments still fail to protect against catastrophic risks.
Economic and insured losses against natural disasters, technological accidents, and terrorism have risen every decade since the 1980s, says Munich Re. The international insurer estimates that economic losses from natural catastrophes hit $1.6 trillion in the 2001 to 2011 period. The Japan earthquake of 2011 alone caused an economic loss of $210 billion (along with insured losses of $35 billion to $40 billion).
Why? The escalating costs of disaster are more about flaws in human behavior and risk management than bad luck, say two business-school professors in a recently released paper, “Managing Catastrophic Risk.” Howard C. Kunreuther of the Wharton School for Risk Management and Geoffrey M. Heal, a finance and economics professor at Columbia Business School, say the overarching reason for the high costs of catastrophe is that companies and individuals are “locating in harm’s way while not taking appropriate protective measures.” In particular, they are failing to guard against low-probability, high-consequence events.
A copy of the full paper ( 20 pp.) can be found here.
From Canada.com, June 22: Stakeholders cry foul as feds cut funding for emergency preparedness
Looks like some serious butting cutting in Canada has gone way past the fat and into the quick. It is a sad day indeed when education and training are cut from the Canadian budget. I sure hope the EM folks get to come to the U.S. and compensate for that shortsighted action.
Among the cuts in the omnibus budget bill, the government quietly cancelled the Joint Emergency Preparedness Program (JEPP) established in 1980 and ceased operations at the Canadian Emergency Management College which has offered training to emergency responders since 1954. The cuts were billed as a deficit reduction measure.
How is this for reasoning:
Public Safety Minister Vic Toews’ press secretary Julie Carmichael further noted “the original objectives of this program — namely to enhance local emergency preparedness and response capacity — have been met.”
Unbelievable! No need for EM education and training to continue, since we did that. Might as well abolish public schools, if that line of thinking prevails!
The ranking plan has its pros and cons. See Florida emergency operations officials object to planned statewide ratings proposed by Gov. Scott. (Palm Beach Post, June 19.) According to the article:
After backing away from a controversial ranking of Florida’s elections’ supervisors, Gov. Rick Scott is now preparing to grade the state’s 67 county emergency management offices.
Many of the county officials, however, are balking at Scott’s latest and performance measure. They’re concerned about the timing of the exercise, coming in the midst of hurricane season and set to be released two weeks before the Aug. 14 primary election.
See the new article titled The Missing Piece of NIMS: Teaching Incident Commanders How to Function in the Edge of Chaos, by Cynthia Renaud. It just was published in the current issue of the online HSAJ ( hsaj.org).
I found it fascinating and recommend it highly.
Thanks to the FAS, these Congressional Research Service reports are available to the public. Not clear why research done with taxpayer money is so hard to find! Go to this link.
The full title of this report is Research Universities and the Future of America: Ten Breakthrough Actions Vital to Our Nation’s Prosperity and Security: Condensed Version
. You can download the Executive Summary (14 pp.) or the whole report (227 pp.) at no cost from the NAS website. [Thank you NAS for making all products available!]
From the UN report: see this short report.
One additional report, which deals with business recovery, gleaned from Prevention Web is here.
See also the comments below from reader in Christchurch.
From. Prof. Dan Aldrich, here is a copy of his new bibliography (31 pp.) on the Politics of Natural Disasters. Aldrich is with Purdue University.
Sections include general overviews, centers and data sources, comparative approach, case studies of individual disasters, recovery, natural, man-made, and natural/technological disasters, mitigation, preparation, and insurance, ulnerabilities, evacuation, emergent groups, disaster myths and behavior, humanitarian response, governance during and after, social capital in disaster recovery, political outcomes, political and economic impact, temporary housing, and resilience.
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Please patronize our sponsor, the Disaster Bookstore.
This new report highlights the fire risks expected. I guess what is happening right now in N.M. is an indication of the record-setting fires we might expect to occur.
Recovery Diva 