International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction
Volume 16, In Progress (June 2016)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/22124209/16

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Original Research Article
Responsibility and liability in emergency management to natural disasters: A Canadian example
Pages 12-18
Jonathan Raikes, Gordon McBean
Abstract
Most provincial emergency management legislation (Quebec excepted) fails to include regulatory guidelines as to how local authorities reduce community vulnerability. This exposes individual(s) and groups to greater vulnerability to disasters if the local authority decides not to act or provide inadequate management. In addition, access to financial resources to assist or compensate local governments and/or private landowners for damages endured often come with attachments or do not exist. When damages result from a government’s action or inaction in the event of an emergency, provisions in provincial legislation and court findings have reduced government exposure to civil liability at common law further exposing private landowners to financial risk.
This paper argues that a lack of standards in emergency management legislation, restrictive access to financial assistance and/or compensation and reduced government exposure to civil liability at common law expose private landowners to greater vulnerability to disasters and the liability attached. It is essential that those responsible for proactive/preventative planning for disasters work from a standard playbook, one which sets minimum safeguards for the public. Absent of clear and fulsome compensation guidelines, private landowners will bear an unfair and disproportionate financial risk.

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Event monitoring in emergency scenarios using energy efficient wireless sensor nodes for the disaster information management
Original Research Article
Pages 33-42
Metin Erd, Frank Schaeffer, Milos Kostic, Leonhard M. Reindl
Abstract
Information gathering in tunnels, buildings, bridges, etc. during disasters is of vital importance in speeding up rescue efforts and for protecting the fire fighters. The collected data can be used by the emergency services in the planning of rescue operations and allocation of human resources at a local level. In this article we present design and implementation of a wireless sensor network, which consists of energy-efficient wireless sensor nodes with an integrated ultrasonic sensor, which establish a collision free data transmission in an emergency scenario. The developed network was tested in a field experiment in an explosion within a building to confirm its functionality and reliability. The wireless sensor network was able to pass critical data to the emergency units to initiate the rescue procedures during this disaster scenario.

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Social determinants of mid- to long-term disaster impacts on health: A systematic review
Original Research Article
Pages 53-67
Shuhei Nomura, Alexander J.Q. Parsons, Mayo Hirabayashi, Ryo Kinoshita, Yi Liao, Susan Hodgson
Abstract
Disasters cause a wide range of health impacts. Although there remains a need to understand and improve acute disaster management, a stronger understanding of how health is affected in the medium and longer term is also required to inform the design and delivery of measures to manage post-disaster health risks, and to guide actions taken before and during events which will also lead to reduction in health impact. Social determinants exert a powerful influence on different elements of risk, principally vulnerability, exposure and capacity, and thus, on people’s health. As disaster health data and research has tended to focus on the short-term health impacts, no systematic assessment of the social determinants of the mid- to long-term health impacts of disasters has been identified. We assessed the chronic health impacts of disasters and explored the potential socioeconomic determinants of health impact through a systematic review. Our findings, based on 28 studies, highlighted that regardless of health outcomes and event types, the influence of disasters on chronic heath persists beyond the initial disaster period, affecting people’s health for months to years. Using the World Health Organization’s conceptual framework for the social determinants of health, we identified a total of 35 themes across the three conceptual domains (determinants related to the socioeconomic and political context, structural determinants, and intermediate determinants) as potentially influencing disaster impact. Investment to tackle modifiable underlying determinants could aid disaster risk management, improve medium and long-term health outcomes from disasters, and build community resilience.

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Emergent system behaviour as a tool for understanding disaster resilience: The case of Southern African subsistence agriculture
Original Research Article
Pages 115-122
Christo Coetzee, Dewald Van Niekerk, Emmanuel Raju
Abstract
Prominent international policy documents such as the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030 and contemporary academic discourses on disasters reiterate the importance of understanding and prioritising building societal resilience. However, despite its prominent position in current and future disaster risk management, much confusion still exists on what exactly resilience entails and how it can be enhanced. This paper attempts to provide a perspective on this problem from the point of view of Complex Adaptive Systems Theory, with specific focus on the notion of emergence within adaptive systems. The paper explores the presence of emergent behaviour that could generates disaster resilience by reviewing statistical correlations between four agricultural interventions (small-scale irrigation system, farmers’ associative mechanisms, appropriate crop varieties, and cropping techniques) and prominent indicators of disaster resilience (coping strategies and hazard adaptation/avoidance behaviour) in subsistence agricultural activities in Mozambique, Malawi and Madagascar. The results from the analysis illustrates that emergent behaviour in the form of various coping strategies and hazard avoidance behaviour is indeed observable in agricultural communities that use all or a combination of agricultural interventions such as small-scale irrigation systems, farmers’ associative mechanisms, appropriate crop varieties, and cropping techniques. These resilience abilities are newly formed macro-level behaviours that emerge due to the interactions of agricultural interventions at a micro-level.