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Resilience is an illusion

Emergency Planning

This is not to denigrate the work of resilience managers, as there is obviously much to be done to reduce the risk and impact of adverse events. Put bluntly, in disaster risk reduction, these days the goalposts are moving faster than the players. Resilience and disaster risk reduction: an etymological journey.

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Book Review: Constructing Risk

Recovery Diva

Helpful anecdotes are inserted throughout, balancing critical assessments where organizations and countries have not used available methods of risk assessment, and as a result, “…acting individually and through collective bodies, succeed neither in effective policy nor practice in reducing vulnerability of the built environment.” [p.

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Book Review: The Invention of Disaster

Recovery Diva

Book Review: The Invention of Disaster: Power of Knowledge in Discourses of Hazard and Vulnerability. The book is part of Routledge Studies in Hazards, Disaster Risk and Climate Change. is a disaster risk management specialist, currently working for the Pacific Disaster Center (PDC Global). Series Editor: Ilan Kelman.

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A Five-Minute Plea for Better Civil Protection

Emergency Planning

By and large, governments do not want to know about disaster risk reduction. It does not fully understand the vulnerability of the technology (consider, for instance, the effects of long-term loss of electricity) nor what methods should be used to control it. All vulnerability is contextual (see my writings on that).

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The 2019 Global Assessment Report (GAR)

Emergency Planning

The United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction was born out of the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction, 1990-2000. On 1 May 2019 it was renamed the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction. International Journal for Disaster Risk Reduction 10(B): 403-502. GNCSODR 2015.

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Towards a Taxonomy of Disasters

Emergency Planning

While not independent of the magnitude of physical forces involved, it is not linearly related to them because it depends on the nature and size of the vulnerabilities that the physical forces act upon. The next question is where to draw the boundaries in the study of disasters and practice of disaster risk reduction.

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A Proposed Strategy to Advocate for Improved Civil Protection in the United Kingdom

Emergency Planning

Increasing dependency on critical infrastructure makes the country ever more vulnerable to proliferating technological failure, whether it is caused by cyber attack, sabotage or natural forces. An emphasis on understanding and reducing vulnerability rather than creating resilience, which is a less robust concept. 1] Domoto, A.,