Lecture Notes: Disaster Vulnerability and Resilience Session 1 Lecturer: JoAnn Carmin Introduction Through joining the knowledge of students from diverse backgrounds with the participation of guest lecturers, the course will seek the most current knowledge in the field of disaster vulnerability studies. In the last twenty years, the world has seen exponential growth in the wealth of nations and individuals, which ostensibly has resulted in a steadily increasing quality of life globally. During the same period of time, the world has seen increasing death and destruction as the result of natural disasters. The major question this class asks students to grapple with is: Are we perpetuating entrenched inequalities thus making certain populations more vulnerable to the effects of natural disasters? Why should we care about natural disasters? For every 10 deaths from disaster, five are due to war and four are due to famine. Though natural disasters may seem less important, they still have a significant impact. The UN has calculated that every day, a minimum of 184 people will die from a natural disaster, and that approximately 3000 casualties come with every death by natural disaster. In 1960, approximately US $75 billion was spent to aid recovery from natural disasters. By the 1990s, that number had grown to over US $660 billion per year for recovery from natural disasters, and these numbers are known to be under-calculated. Transient populations often are not counted while some property is undervalued in these estimates. The real losses associated with natural disasters are therefore much greater than these estimates. Our charge as scholars / practitioners / policy-makers is to find ways to reverse this trend and to do so while dealing with issues of vulnerability in a truly just way. Background Understanding the genesis of the field of disaster studies is critical to understanding the context of this class. Circa World War II • Planning profession is born with the rise of rational knowledge. In the era of the engineer, planning was guided by the principle that humans could take scientific knowledge and apply it to solving social problems. • Rational approach leads to a general response to natural disasters as discrete events • Scientific knowledge applied in response to these events provides a technical fix.1936 • Gilbert White diverges from that line of thinking by proposing that there may be some human factors involved in natural disasters; • Milestone in land use planning: assumption that altering human behavior could mitigate the effects of natural hazards; • The field moves from a focus on technological fixes to the recognition that policy issues and connections between social and natural systems are major factors in natural disasters. 1970s • Professionals focus on specific fields: o Geologists, engineers, and scientists still seeking a technical fix; o Geographers, especially in the realm of human geography looking at connections between humans and their environment; o Social scientists focus on psychological and collective behavior in response to disasters. • The field of disaster studies remains fragmented. • Major natural disasters: o Extreme winters in Europe o An earthquake in China o A cyclone in Bangladesh 1980s • Disaster studies shift to take into account development, equity, inequity, and poverty. • The rhetoric of sustainable development begins to develop. • Major disasters o Chernobyl o Three-Mile island o Bhopal 1990s: • International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction o Stimulated by belief that socio-political forces from local to global factors into impact disasters have on local to global communities:  Poverty  Globalization  Mega Cities Present view: • We need to think about disasters in relation to their socio-political contexts: o In order to generate resilient systems and make a difference, professionals need to develop an understanding of the bigger picture.Definition of Terms Disaster - When people experience severe damage or disruption to their lives as a consequence of a hazard. o Socially defined (“severe”) o Element of change o Element of loss Hazard - A naturally occurring or human-produced event or occurrence that has the potential to cause damage. Natural Hazards Climatological / Atmospheric Hazards: o Hurricanes o Blizzards o Heat waves o Floods o Droughts o Tornadoes o Dust storms o Extreme cold o Wind storm o Tropical storm o Avalanche o Wildfires started from lightening o Hail Geophysical Hazards: o Landslides o Earthquake o Volcano o Tsunami Technological Hazards o Toxic chemical releases; o Transit accident (oil spill); o Nuclear power plant; o Building / infrastructure collapse Because disaster specialists understand the interconnectedness of human action and environmental impact and because the landscape of disaster is shifting to include more technological disasters, a number of grey areas exist that this class will explore over the course of the semester. Natural disasters often are affected by human activities. An example below:Flooding: From one perspective, flooding is a straightforward natural disaster. Rain falls into rivers; they in turn overflow, and cause flooding. Most rivers in the United States and Europe, at least, have been modified from their natural state in some way. The flood could be caused by technological failure of a dam or other infrastructure intended to control water levels. Perhaps climate changes due to human activity have contributed to changes in weather (rain). It is also possible that development patterns resulted in sediment in the waterways forcing the water level in rivers to rise or that generated more impervious surfaces have made it possible for water to move more quickly into waterways, both contributing to flooding. What is the continuum from natural to man-made? - Disasters are not just discrete events from nature, but affected by human activity Vulnerability: - A situation where there is an inability to absorb or remove harm - Two types: o Physical:  Physical environment (buildings/infrastructure)  Biophysical environment (associated with geographic locale) o Social:  Age  Economic status (may have more resources, more protection)  Social cohesion  Population density (good for social support, bad for potential size of impact)  Gender  Health/Mental