Emergency Planning

DECEMBER 30, 2022

In an article in Times Higher Education Professor Harvey J. Graff described malpractice among academic journal editors and called for a bill of rights to protect authors against such excesses. He discussed arbitrary decision-making, failure to communicate the reasons for decisions, negligence, manuscripts with excessive time in review, unprofessional reviews and use of inappropriate reviewers.

Publishing 130

Publishing Authorization Education Communications 130

Emergency Planning

OCTOBER 21, 2022

Welcome to the 'riskscape' On one day in July 2021 fires devastated large areas of Sardinia, flooding occurred for the second time in two weeks in London and I received a message from research colleagues in Germany that read "the institute was quite destroyed and many colleagues have suffered tremendous damage to their houses." Hot, humid weather and developing storms made me wonder whether my house was about to suffer the effects of the kind of concentrated microcyclone storm which has come to

Management 231

Management Emergency Planning All-Hazards Transportation 231

Emergency Planning

OCTOBER 20, 2022

Few would deny that there is a general air of malaise in academia at the moment. I look around at colleagues and their attitudes seem to vary along a spectrum from combative anger, through pervasive anxiety, to sullen resignation. Academics seem to be trapped in a spiral of worsening conditions, but many fear that if they seek a new position elsewhere, the situation there may be just the same as the one that induced them to move.

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Pandemic Education Government Activation 216

Emergency Planning

APRIL 24, 2022

A principle of cascading disasters is that the world is ever more closely linked by networks on which we all depend for communications, commerce, enlightenment and entertainment. When disaster strikes, these networks are capable of transmitting impacts through a variety of domains and system states, each of which produces different consequences. The cascade is a result of the progression of a shock through different kinds of vulnerability.

Natural Hazard 199

Natural Hazard All-Hazards Entertainment Transportation 199

Emergency Planning

MARCH 23, 2022

1. Preamble 1.1 The purpose of this charter is to specify the responsibilities of the state and citizens in the field of resilience against disasters, crises and major public emergencies and incidents. 1.2 The future of humanity will involve very significant challenges in order to create and maintain resilience. Climate change will increase the magnitude and frequency of extreme meteorological events.

Resilience 244

Resilience All-Hazards Emergency Planning Hazard 244

Emergency Planning

FEBRUARY 15, 2022

I must admit that I was in the middle of my post-doctoral fellowship (at UCL) before I fully realised what research involves. It suddenly clicked while I was desperately trying to learn clay chemistry in order to work out a rather intractable problem of erosional landscapes. How on earth had I managed to get through all the previous stages? Having decided to embark on a research project, the first big hurdle is “how do I do this?

Travel 223

Travel Education Management 223

Emergency Planning

FEBRUARY 10, 2022

I live in a short street that connects a 15th-century convent to a Napoleonic-era theatre. On one side there is a park full of ornamental trees, in the middle there is a via crucis flanked by a double row of plane trees and the other side is lined by a row of elegant palazzi. The street is paved with flagstones and parking is forbidden by law. My neighbour parks her car outside her front door every night.

Manufacturing 213

Manufacturing Communications Media Publishing 213

Emergency Planning

JANUARY 5, 2022

The island of Capri seen from the slopes of Mount Vesuvius (photo: D. Alexander) There are two things we don’t teach our students but we should: to see and to listen. They are virtues--and skills--that are at least as important as writing and speaking. Some would argue that they are even more important. Pierre Bonnard, the great post-Impressionist painter, said that “many people look, but few see”.

Travel 212

Travel Architecture Media Communications 212

Emergency Planning

MARCH 7, 2019

Myth 1: Disasters are truly exceptional events. Reality: They are a normal part of daily life and in very many cases are repetitive events. Myth 2: Natural disasters are an inevitable result of Mother Nature's fury. Reality: The triggering phenomena are natural, and virtually nothing can be done to stop earthquakes, floods or tropical storms, for example.

Hospitality 130

Hospitality All-Hazards Risk Reduction Logistics 130

Emergency Planning

APRIL 5, 2019

Colette We must all learn to write. Writing is our craft and our main means of communicating our ideas. Good writing can be judged by whether or not it is good communication. For many years I have advocated a particular technique to students. As they have never followed my advice, perhaps I am not communicating well enough. But let us not be deterred.

Authorization 130

Authorization Publishing Communications Insurance 130

Emergency Planning

APRIL 16, 2019

As the cathedral is located in a congested space on an island in the River Seine, the 'convergence reaction' of emergency vehicles and equipment cannot have been easy to manage. On the other hand, evacuation and keeping the scene clear of unauthorised people would have been relatively easy. The fire underlines the need for metropolitan fire services to have long aerial ladders, something that was problematic in London's Grenfell Tower conflagration.

Capacity 130

Capacity Management 130

Emergency Planning

APRIL 26, 2019

Lago di Pietra di Pertusillo In 2010 a remarkable film was released in Italy. It was called Basilicata, Coast to Coast. Obviously, the title makes ironic reference to the archetypal road trip across the United States. Basilicata, the forgotten region of the Italian South, does not have two oceans, but it does have two seas. The protagonists of the film are a musical group who live in Maratea on the Tyrrhenian Sea coast.

Travel 130

Travel Alert Resilience 130

Emergency Planning

MAY 27, 2019

Leonardo da Vinci: Storm over a town in the mountains. The 500th anniversary of the death of Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) is an occasion to reflect once again on the life of a genius with a very complex and sophisticated mind. Leonardo's reputation as a painter has never wavered, despite the relative paucity of his output (and notwithstanding his disastrous attempts at fresco in Florence and Milan).

Natural Hazard 130

Natural Hazard Risk Reduction All-Hazards Hazard 130

Emergency Planning

MAY 30, 2019

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. UNDRR remains a relatively small unit of the United Nations, but it has a truly world-wide reach. DRR is thus now truly mainstreamed at the global level.

Risk Reduction 130

Risk Reduction Natural Hazard All-Hazards Hazard 130

Emergency Planning

JUNE 9, 2019

Taxonomy is the process of classifying things or concepts and is usually backed by principles. The study of disasters is a 'lateral discipline' that, to varying degrees embraces at least 42 other disciplines and professions (Alexander 2013). One result of having so many disciplinary perspectives is virtually to preclude consensus on the definition and classification of disasters and the concepts that go with them.

Risk Reduction 130

Risk Reduction Natural Hazard All-Hazards Hazard 130

Emergency Planning

JULY 5, 2019

In 1973, when I was a young undergraduate, I was taught the rudiments of the philosophy, theory and methodology of science. In the library of the London School of Economics there was an entire shelf that contained 29 well-thumbed copies of Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Kuhn 1970). This was standard reading on many courses in the social sciences.

Risk Reduction 130

Risk Reduction Fashion Natural Hazard All-Hazards 130

Emergency Planning

JULY 29, 2019

Bertrand Russell once observed, "Most people would die sooner than think--in fact they do so." Perhaps this goes some way to explaining the common failure of risk estimation and the tendency willingly to take unnecessary risks. However, an understanding of risk requires, not only an ability to think things through, but also enough information with which to make informed decisions.

Risk Reduction 130

Risk Reduction Internet Media All-Hazards 130

Emergency Planning

AUGUST 22, 2019

I am the founding editor of the International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction (IJDRR), which began publishing in August 2012 with just four papers. Seven years later, the submission rate is equivalent to about 1,500 manuscripts per year (although the rejection rate is over 80 per cent). Two years ago, the journal published its first issue to contain 100 papers.

Publishing 130

Publishing All-Hazards Risk Reduction Education 130

Emergency Planning

OCTOBER 9, 2019

A man walks into the room. He is extremely handsome and quite tall (at least for his time, about 520 years ago). He is neither fat nor thin. In fact he likes his food and drink, he is fond of convivial dinners with good food and wine. His circle of friends is small but select, much more so than his large circle of enemies and opponents. One of his friends is his neighbour, Lisa Gherardini.

Fashion 130

Fashion Evaluation Education Technology 130

Emergency Planning

FEBRUARY 6, 2020

In disaster risk reduction circles, there is an almost desperate reliance on 'community' and a strong growth in studies and plans to "involve the community" in facing up to risks and impacts (Berkes and Ross 2013). The intentions are laudable, as DRR needs to be democratised if it is to function. However,'community' is contentious concept (Barrios 2014).

Risk Reduction 130

Risk Reduction Resilience Natural Hazard Hazard 130

Emergency Planning

MARCH 11, 2020

It is now more than ten years since there was a general push to induce countries to plan for pandemics (WHO 2005). In some quarters, it had an immediate effect (e.g., US Homeland Security Council 2005, UK Government 2008), while in others it did not. In 2020, some confusion arises from the fact that much of the planning refers to influenza, whereas the SARS category of diseases is not strictly a 'flu virus, but most of the planning principles are exactly the same, so this is mainly a labelling i

Pandemic 130

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Emergency Planning

MARCH 15, 2020

Once upon a time in Tuscany, when my son was very young, I lamented to a friend that all he seemed to have learned at school was how to swear and blaspheme. My friend put on a wise expression and said, very sagely, "David, you must remember that swearing and blaspheming are an ancient tradition in our countryside here." I mention this because, in AD 1244, a group of men in a bothy decided that they were swearing and blaspheming too much and each time they did it they would put a groat in a jar.

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Emergency Planning

MARCH 26, 2020

As the Covid-19 pandemic progresses, causing distributed crises in one country after another, it is like watching all I have taught about for the last four decades flash past in a sort of speeded-up film. In disasters of this kind, three attitudes are common. Normalcy bias, the tendency to accept the most reassuring interpretation of a situation, tells people that it will not be as bad as it seems.

Pandemic 130

Pandemic Vulnerability Hospitality Transportation 130

Emergency Planning

MARCH 27, 2020

As I write, the Covid-19 pandemic is ramping up in many countries. So is the response by academic authors. In 2015 Gaillard and Gomez published an interesting paper on the "disaster research gold rush". It was inspired by some thoughts expressed in 1967 by eminent sociologists of disaster on problems associated with researching transient events (Dynes et al. 1967).

Pandemic 130

Pandemic Publishing Authorization Government 130

Emergency Planning

APRIL 9, 2020

A few days ago, I was accused of "putting the careers of trainees and junior faculty at risk" because a member of my editorial team was slow to complete the review process on a paper that had been submitted to the journal I manage. This reminded me that perhaps 70 per cent of academic publishing is for personnel reasons (to get a job, keep a job, obtain a salary raise, or achieve promotion).

Publishing 130

Publishing Fashion Activation Authorization 130

Emergency Planning

JUNE 20, 2020

Image: US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases In terms of its scope, Covid-19 is like no other disaster that has occurred in the last 100 years, since, in fact, the influenza pandemic of 1918-1920 killed more people than both world wars combined, and contributed to the end of the First World War. Despite this, the 2020 pandemic has obvious similarities with previous outbreaks of viral diseases and with many other kinds of disaster.

Emergency Planning 130

Emergency Planning Pandemic Logistics Vulnerability 130

Emergency Planning

OCTOBER 23, 2020

Since the start of the crisis, I have constantly affirmed that the key to understanding the effects of this pandemic is the UK Government's failure to give adequate weight to emergency planning and management (Alexander 2020a, 2020b). Although the virological, medical and epidemiological problems are obviously very complex, medical scientists - and politicians - should not be making risk management and logistical decisions if they do not have the expertise.

Civil Emergency 130

Civil Emergency Pandemic All-Hazards Logistics 130

Emergency Planning

DECEMBER 14, 2020

1. What are, and have been, the key challenges in coping with the Covid-19 pandemic? The first challenge is to understand the behaviour of an emerging disease caused by a new variant of a virus. This concerns its infectiousness, mode of transmission, lethality, symptoms and effects, mutation, longevity on various kinds of surface, and so on. Information on these characteristics takes a long time to assemble, as at the start the virus is new and unknown, its relationship with the host population

Pandemic 176

Pandemic Hospitality Logistics Authorization 176

Emergency Planning

FEBRUARY 9, 2021

Laviano, Province of Avellino, 1984 Monday 23rd November 2020 at 19:34 and 52.8 seconds marked the fortieth anniversary of the 1980 southern Italian earthquake in which I was directly involved as a survivor. The magnitude 6.9 tremors killed 2,914 people and injured 8,848. About 280,000 people were left homeless (including myself) and damage was reported from 628 municipalities.

Natural Hazard 130

Natural Hazard All-Hazards Automotive Risk Reduction 130

Emergency Planning

FEBRUARY 21, 2021

The current system for managing major incidents and disasters in the United Kingdom was devised after the Broadwater Farm, Tottenham, riots of 1986 and reflects a preoccupation with public order. The lineaments of the system reflect military practice. In the world as a whole, there has been a gradual process of demilitarisation of emergency response.

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Emergency Response Emergency Response Logistics Emergency Planning 131

Emergency Planning

MARCH 16, 2021

The tsunami museum at Rikusentakata, seen from atop the coastal tsunami barrier across the land that was devastated by the waves in March 2011 Thursday 11 th March 2021 was the tenth anniversary of the Japanese triple disaster: earthquake, tsunami and radiation release. I sent my greetings and respects to my Japanese colleagues and spent the day teaching my students about the event and its aftermath.

Authorization 130

Authorization Education Government Activation 130

Emergency Planning

AUGUST 20, 2021

Some years ago I met a 31-year-old Bulgarian policeman whose main claim to fame was that he had been the Chief of Police for the Republic of Haiti for 20 minutes, or in other words until someone more senior arrived from Port-au-Prince airport. This was in 2010, shortly after Haiti had been prostrated by a magnitude 7 earthquake. Nobody knows how many casualties there were in that disaster: perhaps 240,000 dead and 300,000 injured.

Vulnerability 174

Vulnerability All-Hazards Risk Reduction Government 174

Emergency Planning

AUGUST 31, 2021

Although we need to change attitudes to disaster from response to preparedness and prevention, this must not be done at the expense of our ability to respond to disasters when they occur. In the light of climate change, technological risks and migration, we will soon need civil protection systems that are an order of magnitude more powerful than those that we have now.

Risk Reduction 171

Risk Reduction Government Vulnerability Emergency Planning 171