This comprehensive Handbook assesses the escalation of global natural disasters as a result of climate change. Examining the complex interplay of human and natural activities, it highlights the growing vulnerability of people and communities in developing countries to floods, landslides, cyclones, heat waves and wildfires. The Handbook opens with a global framework analysis, outlining the implications of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, the Paris Agreement and the Sendai Framework for disaster risk reduction. International contributors address the roles of stakeholders in mitigating climate hazards, as well as offer detailed analysis of cross-cutting issues, including poverty, health, education and gender. Concluding chapters address the future of climate change mitigation and disaster protection, exploring the growing role of emerging technologies in disaster resilience and sustainable development. Bringing together cutting-edge research from renowned global scholars and professionals, this Handbook offers key insights for researchers and students of environmental studies and development studies, particularly those focusing on natural disasters and climate technologies. The empirical data and case analysis will also benefit practitioners, professionals and policymakers working in climate risk relief.

Communities are at the core of disaster risk reduction (DRR), and community based approaches are getting increasing focus in national DRR plans. In the case of past disasters, communities were always the first responders, and took leading roles in the post disaster recovery. The roles of communities in pre-disaster preparedness are also very important. This is the first comprehensive book available on CBDRR (community based disaster risk reduction) which outlines both research and practice, citing field examples and research results. It provides an overview of the subject and looks at the role of governments, NGOs, academics and corporate sectors in community based disaster risk reduction. It proceeds to examine experiences from Asian and African countries, and concludes by looking ahead to the future perspective of CBDRR.

Climate Change, Community Response, and Resilience: Insight for Socio-Ecological Sustainability, Volume Six presents a fundamental theoretical framework for understanding how community resilience and risk assessment affect climate change adaptation behavior. This framework is based on a 26-chapter theoretical and empirical examination that includes pioneer projects from various regions that illustrate the relationship between theory and practice, reflect a paradigm shift in climate change, community response, and resilience, and focus on these important aspects from a sectoral perspective. Climate change, ecological consequences and resilience are then discussed in the final section. Members of the Royal Meteorological Society are eligible for a 35% discount on all Developments in Weather and Climate Science series titles. See the RMetS member dashboard for the discount code.

The world has spent the majority of 2020 enduring an unpreceded crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The impact of this crisis has been enormous, and the situation has yet to be resolved. It is still difficult to anticipate when the pandemic will end and how our lives will have changed after the crisis. Higher educational institutions (HEIs) have also had to undergo tremendous transformation, in particular, changing a conventional educational, teaching, and learning system to a digital and online mode and cancelling or postponing important events such as graduation and entrance ceremonies and entrance examinations. In addition, a number of HEIs have been facing financial constraints due to reduced enrolment, particularly from overseas. Students have missed opportunities to meet their family and friends, causing profound psychosocial impact and stress for all concerned. Simultaneously, however, the situation has given HEIs a good opportunity to consider their disaster preparedness, response, and recovery capacity on campus. Some surveys have highlighted a lack of preparedness for pandemic and other hazardous risks beyond natural hazards. Safety issues are a top priority at HEIs because they bring together a number of students, faculty, and staff. This book covers the experiences and lessons learned from HEIs in preparedness, response, and recovery during the COVID-19 pandemic to prepare for such calamities beyond natural disasters in the future. The book consists of 15 chapters divided into three major sections. They highlight the importance of HEIs’ governance issues in disaster risk management, examine the challenges that HEIs have faced during the pandemic and the implementation of new teaching and learning methodologies, and provide innovative responses and preparedness by HEIs based on science and technology, respectively.

This book discusses the need for entrepreneurship for sustainable development from the perspective of Asia, the fastest growing region in the world. The world is now witnessing a spectacular rise of technology entrepreneurship, involving mobile phones, artificial intelligence, geospatial information systems and social media. On the other hand, governments all over the world, particularly those in low and medium income countries, are facing severe resource constraints in developing the livelihood and well-being of citizens. Although many non-government organizations (NGOs) have worked on various development projects in a number of social sectors such as health, education, disabilities, poverty alleviation and environment, there is still substantial scope for technological innovation, including more efficient, effective and user-friendly solutions in different parts of the world. This book is organized into 2 parts and consists of 17 chapters. The first part explores education and well-being, and the second part discusses the climate, environment and disaster management.

Multi-hazard Vulnerability and Resilience Building: Cross Cutting Issues presents multi-disciplinary issues facing disaster risk reduction and sustainable development, focusing on various dimensions of existing and future risk scenarios and highlighting concerted efforts of scientific communities to find new adaptation methods. Disaster risk reduction and resilience requires participation of a wide array of stakeholders, ranging from academicians to policy makers to disaster managers. The book offers evidence-based, problem-solving techniques from social, natural, engineering, and other perspectives, and connects data, research, and conceptual work with practical cases on disaster risk management to capture multi-sectoral aspects of disaster resilience, adaptation strategy, and sustainability.

This book provides an introduction to the critical role of ecosystem-based disaster risk resilience (Eco-DRR) for building community resilience to multiple environmental risks such as rising heat, water stress, and pollution. Blue-green infrastructure (BGI) is an Eco-DRR tool that is an under-explored paradigm and can respond as one common strategy to targets set by the Sustainable Development Goals (UNDP), Climate Agreements (UNEP), the Sendai Framework (UNISDR), and the New Urban Agenda (UNCHS). Highlighted here in a systematic way is the importance of blue-green infrastructures in resilience building. The purpose is to introduce readers to the challenging context of development and opportunity creation for Eco-DRR. The roles of policy, scientific research, and implementation are presented cohesively. An attractive proposition of the book is a collection of case studies from different parts of the world where integration of BGI is experimented with at various levels of success. It envisages that shared tacit experiences from the realm of practice will further strengthen explicit knowledge. The focus in this book is on need and context building, policy and science (investigation, analysis, and design), case studies, and a road map for the future in four successive parts. Each part is self-sufficient yet linked to its predecessor, successor, or both, as the case may be.

Technological advances have helped to enhance disaster resilience through better risk reduction, response, mitigation, rehabilitation and reconstruction. In former times, it was local and traditional knowledge that was mainly relied upon for disaster risk reduction. Much of this local knowledge is still valid in today's world, even though possibly in different forms and contexts, and local knowledge remains a shared part of life within the communities. In contrast, with the advent of science and technology, scientists and engineers have become owners of advanced technologies, which have contributed significantly to reducing disaster risks across the globe. This book analyses emerging technologies and their effects in enhancing disaster resilience. It also evaluates the gaps, challenges, capacities required and the way forward for future disaster management. A wide variety of technologies are addressed, focusing specifically on new technologies such as cyber physical systems, geotechnology, drone, and virtual reality (VR)/ augmented reality (AR). Other sets of emerging advanced technologies including an early warning system and a decision support system are also reported on. Moreover, the book provides a variety of discussions regarding information management, communication, and community resilience at the time of a disaster. This book's coverage of different aspects of new technologies makes it a valuable resource for students, researchers, academics, policymakers, and development practitioners.

This book explores how climate change and disaster risks threaten human security in Asia. Climate change and disaster risks have emerged as major human security challenges in the twenty-first century, and are an imminent "threat multiplier" with the potential to harm the vital core of human life and curtail people's freedom and ability to live with dignity. Climate change and disaster risks undermine the security of individuals, communities, nations, and the world, considering the increasing trend in the frequency and magnitude of hydro-meteorological disasters and the projections on their future adverse impacts. Despite recent advances in the literature, there is still a major gap in understanding the relationship and linkages between climate change, disaster risks, and human security, particularly as gleaned from the Asian experience. Asia is the world's most vulnerable region in terms of the quantity and magnitude of impacts from various forms of disaster. At the same time, it has developed a number of innovative responses to address those risks, offering a wealth of experience. Exploring and capitalizing on the Asian perspective, this book provides valuable resource material for students, academics, researchers, policymakers, and development practitioners working in these areas.

This book analyzes recent advances, trends, challenges and potentials of the role of media in disaster risk reduction. Collaboration, co-design and co-delivery with other stakeholders in science technology, private sectors, and civil society are found to be effective in reaching people and communities.The media is considered to be of utmost importance in all phases of disasters, before, during and after, with different types of media having different proactive roles to play in disaster risk reduction. Before disasters, they play essential roles not only in bringing early warning to people but also in enhancing their perception of the need to take action. At during- and post-disaster response recovery phases, community radio and social media are the key. These necessitate a resilient media infrastructure as the core of uninterrupted coverage. Media literacy has become an important issue for several stakeholders, including governments. In addition, more focus is placed on media governance to look at the priorities of disaster risk reduction initiatives within the media. All of these are considered to lead to trust in the media, which further improves people's disaster response actions based on information from the media, before and during disasters. Covering different aspects of media, this book is a valuable source for students, researchers, academics, policy-makers and development practitioners.

This book is a collection of works written by young scientists involved in the Integrated Disaster Risk Research (IRDR). Integrated Research on Disaster Risk (IRDR) is a decade-long research programme co-sponsored by the International Science Council (merged by International Council for Science (ICSU), the International Social Science Council (ISSC), and the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR). It is a global, multi-disciplinary approach to dealing with the challenges brought by natural disasters, mitigating their impacts, and improving related policy-making mechanisms. The book examines multidisciplinary research and actions related to disaster risk reduction internationally. The Integrated Research on Disaster Risk (IRDR) Young Scientists programme is: * A sub-programme within IRDR which promotes capacity building of young professionals and encourages them to undertake innovative and need-based research which makes science-policy and science-practice linkages stronger. * IRDR Young Scientists Programme was started in late 2016. Currently, it is a community of 115 young researchers from over 40 countries after 3 batches of application. * IRDR network and partners provide academic advice and training courses, workshops, and programmes for IRDR young scientists. * IRDR young scientists contribute to innovative research in the field of disaster risk reduction and participate in conferences and/or social media as the ambassador of IRDR. The book is of interest to researchers and scholars in the field of governance of sustainability and environmental governance. Postgraduate students will benefit this book within courses on environmental governance, on climate change governance, and on transformation and social change processes. Societal actors in climate change adaptation and other environmental governance fields on local, national, and international levels can benefit from the focus on societally relevant findings in the past 10 years of research on adaptiveness.

This book provides an introduction to the critical role of ecosystem-based disaster risk resilience (Eco-DRR) for building community resilience to multiple environmental risks such as rising heat, water stress, and pollution. Blue-green infrastructure (BGI) is an Eco-DRR tool that is an under-explored paradigm and can respond as one common strategy to targets set by the Sustainable Development Goals (UNDP), Climate Agreements (UNEP), the Sendai Framework (UNISDR), and the New Urban Agenda (UNCHS). Highlighted here in a systematic way is the importance of blue-green infrastructures in resilience building. The purpose is to introduce readers to the challenging context of development and opportunity creation for Eco-DRR. The roles of policy, scientific research, and implementation are presented cohesively. An attractive proposition of the book is a collection of case studies from different parts of the world where integration of BGI is experimented with at various levels of success. It envisages that shared tacit experiences from the realm of practice will further strengthen explicit knowledge. The focus in this book is on need and context building, policy and science (investigation, analysis, and design), case studies, and a road map for the future in four successive parts. Each part is self-sufficient yet linked to its predecessor, successor, or both, as the case may be.

Technological advances have helped to enhance disaster resilience through better risk reduction, response, mitigation, rehabilitation and reconstruction. In former times, it was local and traditional knowledge that was mainly relied upon for disaster risk reduction. Much of this local knowledge is still valid in today's world, even though possibly in different forms and contexts, and local knowledge remains a shared part of life within the communities. In contrast, with the advent of science and technology, scientists and engineers have become owners of advanced technologies, which have contributed significantly to reducing disaster risks across the globe. This book analyses emerging technologies and their effects in enhancing disaster resilience. It also evaluates the gaps, challenges, capacities required and the way forward for future disaster management. A wide variety of technologies are addressed, focusing specifically on new technologies such as cyber physical systems, geotechnology, drone, and virtual reality (VR)/ augmented reality (AR). Other sets of emerging advanced technologies including an early warning system and a decision support system are also reported on. Moreover, the book provides a variety of discussions regarding information management, communication, and community resilience at the time of a disaster. This book's coverage of different aspects of new technologies makes it a valuable resource for students, researchers, academics, policymakers, and development practitioners.

This book analyzes recent advances, trends, challenges and potentials of the role of media in disaster risk reduction. Collaboration, co-design and co-delivery with other stakeholders in science technology, private sectors, and civil society are found to be effective in reaching people and communities.The media is considered to be of utmost importance in all phases of disasters, before, during and after, with different types of media having different proactive roles to play in disaster risk reduction. Before disasters, they play essential roles not only in bringing early warning to people but also in enhancing their perception of the need to take action. At during- and post-disaster response recovery phases, community radio and social media are the key. These necessitate a resilient media infrastructure as the core of uninterrupted coverage. Media literacy has become an important issue for several stakeholders, including governments. In addition, more focus is placed on media governance to look at the priorities of disaster risk reduction initiatives within the media. All of these are considered to lead to trust in the media, which further improves people's disaster response actions based on information from the media, before and during disasters. Covering different aspects of media, this book is a valuable source for students, researchers, academics, policy-makers and development practitioners.

"Disasters cause economic as well as human losses. Indeed, economic losses associated directly with disasters have continued at increasing proportions worldwide since the 1970s, as the 2011 Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction conducted by the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR) illustrates. Disaster losses due to single geological events sometimes appear much greater in magnitude than those attributed to climate-related disasters. Nonetheless, the overall trend for increasing loss can largely be attributed to the increase in climate-related disasters, which in turn is triggered in part by global climate change. Furthermore, as such disasters increase in frequency, it intensifies vulnerability in the poorest regions of developing countries. In this book, the authors discuss effective approaches to enhancing the local disaster risk management (DRM) capacity of developing countries to combat increasing climate-related disaster impacts. Also provided are ideas and lessons on local disaster risk management, in terms of planning and practice in developing countries, with particular focus on a case study in Costa Rica."

We live in a world which continues to experience dramatic suffering and loss of life due to natural hazard. The disaster paradigm has accelerated efforts towards resilience building, particularly since the adoption of the Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA), a ten year plan to build the resilience of nations and communities to disasters Urban areas present complexity and interconnectivity of various elements, and this needs to be considered when building the resilience of such areas to disasters. To address urban risks, local level disaster risk reduction (DRR) is of fundamental importance, not only because it is closer to the citizens, but because it is the repository of regulatory governance functions and local knowledge The need to scale up the capacity of DRR at the local government level to build urban resilience is a key incentive for this study. With particular reference to the example of Makati City in the Philippines, this book analyses a local DRR approach with reference to the HFA, applies a micro-level resilience assessment and discusses an effective model for enhancing local DRR capacity in the future.

"How do urban communities in Asian cities experience the impacts of urbanisation and climate change? This book throws light on the ongoing processes of rapid urban transformation in many cities in developing countries, with particular reference to cities such as Chennai in India. Due to increasing demands on infrastructures and urban services, cities in developing countries are often pushed to the edge of collapse even when not in times of disaster. While such cities try to implement measures to safeguard the well-being of their citizens, looming impacts of climate change such as increasingly frequent and intense natural hazards pose new and additional challenges to their urban communities. This book connects critical issues relating to the general functioning of cities with climate-related disasters with the concept of resilience. Furthermore, this research takes a pro-solution stance, and demonstrates that individuals can form collective power to deliver added value before, during and after a disaster. The concept of resilience is applied to determine whether an urban community would be affected or damaged during a climate-related disaster, and to what extent."

Communities affected by natural disasters are often stigmatized as being passive with regard to disaster prevention, mitigation and adaptation, waiting only for government assistance in the aftermath of such events. However, many innovative community initiatives have been developed to address natural disasters, which are often characterized as "local responses". While scrutinizing the potential strength and comparative advantage of community-based disaster response, this book analyzes and illustrates how individuals, families and social groups in rural and urban communities perceive natural disasters, their underlying reasons and their effects on their livelihoods, and documents and analyzes the role of local responses to natural disasters and conflict. Key factors determining the degree of vulnerability and resilience of affected communities are also elicited. Several pivotal issues related to community-based disaster responses are addressed, such as the relationship between local and external knowledge in addressing disasters, the relevance of institutional and policy frameworks for community-based disaster response and the role of social capital and collective action.

It has been estimated that globally, 1.2 billion people live with acute shortage of water. Water scarcity, particularly in south and south-east Asian countries, is well known. However, the social dilemmas and insecurities related to water issues are often less discussed. In the case of south and south-east Asia, the distribution of available water amongst various casts and creeds has been determined through several social hierarchies. Hence, water forms a critical socio-political issue, with a multi-faced dimension. This book critically analyses the associated social issues of increasing water scarcity in countries such as India. It documents the social impacts and predicament of water scarcity. The book will be of prime interest to researchers, policy makers and practitioners in the fields of development and environment, as well as water planners, and it will be a useful reference guide for future research in the field of water scarcity and risk management. Topics analysed include arsenic contamination, the impact of salinity on livelihood and mitigation, and drought resilience, adaptation and policy. The book concludes by providing lessons, challenges and future perspectives of water insecurity.

Ecosystems are often examined from a ecological perspective because of the importance of biodiversity and ecosystem services. Ecosystems of different types and scales are under increasing pressure due to natural and human induced changes. Climate change and the disasters it causes, are a major driver affecting ecosystems and services. Several studies have provided evidence that a healthy ecosystem helps in reducing the impacts of climate change and disasters. This book makes a case for ecosystem-based adaptation by arguing that ecosystems and its services are critical in the climate change and disaster risk reduction fields. Consequently, the monitoring and regulation of ecosystems need to be linked to a regular governance and institutional mechanism and be reflected in a more action-oriented agenda.

As cities all over the world have urbanized rapidly after the industrial revolution, most cities have confronted environmental problems such as poor air and water quality, high levels of traffic congestion and ambient noise, poor-quality built environment, derelict land, greenhouse gas emissions, urban sprawl, generation of waste and waste-water. In particular, cities in the developing world face problems related to the living conditions in which the urban population lives. In the context of urban cities in the developing world, it can be narrowed to the quality of life of living population in the cities. Needless to say that Asia has the largest population, as well as urban population at risk. This book brings the lessons from innovative urban risk management approaches in Asian cities, drawing the lessons from seven Asian countries. The authors of the chapters consists of wider spectrum of stakeholders: from academicians to policy makers to NGO practitioners.

This book presents a portrait of the social advantages and limitations of climate change related modeling in the Hindu Kush-Himalayan (HKH) region. Physical systems modeling - such as of climate, weather, water, and soil - can be useful planning tools, and are essential to the forecasts and projections used operationally for decisions on climate and development. However, these models and their limitations are rarely discussed in terms of how they are interpreted, misinterpreted, used, not used, needed and not needed by society at the local level for climate change adaptation. This publication addresses the implied but largely uncritiqued relationships between scientific modeling knowledge and local adaptation responses. It also presents theoretical perspectives on modeling and adaptation, supported by case studies of model use, non-use, interpretation and misinterpretation in the HKH region for application at the local level. It provides a critical angle into the value of modeling at multiple decision making scales in society, but focused on local needs. Case studies are presented from a variety of HKH countries, as defined by ICIMOD (which includes Bangladesh and Myanmar).

Disaster management has historically focused on reactive approaches, but a shift to proactive approaches is crucial for addressing concerns raised by the changing environment. A prime reason for the absence of proactive approaches in disaster/hazard management is the uncertainty or ambiguity present in the links between the environment and the hazards. This is one of the first books to focus on explicit linkages between the changing environment and disasters and suggests better approaches towards disaster management. A ready-reference for field practitioners it combines academic research and field practices and covers areas such as: elements of environmental entry (water-related disasters, desertification and land degradation, typhoon risk management, catastrophic flood and forest management, and coastal issues); impacts of environment and disaster (livelihoods impacts, human health: post-disaster waste management); and strategies, planning and the way forward (climate change adaptation as a planning tool, urban planning and land use planning, mangrove management as a coastal planning tool, and environment disaster education and risk communication).

Drought is a slow-onset disaster. The impacts are invisible and are often reflected as a complex socio-economic phenomenon. Due to changes in the climatic conditions droughts are increasingly occurring in non-traditional drought prone areas. The Asian monsoon region is one of these areas where consecutive years of droughts are causing severe problems for the lives and livelihoods of the communities. The impacts are becoming increasingly more visible, and drawing the attention of policy makers and professionals from national and international levels. In this context, this book outlines the characteristics and challenges of the Asian monsoon drought and highlights innovative solutions and approaches undertaken in different parts of the region. A ready-reference for field practitioners it combines academic research and field practices, and builds on actual implementation experiences of drought risk reduction. Providing a thorough examination of the subject and region, chapters cover droughts in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Myanmar, Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka. It concludes with an article on cross-cutting experiences and drought risk reduction in the Asian Monsoon Region.

Education is the key to risk reduction, be it environmental management or disaster risk reduction, and is a process which needs to be embedded at different levels of management and practices to collectively reduce the risk. While school education forms the foundations of the knowledge cycle, for effective knowledge use, it is necessary to link school and community education. Education is linked to enhanced awareness and a key reflection of education is seen in terms of actions. Divided into four sections this book begins with an informative introduction to the subject of disaster risk reduction education and proceeds to highlight key places of education such as family, community, school, and higher education. It then examines approaches, methods and tools before providing a future perspective and pointing to the way ahead. This is the first book of its kind on disaster risk reduction education. A ready reference for practitioners in the field, this book describes and demonstrates different aspects of education in an easy-to-understand form with current academic research and practical field experiences included throughout.