Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide a historical analysis of the disaster management structure, policies and institutions in Pakistan between 1947 and 2005, and highlights the contemporary challenges in view of the learning from the past. Design/methodology/approach – The paper uses a historic-integrative case study approach to disaster management and risk reduction policy, planni...

iran's health system is expanding the disaster and emergency higher education programs over the country to enhance the capacity of human resources for effective and efficient disaster mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery. in this article we present an overview about the initiatives and progress of disaster and emergency health higher education in iran. following the bam earthquake, i...

Among various natural disasters floods make the largest impact in terms of number of casualties, people affected and property lost. Flood data during the past 30 years show that flood events that cause significant impacts have increased at a steady rate. Available data suggest that this increase could be attributed to increasing population and exposure, increasing property values located in vul...

Mitigating disaster impact requires identifying risk factors. The increased vulnerability of the physically fragile is easily understood. Less obvious are the socio-economic risk factors, especially within relatively affluent societies. Hurricane Katrina demonstrated many of these risks within the United States. These factors include poverty, home ownership, poor English language proficiency, e...

Knowledge about the causes and consequences of hazards is increasing, but losses continue to rise dramatically. We examine the major benefits of land use planning when applied to hazard mitigation, and then discuss why vulnerable communities fail to enact effective planning programs to prevent hazard-induced losses. We then present five sets of choices that communities can make to advance plann...

In this paper, we present the development and validation of a Disaster Management Metamodel, a language that we develop specific for describing disaster management domain, as a foundational component to create a decision support system to unify, facilitate and expedite access to disaster management expertise. The metamodel which consists of four views based on disaster management phases includi...

Earthquake DSS is an information technology environment which can be used by government to sharpen, make faster and better the earthquake mitigation decision. Earthquake DSS can be delivered as E-government which is not only for government itself but in order to guarantee each citizen’s rights for education, training and information about earthquake and how to overcome the earthquake. Knowledge...

There has been relatively little research on the economic impacts of natural disasters to date. This paper reports findings of a sUidy of the Philippines which is intended as a contribution in filling that gap. Findings include the following: • The Philippines experiences all major types of naUiral hazard and is widely acknowledged as one of the most hazard-prone countries in the world. Moreove...

The city of Kolkata, the State Capital of West Bengal is jolted by earthquakes time and again from the tectonic regimes of the Central Himalaya, highly seismogenic Northeast India and the active tectonics of Bengal Basin which is a pericratonic tertiary basin on which the City is located. Earthquake disaster mitigation and management necessitates seismic hazard assessment for the generation of ...