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The local newspapers have a lot to thank those short sighted computer engineers who thought that life ended at the end of this millenium and conveniently forgot to allow for later milleniums. From the Jakarta Post to the South China Morning Post to the Bangkok Post, all have allocated massive column inches to speculating on oncoming disasters due to the Y2K mega-bug. This week's review is all about disasters, not just IR related but those due to floods, pestilance, earthquakes and all the rest of the stuff that God wroughts on us from time to time.... mostly culled from MCB's Disaster Prevention and Management journal. Actually this week's free access journals also includes Aircraft Engineering & Aerospace Technology, with a mass of excellent technical material on matters aeronautical for the engineers, but we will mainly leave that to the specialists to browse on their own accord. We could understand about 5 percent of it though the Rat's distant Chief aeronautical engineer relative in Taiwan says it's great stuff. OK, we will take his word for it and focus on some of the more general management articles on disaster available in the former, apart from a little gem of an article on training engineers hidden away in the back pages... Sharpening the problem-solving skills of aerospace engineers by Gary J. Vroman (Aircraft Engineering and Aerospace Technology; 71: 3 1999; pp. 255-258) Describes how Ladish Co. Inc., North America's second largest forging company, has changed the approach its engineers use to solve problems. Aerospace constitutes approximately 85 per cent of Ladish's sales and the cyclical nature of the industry forced the company to recognize the competitive shortcomings of focusing narrowly on technical issues. Today Ladish thoroughly scrutinizes the business impact of every technical decision - and its engineers do so using a significantly different set of broad-based assumptions than were commonly in use in the organization five years ago. The new problem-solving methodology seems to be working. In 1998, Ladish posted its strongest financial performance in ten years...
Now back to disasters! and the obvious place to start is Y2K. Pamela Showalter in Responding to "unconventional" millennial predictions (Disaster Prevention and Management; 07: 4 1998; pp. 273-280) says -
Just one of the disasters that Japan has experienced in recent years was caused by the Sasin gas terrorism by a religious sect, and of course we have heard a lot about biological warfare this decade im matters relating to Iraq. In an article entitled Dimensions of biological terrorism: to what must we mitigate and respond?, (Disaster Prevention and Management; 08: 1 1999; pp. 27-32), Henry W. Fischer III reviews "the emergence of biological weapons of mass destruction as likely terrorist means of reigning terror on domestic urban populations.". "...The dimensions of such a possible future catastrophe are described. The lack of preparedness to mitigate and respond to such an event is noted and it is argued that the disaster research literature should be consulted as a guide to help develop effective mitigation and response plans..." notes the abstract, stating the obvious with measured eloquence. Still, this article got 3 stars for Research Implication, and only one star for Practice Implication and Originality. ..Which we guess means its yet another of those articles that signs off with "...More research is needed..." And how about some Emergency inter-organizational relationships (Disaster Prevention and Management; 08: 1 1999; pp. 21-26) which is the title of an article from Hayim Granot. Ignore the jargon and big words and he does make a good point. "...Emergencies usually require inter-organizational co-operation in order to meet the unusual demands of emergency response. By their orientation, however, emergency organizations tend toward formal structures and organizational cultures that make such co-operation difficult. The paper reviews a number of salient findings regarding emergency services. On the strength of these findings several directions are suggested that hold the promise to improve inter-organizational relationships..."And now back to our own fair region again, with an article that touches on the emotional area of environmentalism vs. economic progress, a recurring them on the Asia Pacific Management Forum. The fast development of many Asian economies has also brought with it scant attention for the environment. Environomentalism is seen by many decision makers in Asia as a Western and middle class concern, but smog from forest fires in Indonesia, landslides, turtles going AWOL in tourist areas, and landslides and building collapses suggest that the environoment is indeed our concern. Ngai Weng Chan has contibuted two articles here. The first one warns that landslides will become a "common feature of Malaysian life" in his case study Responding to landslide hazards in rapidly developing Malaysia: a case of economics versus environmental protection (Disaster Prevention and Management; 07: 1 1998; pp. 14-27). From the abstract:-
Malaysia is an ex-colonial, newly-industrialising country, with a sustained high economic growth rate averaging eight per cent GDP per annum over the past ten years. Within such a rapidly booming economy, the pace of social, economic and political change is fast, as is the pace of technological change. Other things being equal, these are the changes in which environmental hazards can be magnified. As a result of rapid economic development, physical systems are disturbed and changed. For example, the modification of the hydrological cycle due to deforestation, urbanisation, development of hill slopes and other human land use have given rise to increased risks of landslides. In recent years, the collapse of a block of luxury condominiums in Kuala Lumpur, the Genting Highland and Pos Dipang landslide tragedies as well as other landslide disasters have caused substantial loss of life and damage to property and infrastructure. Combined with intensive development of hill slopes and hill land for housing, recreation, tourism, agriculture, highway and dam construction, and other human induced land use changes, the exposure and vulnerability of human populations to landslide hazards have also increased. Other reasons, largely structural, such as persistent poverty, low residential and occupational mobility, and landlessness, manifested in illegal squatting and farming on hill slopes and foothills have also contributed to increased vulnerability of large communities to landslide hazards in many parts of the country. As Malaysia pushes ahead to meet its target of becoming a fully industrialised country by the year 2020, further environmental degradation is expected to occur. Notwithstanding other aspects of environmental degradation, the occurrence of landslide hazards is expected to become a common feature of Malaysian life.Ngai Weng Chan's second article focuses on the Pearl of the Orient as Malaysian's call it- Pulau Pinang. The abstract from Environmental hazards associated with hill land development in Penang Island, Malaysia: some recommendations on effective management (Disaster Prevention and Management; 07: 4 1998; pp. 305-318) reads -
Increasingly, land is a scarce resource which is much sought after in Penang Island, Malaysia. This is because Penang is largely made up of steep topography and much of the lowland areas are already developed. Penang is one of the many rapidly industrialising states in Malaysia with a largely urban populace. In recent decades, efforts at industrialisation and the development of other economic sectors have been intensified, leading to greater urbanisation and greater pressures on land. Although land reclamation has eased the pressures somewhat, it is not enough to satisfy the high demand for land on the island. As such, developers have turned to the remaining hill land on the island. Many hills and their environs are already being developed and many hill projects are in the pipe line. This has led to many environmental problems such as deforestation, decimation of water catchments, destruction of endangered fauna and flora, soil erosion, landslides, water pollution, sedimentation and downstream flooding. Some of these problems have been exacerbated and turned into disasters due to the extremely fragile and sensitive nature of hill ecosystems. Despite such problems, the State Government has decided to lift the freeze on development of hill land since January 1998, and this has effectively opened up all hill land for development on the island. Therefore, hill land needs to be protected and conserved by other means and this study recommends the adoption of a policy of "No development in all ecologically and environmentally sensitive areas", the setting up of a Hill Land Technical Committee (HLTC) to manage all developments pertaining to hill land and to gazette all hill land in the State, and the use of state-of-the-art remote sensing and Geographic Information System (GIS) technology to monitor and control development activities on hill land in Penang.Following our tour we move North with an article entitled Mitigating flood losses in the active floodplains of Bangladesh by Paul Thompson and Ian Tod (Disaster Prevention and Management; 07: 2 1998; pp. 113-123)
The inhabitants of the active floodplain of Bangladesh's main rivers receive little government support to help them cope with floods and have developed their own strategies. Major flood projection works are not possible in these areas where floods and erosion annually affect many vulnerable people. Surveys of the impact of severe floods found that total losses and the dislocation to their lives is substantial. These loss data were used to assess the financial viability of small scale floodproofing measures, such as house raising and flood shelters, which are the preferences of these people. Such measures give better rates of return than embankment projects in mainland areas, provided that the location is not affected by erosion for four to eight years. A combination of resources, technical assistance and local hazard assessment is needed, and a government commitment to improve the living conditions of the inhabitants of the active floodplains.Weve also extended for one week the bonus article from last week on earthquakes seeing we are preoccupied with disasters. We heard a lot about the aftermath of the Taiwan earthquake on the news, but little on how the enormous management task of clearing up the mess was carried out. Perhaps natural tragedies like this are the greatest test of any management system. This article is a whopper.. almost 1 megabyte but it provides excellent insight into the management aspects of earthquake relief, based on the recent 3 earthquakes in Iran. And yet again it's another three star for Practice implications from the earnest abstractors and reviewers tucked away in a dark room in Northern England... Gee.. they must think it's Christmas... With many thanks to Emerald for providing us with the free article, click on the title to download the 911 magabyte PDF file.
Rescue operation and reconstruction of recent earthquakes in IranKeywords: Disasters, Disaster management, Iran Article Type: Survey, Case study Quality Indicators: Research Implication- *, Practice Implication- ***, Originality- **, Readability- * Landslides, earthquakes, Y2K, biological terrorism, and weapons of mass destruction. Think wever covered them all in this week's disaster edition. ..Nope.. we still got VOLCANOES. We've got a lot of 'em.. in fact much of Java is built on the things, so its timely also to take a look at an article by Douglas Paton, David Johnston ad Bruce Houghton on "Organisational response to a volcanic eruption" (Disaster Prevention and Management; 07: 1 1998; pp. 5-13)
This paper reports on the findings of a survey of organisational responses to the 1995 eruptions at Ruapehu volcano, New Zealand. The survey identified co-ordination, communication, training and management issues that had implications for the quality and effectiveness of an integrated organisational response to hazard impacts. This paper explores the implications of organisational structure and social (professional) identity for developing and sustaining integrated emergency management capability. It also discusses the implications of decision-making processes and group dynamics for response effectiveness. These issues are used to illustrate the nature and origin of the problems observed in the survey and to define strategies for their resolution and for promoting effective inter-organisational relationships and integrated emergency management capability...And it's Hayim Granot yet again and this time in a black mood in "The dark side of growth and industrial disasters since the Second World War" (Disaster Prevention and Management; 07: 3 1998; pp. 195-204).
Examines the disastrous industrial accidents globally since the Second World War. Change and innovation development have accelerated dramatically through this century. The war itself influenced various developments. Argues that environmental problems are problems of development. Bhopal, Chernobyl, Exxon Valdez, Kuwait's oil wells and Siberian pipelines are all used as examples. Industrial activity and social change have increased vulnerability to man-made hazards. Hazardous industries tend to be sited nearer the poorest and most vulnerable people, making the effects of any disaster even greater. Discusses the changing attitudes to man-made disasters - from fatalistic resignation to a desire to gain greater control. Assessment, legislation and mitigation have meant improvements and are indicators of willingness and ability to handle the threats.Granot sketches out a good argument here. It's been said before of course, but has anybody really listened?... A "paen" to Globalization from M. Harper in Conflict today and its demands on international society (Disaster Prevention and Management; 04: 1 1995; pp. 6-11).
Assumes acceptance of the argument that, as the world has become a mere village owing to modern communications systems, trading patterns and the like, it is no longer possible for any individual, community or state to seek to pull down the blinds and ignore what is happening in other parts of the world. This is not merely an ethical issue - although believes that the morality of caring is much in need of an uplift, both in British society and elsewhere - it is a pragmatic and political necessity. Confines discussion to looking at conflicts at the levels where they involve communities or whole states, rather than individuals alone.And back to Hong Kong and the Mass Transit Railway Corporation. (I wouldnt mind a couple of HK dollars for each article published on the MTRC. Seems thay have a great PR crowd..) Alan Marsden reports on his training program in Training railway operating staff to understand and manage passenger and crowd behaviour (Disaster Prevention and Management; 07: 5 1998; pp. 401-405) For anyone involved in moving large numbers of people, indeed in any aspect of crowd management, the biggest threats are ignorance of crowd behavioural dynamics and complacency. When the Mass Transit Railway Corporation (MTRC) in Hong Kong was faced with excessive passenger growth, serious safety problems and concerns arose. As part of a study into "Passenger and Crowd Behaviour Safety", the author recommended that staff be put through a comprehensive programme of passenger management and behaviour training. As a result of this he was asked to design and deliver such a programme, consisting of two-day modules for all those directly concerned and one-day modules for all other managers throughout the organisation. These have now been followed up with update training, and a redesigned course has been implemented for the new Airport Express railway.It's a top gong for Hong Kong. Three stars for "Research Implication" from the Emerald reviewers. And we will sign off there. These are just a few of the many free articles available this week. I'm off to get some satay, and forget about disasters for just a bit. Then again, I might even get run over by a runaway bus...
None this week! We figure its going to take you all week to read the article on earthquake management in Iran anyway...
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