Everyday realities of climate change adaptation in Mozambique

This paper analyzes discourses and practices of flood response and adaptation to climate change in Mozambique. It builds on recent publications on climate change adaptation that suggest that the successes and failures of adaptation highly depend on the cultural and political realms of societal perceptions and the sensitivity of institutions. To capture this, the paper adopted a multi-sited ethnographic approach. Acknowledging that there is no central locus of representation that can unveil the working of disaster response in Mozambique, the paper brings together five vignettes of research in different ‘sites’ of concern to the rise in floods in Mozambique. These are the politics of climate change adaptation at the national institutional level, societal responses to increased flooding, local people's responses to floods, the evacuation and resettlement programme following the 2007 flood. The paper finds how adaptation to climate change becomes part of everyday politics, how actors aim to incorporate responses into the continuation of their normal behavior and how elites are better positioned to take advantage of adaptation programmes than the vulnerable people that were targeted. It argues that climate change adaptation must be made consonant with historically grown and ongoing social and institutional processes. It concludes with lessons that the analysis and methodology of the research can provide for the practice of climate change adaptation

Comparative analysis of spring flood risk reduction measures in Alaska, United States and the Sakha Republic, Russia

Thesis (Ph.D.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2017River ice thaw and breakup are an annual springtime phenomena in the North. Depending on regional weather patterns and river morphology, breakups can result in catastrophic floods in exposed and vulnerable communities. Breakup flood risk is especially high in rural and remote northern communities, where flood relief and recovery are complicated by unique geographical and climatological features, and limited physical and communication infrastructure. Proactive spring flood management would significantly minimize the adverse impacts of spring floods. Proactive flood management entails flood risk reduction through advances in ice jam and flood prevention, forecasting and mitigation, and community preparedness. With the goal to identify best practices in spring flood risk reduction, I conducted a comparative case study between two flood-prone communities, Galena in Alaska, United States and Edeytsy in the Sakha Republic, Russia. Within a week from each other, Galena and Edeytsy sustained major floods in May 2013. Methods included focus groups with the representatives from flood managing agencies, surveys of families impacted by the 2013 floods, observations on site, and archival review. Comparative parameters of the study included natural and human causes of spring floods, effectiveness of spring flood mitigation and preparedness strategies, and the role of interagency communication and cooperation in flood risk reduction. The analysis revealed that spring flood risk in Galena and Edeytsy results from complex interactions among a series of natural processes and human actions that generate conditions of hazard, exposure, and vulnerability. Therefore, flood risk in Galena and Edeytsy can be reduced by managing conditions of ice-jam floods, and decreasing exposure and vulnerability of the at-risk populations. Implementing the Pressure and Release model to analyze the vulnerability progression of Edeytsy and Galena points to common root causes at the two research sites, including colonial heritage, unequal distribution of resources and power, top-down governance, and limited inclusion of local communities in the decision-making process. To construct an appropriate flood risk reduction framework it is important to establish a dialogue among the diverse stakeholders on potential solutions, arriving at a range of top-down and bottom-up initiatives and in conjunction selecting the appropriate strategies. Both communities have progressed in terms of greater awareness of the hazard, reduction in vulnerabilities, and a shift to more reliance on shelter-in-place. However, in neither community have needed improvements in levee protection been completed. Dialogue between outside authorities and the community begins earlier and is more intensive for Edeytsy, perhaps accounting for Edeytsy's more favorable rating of risk management and response than Galena's

Modeling Family Behaviors in Crowd Simulation

Modeling human behavior for a general situation is difficult, if not impossible. Crowd simulation represents one of the approaches most commonly used to model such behavior. It is mainly concerned with modeling the different human structures incorporated in a crowd. These structures could comprise individuals, groups, friends, and families. Various instances of these structures and their corresponding behaviors are modeled to predict crowd responses under certain circumstances and to subsequently improve event management, facility and emergency planning. Most currently existing modeled behaviors are concerned with depicting individuals as autonomous agents or groups of agents in certain environments. This research focuses on providing structural and state-based behavioral models for the concept of a family incorporated in the crowd. The structural model defines parents, teenagers, children, and elderly as members of the family. It also draws on the associated interrelationships and the rules that govern them. The behavioral model of the family encompasses a number of behavioral models associated with the triggering of certain well-known activities that correspond to the family’s situation. For instance, in normal cases, a family member(s) may be hungry, bored, or tired, may need a restroom, etc. In an emergency case, a family may experience the loss of a family member(s), the need to assist in safe evacuation, etc. Activities that such cases trigger include splitting, joining, carrying children, looking for family member(s), or waiting for them. The proposed family model is implemented on top of the RVO2 library that is using agent-based approach in crowd simulation. Simulation case studies are developed to answer research questions related to various family evacuation approaches in emergency situations

Development and validation of a disaster management metamodel (DMM)

Disaster Management (DM) is a diffused area of knowledge. It has many complex features interconnecting the physical and the social views of the world. Many international and national bodies create knowledge models to allow knowledge sharing and effective DM activities. But these are often narrow in focus and deal with specified disaster types. We analyze thirty such models to uncover that many DM activities are actually common even when the events vary. We then create a unified view of DM in the form of a metamodel. We apply a metamodelling process to ensure that this metamodel is complete and consistent. We validate it and present a representational layer to unify and share knowledge as well as combine and match different DM activities according to different disaster situations

An information assistant system for the prevention of tunnel vision in crisis management

In the crisis management environment, tunnel vision is a set of bias in decision makers’ cognitive process which often leads to incorrect understanding of the real crisis situation, biased perception of information, and improper decisions. The tunnel vision phenomenon is a consequence of both the challenges in the task and the natural limitation in a human being’s cognitive process. An information assistant system is proposed with the purpose of preventing tunnel vision. The system serves as a platform for monitoring the on-going crisis event. All information goes through the system before arrives at the user. The system enhances the data quality, reduces the data quantity and presents the crisis information in a manner that prevents or repairs the user’s cognitive overload. While working with such a system, the users (crisis managers) are expected to be more likely to stay aware of the actual situation, stay open minded to possibilities, and make proper decisions

Metamodelling Approach To Support Disaster Management Knowledge Sharing

Handling uncertain events that could happen anytime and anywhere and dealing with many complex systems interconnected physically and socially makes Disaster Management (DM) a multidisciplinary endeavor and a very difficult domain to model. In this paper we present a development and validation of a Disaster Management Metamodel (DMM), a language that we develop specific for describing DM domain. The metamodel, a precise definition of the constructs and rules needed for creating the semantic models of DM domain consists of four views based on four DM phases including Mitigation, Preparedness, Response and Recovery-phase classes of concept. A Model Importance Factor (MIF) criterion is used to identify 10 existing disaster management models to evaluate the expressiveness and the completeness of DMM. The paper presents the synthesis process and the resulting metamodel, as a foundational component to create a Disaster Management Decision Support System (DMDSS) to unify, facilitate and expedite access to DM expertise