Towards a Resilient Future: Experiences with Community Managed Disaster Risk Reduction and Climate Change Adaptation

This testimony shows the urgency of the problems faced by people on the front line of climate change, which is exposing more and more people to increased risk of dis This testimony shows the urgency of the problems faced by people on the front line of climate change, which is exposing more and more people to increased risk of diaster and directly affecting their lives and livelihoods. Tragically, the global community turns a blind eye to the severity of the risks posed by climate change and is doing too little to help people prepare themselves for these risks. Community managed disaster risk reduction (CMDRR) is an effective strategy of addressing the impacts and effects of climate change and reducing communities' vulnerability to disasters

The COVID-19 pandemic: resilient organisational response to a low-chance, high-impact event

The global healthcare sector is currently in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, a ‘low-chance, high-impact’ event which will require healthcare systems, and the organisations within them, to maintain organisational resilience in order to respond effectively. However, contrary to the instinctive reaction to tighten control, the quality of response depends on healthcare systems’ capacity to loosen control and, subsequently, enhance improvisation. Three factors critical to enhancing an organisation’s capacity for improvisation are highlighted; increasing autonomy, maintaining structure and creating a shared understanding. By drawing on the case of Christchurch Hospital’s response to a major earthquake, this paper demonstrates the vital role that improvisation can play within a clinical setting, when responding to a low-chance, high-impact event. This article is made freely available for use in accordance with BMJ's website terms and conditions for the duration of the covid-19 pandemic or until otherwise determined by BMJ. You may use, download and print the article for any lawful, non-commercial purpose (including text and data mining) provided that all copyright notices and trade marks are retained

UAV-Empowered Disaster-Resilient Edge Architecture for Delay-Sensitive Communication

The fifth-generation (5G) communication systems will enable enhanced mobile broadband, ultra-reliable low latency, and massive connectivity services. The broadband and low-latency services are indispensable to public safety (PS) communication during natural or man-made disasters. Recently, the third generation partnership project long term evolution (3GPPLTE) has emerged as a promising candidate to enable broadband PS communications. In this article, first we present six major PS-LTE enabling services and the current status of PS-LTE in 3GPP releases. Then, we discuss the spectrum bands allocated for PS-LTE in major countries by international telecommunication union (ITU). Finally, we propose a disaster resilient three-layered architecture for PS-LTE (DR-PSLTE). This architecture consists of a software-defined network (SDN) layer to provide centralized control, an unmanned air vehicle (UAV) cloudlet layer to facilitate edge computing or to enable emergency communication link, and a radio access layer. The proposed architecture is flexible and combines the benefits of SDNs and edge computing to efficiently meet the delay requirements of various PS-LTE services. Numerical results verified that under the proposed DR-PSLTE architecture, delay is reduced by 20% as compared with the conventional centralized computing architecture.Comment: 9,

Minimising flood risk accumulation through effective private and public sector engagement

Flooding is a global problem affecting both developing and developed countries. Academics and practitioners in climate science frequently argue that changing climatic conditions are likely to worsen the length and severity of these flood events, which will have catastrophic consequences to economies and social lives of communities world over. Whilst the overall consequences affecting many regions have been established, effective and efficient strategies to cope with the effects of flooding and building up resilience strategies have not properly evolved. This paper examines this issue by exploring effective strategies undertaken in partnerships between private and public stakeholders. The paper details two case studies conducted in a developed and a developing country to investigate what global strategies for coping and resilience to flooding have worked in practice. The two case studies: Cockermouth in Cumbria, UK and Patuakhali in Bangladesh provide interesting insights on how some of the strategies work within the chosen developed and developing country contexts. The case study findings are mapped against UNISDR’s ten-point checklist under the “Making Cities Resilient Campaign”. In conclusion the paper examines how these findings can be incorporated within city development plans to develop stakeholder capacity and capability and eventually build up resilient cities

Minimising flood risk accumulation through effective private and public sector engagement

Flooding is a global problem affecting both developing and developed countries. Academics and practitioners in climate science frequently argue that changing climatic conditions are likely to worsen the length and severity of these flood events, which will have catastrophic consequences to economies and social lives of communities world over. Whilst the overall consequences affecting many regions have been established, effective and efficient strategies to cope with the effects of flooding and building up resilience strategies have not properly evolved. This paper examines this issue by exploring effective strategies undertaken in partnerships between private and public stakeholders. The paper details two case studies conducted in a developed and a developing country to investigate what global strategies for coping and resilience to flooding have worked in practice. The two case studies: Cockermouth in Cumbria, UK and Patuakhali in Bangladesh provide interesting insights on how some of the strategies work within the chosen developed and developing country contexts. The case study findings are mapped against UNISDR’s ten-point checklist under the “Making Cities Resilient Campaign”. In conclusion the paper examines how these findings can be incorporated within city development plans to develop stakeholder capacity and capability and eventually build up resilient cities

Global emergency telecommunication service on global emergency telecommunication platform with global crisis management scheme

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Building Information Modeling as Tool for Enhancing Disaster Resilience of the Construction Industry

As frequencies of the disasters are increasing, new technologies can be used to enhance disaster resilience performance of the construction industry. This paper investigates the usage of BIM (Building Information Modeling) in enhancing disaster resilience of the construction industry and in the establishment of the resilient built environment. In-depth literature review findings reveal BIM’s contribution to the disaster resilience in the pre-disaster and post-disaster phases especially through influencing the performance of the supply chain, construction process, and rescue operations. This paper emphasises the need for BIM’s integration to the education and training curriculums of the built environment professionals. Policy makers, construction professionals, professional bodies, academics can benefit from this research