Friendship and Adults With Profound Intellectual and Multiple Disabilities and English Disability Policy

The authors analyzed references to “friendship” in the documents that set out the policy vision for adults with intellectual disabilities living in England. Friendship is commonly identified as one of the human “goods”—those aspects of life that contribute to our flourishing. Disability ethicists have suggested that friendship is especially important for people with the most profound intellectual and multiple disabilities, as a means of establishing their social and moral standing. However, the idea of friendship with adults with profound disabilities is problematic if friendship is defined as it is commonly understood in the contemporary English context. Citizenship and rights have dominated policy discourse since the publication of the English intellectual disabilities strategy, Valuing People, in 2001. However, recent policy documents give greater prominence to friendship and frame it explicitly as a “good” in the lives of adults with profound disabilities. The language used in these policy documents signals but does not openly acknowledge the tensions and complexities entailed in the idea of friendship with adults with profound disabilities. The authors suggest that the failure to address these tensions and complexities is a recipe for failure in the implementation of policy recommendations. They note the need for policy in this area to be reconsidered and suggest that this process should be informed by both empirical research and conceptual analysis

Impact Forecasting to Support Emergency Management of Natural Hazards

Forecasting and early warning systems are important investments to protect lives, properties, and livelihood. While early warning systems are frequently used to predict the magnitude, location, and timing of potentially damaging events, these systems rarely provide impact estimates, such as the expected amount and distribution of physical damage, human consequences, disruption of services, or financial loss. Complementing early warning systems with impact forecasts has a twofold advantage: It would provide decision makers with richer information to take informed decisions about emergency measures and focus the attention of different disciplines on a common target. This would allow capitalizing on synergies between different disciplines and boosting the development of multihazard early warning systems. This review discusses the state of the art in impact forecasting for a wide range of natural hazards. We outline the added value of impact-based warnings compared to hazard forecasting for the emergency phase, indicate challenges and pitfalls, and synthesize the review results across hazard types most relevant for Europe