Geographies of resilience: Challenges and opportunities of a descriptive concept

In disaster science, policy and practice, the transition of resilience from a descriptive concept to a normative agenda provides challenges and opportunities. This paper argues that both are needed to increase resilience. We briefly outline the concept and several recent international resilience-building efforts to elucidate critical questions and less-discussed issues. We highlight the need to move resilience thinking forward by emphasizing structural social-political processes, acknowledging and acting on differences between ecosystems and societies, and looking beyond the quantitative streamlining of resilience into one index. Instead of imposing a technical-reductionist framework, we suggest a starting basis of integrating different knowledge types and experiences to generate scientifically reliable, context-appropriate and socially robust resilience-building activities

Disaster Loss Financing in Germany - The Case of the Elbe River Floods 2002

In August 2002, floods in central Europe caused damage of about Euro 15 billion; insured losses were about Euro 3.1 billion. According to Munich Reinsurance, this was the most expensive natural disaster of the year 2002. In Germany, heavy rains led to some of the worst flooding the Free State of Saxony has witnessed in more than a century. In Dresden, the Elbe River rose from a normal summer level of about two meters to 9.13 meters surpassing the historical flood mark of 8.77 meters seen in March 1845, to reach on August 17, 2002, a water level of 9.40 meters -- the highest level that has ever been recorded in Dresden. Shortly after the flood event, overall damage in Germany was estimated to be Euro 22 billion, which in December 2002 was revised to about Euro 9.1 billion of direct losses. Concerning the regional distribution of losses, Saxony was hit hardest. With direct damage of Euro 6.084 billion the federal state bears 67% of the total losses. About 14.9% (Euro 1.353 billion) of the overall damage is corresponding to the German government and 11.3% (Euro 1.029 billion) to the state of Saxony-Anhalt. The major share of about Euro 3.316 billion accrued to state and municipal infrastructure (36.6%), federal infrastructure losses were Euro 1.353 billion (14.9%); private households suffered about Euro 2.547 billion of losses (28.1%), followed by private companies with Euro 1.438 billion (15.9%). The compensation of the flood losses was mainly financed by a special disaster relief and reconstruction fund set up by both the National Government and the federal states of Germany. This so-called "Sonderfonds Aufbauhilfe" amounted to Euro 7.1 billion, or seventy-eight percent of total direct losses. Other sources of financing were the insurance (estimated to amount to Euro 1.8 billion), an European Union emergency fund (Euro 444 million), and public donations (Euro 243 million). Total financing available amounting to 9.6 billion Euro thus exceeds the direct losses incurred, which will only be financed. Considering that government compensation will be provided in terms of replacement costs rather than current value lost, still all direct losses could be compensated in theory. Compared to total compensation provided in other major events in developed countries, which on average amounted to 45% of total losses, this large financing provided is exceptional. This can be attributed to the following factors: the floods constituted the largest losses ever in Germany and were commonly considered an event with a return period of less than 1000 years ("Jahrtausendhochwasser", millennium floods); the floods mainly affected East Germany that is still struggling economically and where unemployment is high; some observers cite the "hot" election phase as federal elections were in their final stages of what was known to be a very close election. The provision of government funds to the affected private households and companies and municipalities was and is governed by a set of principles that were explicitly set out by the government in order to guarantee the efficient allocation of the funds, allow quick reconstruction and provide and keep incentives for ex-ante measures. These principles include: subsidiarity (the delegation of responsibilities to the lowest administrative level feasible), parallelity (reconstruction in the affected East German region was and is parallel and independent of "Aufbau Ost" (reconstruction in East Germany after reunification), provision of Incentives (inclusion of deductibles in order to maintain incentives for mitigation and insurance), efficiency (financing of direct losses only to primarily compensate those worst affected), and the ability to rebuild (loss financing was provided in terms of reconstruction costs rather than current values). Regarding financing on the municipal level, the Saxon cities of Dresden and Pirna were examined since both experienced large damages to their infrastructure and public assets: Dresden Euro 400 million, equaling forty-seven percent of the municipal budget of 2002, and Pirna Euro 22 million, or thirty-five percent as a fraction of the budget. The cities expect to be reimbursed ninety percent of their damages in the currently ongoing financing negotiations. Also, large losses were suffered by the private households and business, however, these will not be compensated by the local governments but by the "Sonderfonds Aufbauhilfe." Households can expect to receive eighty percent of their losses, businesses up to seventy-five percent

Resolving the paradox: Food for thought on the wider dimensions of natural disasters

Recent disaster statistics reflect an alarming trend of increasing losses from natural disasters. Typically, the insurance industry, scientific experts, and thus the media, refer to such "external" factors as population increase, the potential for damage in hazard-prone areas, and land use and climate change as the primary causes of this trend. Although these factors increase vulnerability to natural disasters, we argue that "internal" factors such as disaster-related science and policy are also responsible for the inability to stem or reverse the upward trend in disaster damage. The paradox of concurrent increases in economic loss and disaster-related research raises questions about the approaches and tools used in hazard assessment and disaster management. This in turn raises the possibility that progress is being blocked by fundamental conceptual barriers, in addition to profound changes in environmental and social processes, neither of which are adequately being addressed. We conclude with some thought-provoking suggestions for addressing problems in disaster management

Challenges and opportunities for building urban resilience

In science, the resilience concept has increasingly been embraced as a framework for disaster-related work. As a result, policy supports 'resilient communities' programs. The current transition from a 'descriptive' scientific concept explaining the state of a system to a 'normative' agenda applied by local authorities faces various challenges. To contribute to the A|Z journal's special issue on Cities at Risk, this paper argues that it is crucial to address and explain these challenges in order to effectively increase resilience. It examines some theoretical foundations and underlying assumptions of the resilience concept and highlights some challenges associated with practical application in urban locations. Most importantly, the chronic needs and root causes of vulnerability will remain unsolved and will continue to generate vulnerable groups as long as efforts to increase resilience ignore the preconditions and root causes of (what is effectively social and political) vulnerability. Building resilience in cities provides opportunities to address under-studied elements, to gain understanding about the historical and socio-political processes that create and maintain social vulnerabilities, and to develop designs capable of identifying options for intervention and leverage points that can move communities toward less vulnerable development pathways

Previous attentional set can induce an attentional blink with task-irrelevant initial targets

Identification of a second target is often impaired by the requirement to process a prior target in a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP). This is termed the attentional blink. Even when the first target is task-irrelevant an attentional blink may occur providing this first target shares similar features with the second target (contingent capture). An RSVP experiment was undertaken to assess whether this first target can still cause an attentional blink when it did not require a response and did not share any features with the following target. The results revealed that such task-irrelevant targets can induce an attentional blink providing that they were task-relevant on a previous block of trials. This suggests that irrelevant focal stimuli can distract attention on the basis of a previous attentional set

LACO-Wiki: A New Online Land Cover Validation Tool Demonstrated Using GlobeLand30 for Kenya

Accuracy assessment, also referred to as validation, is a key process in the workflow of developing a land cover map. To make this process open and transparent, we have developed a new online tool called LACO-Wiki, which encapsulates this process into a set of four simple steps including uploading a land cover map, creating a sample from the map, interpreting the sample with very high resolution satellite imagery and generating a report with accuracy measures. The aim of this paper is to present the main features of this new tool followed by an example of how it can be used for accuracy assessment of a land cover map. For the purpose of illustration, we have chosen GlobeLand30 for Kenya. Two different samples were interpreted by three individuals: one sample was provided by the GlobeLand30 team as part of their international efforts in validating GlobeLand30 with GEO (Group on Earth Observation) member states while a second sample was generated using LACO-Wiki. Using satellite imagery from Google Maps, Bing and Google Earth, the results show overall accuracies between 53% to 61%, which is lower than the global accuracy assessment of GlobeLand30 but may be reasonable given the complex landscapes found in Kenya. Statistical models were then fit to the data to determine what factors affect the agreement between the three interpreters such as the land cover class, the presence of very high resolution satellite imagery and the age of the image in relation to the baseline year for GlobeLand30 (2010). The results showed that all factors had a significant effect on the agreement