Interconnected risks, cascading disasters and disaster management policy: a gap analysis
GRF Davos Planet@Risk, Volume 3, Number 2, October 2015
This paper presents a background analysis of the changing structure of disasters, a policy based comparative analysis of (i) the 2011 tri-partite (earthquake, tsunami, nuclear) Tohoku disaster in Japan and (ii) the 2005 Hurricane Katrina that struck the southern coastal area (New Orleans area) of the United States and the formulations of new paradigms of policy, governance and management of disaster impacts across individual and inter-linked sectors.
The paper addresses “gaps” in existing governance, policies and procedures which are attributable to an overarching weakness in disaster management and disaster risk reduction i.e. the lack of integrated multi-sectoral risk assessments that provide a common actionable base of information and knowledge within and across selected impacted sectors. Equally important is a clear recognition of the spatial and temporal components of disasters across sectors.
The authors note that to address this deficiency there is a need to (i) better understand what constitutes the “new generation” of inter-linked disasters, (ii) how such disasters are evolving, transforming and impacting societies in complex and uncertain ways and (iii) what new modes of governance, disaster management and public-private cooperation will be required to address these gaps for the future.
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