Societal Response to Hurricane Mitch and Intra‐ versus Intergenerational Equity Issues: Whose Norms Should Apply?

Late in the 1998 hurricane season, Central America was slammed by a devastating hurricane. Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Belize were greatly impacted by Hurricane Mitch, one of the deadliest storms to affect the region in the past 200 years. The economies of each of these countries were badly affected. In the case of Honduras — at the time the fourth‐poorest country in Latin America — its president suggested that 50 years of progress had been wiped out by the floods and mudslides associated with this relatively short‐lived storm system. Humanitarian assistance poured into the region in the first months following the disaster. As of mid‐2000, various national, bilateral, international, and nongovernmental programs were in progress or on the drawing board for recovery, reconstruction, and renewed development of the worst affected countries. Using Honduras as a case study, some of the ethical issues that abound in the decisions of whom to help, when, and how to help them in the wake of such an extreme climate‐related human tragedy are examined. Should development assistance be focused on those who have been directly and adversely affected by this storm, or should the emphasis be on reducing the risk of exposure by future generations to such disasters? Is there yet another approach that seeks to protect future generations from similar harm while at the same time assisting present‐day victims to get through their hardships?     

灿烂的传统潮文化

中国古代发达的海洋文化中,潮文化占有较大比重,且历史悠久。古代潮文化中,"潮"词含义广泛,并非仅指周期潮汐,还指非周期的潮灾。潮灾主要是风暴潮,但也包括海啸(津浪)。周期性潮汐包括普通的潮汐和暴涨潮(涌潮),而普通的潮汐又包括"天文潮"与"地理潮"。此外,除了潮汐,还包括大海中的"潮流"。在古代,潮文化对沿海资源开发、农业、减灾、航海、战争、科学技术、文学艺术、生活习俗、旅游、宗教、哲学等方面均有广泛而深刻的影响。     

飞虫走蝶入诗来——诗与昆虫

中国是诗的国度,在数千年的文明史中,一代代的文人雅士,创造了无数脍炙人口的诗词歌赋(本文统称为诗)。通过对千余篇古诗词的搜索,筛选出有关昆虫的诗句,从形态结构、生活习性、对人类的影响三个方面进行了分类归纳。     

万物关联的断裂：灾难的心智根源

从人类生态系统理论和贝特森元关联理论,可以拓展出万物关联生态体系概念以及相关的生态理论范式,并由此分析产生灾难的心智根源;灾难表现为生态系统结构的断裂,是一系列生态要素的连锁反应甚至剧变,涉及诸多因素的干扰,是一个极为复杂的过程,但是其深层根源却是错误的人类生态观。需要建立“以生命为本”的价值取向,建设人文生态,优化元关联的生态体系,这是避免灾难或者从灾难迅速恢复的根本途径。     

Disaster Management from a POM Perspective: Mapping a New Domain

We have reviewed disaster management research papers published in major operations management, management science, operations research, supply chain management and transportation/logistics journals. In reviewing these studies, our objective is to assess and present the macro level “architectural blue print” of disaster management research with the hope that it will attract new researchers and motivate established researchers to contribute to this important field. The secondary objective is to bring this disaster research to the attention of disaster administrators so that disasters are managed more efficiently and more effectively. We have mapped the disaster management research on the following five attributes of a disaster: (1) Disaster Management Function (decision‐making process, prevention and mitigation, evacuation, humanitarian logistics, casualty management, and recovery and restoration), (2) Time of Disaster (before, during and after), (3) Type of Disaster (accidents, earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, landslides, terrorism and wildfires etc.), (4) Data Type (Field and Archival data, Real data and Hypothetical data), and (5) Data Analysis Technique (bidding models, decision analysis, expert systems, fuzzy system analysis, game theory, heuristics, mathematical programming, network flow models, queueing theory, simulation and statistical analysis). We have done cross tabulations of data among these five parameters to gain greater insights into disaster research. Recommendations for future research are provided.     

生产安全事故与自然灾害信息对中国股票市场影响的实证研究

采用事件研究法以2003～2013年间中国上市公司118个关于受生产安全事故、自然灾害影响的公告为样本实证研究了此类事件对中国股票市场的影响。研究结果表明：（1）相比牛市而言,熊市环境下事故灾害对股市产生影响的持续时间更长;（2）生产安全事故比自然灾害对股市的影响更大,自然灾害对股市呈现分阶段的影响;（3）不同行业受事故灾害的影响程度各不相同,电力、热力、燃气及水生产和供应业几乎不受负面影响;（4）同等严重程度的事故灾害信息的披露对小规模公司所产生的短期影响要大于大规模公司,但其对大规模公司的影响时间更持久。     

Ngā Mōwaho: an analysis of Māori responses to the Christchurch earthquakes

Since September 2010, a series of earthquakes have caused widespread social, financial and environmental devastation in Christchurch, New Zealand. Anecdotal evidence suggests that local Māori responded effectively to facilitate community recovery and resilience. However, the form, content and extent of that response has not been adequately recognised or documented. This qualitative research project, conducted in partnership with Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu, has documented the way in which Māori cultural factors have facilitated disaster risk reduction and management in response to the earthquakes. This paper explores sets of understandings about marginalisation and inclusion within the narratives of 70 Māori community members who contributed to this research. Forms of marginalisation expressed in participants’ narratives include delayed linkages to the formal emergency management infrastructure, difficulties integrating Māori volunteers into the mainstream response as well as enduring barriers to Māori engagement within Civil Defence, illustrated in a lack of Māori representation as well as tikanga Māori within emergency planning. We argue that the knowledge, principles and practices embedded within Māori responses to the Christchurch earthquakes may be contextually relevant for national and regional policy development in the area of disaster risk management, response and recovery.     

1949—1966年间中国红十字会的主要活动及其特点

新中国成立之后,在中央人民政府的领导下,中国红十字会进行了改组。1949—1966年间,中国红十字会在医疗卫生、战地救护、灾害救助、战后问题处理等领域开展了大量活动,对于国家的经济社会建设起到了重要促进作用。归纳这时期中国红十字会活动开展的特点有：国内活动侧重于医疗卫生领域;积极实施国际救助并参与国际事务处理;活动开展的行政化色彩比较浓重。     

Disaster and Development Paradigms: Too Close for Comfort?

The familiar distinctions between the disaster and development paradigms have become increasingly blurred. Yet, conceptual and policy dilemmas continue to pose challenges for the integration of the two paradigms into a single framework. Drawing on the literature and Ethiopia's Institutional Support Project, this article argues that the increased convergence of the two constructs may be too close for comfort, thus rendering the assertion that disaster‐risk reduction can help achieve sustainable development and vice versa mere rhetoric. Unless there is a shift from focusing on the hazard event to also recognising that disasters are not politically neutral, there is a danger of being locked into the hazard paradigm, despite the different labels, titles or metaphors that may be assigned to it.     

Partition models

Product partition models assume that observations in different components of a random partition of the data are independent given the partition. If the probability distribution of random partitions is in a certain product form prior to making the observations, it is also in product form given the observations. The product model thus provides a convenient machinery for allowing the data to weight the partitions likely to hold; and inference about particular future observations may then be made by first conditioning on the partition, and then averaging over all partitions. This model is applied to fatalities in manned rocket launches, using data from the SOYUZ, APOLLO, SHUTTLE, and post-Challenger SHUTTLE programs in the Soviet Union and the United States. The combination of these data suggest that the chance of a fatality in the next shuttle, launch is about .03, after allowing for the possibility that the older programs are of slight relevance to the present shuttle program.