Disaster Culture

Roland Emmerich's disaster blockbuster The Day After Tomorrow appeals to both rational thinking and emotions as it tells its tale of abrupt and catastrophic climate change, turning current perceptions of risk—anticipated catastrophes, as Ulrich Beck calls them—into audio-visual spectacles that have a direct visceral effect on the viewer. The essay draws connections between five independently conducted audience response studies in the United States, Britain, Germany, and Japan on the one hand, and cognitive approaches to film studies on the other, in order to develop a more comprehensive understanding of how, exactly, The Day After Tomorrow interacts with its viewers’ emotions, perceptions, and cognitions. Emmerich’s film engages its viewers emotionally in both its melodramatic plotline and the mind-boggling spectacle of “natural” disaster. The basic information about climate change it communicates between the lines is thus infused with affect and likely to make an impact on viewers’ perception and cognitive understanding of the issue.

Spike Lee's four-hour HBO documentary film When the Levees Broke about Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath uses the tragic events around the storm as an occasion to consider the continued significance of race and class in the inequitable distribution of environmental hazards in the United States, while at the same time celebrating traditional New Orleans culture. Lee's film gives voice to those who were directly affected by the Katrina disaster and reminds us that for historical and socio-political reasons African-American and other minority perspectives on issues of sustainability are necessarily different from those of mainstream environmentalists. Through its powerful presentation of these alternative perspectives and needs, When the Levees Broke raises awareness for the fact that any concept for a “sustainable” New Orleans that does not address the enormous class and race-based inequities within the city will be unjust and thus fundamentally flawed.

Fire is one of the common disasters in Indonesia especially in many big cities including capital city of Indonesia, Jakarta. Although it is considered as human error factor and happened incidentally but fire has become a disaster because its effect to many aspect of community life. It also usually happens in high density area with low social-economic status. Thus, this intervention intends to empower vulnerable community against fire hazard. Research focuses at the aspect of preparedness based on social-cognitive model (Paton, 2006). It is used to elaborate the factors of intention to prepare including critical awareness, sense of community, action coping, and outcome expectancy of the community as the basic to design an intervention in order to develop a proper form of risk communication that match with local community need. Then, vulnerability and capacity assessment technique is used to obtain the whole picture about community’s vulnerabilities and capacities. Intervention strate...

Research has shown that in the recent years disaster incidents are increasing rapidly all over the world. Natural disasters -geologic, climatic and biological hazards (e.g. earthquake, landslides, volcanic eruptions, windstorms, floods, viral epidemics etc) or anthropogenic disasters (such as industrial hazard contaminations, fire disasters, terror attacks etc) can strike anywhere without notice. Disasters inflict damages to people, infrastructure and generally stagnate development process. In many countries, advanced technologies are applied for disaster management. In many cases, technologies for disaster management are beyond the ability of common people. The main objective of this paper is to develop a simple, cost effective, and community friendly model that simplifies information flow in disaster management. This paper is developed based on principles of biomimicry (learning from nature), and integration of information and communications technology to design a framework for co...

Sixteen years have passed since the last global volcanic event and more than 25 since a volcanic catastrophe that killed tens of thousands. In this time, volcanology has seen major advances in understanding, modelling and predicting volcanic hazards and, recently, an interest in techniques for reducing and mitigating volcanic risk. This paper provides a synthesis of literature relating to this last aspect, specifically the communication of volcanic risk, with a view to highlighting areas of future research into encouraging risk-reducing behaviour. Evidence suggests that the current ‘multidisciplinary’ approach within physical science needs a broader scope to include sociological knowledge and techniques. Key areas where this approach might be applied are: (1) the understanding of the incentives that make governments and communities act to reduce volcanic risk; (2) improving the communication of volcanic uncertainties in volcanic emergency management and long-term planning and develo...

This article addresses urban reconstruction in Bihar after the 1934 Bihar-Nepal earthquake by arguing that the aftermath became an opportunity for the local government to implement town planning according to ideas of urban improvements guiding sanitation, engineering and control of spaces since the late nineteenth century in colonial India. While earthquake safety surfaced as a central aim of town planning, the local government used the reconstruction phase to improve sanitation facilities, widen roads and restructure plots in bazaars of the three worst affected towns—Monghyr, Darbhanga and Muzaffarpur.

Aquaculture-dependent households in Bireuen District, Aceh, Indonesia, have in recent years endured repeated, diverse shocks; multiple economic shocks, shrimp disease, civil war and the 2004 Asian tsunami. Following the tsunami, extensive international aid efforts were directed at aquaculture pond rehabilitation. Yet, the pitfalls of simply recreating a system that was run down, underperforming and environmentally damaging due to the ongoing effects of multiple previous shocks are clear. Research reported here is one ...

Le catastrofi hanno spesso un'incubazione molto lunga e più di un responsa-bile. Per queste ragioni non è possibile cogliere la complessità della vicenda giudiziaria conseguente al terremoto dell'Aquila se non si mettono da parte gli eccessi di semplificazione, i pregiudizi e la frettolosa ricerca di colpevoli. Questo volume si rivolge a chiunque abbia a cuore i problemi connessi alla gestione dei rischi naturali e le conoscenze necessarie per evitare che in fu-turo questi possano convertirsi in disastri. La condanna in primo grado dei sette esperti che parteciparono alla riunione della " Grandi Rischi " e l'assoluzione in appello per sei di loro evidenziano un problema che non riguarda solo la solidità dell'impianto accusatorio, ma an-che il delicato rapporto tra scienza e giurisprudenza, tra attese dei cittadini esposti ai rischi e istituzioni chiamate a gestirli, tra percezione del rischio e azioni per ridurlo, tra operatori dei media e comunicazione ist...