Disasters to come

Disasters occur from the impact of a variety of natural and technological hazards. This paper explores the kind of disasters we can expect in the coming century, the challenges they present to human societies, and suggests a few future coping strategies. It argues that some future disasters will occur as a result of slow onset of hazards such as Global Warming or Ozone Layer Damage. Other disasters will happen more rapidly, emerging from such human actions as terrorism and resource wars. We can expect future disasters to be increasingly large in scale due to the complexity of human society and the ever growing size and density of urban regions and the built environment.     

Identification and evaluation of risk factors related to provincial food insecurity in China

Understanding the risk factors which could cause provincial food insecurity is of great importance for maintaining China’s food security. In this research, fault-tree analysis has been used to identify risk sources and corresponding risk factors, and both the ratio and growth rate analysis method and the risk coefficient method have been used to evaluate the risk profile for each province. The results showed that constrained land resources and natural disasters were the most common risk factors and agricultural machinery inputs were the least frequent risk factor across all provinces. Fertilizer inputs were no longer a risk in 16 high-yielding provinces. Among natural disaster risks, floods mainly occurred in the eastern, northeastern, central, southern, and southwestern regions, with droughts predominately located in the northern, northeastern, western, and southwestern regions. Overall, natural disasters in major grain-producing provinces were much more serious than in other provinces. Methodical construction of agricultural infrastructure and building of early warning systems for natural disasters should be proposed to reduce losses due to natural disasters and policies on fertilizer application should shift from actively encouraging more use to controlling excess application. Those provinces that now are able to fulfill their food-security mandates should shift their focus to resource and environmental sustainability.     

Schöne Aussicht auf den Fluss? Wahrnehmung von Risiken aus Naturkatastrophen

Impacts of natural disasters have increased worldwide during the last decades. Facing the growing losses from natural hazards also in Germany, the question emerges how persons in likely affected areas perceive risks from natural hazards such as windstorm, flood, and earthquake. The everyday, ?intuitive“ perception of risks is basic for the individual, subjective assessment of natural risks. Consequently, perception and evaluation of risk is basic for behaviour in dangerous situations. It is also fundamental for decisions concerning preventive protective measurements. To be able to develop effective information and communication strategies and politics about natural risks, the perception and evaluation of these risks and influencing factors should be known. Therefore, the purpose of the study presented in this paper is to focus on the perception of storms, floods, and earthquakes and to study factors that influence risk perception. To study risk perception, a mail survey was conducted in summer 2001 in six regions of Germany which had been affected by windstorm, flood and / or earthquake within the last 30 years. Köln-Rodenkirchen, Passau, Karlsruhe, Neustadt/Donau, Albstadt and Rosenheim were selected as survey areas. In total, 450 persons responded the questionnaire. In the study a mixture of approaches to risk perception was applied, among them the psychometric paradigm. The project was conducted at the Institute for Insurance, Universität Karlsruhe (TH) and additionally funded by the Stiftung Umwelt und Schadenvorsorge der SV Versicherungen. The results show that storm, flood, and earthquake are rated heteroge-neously regarding their general dangerousness, several risk characteristics and attributions of causes. Personal characteristics, such as age, education level, and the experience of damage seem to play a role for the general risk rating. In addition, the risk perception of homeowners and tenants differs.     

Public awareness promoting new or emerging risks: Industrial accidents triggered by natural hazards (NaTech)

Dramatic natural events recently stroke several countries worldwide. The impact of the natural events on industrial sites often resulted in large releases of hazardous materials, causing severe technological accidents (Natural-Technological or NaTech events). Industrial operators were often found unprepared or off-guard for unannounced events but also when they had received early warnings. Due to these occurrences, public awareness has raised and the issue of NaTech is now considered as an emerging risk. Due to the climate change and increase in the frequency of some categories of natural disasters, the likelihood of NaTech scenarios is growing, thus NaTech may be also considered as a new risk in some areas of the world. In the present study, the process that ended in the awareness of the scientific community and of the general public toward NaTech has been analyzed. Available tools and knowledge gaps in the assessment of NaTech scenarios are evidenced. The analysis is mainly addressed to the potential impact of flood, lightning, and earthquake events on industrial installations where hazardous substances are present, aiming at the identification of strategies to improve the resilience of industrial facilities to technological accidents caused or intensified by natural hazards.     

A multi-attribute approach to assess homeland security risk

The United States Department of Homeland Security manages a wide spectrum of risks involving crime, terrorism, accidents, and natural disasters. This paper supports disaster management by identifying which attributes should be used to describe risks comprehensively and assessing the need to incorporate such multiattribute information into risk management processes. Attributes for describing homeland security risks were selected through a literature review. These attributes were then used in a risk assessment of homeland security hazards that informed risk ranking sessions conducted with members of the general public. The results taken together support the use of a range of attributes and perspectives. While aspects of life/health and economic damage were considered most important by both experts and the lay public, other attributes were of widespread importance, including attributes related to dread and uncertainty. These results demonstrate how to present risks in a deliberative risk management process and the importance of doing so using a complete set of attributes to describe the risks.     

Market response of US equities to domestic natural disasters: industry-based evidence

This study investigates US industry-based price response to domestic natural disasters over the period 1960–2015. Using an event study methodology, we estimate pre-, during and post-disaster impacts. We document a slower response in the pre-disaster period than in the post-disaster period. We further find that industries react differently to the same disaster and that reactions are not always negative. For example, meteorological disasters have a positive (negative) market impact on Gold (Banking). Moreover, we provide evidence that not every industry responds similarly to different disasters, e.g., Gold reacts positively (negatively) to meteorological (geophysical) disasters.     

A research and defects analysis of the disaster relief system of China

Disasters, whether natural or human-induced, bring great pressure to governments. Disaster relief work can reflect the features of a government and test its ability in this respect. This article analyzes the basic political structure on which the establishment of China’s disaster relief system is based and introduces some reform initiatives in disaster reduction that enhance the quick emergency response ability of governments. However, in view of the government feature of unitary responsiveness (U-form), it is doubtful whether such a government can pool resources to finish a ‘central task’ without ignoring many noncentral tasks. As a low-probability event, disaster relief is unlikely to become the central task of a government and thus tends to be ignored. Such neglect is strengthened by corruption, venality, and other unscrupulous behaviors resulting from the nexus between the government and businessmen and, radically, from the government’s U-form character. This U-form feature strengthens China’s ‘strong government-weak society’ structure, which becomes the leading cause of tense social contradictions and frequent violent conflicts. Therefore, the control of environmental hazards, epidemic transmission, food safety problems, mass disturbances, and other human-induced disasters depends fundamentally on the transition of the Chinese government from the unitary responsiveness to the multiple responsiveness.     

Exchange rate sensitivity of commodity flows between the Philippines and the US

Previous studies that tried to assess the impact of exchange rate changes on the inpayments and outpayments of a country used aggregate trade flows between two countries. They are said to suffer from aggregation bias, and disaggregation by industry is recommended. In this paper, we consider response to exchange rate changes of export earnings (inpayments) of 133 industries that export from the US to the Philippines (Philippines’ importing industries) and outpayments of 65 US industries (Philippines exporting industries) that import from the Philippines using annual data over the period 1973–2012. While in most industries exchange rate changes had significant effects in the short run, the short-run effects did not last into the long run in most industries. Economic activity played more role in the long run than the exchange rate.     

自然灾害对我国经济运行的影响分析

我国地广人多,地理环境复杂,是一个多自然灾害的国家。2010年以来,自然灾害频发,高于常年水平,给生产生活秩序和经济社会发展造成了巨大的损害,受到社会的广泛关注。本文拟对自然灾害产生的经济根源及其对宏观经济的影响进行分析,并提出相关政策建议。     

International portfolio flows and exchange rate volatility in emerging Asian markets

This paper investigates the effects of equity and bond portfolio inflows on exchange rate volatility using monthly bilateral data for the US vis-a-vis seven Asian developing and emerging countries (India, Indonesia, Pakistan, the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand) over the period 1993:01–2015:11. GARCH models and Markov switching specifications with time-varying transition probabilities are estimated in addition to a benchmark linear model. The evidence suggests that high (low) exchange rate volatility is associated with equity (bond) inflows from the Asian countries toward the US in all cases, with the exception of the Philippines. Therefore, capital controls could be an effective tool to stabilise the foreign exchange market in countries where flows affect exchange rate volatility.     

旱灾风险的特征及其防范研究——由西南旱灾和冬麦区大旱引发的思考

旱灾不是所有自然灾害中发生频率最高、等级最重,却是受灾人数最多、影响范围最广的一种自然灾害.旱灾的缓发性、后延性、复杂性特征,容易引发饥荒、贫困、政治冲突甚至社会动荡等风险,故旱灾的风险管理日益成为一个国家自然灾害管理或社会管理的重要内容.传统的"危机管理"模式对旱灾等自然灾害管理的作用有限,"综合风险防范"模式具有很...     

Naturkatastrophen und Versicherungsdeckung

Natural disasters are increasing all over the world; whether by the ever-stressed climate change or by the ever-growing mega-agglomerations where people and investments can be expected to suffer more and more damage from these catastrophes.Owing to the statistics of Swiss Reinsurance for the decade 2006 to 2015, the extent of the worldwide damage caused by natural catastrophes is visible, and likewise the small insured proportion of less than one third. By contrasting with the global gross domestic product the insurance industry covers significantly 0.063% of global GDP. The greater part of 0.157% must be borne by the injured parties themselves, if the government does not enter into a “lender of the last resort”.The following section examines the limits to which the insurance industry is subject, how it can expand the cover through risk-selection and reinsurance, and which are the natural disasters that show limits in the insurance sector.Finally, the alternative is to introduce risk transfer, where the capital market acts as a risk bearer, and to joint ventures of countries forming a kind of mutual insurance association in order to obtain more cash resources for their budgets immediately after disasters, and then to provide the necessary emergency measures.     

A GIS-based tool for the management of industrial accidents triggered by volcanic ash fallouts

In this last decade, worldwide attention has been focused on the hazards derived from the interaction between extreme natural phenomena and critical infrastructures and/or chemical and process industry (natural–technological hazards or Na-Tech). Due to the recent occurrence of significant events, great attention has also been given to Na-Tech hazards triggered by volcanic eruptions; in particular, the eruption of the Icelandic volcano alarmed the European community due to the ash fallout over the continent, which caused significant problems for the population, road, rail and air traffic and production activities. This study aims at defining a procedure for the representation of the vulnerability of industrial facilities to potential volcanic ash fallouts. Its implementation on a Geographical Information System has also been executed and a semi-automatic procedure for the vulnerability mapping has been constructed.     

A composite indicator model to assess natural disaster risks in industry on a spatial level

In the event of natural disasters, industrial production sites can be affected by both direct physical damage and indirect damage. The indirect damage, which often exceeds the direct ones in value, mainly arises from business interruptions resulting from the impairment of information and material flows as well as from domino effects in interlaced supply chains. The importance of industry for society and the domino effects often result in severe economic, social, and environmental consequences of industrial disasters making industrial risk management an important task for risk managers at the administrative level (e.g. civil protection authorities). Since the possible industrial disaster damage depends not only on hazard and exposure but also on the vulnerability of a system, an effective and efficient industrial risk management requires information about the system’s regionalized vulnerability. This paper presents a new methodology for structural industrial vulnerability assessment based on production factors that enables to assess the regional industrial disaster vulnerability. In order to capture industry-specific vulnerability factors and to account for the processes underlying regional industrial vulnerability, a two-stage approach is developed. This approach combines a composite indicator model to assess sector-specific vulnerability indices (V_s) with a new regionalization method. The composite indicator model is based on methodologies from the field of multicriteria decision analysis (MultiAttribute Value Theory) and the Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory Method is applied to correct the (V_s) for interdependencies among the indicators. Finally, the developed approach is applied to an exemplar case study and the industrial vulnerability of 44 administrative districts in the German federal state of Baden-Wuerttemberg is assessed.     

美国洪水保险计划的运营启示

在我国,洪水灾害是主要的自然灾害之一。然而,洪水保险制度却迟迟未能建立。本文搜集和分析有关美国洪水保险计划(NFIP)的最新文献,对以NFIP为代表的政府主导洪水保险运营模式进行了历史脉络的梳理,研究了其法制发展、运营现状、模式特色以及出现的问题,最后对洪水保险的政府运营模式进行了启发式的总结和建议。     

The prospect of online communication in the event of a disaster

In modern society, enormous amounts of information are instantly exchanged, and topics shift rapidly. People desire and share information to foster a sense of membership in their societies. The trend of Internet communication is present in many types of groups. During the circumstances of disasters, the 2011 Great East Japan earthquake and Tsunami and Typhoon Haiyan (local name, Yolanda) in the Philippines in 2013, social networking services (SNS) constituted a considerably effective method for sharing/exchanging information about the significance of the disaster, confirming family members’ and friends’ whereabouts, locating shelters, relief, food and goods rationing, and so on. Not only did individuals seek/provide information, but government agencies also utilized the social media channels to communicate with the public. Hence, developing and adopting communication in a virtual space were considerably effective for decision-makers in providing emergency services. This study examined SNS users’ accounts based on discretionary decisions during two major disasters: the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami in 2011 and Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines in 2013. In the case of the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami in 2011, government agencies and NPOs actively utilized SNS functions, whereas the mass media distributed information during Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines in 2013.     

Financial reporting consequences of natural disasters: Evidence from the impact of resource constraints at audit offices on non-affected clients

Disaster-affected clients demand significant additional effort from their audit office, and hence strain the audit office’s resources available to other non-disaster-affected clients. We consider audit offices with disaster-affected clients to be strained offices and find that, compared with clients audited by non-strained audit offices, non-disaster-affected clients audited by strained audit offices are more likely to have their financial statements restated. This result suggests the financial reporting quality of companies not directly exposed to disasters could also be negatively affected by the disasters, due to their auditors’ strained-resource issue. We further find such a negative effect is more pronounced when the degree of resource constraints is greater and when the audit office lacks client experience or industry expertise. We offer novel evidence of financial reporting consequences of natural disasters, focusing on the externality of disasters on companies not directly affected by disasters. The findings have important implications for regulators in making disaster-related policies, for auditors in managing their client portfolios, and for companies in making auditor choice decisions.     

西部民族地区国内旅游发展空间格局分析

旅游业的发展对西部民族地区经济结构带来了较大的影响,改变着西部民族地区经济发展的格局。从西部民族地区国内旅游收入的分布趋势看,西南省区明显高于西北省区,从人均旅游消费的分布趋势来看,西北省区高于西南省区。由于国内经济的变化,游客的旅游动机发生了比较明显的变化,观光旅游已经不再成为最重要的旅游方式。从国内旅游需求增长空间格局来看,云南、广西和贵州在西部民族地区旅游发展中处于排头位置。目前,西部民族地区旅游发展空间格局形成过程中,还存在着许多问题。综合考量,西部民族地区国内旅游发展将会形成新的潜力空间区域,在旅游发展空间优化过程中应走跨越式发展道路、坚持政府主导战略、创新深化旅游产品。     

构建实现中部经济跨越式发展的金融支撑平台

中部指湖北、湖南、河南、安徽和江西五省,在我国总体经济发展格局中具有重要地位.本文通过对中部五省的金融资源状况进行省际与市际比较后认为,构建中部金融支撑平台是从金融途径取得跨越式发展的途径之一;同时指出,由于武汉在中部五省经济金融中具有特殊重要的地位,建立以武汉为中心的中部发展金融支撑平台具有现实意义.作者在对金融支撑平台建立的总体构思进行定性描述之后,从建立武汉为中心的区域金融控股体系,建立以郑州商品期货交易市场为依托的武汉股指期货交易平台,注重体外循环资金平台的利用,建立中部五省统一的网络化金融服务平台四个方面详细阐述了具体策略的实施.     

The impact and the contagion effect of natural disasters on sovereign credit risk. An empirical investigation

This paper investigates the relationship between natural disasters and the reaction of sovereign CDS spread in Europe. By applying an event study methodology during the period January 2007–December 2021 on an original database in which we identify 92 natural disasters in 17 European countries, we assess the reaction of the sovereign CDS market to a natural disaster. We find a heterogeneous response of the European sovereign risk to a natural disaster, as the response of the sovereign CDS market differs from region to region. The advent of a natural disaster can increase inequality between the regions due to the higher cost of credit for sovereigns and the reduced scope for manoeuvring public finances. Also, the results of the contagion effect confirm the hypothesis of a cross-border propagation effect, as natural disaster, in general, is not local event but spreads to other countries.