An evaluation framework for earthquake-responsive land administration

In recent years earthquakes and their secondary hazards have claimed the largest number of lives of all large natural disasters. Some of the world’s most earthquake-prone zones are also areas of high population density. The impact is magnified by vulnerability factors including non-enforcement of building codes, knowledge gaps, urban poverty and poor governance capacity to manage and reduce earthquake risks. Poor security of land tenure and property rights increases the vulnerability of people and affects their ability to respond to natural disasters.Earthquake recovery and reconstruction provides very significant challenges for land agencies, with these challenges differing from one country to the next due to differences in the local context. Drawing on contrasting case studies in Haiti, Nepal and New Zealand this paper identifies the common post-earthquake land administration functions and challenges that may apply to many contexts. These lessons provide land agencies and other key stakeholders with a summary of the challenges an earthquake poses for land administration at different post-disaster stages. We also discuss the policy and regulatory, institutional, operational and preparedness lessons for land administration. From these lessons we propose a framework for evaluating the earthquake-responsiveness of a land administration system. This framework can be used by a land agency in an earthquake prone region, or where an earthquake has recently occurred, to assess what challenges to land administration might occur in the event of an earthquake, and the preparedness of their land administration system.     

日本地震经济恢复及其对中国经济影响预测

预测日本地震后的经济恢复情况及其对中国经济的影响具有重要的现实意义。考虑到巨灾从发生到重建过程中的相似性,首先利用历史上与本次地震相似的7次地震构建特定模型来进行预测;然后引入模糊数学的贴近度来确定对照地震的权值;最后根据模型预测的日本综合恢复度和单个经济指标的恢复度,详细地从制造业,能源和投资3个方面探讨了本次地震对于我国经济的影响。     

Should executives go to jail over cybersecurity breaches?

The Consumer Data Protection Act, a new bill introduced by Senator Ron Wyden, is proposing “jail time of up to 20 years for executives who knowingly sign off on incorrect or inaccurate annual certifications of their companies’ data-security practices.” The bill also recommends that companies be fined “up to 4 percent of their annual revenue.” While the critics consider the penalties too harsh and severe, the proposed legislation reflects two key realities – a) active involvement and commitment of senior management is essential to achieving a high level of cybersecurity preparedness; and b) legislation and fear of severe penalties (such as Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 and European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation) is often necessary to motivate desired organizational behavior. In an increasingly digital ecosystem characterized by high levels of electronic connectivity, vulnerability to cyberattacks is growing. Organizations are in a perpetual state of breach with rapidly expanding attack surfaces and evolving threat vectors. Protecting confidential data and related digital assets is becoming critical to survival and success. Senior management must come to terms with this new business reality and give strategic priority to cybersecurity preparedness and investments. Research finds active involvement of top management in cyber risk mitigation initiatives to be a critical success factor and best practice. The onus is also on senior management to create a high-performance security culture founded on three key cornerstones – commitment, preparedness, and discipline. They also must lead the charge in establishing a cybersecurity governance structure characterized by joint ownership, responsibility, and accountability.     

Collective efficacy and natural hazards: differing roles of social cohesion and task-specific efficacy in shaping risk and coping beliefs

Abstract

Previous research in non-disaster contexts has shown that the concept of collective efficacy, which is a group’s sense of its ability to achieve a specific objective, assists understanding of community readiness and households’ decisions to take preparedness actions. Collective efficacy expands the concept of social capital, which refers to social resources such as trust, norms and networks, by addressing how likely communities are to activate these resources for specific tasks. This paper empirically investigates the effect of three distinct collective efficacy components on risk perception, fear and self-efficacy regarding natural hazards in Austria. The three components have differing impacts on risk and coping beliefs: (1) Social cohesion decreases risk perception and fear but has no effect on self-efficacy; (2) Efficacy belief in social support increases self-efficacy; (3) Efficacy belief in citizen groups increases risk perception and fear. The combination of efficacy belief in social support and citizen groups seems to be most promising for stimulating protective action, as they together promote both risk and coping appraisal. However, overreliance on social support may have the undesirable effect of creating a false sense of safety among disaster-prone households. The findings demonstrate that collective efficacy provides a meaningful perspective from which to examine risk and coping beliefs but caution against treating it as an umbrella concept, given the differing effects of its components. Future studies are needed to investigate the impact of collective efficacy on other key explanatory factors of protective action, such as response efficacy or non-protective responses.     

Unexpected opportunity for girls: Earthquake,disaster relief and female education in China's poor counties

The Wenchuan earthquake in 2008 devastated poverty-stricken areas in Sichuan Province, China. This paper examines the long-term effect of a disastrous earthquake on children's educational attainment using China's 2015 Population Census. Our cohort difference-in-differences results show that exposure to an earthquake has an unexpected significant positive impact on girls’ educational attainment in poor counties, but not on boys. We suggest that this surprising educational gain may be attributable to the reconstruction of schools and the reduction in school fees after disaster. In the long run, girls in poor affected counties are more likely to delay marriage, postpone childbearing and become self-employed compared with girls in poor unaffected counties. These findings potentially exhibit the unintended benefits in education from post-disaster interventions in poor areas.     

“3．11”东日本大地震一周年之后日本社会的思想状况

“3．11东日本大地震”让我们反思的不仅仅是日本政府而是全世界对于核电以及核武器应该采取的态度,因为简单地将“3．11”和“8．15”联系在一起考虑蕴含着认识论上的危险。我们需要认真考虑大江健三郎所提到的“日本事实上的再度军备化”以及日本国民“对于美国核威慑力有效性的没有来由的信赖”,重新思考“日美安全保障条约体制”以及“日关原子力协定体制”。在此基础上,我们需要警惕“由政官产学媒组成的五角形构筑的关于安全神话的童话”。“3．11”之后日本民主党政权越发趋于保守,而正是因为处在这样一个时期。构筑真正意义上东亚长期的可持续的生活和安全的知识分子之间的交流实践是不可或缺且意义重大的。     

Living on the slopes: entrepreneurial preparedness in a context under continuous threat

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we examine how entrepreneurs living in communities under continuous threat prepare themselves to continue with their enterprising activities or engage in new ones after the expected crisis occurs. Most of the crisis literature on disasters and entrepreneurship focuses on aftermath responses, but the antecedents of such entrepreneurial behaviour and its connection to past and future crises remains largely unexplored. Based on a two-stage exploratory study pre and post the Calbuco Volcano eruptions in 2015 and 2016 in Chile, we introduce the notion of entrepreneurial preparedness in a context of continuous threat and elaborate on its four central attributes: anchored reflectiveness, situated experience, breaking through, and reaching out. Subsequently, our work develops a refined understanding of pre and post-disaster entrepreneurship and offers a novel base for theorizing on the relationship between entrepreneurial preparedness in contexts of continuous threat.     

心理还是实质:汶川地震对中国资本市场的影响

本文通过汶川地震这一独特自然事件,用公司与震中距离来衡量地震导致的投资者负面情绪(如焦虑和恐惧),研究汶川地震对中国资本市场造成的影响。与现有文献关于投资者情绪能够影响股票收益率的研究相一致,本文发现地震后12个月内(2008.6—2009.5),距离震中越近的公司,股票收益率越低。在控制了风险因素后,震中500公里以内的股票收益率显著为负,平均为每月-3%左右,而500公里以外的股票收益率不显著。并且公司与震中距离每增加1000公里,其年收益率平均升高3%。进一步分析发现,该现象地震前不存在,与系统风险的变化无关,并且不能由地震造成的实质经济损失来解释。总之,本文的研究表明汶川地震导致的投资者负面情绪能够影响股票收益率。     

汶川重建的“文化堕距”现象分析——基于社会影响评估的视角

对汶川地震灾后重建的社会影响进行评估有助于减少社会风险,增加社会效益,促进社会公平和谐.社会影响评估工作显示,灾后重建带来的快速社会变迁背景下,由于地震灾区物质文化和非物质文化变化速度的不一致产生了文化堕距,包括:城市空间扩张与市民旧有生活轨迹之间的失调、城市功能的增减与市民价值观之间的失调、产业结构的调整与市民原有的...