Disaster prevention,disaster preparedness and local community resilience within the context of disaster risk management in Cameroon

This paper presents a simulation of three components of near-field ground shaking recorded during the main shock at three stations of the September 16, 1978, Tabas (M _w = 7.4), Iran, earthquake, close to the causative fault. A hybrid method composed of a discrete wavenumber method developed by Bouchon (Bouchon in Bull Seismol Soc Am 71:959–971, 1981; Cotton and Coutant in Geophys J Int 128:676–688, 1997) and a stochastic finite-fault modeling based on a dynamic corner frequency proposed by Motazedian and Atkinson (Bull Seismol Soc Am 95:995–1010, 2005), modified by Assatourians and Atkinson (Bull Seismol Soc Am 97:935–1949, 2007), is used for generating the seismograms at low (0.1–1.0 Hz) and high frequencies (1.0–20.0 Hz), respectively. The results are validated by comparing the simulated peak acceleration, peak velocity, peak displacement, Arias intensity, the integral of velocity squared, Fourier spectrum and acceleration response spectrum on a frequency-by-frequency basis, the shape of the normalized integrals of acceleration and velocity squared, and the cross-correlation with the observed time-series data. Each characteristic is compared on a scale from 0 to 10, with 10 being perfect agreement. Also, the results are validated by comparing the simulated ground motions with the modified Mercalli intensity observations reported by reconnaissance teams and showed reasonable agreement. The results of the present study imply that the damage distribution pattern of the 1978 Tabas earthquake can be explained by the source directivity effect.     

Disaster preparedness of local governments in Panay Island,Philippines

Disaster preparedness plans reduce future damages, but may lack testing to assess their effectiveness in operation. This study used the state-designed Local Government Unit Disaster Preparedness Journal: Checklist of Minimum Actions for Mayors in assessing the readiness to natural hazards of 92 profiled municipalities in central Philippines inhabited by 2.4 million people. Anchored on the Hyogo Framework for Action 2005–2015, it assessed their preparedness in 4 criteria—systems and structures, policies and plans, building competencies, and equipment and supplies. Data were analyzed using statistical package for social sciences, frequency count, percentage, and weighted mean. The local governments were found highly vulnerable to tropical cyclone and flood while vulnerable to earthquake, drought, and landslide. They were partially prepared regardless of profile, but the coastal, middle-earning, most populated, having the least number of villages, and middle-sized had higher levels of preparedness. Those highly vulnerable to earthquake and forest fire were prepared, yet only partially prepared to flood, storm surge, drought, tropical cyclone, tornado, tsunami and landslide. The diverse attitude of stakeholders, insufficient manpower, and poor database management were the major problems encountered in executing countermeasures. Appointing full-time disaster managers, developing a disaster information management system, massive information drive, organizing village-based volunteers, integrating disaster management into formal education, and mandatory trainings for officials, preparing for a possible major volcanic eruption and crafting a comprehensive plan against emerging emergencies like the COVID-19 pandemic may lead to a 360° preparedness.

     

Children in disasters: the role of household preparedness

To increase children’s resilience to disasters, it is important to expand our understanding of what increases their vulnerability. One household factor that has been tied to disaster resilience in general is the extent to which households have prepared themselves. In the context of wildfire preparedness, the current study examined whether households with very young, young, or teenage children differ in the extent to which they prepare their household compared to childless households. A two-wave survey study amongst Australian residents of wildfire-prone areas (N _wave1 = 998, N _wave2 = 514) found that households with young (under twelve years old) and very young (under six years old) children had prepared their properties less for wildfires compared to childless households at the start of the wildfire season, but they had caught up in property preparedness by the end of it. However, households with younger children also performed fewer disaster-planning actions than childless households. This difference remained significant throughout the season. The former group also reported lower motivation to prepare, greater perceived difficulty in preparing, and greater lack of time to prepare than childless households. The majority of these findings were explained by the younger age of the adult parents rather than the presence of younger children per se. An exception was that those with young and very young children reported a greater lack of time to prepare than childless adults of a similar age. We discuss practice and public policy implications that follow from this research.     

Disaster resilience in a flood-impacted rural Australian town

This paper reports exploratory research conducted in a flood-impacted rural Australian town to identify the factors which residents perceived as supporting community resilience to disaster. There is a gap in this research area centred in the Australian disaster context. Since Australia is predicted to be highly impacted by the effects of climate change in the form of an increased incidence of flooding, an urgent need exists to examine the factors that confer resilience to disaster-impacted localities to inform suitable disaster mitigation and adaptation policies for the future. Because of the complexity of community resilience and its interrelationship with individual resilience, a multi-method approach was used: a demographic study to assess community stability and functioning before and after the flood disaster, focus group interviews to obtain from community members their views on what supported them and their community resilience and a survey to generalise the interview findings. Our operating hypothesis was that individuals remaining in the town post-flood were likely to be resilient to the flood disaster. The demographic study results pointed to a resilient community after the floods as they reflected stability in population numbers and socio-economic indicators. The interviews and survey showed that individual resilience was promoted by social connectedness and a sense of place, a factor that was also negatively linked to the desire to relocate from the community. The use of structural equation modelling of our results provided verification of prior research findings about the role of sense of place in supporting individuals’ resilience. Results are discussed in the context of future climate change adaptation policy.     

A model of household preparedness for earthquakes: how individuals make meaning of earthquake information and how this influences preparedness

One way to reduce the risk from earthquakes is for individuals to undertake preparations for earthquakes at home. Common preparation measures include gathering together survival items, undertaking mitigation actions, developing a household emergency plan, gaining survival skills or participating in wider social preparedness actions. While current earthquake education programmes advocate that people undertake a variety of these activities, actual household preparedness remains at modest levels. Effective earthquake education is inhibited by an incomplete understanding of how the preparedness process works. Previous research has focused on understanding the influence individual cognitive processes have on the earthquake preparedness process but has been limited in identifying other influences posed by the wider social contextual environment. This project used a symbolic interactionism perspective to explore the earthquake preparedness process through a series of qualitative interviews with householders in three New Zealand urban locations. It investigated earthquake information that individuals are exposed to, how people make meaning of this information and how this relates to undertaking actual preparedness measures. During the study, the relative influence of cognitive, emotive and societal factors on the preparedness process was explored and the interactions between these identified. A model of the preparedness process based on the interviews was developed and is presented in this paper.     

Gold Mineralization at the Kyaukpahto Mine Area, Northern Myanmar

Abstract. Gold mineralization at Kyaukpahto occurs as a stockworks/dissemination style with localized breccia zones in silicified sandstones of the Male Formation (Eocene). The mineralization appears to be closely associated with NNE-SSW trending extensional faults probably related directly to the dextral movement of the Sagaing Fault system. Intense silicifica-tion associated with sericitization, argillic alteration and decalcification is recognized in the Kyaukpahto gold deposit. The important ore minerals associated with the gold mineralization are pyrite, arsenopyrite and chalcopyrite with minor amounts of other sulfides. Gold occurs as free particles or locked with pyrite, arsenopyrite, chalcopyrite and tetrahedrite. Silver, copper, arsenic and antimony particularly appear to be good pathfinders and the best geochemical indicators of gold mineralization at Kyaukpahto. Electron microprobe analysis indicates that the fineness for the native gold ranges from 844 to 866. Present geological, mineralogical and geochemical investigations demonstrate that the Kyaukpahto gold deposit has been formed as a result of hydrothermal processes in a shallow level epithermal environment.     

Disaster community resilience assessment method: a consensus-based Delphi and AHP approach

Natural Hazards - Several studies have highlighted the importance of community resilience in disaster management. The paper focuses on Saudi Arabia and proposes a ‘community resilience to...     

Conceptualising and measuring psychological preparedness for disaster: The Psychological Preparedness for Disaster Threat Scale

Natural Hazards - Most research on household disaster preparedness has focussed on physical, or material, preparation. Recently, researchers have turned attention to investigating psychological, or...     

Exploring disaster preparedness of students at university in Bangladesh

Natural Hazards - Adequate and effective disaster preparedness in each sector is indispensable to abate disaster impacts and intensify disaster resilience in Bangladesh for achieving sustainable...     

缅甸克钦邦片马地区钨钼矿床特征及找矿标志

缅甸克钦邦果敢地区钨钼矿大地构造位于冈瓦纳和亲冈瓦纳大陆陆块群中缅马陆块群(亲冈瓦纳型)腾冲-毛淡棉微陆块内,成矿区带位于位于中国西南三江-东南亚巨型成矿带腾冲-毛淡棉以锡钨和稀有金属为主的成矿亚带贡山-腾冲锡、钨、钼、铁、铜铅锌成矿带中。钨钼矿体主要产于燕山期黑云母二长花岗岩岩体内构造破碎带内,矿体多呈脉状、侵染状或透镜状。矿石多浸染状矿石及热液脉型矿石,构造裂隙内以细脉状矿石最为主。矿体围岩蚀变为硅化、黄铁矿化,矿床成因类型属岩浆期后热液石英脉型。     

Myanmar and Asia united,Australia left behind long ago

It is well known that western Myanmar is underlain by a continental fragment, the West Burma Block, but there are arguments about its origin and the time of its arrival in SE Asia. This study presents the first petrological, XRD diffraction, heavy mineral and detrital zircon U-Pb age data from turbidite sandstones in the Chin Hills that were deposited on West Burma crust in the Triassic. These sandstones contain detritus derived from areas surrounding West Burma and thus help resolve arguments about its location in the Palaeozoic and Mesozoic. West Burma, Sibumasu and Western Australia have similar populations of Archean zircons derived from Western Australian cratons. Until the Devonian all formed part of the Gondwana supercontinent. The abundance of Archean zircons decreases from Western Australia to West Burma and then to Sibumasu. This is consistent with their relative positions in the Gondwana margin, with Sibumasu furthest outboard from Western Australia. Differences in zircon populations indicate that Indochina was not close to West Burma or Sibumasu in Gondwana. West Burma contains abundant Permian and Triassic zircons. These are unknown in Western Australia and different from those of the Carnarvon Basin; they were probably derived from SE Asian tin belt granitoids. Cr spinel is present in most West Burma sandstones; it is common in SE Asia but rare in Western Australia. These new data show that West Burma was part of SE Asia before the Mesozoic and support suggestions that the Argo block that rifted in the Jurassic is not West Burma.     

Structures,uplift, and magmatism of the Western Myanmar Arc: Constraints to mid-Cretaceous-Paleogene tectonic evolution of the western Myanmar continental margin

Knowledge of Trans-Himalayan tectono-magmatic evolution is critical to understanding the complex pre-collisional history of southern Eurasia active continental margin. It has been proposed that magmatic rocks of the Trans-Himalayan batholith, extending from southern Tibet to Southeast Asia, are now exposed as the Western Myanmar Arc and Central Granite Belt in Myanmar, yet origin, emplacement, and relationships of the two juxtaposed belts remain poorly constrained. In this study, 2D seismic and drilling data for the Western Myanmar Arc, zircon U-Pb age and Hf isotope and whole-rock geochemical data for magmatic rocks from the arc have been applied. Our seismic profiles, borehole stratigraphic sequences and zircon U-Pb data show that a typical arc-basin system was well developed along the western Myanmar continental margin. The magmatic arc has experienced at least three igneous events in the mid-Cretaceous (110–90 Ma), latest Cretaceous-Early Paleocene (69–64.5 Ma) and Eocene (53–38 Ma), as well as three associated uplift processes in the Late Cretaceous, Eocene and Late Oligocene. Whole-rock geochemical characteristics and zircons showing variable but predominately positive ε_Hf(t) values, suggest a significant juvenile mantle source involving a proportion of ancient subducted sediments and juvenile crustal materials for these typical arc-related magmatic rocks. The identification of mid-Cretaceous to Paleogene magmatic rocks having positive ε_Hf(t) values from the Western Myanmar Arc: 1) indicates that the magmatism can be correlated with the Gangdese arc within the Lhasa terrane of the southern Tibetan Plateau; 2) provides evidence for the proximal-derived model that Paleogene sediments in the Central Myanmar Basin were from the Western Myanmar Arc, but were not delivered by the paleo-Yarlung Tsangpo-Irrawaddy river system from the Gangdese arc; and 3) enables a model of eastward subduction of the Neo-Tethyan/Indian oceanic crust to reflect onset of the magmatism at the mid-Cretaceous and a long-existed back-arc extension in western Myanmar.     

Magma Mixing of the Late Paleozoic Tayuan Complex in the Xing’an Block

Mesozoic ophiolites crop out discontinuously in the Indo‐Myanmar Ranges in NE India and Myanmar, and represent the remnants of the Neotethyan oceanic lithosphere. These ophiolites in the Indo‐Myanmar Ranges are the southern continuation of the Neotethyan ophiolites occurring along the Yarlung Zangbo Suture Zone in southern Tibet farther northwes, as indicated by their coeval crystallization ages and geochemical compositions. The Kalaymyo ophiolite is located in the central part of the Indo‐Myanmar Ranges (Myanmar). The Kalaymyo ophiolite are composed of olivine (Fo = 89.8–90.5), orthopyroxene (En86‐91Wo1‐4Fs8‐10; Mg#=89.6–91.9), clinopyroxene (En46‐49Wo47‐50Fs3‐5; Mg# = 90.9–93.6) and spinel (Mg# = 67.1–78.9; Cr# = 13.5–31.5), and have relatively homogeneous whole‐rock compositions with Mg# of 90.1–90.8 and SiO2 (41.5–43.65 wt.%), Al₂O₃ (1.66–2.66 wt.%) and CaO (1.45–2.67 wt.%) contents. They display Light Rare Earth Element (LREE)‐depleted chondrite‐normalized REE patterns and show a slight enrichment from Pr to La. The Kalaymyo peridotites are characterized by Pd‐enriched chondrite‐normalized PGE patterns with superchondritic (Pd/Ir)_CN ratios (1.15–2.36). Their calculated oxygen fugacities range between QFM–0.57 and QFM+0.90. These features collectively suggest that the Kalaymyo peridotites represent residual upper mantle rocks after low to moderate degrees (5–15%) of partial melting at a mid‐ocean‐ridge environment. The observed enrichment in LREE and Pd was a result of their reactions with enriched MORB‐like melts, percolating through these already depleted, residual peridotites. The Kalaymyo and other ophiolites in the Indo‐Myanmar Ranges hence represent mid‐ocean ridge–type Tethyan oceanic lithosphere derived from a downgoing plate and accreted into a westward migrating subduction–accretion system along the eastern margin of India.     

Reconstruction of activity areas at a formative household in northwest Argentina

This paper analyzes the spatial pattern of landscapes and domestic unit activity areas at an archaeological site in northwest Argentina. The site is on a cone glacis in the Tafí Valley on the east side of Aconquija Mountain. The archaeological structures are associated with one of the earliest permanent villages of the region and date to the Formative Period of the Tafí culture (2296 ± 70 yr B.P. to 1140 ± 50 yr B.P.). Using photointerpretation, we distinguished two main structure types: agricultural structures, such as stone terraces, and circular houses. Statistical analysis of the different types of circular structures indicates that simple units had a uniform distribution, which reflects the main function of the area. The patio of one unit was excavated, and three burial cists were found under a Formative Period floor. Archaeological artifacts, together with 107 soil samples from the floor, were collected to establish activity areas within the domestic space. By analyzing soil chemistry (pH, calcium, organic and inorganic phosphorous) and ceramic and animal bone distributions, three major activity areas (animal processing, plant storage, and burials) were identified. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Climate change and groundwater resources in Myanmar

Myanmar is located in Southeast Asia within the Mekong River Basin. The estimated annual surface and groundwater potentials are 1 081 km3 and 494 km3, respectively. Based on geological conditions, 11 different types of aquifers have been classified in Myanmar. The recent alluvial formation, Irrawaddy formation, Upper Pegu Group and Plateau limestone formation are the major water-bearing geologic formations of the country. In Myanmar, 89% of the groundwater is used for agriculture, approximately 8% is used for domestic consumption, and 3% is used for industrial purposes. Climate change projections for Myanmar from 2001 to 2100 predict general increases in temperature, clear-sky days, rainfall variability and flooding risks and a greater occurrence and intensity of extreme weather events across the country. Additional technology and investments are required to achieve groundwater resource security in response to climate changes. In addition, methods of ensuring the sustainability of groundwater resources must be implemented via collaborations with other countries and international sources.     

Community resilience,globalization, and transitional pathways of decision-making

This article investigates the impacts of globalization processes on community resilience. It argues that theoretical concepts such as transition theory can provide a lens through which resilience pathways at community level can be better understood, and proposes a framework focused on a social resilience approach for understanding community resilience as the conceptual space at the intersection between economic, social and environmental capital. It argues that certain types of communities are losing resilience through increased embeddedness into globalized pathways of decision-making, while other communities may be gaining resilience, although not one system is either totally resilient or totally vulnerable. Striking the right ‘balance’ between communities and their scalar interactions with the global level is key for maximization of community resilience: while too much isolation of a community may be bad in light of over-dependency on local resources, skills and people, ‘over-globalization’, with possible loss of autonomy and identity, may be equally fraught with problems. In particular, relocalized communities have, so far, not shown much tangible success, as almost all members of the relocalization process at community level are simultaneously embedded within the global capitalist system through their dependencies on global economic processes.     

缅甸纳莫原生翡翠矿体特征与成因研究

缅甸纳莫翡翠原生矿体呈透镜状侵入于蛇纹石化超基性岩中，矿体中分布有团块状围岩捕虏体。矿物结晶顺序为：具帚状结构的粗晶柱状硬玉→具柱状交织结构的细晶柱状硬玉→具流动构造的微晶柱状硬玉与粒状方沸石组成的绿色翡翠细脉→粒状方沸石脉→钠长石与石英组成的脉。绿色翡翠细脉沿矿体构造裂隙呈条带状、脉状产出，主要由微晶柱状硬玉组成，其长度为0．06～0．08mm，宽为0．01～0．015mm。矿体主要由具柱状交织结构的细晶柱状硬玉组成，是超基性岩浆结晶分异演化的产物。     

Emotional and cognitive factors influencing flood preparedness in Dire Dawa town,Ethiopia

Traditional approaches to risk communication ignore the emotional, cognitive and social factors that interact to influence the meaning people attribute to hazards and protective actions. The aim of this study was to investigate the emotional and cognitive factors predicting preparedness intention and community’s preparedness for flood hazards. A cross-sectional study was conducted between June and July 2015, in Dire Dawa town, Ethiopia. Using stratified systematic random sampling, a structured questionnaire was administered to individuals aged 18 and over in 660 households. Data were analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM) (STATA version 13.0). The study participants’ mean age was 34 years, ranging from 18 to 80 (SD?=?12) with equal gender balance. SEM analysis revealed that the total effects of preparedness intention (path coefficient (β)?=?0.202, 95% CI: [0.036, 0.369]), past flood disaster experience (β?=?0.034, 95% CI: [0.008, 0.061]), trust (β?=?0.100, 95% CI: [0.059, 0.142]), anxiety (β?=?0.026, 95% CI: [0.018, 0.034), positive outcome expectancy (β?=???0.139, 95% CI: [??0.253, ??0.026]), negative outcome expectancy (β?=?0.105, 95% CI: [0.062, 0.149]), perceived flood likelihood (β?=?0.049, 95% CI: [0.012, 0.086]) and consequence (β?=???0.040, 95% CI: [??0.077, ??0.003]) on community preparedness for flood hazards were statistically significant. The main implication of these findings is that people affected by hazard events in the past experience more anxiety and are more likely to participate in community preparedness activities than those who were not affected.