Sophistication at a country pace: community sustainability and amenity-based development

There is a lot at stake in the control of landscapes; not only rights and access to resources, but also the symbolic construction of community identities. Having one’s identity represented in the landscape is critical to understanding one’s position within that community—either as an insider or outsider. This paper examines Great Barrington, Massachusetts as a case study of the links between discourses of landscape and community and their relations to processes of social exclusion during amenity-based development. Building upon conceptions of community as a process of creating boundaries between insiders and outsiders, this paper argues that the sustainability of a town cannot be assessed merely from inside a particular community identity but must situate that town within complex multi-scalar processes to determine if it is merely externalizing its unsustainable aspects, people and practices. I extend this argument by examining the ways to concept of multifunctionality has been used both in Great Barrington and in international discourses to promote sustainability through processes of exclusion. The research for this paper was done in collaboration with the Alliance for a Healthier Great Barrington.     

中国水文水资源常态与应急统合管理探析

中国水资源整体宏观短缺,干旱与洪涝灾害并存,且近年来极端水文事件发生频率加大,北方水资源衰减趋势明显,形势严峻。基于中国基本水情,结合在雨洪水利用、水资源战略储备以及储水空间利用等方面进行的需水侧水文水资源常态管理和应急管理探索与实践,提出了建立水资源常态与应急统合管理概念,即:立足于自然水文的年内与年际整体过程,将正常状态下的水资源管理和非正常状态下的应急管理有机结合起来,实施基于自然水循环系统全过程调控的水资源管理,从而实现将水资源开发利用、防洪除涝和抗旱减灾等有机融合,提升水循环调控效率,增强水安全保障程度。     

Institutionalising IWRM in developing and transition countries: the case of Mongolia

Integrated water resources management (IWRM) forms the widely accepted ecosystem approach to managing water and its related resources in a sustainable way. Nevertheless, its implementation is still lagging behind, especially in developing and transition countries which are often short of essential resources and face complex political dynamics. IWRM often requires a fundamental realignment of governance structures. This may lead to problems of fit and institutional interplay as particular challenges of multi-level governance. Against this background, a case study of Mongolia was carried out, a transition country suffering from extreme climatic conditions and increasing depletion of its resources. While an attempt to introduce IWRM exists on paper, it is less clear how it will be made politically and institutionally applicable. A document review and stakeholder interviews were carried out to understand the progress and problems of introducing IWRM in Mongolia in the face of its transition and decentralisation process. Problems of fit and interplay—which are in part results of the transformation—were identified, as well as the approaches for their solution. Attempts are underway to overcome problems of fit such as the establishment of river basin councils which are presently facing the challenges concerning their room for manoeuvre. Problems of interplay arise when it comes to the cooperation and coordination of numerous water-related organisations which often lead to inconsistent water governance.     

Approaches to sustainable forestry in the Piatra Craiului National Park

Declared in 1990, the Piatra Craiului is one of Romania's 15 national parks and biosphere reserves. It has exceptional scenic and biodiversity value but is under threat from unsustainable agricultural, forestry and tourism management. The paper examines these threats in a historical context, regarding both the growth of the town of Braşov and areas of dispersed rural settlement on the mountain edge, and argues that a sustainable future will require negotiation between the park authorities and all stakeholders, including the local communities and private woodland owners who have benefited or will benefit from restitution. The way forward is explored with forest management in a central role. First, the certification of woodlands, along with the establishment of forest user groups and community woodlands, should help to reconcile the conflicting interests in the woodlands and in wood processing in support of sustainability. Second, the overgrazing of the meadows which is degrading the pastures, restricting forest regeneration and conflicting with large carnivore conservation, could be moderated by the growth of ecotourism linked with bears and wolves which would generate a new source of income to compensate farmers for reducing their flocks – given the importance of the biodiversity resources and the socio-economic pressures – and the paper therefore considers how new approaches to forest management might provide a basis for conservation and sustainable development. It will be for the recently-established national park management system – developed with World Bank Global Environment Facility funding – to take these ideas forward in due course. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

城市突发性地质灾害应急系统探讨

城市突发性地质灾害是当今减灾的重点，已引起了广泛的关注。人们意识到灾后及时地采取应急抢险救援措施，可以有效地减少人员伤亡。灾害应急行动包括建立应急指挥机构，明确职责，并进行资源调配。灾害应急抢险救灾时实性强，其快速反应行动涉及危机管理、预警、撤离、避险，以及维护法律与社会秩序、信息通报、灾情评估。应急救援行动还包括城市基础和生命线的恢复，以确保受灾居民和社区的基本需求。论文在分析城市突发性地质灾害应急管理进展和存在问题的基础上，探讨了当前城市地质灾害应急反应系统中的监测预警系统、快速反应系统、应急指挥系统、应急避难系统、信息发布系统、空间信息系统和宣传教育系统：通过实施这些应急系统并制定预案可以达到减轻城市突发性地质灾害的目的。     

People and community as constituent parts of hazards: the significance of societal dimensions in hazards analysis

Nature-triggered hazards and disasters have traditionally been treated only from the lens of geophysical and biophysical processes, implying that the root cause of large-scale death and destruction lies in the natural domain rather than in a coupled human–environment system. Conceptually, the physical domain has been seen as discrete and separate from human entities, and solutions were sought in the technological intervention and control of the physical environment—solutions that often ended up being less effective than hoped for and sometimes even counter productive. At all levels, institutions have directed and redirected most of their financial and logistical resources into the search for scientific and engineering solutions without allocating due attention and resources towards the assessment of effects and effectiveness of the applications of such technological outcomes. However, over the last two decades, forceful criticisms of the ‘dominant’ technocratic approach to hazards analysis have appeared in the literature and consequently there has not only been a shift in thinking of causation of disaster loss in terms of human vulnerability, but also newer questions have arisen regarding distinguishing between the ‘physical exposure’ of people to threats and societal vulnerability, and linking them with propensity to hazards loss. Though the vulnerability/resilience paradigm has largely replaced the hazards paradigm within the social sciences and much of the professional emergency and disaster management communities, this shift of thinking has not progressed to much of the physical science community, decision-makers and the public, who have not yet accepted the idea that understanding and using human and societal dimensions is equally or more important than trying to deal and control nature through the use of technology. This special issue is intended to further the idea that the aspects of community and peoples’ power to mitigate, to improve coping mechanisms, to respond effectively, and recover with vigor against the environmental extremes are of paramount conceptual and policy importance.     

Integrated Community-Based Disaster Management Program in Taiwan: A Case Study of Shang-An Village

Taiwan has long made efforts to increase community emergency response capability, due to its vulnerability to earthquakes, typhoons, landslides and debris flows. Not until recent major natural disasters, such as the 1999 Chi–Chi Earthquake, Typhoon Toraji and Typhoon Nari, has the government reformed its policy toward empowering the community to take actions in hazard mitigation, emergency preparedness and emergency response. A new initiatve, Integrated Community-Based Disaster Management Program (ICBDM), was launched in 2001 by the Executive Yuan to achieve the goal of strengthening community resistance. The paper, taking Shang-An Village as an example, describes Taiwan’s new community-based disaster management program. Through a participatory process, community residents have learned how to analyze vulnerable conditions, discover problems, develop solutions and establish an organization to implement disaster management tasks. Further, basic response training courses and a disaster scenario were held in order to improve their emergency response capability. Based on the case study, a phased process, including initiation, assessment, planning and practice, is generalized.     

岩溶地区小城镇地下水资源多目标应急配置研究——以织金县为例

以织金县珠藏向斜北段储水构造为例,依据混合整数线性规划和多目标线性规划原理,从保障应急水资源供给的角度构建了不同干旱条件下地下水资源多目标应急配置模型（E-MIP）,并提出了2010-2030年的织金县城区地下水资源应急配置方案,结果表明:（1）珠藏背斜北部储水构造中裂隙-溶洞水的出露方式以地下河集中排泄为主,平均流量为62.04 m3·s-1,基岩-松散岩类孔隙泉则以分散排泄为主,平均流量仅2.14 m3·s-1;（2）干旱程度的加深不单纯限制了可利用水资源量,也直接刺激了用水效率和社会经济效益的提升,2010-2030年期间的织金县重度干旱缺水率比轻度干旱低21.25%,但其社会经济效益却增加了5.84倍;（3）应急地下水资源配置原则是优先保障居民生活用水需求,其次依据用水效率和权重次序对盈余地下水资源量进行产业化分配。进一步推算出了2020年、2025年织金县城区不同干旱状态下水资源应急配置方案。      

General framework and key issues concerning integrated strategies for coping with drought and flood in China in a changing environment

This paper focused on the development of a framework for collective water resources management in China to meet the change of drought and flood. Based on the observational data of drought and flood from 1950 to 2009 and the precipitation from 1961 to 2010, using the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) method, the evolutionary characteristic of drought and flood was analyzed. The results showed that drought and flood occurred frequently, simultaneous occurrences of drought and flood and the rapid shift between the two were increasing. The framework for collective strategies responding to drought and flood under this ever-changing environment was presented. A series of potential mitigation, prevention, and adaptation strategies were discussed. These included both planning and implementation side strategies. In regard to planning, the strategies for dealing with drought and flood should be shifted from crisis management to collective management, unifying normal and emergency management. Combination risk zoning of drought and flood should be conducted and collective emergency planning should be formulated. Moreover, the regulation capability of water conservancy projects group should be optimized to the highest possible level. In regard to implementation, based on the water resources collective management, rational water allocation for both normal and extreme value processes should be implemented. The water conservancy project groups for the extreme value process should work together, and the flood limit water level of reservoirs should be controlled dynamically.     

干旱条件下平谷盆地地下水资源变化与恢复调控措施

北京市王都庄应急水源地和中桥应急水源地均位于平谷地区,充分说明其在北京市应急供水体系中所占的重要地位。本文基于平谷区第四系地下水动态监测成果和资源计算数据,分析了其地下水资源概况及存在问题,回顾了持续干旱和应急开采对平谷地下水资源的影响。研究表明平谷盆地存在地下水降落漏斗、资源亏损、水环境恶化等地质环境问题,可实施地下水调蓄与开采调整措施恢复平谷区地下水资源的战略储备,提高其应急供水保障能力。     

Resource concerns for territorial conflict

The objective of this paper is to engage constructively with literature on armed conflict and resources in order to draw attention both to assumptions that hinder a more accurate or useful understanding of natural resources and their role in territorial conflict as well as to aspects of this field of research that merit further work. In much of the literature on resource conflict, territorial aspects are either implicitly or explicitly tied to resource conflict largely through the assumption that the value of territory is intrinsic. Little of the literature attempts to advance theory, specifically, either on the particular role of resources or on the meaning and objectives of conflict beyond a one-dimensional objective of maintaining or securing control of territory. The paper considers themes of resource scarcity and resource abundance in conflict. A third section focuses on an analysis both of natural resource databases and of conflict databases (both international and civil) which emphasizes problematic results of blending these databases to demonstrate correlations. UIUC territorial conflict management workshop     

Vulnerability management by means of resilience

The article decodes and analyzes the standard functions of social and social-ecological systems when they manage their own vulnerability. The author acknowledges these as “Resilience functions” or “Operational Resilience”. For this purpose, she follows a “Vulnerability Actor” (V Actor)-based approach. V Actor is considered as a system faced with multiple hazards, carrying various vulnerability facets (physical, economic, institutional, etc.) and attempting to transform, transfer, rearrange them in time and space so as to achieve Actor’s own persistence. It is these processes of vulnerability re-arrangement that are identified by the author as Resilience functions and which change the vulnerability not only of the V Actor performing resilience but also others’. Performance of Resilience functions presupposes attraction and employment of resources by the Actor, not only own, current and inherent but also other resources to be found in spatial and temporal scales external to or beyond the Actor but which the Actor can appeal to. This attraction most probably leads to deprivation of others of the necessary resources for their persistence, recovery, etc. When somebody’ vulnerability is reduced sometimes somewhere, it is most probable that others elsewhere are encumbered with extra vulnerability, currently or in the future. Hence, what resilience can only do is vulnerability re-arrangement, re-setting and management. The proposed systemic approach is documented on current state of art regarding interactions between vulnerability and resilience to hazards and on empirical evidence from the international experience of responses to natural hazards.     

地质灾害应急调查工具箱客户端软件设计

针对目前地质灾害应急调查还处在野外全手工记录、应急数据传输不及时、室内手工处理数据等效率低下的情况,进行了地质灾害应急调查工具箱配套数据采集终端的研制,重点进行了自动化数据采集、数据电子化、应急数据实时化传输、数据管理智能化等设计。本文主要介绍在基于Android系统下的平板终端上,设计开发出一套智能化地质灾害应急调查软件,该软件遵循地质灾害调查技术规范,采用结构化和标准化的调查表模板,结合可视化的Google地图数据资源,为地质灾害调查人员现场采集数据（如文字信息,灾害点空间信息,有关灾害点的语音、视频、图片信息,绘制灾害点平面图、剖面图、素描图等）和后期对灾害点的管理,提供了更直观、更快捷、更高效的技术支持手段。该软件利用GIS技术,将采集的数据以可视化的方式展现在地图平台上,直观地反映地质灾害及隐患点的空间分布、灾害类型、灾害危害等级等详细信息,为地质灾害调查提供技术支撑。     

War on Terror,work in progress: security,surveillance and the configuration of the US workfare state

This paper evaluates the impact of recent shifts in the geopolitical outlook of the United States—specifically the ‘Global War on Terror’ and its domestic ramifications—on the prior project of reconfiguring the US state to an after-Fordist ‘workfare’ paradigm. In particular, the paper attempts to situate recent developments in the reconfiguration of the American welfare state within the context of debates over the ‘exceptional’ nature of US politics post-9/11. The extent to which this has had a bearing on work practices, welfare provision and workfarism is investigated, citing examples from the post-9/11 era. On the basis of such examples it has been suggested that the project of reconfiguring the US welfare state and labour relations does overlap and intersect with the emergency practices that the US state has instituted domestically as part of the War on Terror. However, the reconfiguration of the US welfare state towards a neoliberal or workfarist paradigm is, we argue, largely part of the ‘normal’ (as opposed to exceptional) fabric of US politics. The project of reconfiguring the US welfare state is ongoing and largely autonomous (although not entirely removed) from the use of exceptional practices in relation to the US security state. Investigation of this relationship, we assert, provides a potentially fruitful ‘new direction’ for both critical geopolitics and political economic geography, and grounds for interaction between the two.     

The water on a small karst island: the island of Korčula (Croatia) as an example

The island of Korčula, which has an area of 271.47 km² is located along the north-eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea. Due to the Mediterranean climate, size and karst geology its water resources are very scarce. This paper describes the natural features of the island (air temperature, precipitation, geology, hydrogeology and groundwater) which are important for the water appearance and its distribution in time and space. The water supply of the island has been managed in the following ways: through a pipeline from the mainland, by drawing groundwater and by rain harvesting. Tourism causes high seasonal water needs which are barely met by the existing water supply system. Therefore, present water resource management on the island must be improved. The paper also presents mathematical programming scheme to get optimal costs and benefits of water exploitation on the island. Besides economic aspect, linear programming is applied to social and ecological objectives, as well. This study suggests that island’s water management should be primarily based on wisely using its proper water resources.     

Urbanization and water management in Ho Chi Minh City,Vietnam-issues,challenges and perspectives

The management of water resources is an unfinished effort of the international community. Rapid urbanization has transcended the management capacity of governments in developing countries. Since the renovation policy launched in 1986, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, has experienced the fastest urbanization and industrialization process. This has placed severe constraints on the use of water resources and management capacity of the local government. The abstraction of groundwater has exceeded the limiting volume (520,000 m³/day) and the annual drawdown of water table is 2–3 m. In addition, the quality of urban water bodies is increasingly exacerbated by a huge volume of untreated industrial and domestic wastewater. These are hampering water demand, use and the capacity of the municipal authority in managing water resources. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the impact of urbanization on water resources. Current issues and challenges in the management practices of water resources are discussed. It will propose a new paradigm of water management in Ho Chi Minh City.     

Earthquake shaking probabilities for communities on Vancouver Island,British Columbia,Canada

Comprehensive risk assessments are fundamental to effective emergency management. These assessments need to identify the range of hazards (or perils) an entity is exposed to and quantify the specific threats associated with each of those hazards. While hazard identification is commonly, if not formally, conducted in most circumstances, specific threat analysis is often overlooked for a variety of reasons, one of which is poor communication with subject matter experts. This poor communication is often attributable to an adherence to scientific jargon and missed opportunities to simplify information. In Canada, for example, earthquake hazard calculations have been readily available to engineers and scientists for decades. This hazard information, however, is expressed in terms of peak ground accelerations (PGA) or spectral accelerations (SA) that are foreign concepts to most emergency managers, community decision-makers and the public-at-large. There is, therefore, a need to more clearly, simply and effectively express seismic hazard information to the non-scientific community. This paper provides crustal, sub-crustal and subduction interface earthquake shaking probabilities, expressed as simple percentages for each of 57 locations across Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. Calculations present the likelihood of earthquake shaking on Vancouver Island as the probabilities of exceeding each of three shaking intensity thresholds (“widely felt”; onset of “non-structurally damaging” shaking; and onset of “structurally damaging” shaking) over four timeframes (10, 25, 50 and 100 years). Results are based on the latest Geological Survey of Canada hazard models used for the 2010 national building code and are presented in both tabular and graphic formats. This simplified earthquake hazard information is offered to aid local residents, organizations and governments in understanding and assessing their risk and to encourage and facilitate sound earthquake preparedness funding decisions.     

干旱监测与评价技术的发展及其科学挑战

由于气候变暖及人类活动加剧,干旱灾害对全球粮食、水资源和生态安全及人类可持续发展的威胁日益突出,对干旱决策服务和应急管理能力提出了严峻挑战,干旱监测预警、影响评估及应急管理等方面的技术水平亟待进一步提高.在系统总结以往研究成果基础上,阐述了对干旱气候、干旱和干旱灾害的科学认识,归纳了干旱气候、干旱和干旱灾害的成因及其主...     

An operational multiscale system for hazards prediction, mapping, and response

By definition, a crisis is a situation that requires assistance to be managed. Hence, response to a crisis involves the merging of local and non-local emergency response personnel. In this situation, it is critical that each participant: (1) know the roles and responsibilities of each of the other participants; (2) know the capabilities of each of the participants; and (3) have a common basis for action. For many types of natural disasters, this entails having a common operational picture of the unfolding events, including detailed information on the weather, both current and forecasted, that may impact on either the emergency itself or on response activities. The Consequences Assessment Tool Set (CATS) is a comprehensive package of hazard prediction models and casualty and damage assessment tools that provides a linkage between a modeled or observed effect and the attendant consequences for populations, infrastructure, and resources, and, hence, provides the common operational picture for emergency response. The Operational Multiscale Environment model with Grid Adaptivity (OMEGA) is an atmospheric simulation system that links the latest methods in computational fluid dynamics and high-resolution gridding technologies with numerical weather prediction to provide specific weather analysis and forecast capability that can be merged into the geographic information system framework of CATS. This paper documents the problem of emergency response as an end-to-end system and presents the integrated CATS–OMEGA system as a prototype of such a system that has been used successfully in a number of different situations.     

Interpreting amenities,envisioning the future: common ground and conflict in North Carolina’s rural coastal communities

This paper contributes to ongoing discussions about the implications of rural change and amenity migration for members of diverse rural communities. We engage with recent amenity migration and political ecology literature that focuses on social constructions of nature and landscapes, and how these constructions affect the attitudes and opinions of community members. We use our case study of a mail-based survey in Down East, North Carolina to suggest that the ways in which people conceptualize the particular ‘natures’ and landscapes of a place matters in terms of shaping people’s attitudes with respect to ongoing processes of change. We find that people’s opinions about environment, culture, and land use are often superficially similar but that when conflicts arise or particular actions are considered, substantial differences in people’s underlying conceptual frameworks are revealed. In particular we find that despite widespread shared appreciation of the environment and culture Down East, differing interpretations of these key terms lead to potential misunderstandings and land use planning challenges.