Nitin Srivastava

Disaster preparedness: Looking through the lens of hospitals in Japan

Critical facilities, such as hospitals, play a crucial role in the socioeconomic and psychological recovery of the population after a disaster. Hospitals are considered important due to their roles in saving lives in the affected population and must be able to withstand hazards and remain functioning during and after a disaster. This article assesses earthquake preparedness of hospitals in eight Japanese cities using a questionnaire survey. The questionnaire consists of six parameters and 21 indicators from the “four pillars of hospital preparedness” including structural, nonstructural, functional, and human resources. The results show that the majority of the respondent hospitals fulfill the functional preparedness, which is useful during the emergency period of a disaster, while the other three pillars-structural, nonstructural, and human resources-need to be strengthened. This study helps to assess the status of disaster preparedness as well as the gaps for these hospitals in the Tohoku and Nankai Trough regions, drawing lessons from the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami of the Tohoku area. This status and the gaps are used as a departure point to indicate how to enhance preparedness and resilience to future disaster risks.

INTERRELATIONSHIP OF DISASTER AND EMPLOYMENT FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF URBAN-RURAL LINKAGES IN INDIA

Over the centuries cities have undergone various types of urbanizations, thereby changing the lives of the urban residents. At the same time our earth has undergone a damaging transition called climate change that is threatening the lives of millions of people across the globe. The threat is even more in cities and their adjoining regions, as they have higher concentrations of people, including the most vulnerable urban poor. Moreover, the cities and their administration are either oblivious to the emergence of such threats or have taken inadequate measures to counter the effects of the change. Besides, the focus has been predominantly on urban areas rather than urban systems.

Redefining urban ecosystems

The chapter tries to trace the development of concept of urban ecosystem as a problem-solving approach for urban problems, including the unwarranted problems caused by climate change. Urban management has increasingly shifted from infrastructure-based to a more regional-based approach. There has been a shift in the domain of urban ecosystem as well, from the established urbanized area to the aggregation of urban and surrounding rural area. Also, urban-rural linkages are given more attention in resource management in urban areas, thereby reducing the overall risk due to climate change. The chapter provides examples and challenges of urban ecosystem management from across the world.

Enhancing City Resilience Through Urban-Rural Linkages

Urban communities in developing countries fail to collect resources to withstand a shock, and stresses slowly erode resilience and increase the vulnerability of the population over time. At the same time, villages are becoming vulnerable due to their lack of infrastructure, scattered populations, lack of disaster management capabilities, and limited livelihood opportunities. Additionally, a city is resilient only if most of its residents can withstand and recover from the effects of a disaster. Similarly, a region is resilient if all its residents (whether they live in urban, peri-urban, or rural areas) are able to face the negative consequences of disasters and return to predisaster status in a minimal period of time. There is much evidence from developing countries proving that these areas are mutually dependent on each other for natural resources, raw materials, finished products, waste disposal, employment opportunities, and social interactions. These linkages elements provide an opportunity to plan for enhanced resilience of cities through policies which can contribute towards urban and rural resilience both. However, this resilience enhancement should not be achieved at the cost of other spatial areas. Urban governments in major Indian cities have recognized the importance of urban-rural linkages. The model of development authorities (namely, local governments planning for urban areas along with the catchment rural areas) has been adopted by many cities. This chapter discusses the interdependency of cities over villages, and vice versa, and how these urban-rural linkages can be utilized to build the resilience of cities. It also takes up case studies from the development authority areas in India.

Sustainable Development and Disaster Risk Reduction in Post-2015

Disaster risk reduction needs to be mainstreamed with development, and it has been increasingly identified at the global level. This chapter explores the direction of inclusion of disaster risk reduction (DRR) and resilience in sustainable development goals post-2015. The Rio+20 Conference also stressed the same principle in its outcome document. However, investment for DRR, enhancement of disaster knowledge and access to such information and building conducive international environment still pose challenges in post-2015 scenario.

The Role of Micro Enterprises in Disaster Risk Reduction in India

This chapter focuses on the strategies to involve micro enterprises in the recovery processes assisted by other entities of the private sector. The recurring nature of disasters does not allow the communities, involved in smaller businesses, to recover, countermining their resilience. The micro enterprises engage a large segment of the low income population and they can serve as a vehicle for disaster recovery. This would allow the upliftment of the lower income segments of societies without any requirement of focused strategies for recovery. The chapter also takes up case study from India to understand the key challenges and role of micro enterprises in disaster recovery. These challenges range from lack of skills and formal education amongst the proprietors of the enterprises, climate variability, aligning corporate sector’s interests with micro enterprises’, providing micro finance, technology transfer, and combining Disaster Risk Reduction with micro enterprises policies. Both poverty reduction and gender issues are important aspects to be considered for disaster risk reduction. Additionally, urban-rural dependency can also be utilized to share the onus of disaster recovery on urban and rural micro enterprises. Overall, micro enterprises have the potential to act as socio-economic safety nets.

Institutional and Legal Arrangements and Its Impacts on Urban Issues in Post Indian Ocean Tsunami

Disasters are seen as opportunities for enhanced institutional and legal arrangements. Steps have been taken in all the affected countries casting an influence on the urban issues such as governance, housing, land-use and transportation. In India, the government gave significant authority to the local governments while in Indonesia urban reconstruction plan, called Blueprint, was adopted and influenced housing, transportation and economic activities in the city. Maldives government had formulated a population consolidation plan and Sri Lanka focused on development approval policies for enhanced community safety. This chapter tries to summarize urban issues impacted by the new institutional and legal arrangements in the decade after the Indian Ocean Tsunami.