Search results for "ILD"

The impact on disaster governance of the intersection of environmental hazards, border conflict and disaster responses in Ladakh, India

2018

Abstract The Indian border region of Ladakh, in Jammu and Kashmir State, has a sensitive Himalayan ecosystem and has experienced natural hazards and disasters of varying scales over the decades. Ladakh is also situated on a fault-line of multiple tensions, including ongoing border disagreements and intermittent conflict with China and Pakistan. The Indian army has thus become a permanent fixture in the region. This paper examines the implications of the intersection of these environmental and security factors for disaster governance in the region. Using Social Domains theory, the paper argues first, that a hazard-centred paradigm of ‘universal’ disaster science emerges from the colonial per…

Strategies of Identification of a Base-Isolated Hospital Building by Coupled Quasi-Static and Snap-Back Tests

2020

In this paper, the description of a series of quasi-static pushing tests and dynamic snap-back tests is proposed, involving the base-isolated emergency building of the Palermo university hospital. The base isolation system is characterized by a set of double-curved friction pendulum isolators placed on the top of the columns of the underground level, characteristics that cannot be found in the experimental studies available in the literature. The aim of the work was to investigate the static and dynamic properties of the building in question and comparing the in-situ results with the characteristics assigned during the design process and to assess the level of agreement. Static lateral push…

A Mechanical Approach for Evaluating the Distribution of Confinement Pressure in FRP-Wrapped Rectangular Columns

2019

In recent decades, fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) wrapping has become a common technique to retrofit reinforced concrete (RC) columns. Numerous research works have sought to verify analytically and experimentally its effectiveness in terms of enhancement of axial load bearing capacity and ductility. These studies highlighted that in the case of sharp-cornered sections, the maximum allowable confinement pressure is limited by premature failure at corners and, consequently, stress in the FRP, as well as the distribution of the confinement pressure, is not uniform. The prediction of this phenomenon is not straightforward, and existing theoretical studies propose complex numerical simulations, …

State effects and the effects of state building: institution building and the formation of state-centred societies

2016

AbstractThis article discusses the assumptions underlying state-building efforts and the effects of these efforts. It addresses two main questions: why has state building not led to the establishment of effective states? And what are the effects of statebuilding? It is argued that these efforts have been based on an institutionalist model of the state derived from a Weberian framework, and that the basic reason why state building has failed is that the creation of effective states requires the creation of state-centred societies, where both material and symbolic resources are concentrated in the state. This is very difficult to achieve for external actors. But, although state building has n…

The Impact of Regionalism on Democracy Building: An Examination of the Southern African Development Community (SADC)

2017

Since the early 1990s, the world has witnessed a new wave of regionalism and a mushrooming of regional integration organizations, particularly in the global South. Focusing on Africa, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) ranks among the most promising examples of regionalism on the continent. The SADC explicitly aims at building and advancing democracy in the region and its member states as part of its broader agenda on regional development. From a political science perspective, there is general agreement that regional integration and parallel institution building can be useful measures to promote and strengthen democratic rule, since an appropriate institutional “lock-in” impl…

Making sense of crises: the implications of information asymmetries for resilience and social justice in disaster-ridden communities

2017

New information and communication technologies (ICT) have enabled communities to collect and share information and tap into a network of peers in unprecedented ways. For more than a decade, informa...

How women are imagined through conceptual metaphors in United Nations Security Council Resolutions on women, peace and security

2017

United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 is a landmark pronouncement on the Women, Peace and Security Agenda. Not only does this resolution highlight the important role of the involvement of women in peace processes, but it also stresses the importance of their equal participation in all efforts for the maintenance and promotion of peace. Furthermore, it also triggers the approval of some other resolutions, which are all further elaborations on that first document. The aim of this paper is to analyse, from a cognitive linguistic perspective, the way in which women are actually narrated in these pronouncements by means of the two conceptual metaphors that are most often repeated: WOME…

2018

Abstract Disaster diplomacy investigates how and why disaster-related activities do and do not influence conflict and cooperation. Studies into the topic so far have tended to develop the theory, analyse a specific case study in space and time, or connect both. Explorations of disaster diplomacy case studies over the long-term are so far absent from the literature. This paper explores Jammu and Kashmir in the Himalaya as a long-term case study for disaster diplomacy. Jammu and Kashmir has a long history of conflicts, multiple environmental hazards, and significant vulnerabilities yielding major disasters, with each topic generally addressed separately in the literature. This paper explores …

Helices of disaster memory: How forgetting and remembering influence tropical cyclone response in Mauritius

2020

Abstract Tropical cyclones have had a considerable impact on Mauritius. Large cyclones are relatively rare, and in popular imagination are thought to hit Mauritius every 15 years. Yet it has been over 25 years since the last cyclone widely considered as ‘significant’. Critically, there is little known about the role of memory in responses to cyclones and details regarding responses to past cyclones in Mauritian history are scant. This article examines past experiences and impacts of cyclones in Mauritius, as well as contemporary perceptions of cyclone vulnerability and memories of historical cyclones. The analysis draws on both community interviews and archival research conducted in Mauriti…

Measuring the quality of humanitarian information products: Insights from the 2015 Nepal earthquake

2018

Information plays a critical role in humanitarian assistance. It has become a product that is shared for multiple purposes such as situational awareness, decision-making, coordination, reporting, and attracting funding. In the aftermath of sudden onset disasters, humanitarians are constrained with huge workload, time pressure, and uncertainties and thus, information products are often criticized with respect to quality issues. In this paper, we aim at developing an empirically grounded framework that can measure the quality of information products through accuracy, objectivity, completeness, and consistency. We validate the framework with the help of practitioners and apply it to the inform…