Perceived Adverse Effects of Separating Government Institutions for Disaster Risk Reduction and Climate Change Adaptation Within the Southern African Development Community Member States

Integration of disaster risk reduction(DRR)and climate change adaptation(CCA)is widely recognized as a solution for reducing the risk and impacts of disasters.However,successful integration seems elusive,and the two goals continue to function in isolation and in parallel.This article provides empirical insights into the perceived effects of separating government institutions for DRR and CCA within the Southern African Development Community member states.A mixed method research design was applied to the study.A total of 40 respondents from Botswana,Eswatini(until April 2018 Swaziland),Madagascar,Malawi,Namibia,South Africa,Tanzania,Zambia,and Zimbabwe participated in face-to-face interviews or an online survey.Five major effects of separating the organizations for DRR and CCA that impede efforts to reduce disaster risk coherently were identified:duplication of services,polarization of interventions,incoherent policies,competition for the same resources,and territorial contests.Given the continued fragmentation of institutions for DRR and CCA,highlighting these effects is important to emphasize the need for integrated approaches towards the reduction of disaster risk.

Advancing the Field of Disaster Response Management:Toward a Design Science Approach

Multiorganizational response to emergencies and disasters requires collaboration.How to improve the collective response is therefore an essential question,but not easy to answer.In disaster research,normative research with a focus on providing evidence for how to improve professional practice has traditionally received less attention than explanatory ones.The aim of this article,using insights from design science where normative research is more common,is to suggest a complementary approach to response management research.Our approach,which combines experimental and explanatory research,is applied to a study of goal alignment.Goal alignment among response actors is often recommended despite literature’s contradictory evidence regarding its effect.We conducted an experiment with 111 participants,who,in groups of three,played a computer game under one of two conditions(goal alignment or not).Our results show that aligning goals did not improve the outcome in the game.Although this may serve as a counterargument to implementing goal alignment interventions,there are concerns with such conclusions.These reservations include,but are not limited to,the lack of validated models to use in experiments.Nevertheless,our suggested research approach and the goal alignment experiment highlight the importance of testing interventions and their effectiveness before implementation.

How Can We Make Disaster Management Evaluations More Useful?An Empirical Study of Dutch Exercise Evaluations

The evaluation of simulated disasters(for example,exercises)and real responses are important activities.However,little attention has been paid to how reports documenting such events should be written.A key issue is how to make them as useful as possible to professionals working in disaster risk management.Here,we focus on three aspects of a written evaluation:how the object of the evaluation is described,how the analysis is described,and how the conclusions are described.This empirical experiment,based on real evaluation documents,asked 84 Dutch mayors and crisis management professionals to evaluate the perceived usefulness of the three aspects noted above.The results showed that how evalua・tions are written does matter.Specifically,the usefulness of an evaluation intended for learning purposes is improved when its analysis and conclusions are clearer.In contrast,evaluations used for accountability purposes are only improved by the clarity of the con elusion.These findings have implications for the way disaster management evaluations should be documented.

A hybrid framework to analyze crisis management system maturity in sociotechnical systems

In recent decades,numerous catastrophic accidents have occurred worldwide,ranging from natural events(such as tsunamis,flooding,and earthquakes)to industrial events(such as mining and chemical process disasters).They endanger humans,the environment,organizations,and societies,as well as national security.However,there have been few attempts to propose a model for assessing the required capabilities and potential challenges in crisis management system maturity(CMSM).Accordingly,this study proposes a framework for measuring CMSM levels in complex systems.To this end,a CMSM taxonomy was developed,including aspects,dimensions,and factors influencing the CMSM.Fuzzy inference sets and fuzzy analytical hierarchy processes are then used for knowledge acquisition,quantification of the CMSM,and dealing with epistemic uncertainty.An actual complex petrochemical plant is investigated to evaluate its capabilities.The findings revealed the most significant con-tributing factors:the CMSM’s current capability and challenges level(score),as well as the capacity to overcome the potential crisis response challenges.Moreover,the proposed model can be used as a practical approach for various chemical-processing plants.