Climate
Variability and Change in the Southwest
Part IV:
Workshop: Cross-cutting Issues
September
4, 1997
Chapter 17
Disaster
Management
Workshop
report prepared by:
Marvin
Waterstone, Associate Professor
Department of Geography & Regional Development
The University of Arizona
Tucson, AZ
Workshop
Participants: David Kirtland (facilitator), Heather Benway,
Bill Erickson, Bisher Imam, Richard Reinhardt, Marvin Waterstone, Ray
Watts
Only when phenomena
and processes in the other sectors (e.g., water, energy, health, etc.)
become disasters (as defined momentarily) do they become of concern.
Otherwise they are simply the events of everyday life.
Impacts and Vulnerability
Defining Disasters
To begin our discussion,
the group tried to define disasters and came up with this formulation:
A disaster is an extreme event with adverse consequences that are beyond
the scope of typical coping mechanisms. These adverse consequences may
be loss of life, loss of property, loss of resources.
The extreme events
may be biophysical, economic, and/or social. However, given our
definition, in
most cases the effects will transcend the biophysical realm and begin
to be felt in economic and social terms.
A second implication
that flows from this definition is that disasters can arise from a change
in the initiating events themselves, a change in the coping mechanisms
available, or through some combination.
However, it is
important to keep in mind that it is the interaction between coping
capabilities and the characteristics of the initiating events that leads
to conditions beyond coping capacity, and hence disaster vulnerability.
As an example, two communities may be exposed to exactly the same weather/climate
conditions, but depending on their abilities to access emergency-water
supplies, may be more or less vulnerable to drought.
Impacts in the Southwest
Given the previous,
it is important to be able to identify the kinds of phenomena that may
be affected by climatic change in this region and therefore lead to
disasters.
In many ways, these
phenomena are those covered in several of the other sectoral topics
of this report. It is possible that disasters could occur in water resources
(flooding or droughts), natural ecosystems, agriculture, ranching, energy,
or health and air quality.
It is critical
to understand the characteristics of these phenomena in so far as these
characteristics might produce effects beyond the typical coping capacities
of responsible entities. Such characteristics might include the magnitude
of the event, its duration, its areal extent, and its speed of onset.
It is also useful
to keep in mind that in many sectors, the typical pattern in the Southwest
is one of extremes. This has engendered a particular set of coping strategies
for many climate-related phenomena that might make the area more resilient
in the face of climate alterations.
On the other hand,
in some sectors (e.g., water resources, if current use patterns are
to remain the same) the region might be at the limit of its flexibility,
and small changes in climate could put typical events beyond coping
capacity.
Responses
Determining Coping Capability
The coping capability
of any specific management entity (including individuals, communities,
regions, states, nations, and international bodies) is dependent on
a variety of factors. These might include such components as knowledge,
experience, resources, networks, and jurisdictional and other legal/institutional
characteristics.
However, the coping
capability is again dependent upon the combination of these (and possibly
other) characteristics of the management entity as they intersect with
particular hazardous phenomena. The same phenomenon will produce very
different events depending on the coping capacity, and vice versa.
Mitigation Strategies
Strategies to mitigate
disasters, therefore, can focus on the initiating events themselves
(e.g., reduction of air pollution, or elimination of disease vectors),
on increasing coping capabilities, or on some combination. Particular
strategies are highly context-dependent.
Research and Information
Needs
Data
The group discussed
a number of informational and data needs pertinent to managing climate-related
disasters. There was significant concern that timely and spatially appropriate
data are not always available.
This problem is
being exacerbated by:
- increasing moves
toward privatization of data collection and storage;
- reduced budgets
for governmental agencies for monitoring, data collection, and storage;
- a heavy and
increasing reliance on remotely sensed data, and a lag in ground truthing;
- gaps between
more recent, digitized data and historical data in analog form, making
time-series construction difficult and/or expensive; and
- difficulties
in translating the necessary knowledge into forms usable by decisionmakers
and policy-implementation entities.
Decisionmaking
The group also
attempted to characterize a number of informational and other problems
regarding decisionmaking for disaster management. One of the key issues
identified was the significant mismatch between events and decisions.
This mismatch is
captured by two acronyms:
- NIMBY, meaning
"not in my backyard," a spatial mismatch between the scale
of events and the jurisdictional reach of particular entities; and
- NIMTOO, meaning
"not in my term of office," a temporal mismatch between
the duration or timing of events, and the time-sensitive concerns
of policymakers.
Another issue,
in this regard, is the dynamic nature of these processes. The Southwest
is characterized by rapid population growth, which tends to be areally-extensive
(i.e., sprawl).
One implication
of this is that populations may be moving into highly sensitive regions,
areas that are increasingly vulnerable to slight alterations of environmental
and climatic conditions, and/or areas that are at the margins of existing
jurisdictional domains.
In this last regard,
governmental or private coping mechanisms (emergency services, for example)
may be increasingly difficult or expensive to deliver.
Communication
Related to the
matters of decisionmaking are essential communication improvements.
These include improving communication to the public as part of any mitigation
strategy, and this involves walking the fine line between apathy and
panic.
It is important
for communicators to provide not only accurate and timely information,
but also to be able to convey a sense of efficacy.
It is also important
to communicate information to particular sectors that is relevant to
those managers' specific needs. This may mean tailoring information,
which will involve close interaction between information providers (researchers
and governmental agencies) and those who need the information for decisionmaking.
Policy Issues and Research
Questions
Finally the group
turned to the policy issues and research needs emerging out of the previously
described examination. The following were considered important areas
for future investigation:
- Vulnerabilities and
Populations
- Are some
populations more vulnerable than others to changes in climate?
- Does scale
matter and in what ways?
- How can
we deal with the issue of ecosystem vulnerability?
- Are social,
economic, and political changes more important than plausible
climate changes?
- Can we conduct
vulnerability analyses of differing populations at differing scales?
- In what
ways, if any, does climate change affect coping mechanisms and
vulnerability?
- What impacts
are most important, and what sectors are most sensitive to climate
change?
- Identify Policymakers
Needs for Making Decisions in Each Sector
- Will better
information improve decisionmaking?
- What constitutes
better information; i.e., what information do decisionmakers actually
need?
- How do we
avoid NIMBY and NIMTOO problems?
- How do we
avoid "Chicken Little" and "crying wolf" problems?
- What kinds
of decisionmaking processes are needed?
- Are different/improved
models required to address decisionmakers needs?
- How are
information and policymaking linked?
- Translating Data into
Useful Information
- How do data
become useful for decisionmaking by policymakers and the public?
- How does
such information get communicated?
- In addition
to information about phenomena and processes, what can be communicated
about response?
- Developing Contingency
Plans
- What is
the content of an effective contingency plan?
- In formulating
contingency plans, should entities focus on comprehensiveness
or concentrate on specific events and "hot spots"?
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