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East Asia & Pacific is facing some great development challenges today: urbanization, protection of the environment, the need to find renewable energy sources and many others. This site wants to create a conversation around those important issues. More »

Disaster management

Four years on: What China got right when rebuilding after the Sichuan earthquake

Submitted by Vivian Argueta Bernal, co-authors: Paul Procee on Fri, 2012-05-11 16:11
The devastation from the Sichuan earthquake was immense; the recovery, impressive.

Four years ago on May 12, 2008, the world was stunned by the news of an 8-magnitude massive earthquake that struck Wenchuan of Sichuan Province and affected, in total, ten provinces in Southwestern China.  

Official estimates put the number of affected people at 46.25 million, with some 69,227 deceased, 17,923 missing and 15 million displaced from their homes.

During our visits to those areas back then, we witnessed how water, electricity and gas systems were largely paralyzed and telecommunications and transportation severely disrupted.  General infrastructure was also overwhelmingly damaged, with approximately 7,444 schools and 11,028 medical institutions and 34,125 kilometers of highways devastated, in a region that was already among the poorest and most vulnerable in China.

The overall direct economic loss was estimated to be RMB 845 billion (US$ 130 billion).

In face of these severe human, material, economic and environmental damages, the Chinese government immediately set in motion a comprehensive relief and reconstruction program.

Samoa after the disaster: The wave of fire and the kid called Tsunami

Submitted by Aleta Moriarty on Thu, 2012-03-22 23:00

In June 2009 Samoa was the set for the popular TV program Survivor. It was a fantastic choice. It is one of those picture-perfect places–shady palms, trees dripping with fruit, blossoming hibiscus, all framed by powder sand beaches. It is a vastly understated paradise.

A few months later, the country was once again centre stage. This time for something utterly distressing and heart-breaking as the country embarked on the harrowing search for real life survivors after they were struck by a powerful tsunami on 29 September 2009.

Galu afi means “wave of fire” and is the traditional Samoan word used to describe a tsunami. It describes the force that gains momentum as the wave generates and the sheer destruction that it brings to bear. That is what happened here.

The earthquake that changed the world forever

Submitted by Abhas Jha on Sun, 2012-03-11 12:23

The Japanese phrase “Shikata ga nai (仕方がない)  -loosely translated as "it can't be helped" -captures the essence of the resilience and sense of duty towards one’s community that the Japanese people displayed in the aftermath of the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami. One of the initial images that captured this spirit after the horrific events of March 11 was that of the unsung shop assistants rushing to stop items from falling off shelves instead of running to save their lives.

Live web chat - How can cities prepare for and manage floods?

Submitted by Claudia Gabarain on Tue, 2012-02-21 12:42

Copyright Gideon MendelFloods are the most frequent among all natural disasters. In 2010 alone, 178 million people globally were affected by floods. More than 90 % of the global population exposed to floods lives in Asia.

 
With rapid urbanization, growing populations and long-term climate change trends, urban flooding is becoming an increasingly serious development challenge.  The most effective way to manage flood risk is to take an integrated approach which combines both structural and non-structural measures. But the key is getting the balance right.
 
Abhas Jha, lead author of the new report "Cities and Flooding:A Guide to Integrated Urban Flood Risk Management for the 21st Century" (and occasional blogger here) will be online for a live Question & Answer discussion on how to prepare for and manage floods in cities. Join the discussion on Wednesday, February 22 at 10:00 a.m. EST (16:00 GMT) and/or send your question right now --there's a better chance of having it answered during the event.
 
See you there.

Seven years on: Remembering the tsunami in Aceh, Indonesia

Submitted by Dave Lawrence on Sat, 2011-12-24 13:43

Also available in Bahasa

The number just kept getting bigger and bigger. At first it was a staggering 13,000. The next day, over 25,000. And then, 58,000. By the end of the week, on January 1st, 2005, the death toll of the Asian Tsunami had reached 122,000. Yet the number kept climbing, and nobody knew when it would stop. 

Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer

 
 

Shoe molds and scuba divers: How natural disasters affect our supply chains

Submitted by Thomas Farole, co-authors: Julia Oliver on Mon, 2011-11-21 12:48
Photo courtesy of ianmyles through a Creative Commons license

Available in ภาษาไทย

Like the massive earthquake in Japan earlier this year, the floods in Thailand are again exposing the vulnerabilities of fragmented global supply chains.

Last month, a team of economists from the World Bank’s International Trade Department encountered some flooding side-effects during a visit to the Indonesian production site for ECCO, a Danish company that manufactures footwear. In order to transfer production to the factory in Indonesia, the workers needed the specific shoe molds used in the Thai factory. But there was a problem: The Thai factory was under three meters of water.

แม่พิมพ์รองเท้ากับนักประดาน้ำ: ผลกระทบจากภัยพิบัติทางธรรมชาติต่อห่วงโซ่อุปทาน

Submitted by Thomas Farole, co-authors: Julia Oliver on Mon, 2011-11-21 12:17
ภาพภ่ายโดย iamyles ผ่านการใช้ลิขสิทธิ์จากครีเอทีฟคอมมอนส์

ยังมีอีกที่: English

เช่นเดียวกับแผ่นดินไหวครั้งรุนแรงที่ญี่ปุ่นเมื่อต้นปี ภาวะน้ำท่วมในประเทศไทยได้ตอกย้ำให้เห็นอีกครั้งถึงความเปราะบางของห่วงโซ่อุปทานสินค้าของโลกที่แบ่งกระจัดกระจายอยู่ตามประเทศหรือภูมิภาคต่างๆ

เมื่อเดือนที่แล้ว ทีมนักเศรษฐศาสตร์จากแผนกการค้าระหว่างประเทศ (International Trade Department) ของธนาคารโลกได้พบเห็นปัญหาบางประการอันเป็นผลข้างเคียงจากภาวะน้ำท่วมดังกล่าวในระหว่างการเยือนโรงงานผลิตรองเท้าที่ประเทศอินโดนีเซียของบริษัทเอ็คโคจากเดนมาร์ก ในการที่จะย้ายการผลิตไปยังโรงงานที่อินโดนีเซียนั้น คนงานจำเป็นต้องใช้แม่พิมพ์รองเท้าแบบเฉพาะที่ใช้ในโรงงานที่ประเทศไทย แต่ปัญหาคือ โรงงานไทยกำลังจมอยู่ใต้น้ำระดับสามเมตร

Our home, our village, we shall rebuild it

Submitted by Nugroho Nurdikiawan Sunjoyo on Tue, 2011-11-15 15:56

Available in Bahasa

In September this year I visited a number of communities in Yogyakarta, in Java, Indonesia, who were rebuilding their lives and homes after experiencing a series of natural disasters. The reconstruction process which I saw is perhaps in example of post-disaster community participation at their best.

Our home, our village, we shall rebuild it

Laos: How the Nam Theun 2 dam is managed during flood events

Submitted by William Rex on Sun, 2011-10-16 17:31

William RexIt’s been an unusually severe rainy season in some parts of Lao PDR, with several typhoons passing over after making landfall in

Vietnam.  Thailand is also severely hit, with Bangkok bracing itself for floods as I write this. Floods are a regular part of life in this part of the world, but they can nevertheless be devastating for people impacted by them:  people may lose their entire rice crop if flood waters don’t recede in time; remote communities may lose access to the outside world as parts of their only road are washed away; and public health problems can multiply water and sanitation facilities are overwhelmed.

A large hydropower project like Nam Theun 2 (NT2) has a significant effect on water flows around the project, and so inevitably people begin to question whether NT2 is somehow making the local floods worse.  Questions around project’s role in exacerbating natural floods started even before Nam Theun 2 started operating (see a blog post on this back in 2009), and it has sporadically been blamed during this wet season as well.  A lot of these arguments stem from some pretty basic misunderstandings of how NT2 works, so although this information is already in the public domain, I thought I’d produce a simple summary here with reference to the attached map.

In Queensland, no great barrier to flood recovery

Submitted by Henrike Brecht on Thu, 2011-05-05 15:56

The New Year was not so happy in Queensland, Australia. In December 2010 and January 2011, floods swept across the state and at the beginning of February 2011, cyclone Yasi, a category 5 storm, struck near Cairns. Dozens died, hundreds were evacuated, thousands were affected and an excess of US$15 billion of damages were caused. A state of emergency was declared in all but one of the 75 councils. Seventy percent of the state was impacted; an area five times the size of the United Kingdom.