TITLE:
Disaster Risk Reduction and Management: Recalling the Need for Paradigm Shift in Definition
AUTHORS:
Earl Bailey
KEYWORDS:
Risk Reduction, Disaster Management, Origin-İnteraction-Resultant, Spatial Nonlinear
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Geoscience and Environment Protection,
Vol.10 No.6,
June
27,
2022
ABSTRACT: The paper articulates the need for a paradigm shift in defining the basis
of what constitutes a disaster. This new framework must be sensitive to the
need for a more theoretical approach to inform disaster and hazard management.
Central to this is that the resulting approach cannot be muddled in linear
rational and procedural doctrines but appreciate the dynamics of complex
nonlinearity of disaster events. By engaging in thought experiment and critical
analysis of existing literature, the paper deconstructs the normative paradigm
of defining disaster. The end is to inform disaster management and risk
reduction intervention and mitigation programmes. The presented alternative
approach is sensitive of the need to equally include; spatial, political, social, parameters.
These are appreciated as being equally important as those dealing with ecological and economic. The resulting not
only include other elements, but also expands the definition to the complex
conditions inherent in the origin of phenomena to the interaction of the
phenomena with multiple and complex socio-spatial and demographic dynamics, and
then appreciating the complex results of this nonlinear interaction. The need
for a more substantive definition of
disaster underlines the pre-analysis that is necessary for implementation of
mitigation and prevention strategies. That disasters are becoming more complex is synonymous
with the complexities inherent in post-war development dynamics.