Archive
Reuters blog archive
from The Great Debate UK:
How social media can play a major role in disaster forecasting and recovery
--Julian Hunt is Visiting Professor at Delft University of Technology and the Malaysian Commonwealth Studies Centre. Joy Pereira is Deputy Director of SEADPRI, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. The opinions expressed are their own.--
The UN Climate Change Summit in Qatar will be negotiating levels of funding for adaptation against climate change. Social media, which can reduce impacts of disasters through community involvement and improved real-time management, must receive effective and rapid use of such funds.
Social media is increasingly joining public broadcasts and targeted radio messages as a means for central organisations, including government, to communicate forecasts and advisory information to people in affected areas ahead of a disaster, and effective advice during and after one.
Satellite observations and computer predictions may make accurate real-time forecasting of factors such as wind, waves and flooding possible several days ahead of the tracks of tropical cyclones, but, as with Nagi, which devastated Burma in 2010, thousands of casualties can occur in the poorest remote communities because there are no telecommunications providing warnings based on them. Many countries are now strengthening the structures that support such communication systems.
from The Great Debate UK:
Strong storms could be even more dangerous in future
--Lord Hunt is a Visiting professor at Delft University, and former Director-General of the UK Met Office. The opinions expressed are his own.--
Sandy has been called, by some, the ‘perfect storm’ and the storm of the century’. But there are reasons to believe that strong storms could be even more dangerous in the future.
from Photographers Blog:
An extreme year
2012 is the year of extremes in northern Brazil. Two regions of the country's vast north suffered their worst natural disasters in recorded history, but they were opposite disasters, with floods in the Amazon and drought in the northeast. Reuters photographers Ricardo Moraes and Bruno Kelly covered both stories. Their contrasting accounts follow:
Ricardo Moraes writes from northeastern Bahia State:
People suffering without water but full of hope, was what I found in the state of Bahia, facing its worst drought in half a century.
from Photographers Blog:
Strength born of calamity
By Swoan Parker
Everything was in its place. Knick-knacks of varying shapes perfectly lined the dresser as the dearly loved treasures from a literally broken home. Aline Deispeines’ concrete home was destroyed in the devastating earthquake that rocked Haiti on January 12, 2010. Her new home, spotlessly kept, was a tent. Her life, like that of so many who survived the calamity, was changed forever. She, like so many other Haitians, had lost her home, her loved ones, her business, and all feeling of security for her future.
I came to know Aline, 44 and a single mother to daughter Tina, 13, and adopted daughter Herby, 24, after hearing about OFEDA, the Organization of Dedicated Women in Action. OFEDA is a grassroots organization of women in support of women. It is run by Aline, who against incredible odds formed the group just weeks after the quake. OFEDA, I would later learn, is a symbol of strength, hope and endurance.
from The Great Debate UK:
Pakistan floods show Asia’s vulnerability to climate change
By Lord Julian Hunt and Professor J. Srinivasan. The opinions expressed are their own.
It is more than a year since the devastating July and August 2010 floods in Pakistan that affected about 20 million people and killed an estimated 2,000. Many believe that the disaster was partially fuelled by global warming, and that there is a real danger that Pakistan, and the Indian subcontinent in general, could become the focus of much more regular catastrophic flooding.
from Gregg Easterbrook:
What’s causing the tornado tsunami
“Tornadoes are currently on a frightening upswing.” That could have been written yesterday -- but was written 12 years ago, by your columnist, in the November 8, 1999 issue of The New Republic.
The onslaught of tornadoes is not some sudden, unexpected bolt out of the blue. I wrote about tornadoes a dozen years ago because 1998 and 1999 were terrible years for tornadoes. Now three of the last 12 years have been terrible for tornadoes, and the 1950-2010 trend isn’t so great either.
from The Great Debate:
Japan shows another side of the press
By Anya Schiffrin
The opinions expressed are her own.
Sitting in Japan in the days after the Friday earthquake and watching the official broadcaster NHK cover the disaster has been an unusual experience. There has been the typical blanket television coverage of this tragedy but the flavor of the reporting is different than it would be in the U.S. “Restrained” is how one friend described it. Over and over we’ve seen the same awful footage of the enormous dirty wave sweeping up cars and houses as it inches slowly along the land.
There are the inevitable interviews with displaced people and experts in their offices. But there are very few graphics or charts, no catchy logos and certainly no dead or injured on the screen. Just as U.S. presidents take off their ties when they visit the troops, Japanese officials appearing on television wear the blue uniforms of someone doing physical labor but with their logo of their ministry or office sewn on their pocket. “It’s theatre” a Japanese friend said dismissively as we watched television last night. But the purposefulness and determination of the government officials were evident — and even my skeptical friend agreed that this commitment would be well-received by the electorate.
from The Great Debate UK:
Preparing for the next tsunami
-- Lord Hunt is a visiting professor at Delft University and emeritus professor at University College London, and former director-general of the UK Meteorological Office. Dr Simon Day is a researcher at the Aon Benfield UCL Hazard Research Centre, University College London. The opinions expressed are their own --
The devastating tsunami that struck the Indonesian islands of Mentawai may have caused about 450 deaths, with hundreds more still missing, and compounds the disaster caused in the country by the eruption of Mount Merapi in Java. Following a magnitude 7.7 earthquake, the Mentawai Islands were engulfed with estimated three-metre waves that affected thousands of households.
from Environment Forum:
This oil leak is different
-- Willy Bemis is Kingsbury Director of Shoals Marine Laboratory, collaboratively operated by Cornell University and the University of New Hampshire, and professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Cornell. Any views expressed here are his own.--
Earth Day 2010 will be remembered for the explosion and fire on the Transocean Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, from which 11 workers are missing and presumed dead.
from Tales from the Trail:
Maybe we should just call it “Katrina-slick-gate”
Is "Katrina" the "gate" of the 2000s?
The 1972 Watergate break-in spawned an army of "gates," as the expression "whatever-gate" became shorthand for any political scandal. The subsequent decades saw "Travelgate," "Irangate," "Nannygate, "Whitewatergate" and a host of other major and minor political improprieties.
Almost 40 years later, "Katrina" has become popular political shorthand representing the slow response to a disaster, a nod toward the aftermath of the devastating 2005 hurricane in New Orleans by then-President George W. Bush. The perception that the Republican president cared too little about the people of New Orleans to respond quickly to a hurricane that killed some 1,800 Americans was devastating to his public image, and hurt his party in the 2008 election that brought Democratic President Barack Obama to power.
