IDRiM 2011 - Reframing disasters and identifying deficits in risk governance

The 2nd Conference of the International Society for Integrated Disaster Risk Management (IDRiM Society) will be held at the University of Southern California (USC) in Los Angeles, USA, on 14-16 July 2011.

The conference theme, “Reframing Disasters and Reflecting on Risk Governance Deficits,” arises from the analysis of recent events including the Haiti and Chile earthquakes, the volcanic ash disruption to European air space (as well as interconnected airlines, businesses, and people around the world), and the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. These events highlighted two important points: a) the need to address/ manage disasters locally, but also the need to consider their potential impacts globally as the world becomes more and more interconnected; and b) the need to identify and address risk governance deficits (e.g., the stark difference between the impacts on and the resilience of Haiti and Chile during the earthquakes; the need for international risk governance mechanisms to manage global disasters; and the need to include policy experts in disaster planning). Integrated disaster risk management is needed that uses multi-hazard, interdisciplinary, multi-stakeholder, and comprehensive approaches to disaster risk reduction. The following conference topics are encouraged:

- All hazards approaches
- Analysis of international dimensions
- Resilience
- Sustainability
- Low probability/ high consequence events
- Megacities
- Transportation
- Critical infrastructure
- Climate change adaptation, linking climate change and weather-related disasters
- Conjoint natural and technological (Natech) disasters
- Socio-economic strategies for disaster risk reduction
- Information management and sharing
- Other IDRiM related topics