Knowledge Base highlights and editors' picks

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Every week the PreventionWeb team of editors selects the latest news and research, reports and publications on disaster risk reduction – here is their selection of the latest must-read content.

People walking in flooded water in Pakistan

Update

4 January 2023

2022: A year when disasters compounded and cascaded

Driven by the hazard characteristics and the underlying diverse socio-economic vulnerabilites and exposure, the major disasters in 2022 were complex with compounding and cascading impacts.

United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UN-ESCAP)

Fire fighters in clouds of smoke during a wild fire in Greece

Update

2 January 2023

Europe’s ‘pyroregions’: summer 2022 saw 20-year freak fires in regions that are historically immune, close to normal in fire prone areas

Over the summer of 2022, the European “fire season” made headlines, and the burned area was said to be “unprecedented” in many countries. However, an examination of historical climate and fire data provides some important context.

Conversation Media Group, the

Update

29 December 2022

Enhanced emergency alerting mobile app in development

The Department of Disaster Management (DDM) is developing an enhanced emergency alerting app, which will be available to the public next year.

British Virgin Islands - government

Documents and publications

1 January 2023

Anticipatory cash transfers and early warning information ahead of drought in Ethiopia

This factsheet assesses anticipatory cash transfers and early warning information ahead of drought in Ethiopia. Ahead of the March-May 2021 rainy season, forecasts indicated below-average rainfall was highly likely in the Somali region.

Documents and publications

1 January 2023

Mortality risk associated with nuclear disasters depends on the time during and following evacuation of hospitals near nuclear power plants: An observational and qualitative study

This study aimed to examine the factors correlated with emergency evacuations on patients’ prognosis in hospitals severely affected by the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant (FDNPP) accident in March 2011.

This image shows a mini business man figure looking at euro sign on the stack of banknotes.

Update

27 December 2022

New report: Top 10 climate disasters cost the world billions in 2022

A new report by Christian Aid, Counting the cost 2022: a year of climate breakdown identifies 20 of the most destructive climate disasters of the year. The ten most financially costly events all had an impact of $3 billion or more.

Christian Aid

Documents and publications

28 December 2022

An urban drought categorization framework and the vulnerability of a lowland city to groundwater urban droughts

This article is focusing on assessing the vulnerability of a city to groundwater drought, using parts of the lowland city of Leiden, the Netherlands, as a case study.

Illustration of two tectonic plates in the ocean causing a tsunami

Research briefs

13 December 2022

Cause of puzzling tsunami near Sulawesi unraveled

When tectonic plates collide and thrust over each other and cause an earthquake, a tsunami can occur. That should not happen in an earthquake where the plates slide past each other. A team of researchers has a new solution to the riddle.

Utrecht University

Update

26 December 2022

Homes that survived the Boulder County fire hid another disaster inside – we turned them into labs to study this urban wildfire health risk

On Dec. 30, 2021, one of the most destructive wildfires on record in Colorado swept through neighborhoods just a few miles from our offices at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Conversation Media Group, the

Documents and publications

27 December 2022

Social vulnerability to long-duration power outages

This study presents a three-dimensional metric of social vulnerability to quantify the degree to which a person's life or livelihood is put at risk by a long-duration power outage.