Reframing Disasters and Reflecting on Risk Governance Deficits

The 2nd Conference (IDRiM2011) of the International Society for Integrated Disaster Risk Management (IDRiM Society) will be hosted at the University of Southern California (USC) in Los Angeles, USA, on 14-16 July 2011, right after the Natural Hazards workshop (http://www.colorado.edu/hazards/workshop/ ) in Boulder. The conference is co-organized by the Disaster Prevention Research Institute (DPRI) of Kyoto University, and partly supported by the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) and the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission.

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. Furthermore, the devastating Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan on 11 March 2011 which triggered the on-going accident at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant have shown that even in a country with some of the best earthquake and tsunami construction and disaster preparedness and mitigation systems in place there are gaps in risk management. These events have highlighted several important points: the need to rethink the way we design our infrastructure and protection and mitigation barriers; the need to address/ manage disasters locally, but also the need to consider their potential impacts globally; and the need to identify and address risk governance deficits as well as the need for more transparency in the governance and management of high risk activities. Integrated disaster risk management is needed that uses multi-hazard, interdisciplinary, multi-stakeholder, and comprehensive approaches to disaster risk reduction.

Several well-known national and international speakers have confirmed their participation including:

Kathleen Tierney (University of Colorado, USA)
Detlof von Winterfeldt (Director, IIASA, Austria)
James Featherstone (Director, City of Los Angeles Emergency Management Department)
George Apostolakis (US Nuclear Regulatory Commission)
Norio Okada (Disaster Prevention Research Institute (DPRI), Kyoto University, Japan)
Hirokazu Tatano (DPRI, Kyoto University, Japan)
Adam Rose (University of Southern California, USA)
Erwann Michel-Kierjan (University of Pennsylvania, USA)
Stephanie Chang (University of British Columbia, Canada)
Aniello Amandola (IIASA, Austria)
Charles Scawthorn (Kyoto University, Japan/USA)
Fouad Bendimerad (Earthquake and Megacities Initiative, Philippines)
Friedmann Wenzel (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany)
Bijay Anand Misra (School of Planning and Architecture, India)
Akemi Takeoka Chatfield (University of Wollongong, Australia)

The conference will cover various topics including:
- The Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan on 11 March 2011.
- Post-disaster reconstruction and recovery
- Resilience as an approach to integrated disaster risk management
- Megacities and disasters
- Transportation systems
- Critical infrastructure
- Climate change adaptation, linking climate change and weather-related disasters
- Conjoint natural and technological (Natech) disasters
- Social vulnerability
- Socio-economic strategies for disaster risk reduction
- Information management and sharing
- The Future and Limitations of Catastrophe Models
- Disaster debris management
- Terrorism risk
- Young scientists research session

For more information please visit the IDRiM Society website at: www.idrim.org. E-mail inquiries may be sent to: society@idrim.org, or to cruzanamaria2000@yahoo.com