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This video features Baroness Valerie Amos UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator and Prof Lena Dominelli, co-director of IHRR and organiser of the 2012 Breaking the Mould Conference at Durham University. Baroness Amos talks about how ‘resilience is about breaking the mold’ in order for humanitarian and development organisations to protect against natural disasters and other large-scale emergencies that require humanitarian aid. Emphasising the need to do more to build resilience to disasters, Baroness Amos and Professor Dominelli explain how investing more efforts in preparation for disasters is imperative to responding effectively to them.
Eruption of Mt St Helens in Washington, USA in 1980.
IHRR was very pleased to welcome Prof Sue Kieffer from the University of Illinois At Urbana-Champaign as a COFUND Senior Research Fellow. During her time in the Institute, Sue researched highly energetic geologic events, particularly comparing and contrasting the behaviour of torrential river floods with that of large landslides. Sue is one of the world’s leading authorities on geological fluid dynamics that addresses dynamic surface processes, such as movement of water and wind and the dynamics of volcanic eruptions and meteorite impacts. Her work has made a large impact on the geosciences, especially understanding the geologic processes that lead to different kinds of hazards, such as floods and landslides. Sue’s research spans terrestrial as well as extraterrestrial environments as her geyser theory developed early in her academic career was applied to the study of volcanoes on Io, one of Jupiter’s moons. Also, her shock wave theory was used to study the historic eruption of Mt St Helens and the massive flood on the Colorado River in 1983. Read more
An interesting infographic from the UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction shows the annual damages caused by large-scale natural disasters. It provides context for people killed by disasters, a staggering 1.1 million, those affected, 2.7 billion, and the total cost in damage, 1.3 trillion USD. This information from EM-DAT The International Disaster Database includes all disasters entered into its database (both natural and technological) are based on at least one of these criteria: 10 or more people reported killed, 100 or more people reported affected, declaration of a state of emergency or call for international assistance. Read more
