Special issue: Natural disasters and their ...

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Dec 11, 2012 - policy significance to all walks of life in our societies. In this regard, improving our understanding about the physical mechanisms of nature ...
Asian Geographer Vol. 29, No. 2, December 2012, 75–76

EDITORIAL Special issue: Natural disasters and their management in Hong Kong and Mainland China

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Harry F. Lee, guest editor Department of Geography, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong The recent catastrophes including the March 2011 Tōhoku earthquake in Northeast Japan and the recurrence of massive drought in China have aroused widespread public concerns about and motivated academic interest in natural disasters. Despite the social, economic, and technological advancements of modern societies, human beings are still vulnerable to natural disasters, which often result in substantial human causalities and economic losses. Longitudinal instrumental records show that the number of various types of natural disasters has been on the rise. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report (2007), it is projected that more natural disasters will be happening in the next 50 years. All these facts suggest that natural disaster is a topic of interest not only within academic circles, but also has social and policy significance to all walks of life in our societies. In this regard, improving our understanding about the physical mechanisms of nature disaster and evaluating the preventive policies and risk management strategies in response to natural disasters are imminent and important. In this special issue, scholars are invited to examine the above topics. The scope of research ranges from macroscopic perspective (based on all of the known cases in the long-term) to microscopic perspective (based on individual incidents). It is hoped that readers can obtain a holistic understanding about the multi-facets of natural disasters through this special issue. This special issue is originated from the invitation of Prof. Donggen Wang – the Editor-inChief of Asian Geographer. Five papers are included in this special issue. Briefly, the first two papers are about historical disasters in China. Based on various historical documents, Fei and his colleagues reconstruct the dust storm disaster in northern China in 1523. The dust storm is found to be the most severe one in Chinese history. During the event, the horizontal visibility dropped below 0.05 km, while the wind speed surpassed Scale 10 of the Beaufort Wind Force Scale (i.e., 88–103 km/h). It severely affected agriculture, resulting in crop failures and famines. The blowing sand of the dust storm buried and killed about 100 people. In parallel, it is generally believed that global warming may result in more frequent natural disasters. However, the temperature-disaster association may vary in different regions because of the influence of regional meteorology and geography. Based on fine-grained paleo-temperature reconstructions and historical natural disaster data (including drought, flood, hail, frost, dust storms, pests, and famine) spanning 1270 to 1949, Lee and Zhang explore whether the positive temperature-disaster association is valid in northwestern China (i.e., Gan-Ning-Qing Region (GNQR)) in the very long term. They find that the multi-decadal variability of temperature is positively correlated with that of various disasters (particularly dust storm, flood, hail and pest) in GNQR, but the positive association is only moderate; this does not fully support the positive temperature-disaster association in northwestern China in the coming future.

ISSN 1022-5706 print/ISSN 2158-1762 online © 2012 Hong Kong Geographical Association http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10225706.2012.742613 http://www.tandfonline.com

Downloaded by [University of Hong Kong Libraries] at 07:45 11 December 2012

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Editorial

A large part of Chinese territory lies on earthquake-prone zones. The 2008 Sichuan earthquake heightens our concern about the earthquake hazard in China. The third paper in this special issue is about the longitudinal comparison of earthquake mitigation in contemporary China. By comparing two large earthquakes – the 1976 Tangshan earthquake and the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake – Kwong and his colleagues track the changes of earthquake preventive measures and policies in China over the past few decades. Besides this, they also evaluate the effectiveness of those measures and policies and discuss the associated policy implications in mitigating the damages brought by large earthquakes. Hong Kong is frequently exposed to the destructive wind threats of tropical cyclone from the Western-North Pacific, mainly in summer season. Tropical cyclones are one of the major natural hazards that affect the populace of Hong Kong on an annual basis. We have two papers examining the tropical cyclones in Hong Kong. Fok and Cheng systematically review the loss reduction strategies currently adopted by the Hong Kong government. Through the continuous application of those strategies, the vulnerability of the Hong Kong population to the tropical cyclone hazard has been greatly reduced in recent decades. Positively speaking, a sense of security in relation to tropical cyclone hazard has been developed by Hong Kong citizens. However, it is worth discussing whether the increasing sense of security will result in a general insensitivity to the tropical cyclone hazard risk. Our last paper pinpoints the existing tropical cyclone warning system in Hong Kong. Since its application in the nineteenth century, its effectiveness has seldom been holistically evaluated. Lee and his colleagues make an exploratory attempt to evaluate the performance of an existing tropical cyclone system in Hong Kong. They adopt Dennis Parker’s (1999) Criteria-development Matrix to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the warning system. Their findings indicate that the tropical cyclone warning system of Hong Kong performs quite satisfactory. Nonetheless, there is still deficiency in weather-related legislation and the recognition of the local needs. To conclude, natural hazard and disaster risk management research is an important subject area. We hope that this special issue may make a valuable contribution to the literature of this study area. It should also be pointed out that many research topics remain unexplored. More research efforts are invited to examine the physical mechanism of and human responses to various types of natural disasters experienced in Asia and the Pacific Rim.