Bibliographic details:

Young, A. F. (2022). From federal transfers and local investments to a potential convergence of COVID-19 and climate change: The case study of São Paulo city. Sustainable Cities and Society, 76, 103450.

Abstract:

This paper is divided into two parts to explore some aspects of municipal development related to national and subnational investments in disaster risk reduction and urban sustainability related to Covid-19 and climate change response. In Part I, a survey on disasters and national transfers to 45 Brazilian municipalities is presented. In Part II, the local-scale approach enabled to compare the areas most affected by COVID-19 with those impacted by climate change. There are large uncertainties around financial support from the federal government and their impact at local scale. São Paulo city was chosen because it reveals some important aspects of spatial structure carried out through local investments. In this sense, updated information on floods and warmer surfaces were updated to provoke a discussion about a potential confluence with the effects of pandemic. The results highlighted the effects of scarce federal transfers and the maps help us to identify the spatial distribution of people at risk, which can be beneficial for municipal decisions as they highlight a significative relationship between pandemic effects and an uneven social structure. In conclusion, the trade-off between this unequal structure and a necessary and effectively sustainable change leads us to reflect on local investment trends.

Webpage: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scs.2021.103450

Bibliographic details:

Shlomo Mizrahi, Adar Ben-Eliyahu, Nissim Cohen, Uri Hertz, Rotem Miller-Mor, Efrat Mishor & Eran Vigoda-Gadot (2022): Public management during a crisis: when are citizens willing to contribute to institutional emergency preparedness?, Public Management Review, 1-25. DOI: 10.1080/14719037.2022.2042727
https://doi.org/10.1080/14719037.2022.2042727

Abstract:

Institutional emergency management has become an integral part of public management practice and research. This paper investigates the factors related to people’s willingness to contribute to institutional emergency preparedness. We explore the relationships between this willingness and people’s perceptions about the likelihood of government handling emergencies effectively, the risks of emergencies, and their relationship with public sector organizations. Using a dataset collected in Israel at two points in time before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, we demonstrate that people’s willingness to contribute to institutional emergency preparedness is strongly anchored in their evaluations of the public sector’s responsiveness and fairness.

Bibliographic details

Negev, Maya, Zohar, Motti and  Paz, Shlomit (2022). Multidimensional hazards, vulnerabilities, and perceived risks regarding climate change and Covid-19 at the city level: An empirical study from Haifa, Israel,Urban Climate,Volume 43,2022,101146,ISSN 2212-0955

Abstract
Climate hazards and vulnerabilities in cities are multidimensional. Natural features determine heat, floods and wildfires. Social features determine vulnerability and resilience. This study examined multidimensional hazards, vulnerabilities, and resilience in Haifa, a socially diverse Mediterranean city. Spatial indices of heatwaves, floods, wildfires and social vulnerability were developed by Geographic Information Systems geoprocessing functions using Digital Elevation Model, land use and welfare data. An online survey assessing risk perceptions, sense of danger and community resilience was distributed to residents (N = 549), and geocoded using street identification. The results show that climate hazards and vulnerabilities vary within the city and reflect its geographical and social characteristics: lower regions are prone to heat and floods and elevated neighborhoods to wildfires. All zones and segments of the population are in certain danger, but climate hazards and vulnerabilities are heterogeneous and unequally distributed, with certain neighborhoods more exposed. The downtown area is most vulnerable in social features, yet its residents have higher resilience perceptions compared to uptown, where the main hazard is wildfires and the main vulnerability is aging. Implications for urban climate policy: local stressors should be mitigated at the neighborhood level by investing in suitable infrastructure and fostering community resilience.

Webpage:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.uclim.2022.101146.

Bibliographic details:

IPCC, 2022: Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [H.-O. Pörtner, D.C. Roberts, M. Tignor, E.S. Poloczanska, K. Mintenbeck, A. Alegría, M. Craig, S. Langsdorf, S. Löschke, V. Möller, A. Okem, B. Rama (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press. In Press.  

Abstract:

The Working Group II contribution to the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report assesses the impacts of climate change, looking at ecosystems, biodiversity, and human communities at global and regional levels. It also reviews vulnerabilities and the capacities and limits of the natural world and human societies to adapt to climate change.

The Sixth Assessment Report consists of contributions from each of the three IPCC Working Groups and a Synthesis Report (SYR), which integrates the Working Group contributions and the Special Reports produced in the cycle.

Webpage: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg2/

Bibliographic details

Newman Cohen, Avigail  & Fishhendler, Itay. (2022). An archetype for insurance thresholds for extreme natural events in the agricultural sector. Climate Risk Management, 100434.

Abstract

‏The use of insurance against disasters triggered by natural hazards has become a common mechanism in the agricultural sector. Typical insurance policies, including those in the agricultural sector, specify an event or threshold beyond which insured payments are triggered. However, there is an absence of studies situating agricultural insurance against natural disasters in the wider insurance framework or depicting the range and evolution of thresholds for extreme events in the agricultural sector. As a result, there is no conceptual framework for understanding how a threshold is selected in real life situations. This study comes to address this gap by developing an archetype for threshold selection under conditions of climate mitigation and adaptation uncertainty. To this end, the study first unpacks the concept of insurance thresholds and identifies its evolution over time as well as its main building blocks: insurance realm, primary thresholds, and risk indicators. It then assembles these building blocks into three generic trajectories (climate exposure, location exposure, and sensitivity), each driven by different external and internal variables. Finally, it lays the foundation for treating the topic of insurance threshold as a research agenda.

Webpage: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212096322000419

Bibliographic details:

Cheek, W., & Chmutina, K. (2022). Measuring Resilience in the Assumed City. International Journal of Disaster Risk Science, 1-13.

Abstract:

The malleable nature of both the idea of a city and the idea of resilience raises an important question—why measure? Resilience is assumed to be located in the physical infrastructure of specific places or as a quality of the people located there. For disasters, we are often trying to conceptualize, measure, or render legible resilience in physical structures. But what is it that we are trying to measure, and is the idea of a city reflected in these measurements? If cities are organized around something other than resilience, is resilience their natural by-product? What is necessitating the need for increased—and measured—resilience? Using interpretive policy analysis, we explored five well known disaster resilience frameworks (UNDRR’s Making Cities Resilient Campaign, UN-Habitat’s City Resilience Profiling Programme, The World Bank and GFDRR’s Resilient Cities Program, Arup and The Rockefeller Foundation’s City Resilience Index, and The Rockefeller Foundation’s 100 Resilient Cities) to identify the working definition of “city” and of “resilience.” We conclude that if the demand for cities to become more resilient is an acknowledgment of the risk produced by globalized urbanization, then the call itself is an indictment of the current state of our cities.

Webpage: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13753-022-00410-9

 Bibliographic details:

Feitelson, E., Plaut, P., Salzberger, E., Shmueli, D., Altshuler, A., Ben-Gal, M., Israel, F., Rein-Sapir, Y. & Zaychik, D. (2022). The Effects of COVID-19 on Wellbeing: Evidence from Israel. Sustainability, 14(7), 3750.

Abstract:

Many aspects of wellbeing have been studied in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, studies that measure a comprehensive, multi-faceted conceptualization of wellbeing are rare. Using a broad conceptualization of wellbeing, based on the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) wellbeing indicators and a theoretical model of wellbeing developed previously, this study empirically assesses the wellbeing effects of COVID-19 in Israel. A representative sample of the adult population in Israel was surveyed and structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to analyze the impacts of the pandemic on a number of wellbeing indicators. Relationships among indicators were also analyzed. The study’s findings highlight the importance of social interactions, economics, mental health, and leisure on wellbeing. The study can be used by policymakers to fully understand the impact of various COVID-19 response policies on the wellbeing of the population.

Webpage: https://doi.org/10.3390/su14073750

Bibliographic details:

Feitelson, E., Plaut, P., Salzberger, E., Shmueli, D., Altshuler, A., Amir, S., & Ben-Gal, M. (2022). Learning from Others’ Disasters? A Comparative Study of SARS/MERS and COVID-19 Responses in Five Polities. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 74, 102913.

Abstract:

The ability to successfully manage disasters is a function of the extent to which lessons are learned from prior experience. We focus on the extent to which lessons from SARS/MERS have been learned and implemented during the first wave of COVID-19, and the extent to which the source affects governance learning: from a polity's own experience in previous episodes of the same disaster type; from the experience of other polities with regard to the same disaster type; or by cross-hazard learning - transferring lessons learned from experience with other types of disasters. To assess which types of governance learning occurred we analyze the experience of four East Asian polities that were previously affected by SARS/MERS: South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong-Kong. Their experience is compared with that of Israel. Having faced other emergencies but not a pandemic, Israel could have potentially learned from its experience with other emergencies, or from the experience of others with regard to pandemics before the onset of COVID-19. We find that governance learning occurred in the polities that experienced either SARS or MERS, but not cross-hazard or cross-polity learning. The consequences in the 5 polities at the end of the first six months of Covid-19, reflected by the numbers of infected and deaths, on one hand, and by the level of disruption to normal life, on the other, verifies these findings. Research insights point to the importance of modifying governance structures to establish effective emergency institutions and necessary legislation as critical preparation for future unknown emergencies.

Webpage: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijdrr.2022.102913

ד"ר דניאל זייצ'יק היא עמיתת פוסט-דוקטורט במרכז המחקר והידע הלאומי בתחום היערכות למצבי חירום וכן במרכז מינרווה לחקר שלטון החוק במצבי קיצון באוניברסיטת חיפה. לדניאל תואר שני במדיניות ציבורית מהאוניברסיטה העברית, ואת לימודיה לדוקטורט השלימה באוניברסיטת טקסס בדאלאס, בביה"ס למדעי הכלכלה, המדינה, ומדיניות. תחומי המחקר שלה כוללים היערכות, התמודדות ושיקום ממצבי חירום, מחקרי הערכה, סיבתיות ומדידה במדעי החברה. במסגרת המרכז היא התעמקה בין השאר בהתמודדות הרשויות המקומיות עם משבר הקורונה, פיתוח מדדים לחוסן ופיתוח מרחבי והיערכות לגלי חום קיצוני. בימים אלה היא עוסקת גם בבחינת תהליכים לשיקום אחרי רעידות אדמה.