Disaster Response

A rescue worker uses a two-way radio transceiver during heavy snowfall at a factory area devastated by an earthquake and tsunami in Sendai, northern Japan, 16 March 2011. Credit: REUTERS/KIM KYUNG-HOON

unocha.org - March 15, 2013

When one of the most technologically sophisticated countries in the world is hit by a triple emergency, should we count on web platforms and social media to deliver lifesaving information? Not necessarily, according to a new report by Internews into the communications aspects of the 2011 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster in Japan.

. . . instead of their usual high-tech operation, local newspaper reporters went back a few decades in time and produced a handwritten newspaper.

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Internews Report - Connecting the Last Mile: The Role of Communications in the Great East Japan Earthquake
http://www.internews.org/research-publications/connecting-last-mile-role-communications-great-east-japan-earthquake

Image: Currie Wagner looks over the debris from his grandmother Betty Wagner's house, destroyed by Sandy, in New Jersey. Photograph: Julio Cortez/AP

guardian.co.uk - October 31st, 2012 - Bill McKibben

Here's a sentence I wish I hadn't written – it rolled out of my Macbook in May, part of an article for Rolling Stone that quickly went viral:

    "Say something so big finally happens (a giant hurricane swamps Manhattan, a megadrought wipes out Midwest agriculture) that even the political power of the industry is inadequate to restrain legislators, who manage to regulate carbon."

I wish I hadn't written it because the first half gives me entirely undeserved credit for prescience: I had no idea both would, in fact, happen in the next six months.

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Image: Chief executive Sir Stuart Etherington says government should open up commissioning and make other initiatives less complex

submitted by Albert Gomez

thirdsector.co.uk - October 25th, 2012 - Tim Tonkin

Charity leaders are feeling more optimistic about their organisations’ financial prospects in the forthcoming year, according to a new report by the National Council for Voluntary Organisations.

The umbrella body’s latest quarterly Charity Forecast Survey, carried out last month and published today, shows that 31 per cent of the 200 or so NCVO members who responded feel the overall situation of their organisations will improve over the next year, compared with 21 per cent in the poll carried out for the last Forecast Survey.

The proportion who feel their organisation’s overall position will worsen over the coming year is down slightly, from 46 per cent in the last survey to 42 per cent.

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