While scientists can predict the probability — if not the exact timing or scale — of certain natural disasters, the ability to read a crystal ball may be more helpful than complex calculations in determining risks stemming from human events.
Resilience explains the resistance of a system to shocks and disasters, recovery ability, recovery times, and costs of recovery [75].
If we were to stick to this approach, it would be a recipe for disaster, threatening the ability of our children's children to feed themselves.
It could also do more to train and support the cash-strapped local organizations that protect vulnerable people on an everyday basis, because (as we learned in New Orleans) when disaster strikes, their ability to maintain operations will determine the fate of those most at risk.
The findings show that the design of governance structures for re-building after a disaster impacts the ability to secure resilience.
It isn't easy to spot an opportunity in disaster, but the ability to do is a crucial trait great business leaders master and use to make their companies stronger.
Several other studies and pilot projects have also shown the relevance of weather index insurance for famine prevention and its effectiveness towards enhancing disaster risk management ability of low income countries (see Hess and Syroka 2005; World Bank 2005; Chantarat et al. 2007).
Japan's nuclear regulator also said it feared the disaster exceeded the ability of the plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co, to cope "in some respects".
"If we do not begin to significantly curtail the use of carbon-based fossil fuels, this freed methane threatens to radically accelerate the speed of global warming, potentially producing a disaster beyond the ability of the human species to adapt".
This method, which also was used after the 1986 Chornobyl nuclear power plant disaster, hinges on the ability of study subjects to remember their activities, hour by hour, after a gap of several months.
