Barbarigenesis and the collapse of complex societies: Rome and after.

"Barbarism" is perhaps best understood as a recurring syndrome among peripheral societies in response to the threats and opportunities presented by more developed neighbors. This article develops a mathematical model of barbarigenesis-the formation of "barbarian" societies adjacent to more complex societies-and its consequences, and applies the model to the case of Europe in the first millennium CE. A starting point is a game (developed by Hirshleifer) in which two players allocate their resources either to producing wealth or to fighting over wealth. The paradoxical result is that a richer and potentially more powerful player may lose out to a poorer player, because the opportunity cost of fighting is greater for the former. In a more elaborate spatial model with many players, the outcome is a wealth-power mismatch: central regions have comparatively more wealth than power, peripheral regions have comparatively more power than wealth. In a model of historical dynamics, a wealth-power mismatch generates a long-lasting decline in social complexity, sweeping from more to less developed regions, until wealth and power come to be more closely aligned. This article reviews how well this model fits the historical record of late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages in Europe both quantitatively and qualitatively. The article also considers some of the history left out of the model, and why the model doesn't apply to the modern world.

Potential Impact of Climate Change on Human Trafficking: A Narrative Review.

ABSTRACT: Climate change is a threat to the public health with wide-reaching impacts that are becoming more studied and recognized. An aspect of climate change that has not yet gained adequate scholarly attention is its potential impact on human trafficking. We review the potential impact of climate change on risk factors to human trafficking including poverty, gender inequality, political instability, migration or forced displacement, and weather disasters. We conclude that climate change is a crucially important consideration in understanding the complex and multifactorial risks for human trafficking. These findings add to the priority for health professionals to embrace efforts to prevent and to mitigate the effects of climate change and to take account of these risk factors in screening and identifying trafficked persons.

Fragmentation of production amplifies systemic risks from extreme events in supply-chain networks.

Climatic and other extreme events threaten the globalized economy, which relies on increasingly complex and specialized supply-chain networks. Disasters generate (i) direct economic losses due to reduced production in the locations where they occur, and (ii) to indirect losses from the supply shortages and demand changes that cascade along the supply chains. Firms can use inventories to reduce their risk of shortages. Since firms are interconnected through the supply chain, the level of inventory hold by one firm influences the risk of shortages of the others. Such interdependencies lead to systemic risks in supply chain networks. We introduce a stylized model of complex supply-chain networks in which firms adjust their inventory to maximize profit. We analyze the resulting risks and inventory patterns using evolutionary game theory. We report the following findings. Inventories significantly reduce disruption cascades and indirect losses at the expense of a moderate increase in direct losses. The more fragmented a supply chain is, the less beneficial it is for individual firms to maintain inventories, resulting in higher systemic risks. One way to mitigate such systemic risks is to prescribe inventory sizes to individual firms-a measure that could, for instance, be fostered by insurers. We found that prescribing firm-specific inventory sizes based on their position in the supply chain mitigates systemic risk more effectively than setting the same inventory requirements for all firms.

Valuing disaster risk reduction neighborhood interventions in informal settlements of Latin American and the Caribbean.

This study assesses the dollar benefit of a neighborhood approach intervention on disaster risk reduction in small-sized, densely populated, and hazard-prone informal settlements across Latin American and Caribbean countries. We use a life satisfaction approach that assigns a dollar value to gains in wellbeing associated with the neighborhood approach intervention. Our primary data was a survey to a sample of 349 beneficiaries from small towns in Haiti, Guatemala, and Jamaica, and in major cities' surrounded areas of Peru, Colombia, and Honduras. Out of 14 interventions, we found that community empowerment, physical works in public spaces and urban gardens/food approaches produced a gain of USD1,038 to USD1,241 to individual beneficiaries. Our study suggests a large benefit associated with the neighborhood approach intervention. It also shows that the life satisfaction approach is a promising method for the valuation of non-market and public goods, especially for countries where data on hazards and risks is not available to help monetize risk reductions.

Quantifying the relationship between predisaster mitigation spending and major disaster declarations for US states and territories.

Since the Stafford Act of 1988, the process of obtaining a formal Major Disaster Declaration has been codified for national implementation, with tasks defined at the smallest levels of local government up to the President. The Disas-ter Mitigation Act of 2000 (DMA 2000) placed additional requirements on local government to plan for mitigation ac-tivities within their jurisdictions. The goal of DMA 2000 was to not only implement more mitigative actions at the local level, but also initiate a process by which local governments could set up ongoing conversations and collaborative efforts with neighboring jurisdictions to ensure continuous, proactive measures were taken against the impacts of disasters. Based on the increased attention paid to mitigation and planning activities, a reasonable expectation would be to see a decline in the number of major disaster declarations since DMA 2000. However, simple correlation analy-sis shows that since DMA 2000, the number of major disaster declarations continues to increase. This article is in-tended as a preliminary study to encourage more detailed analysis in the future of the impacts of federal policy on local-level disaster prevention.

Comparing predisaster mitigation grant spending with postdisaster assistance spending: Are mitigation investments saving federal dollars?

This work is a companion paper to "Quantifying the Relationship Between Predisaster Mitigation Spending and Major Disaster Declarations for US States and Territories." Mitigation is a relatively new undertaking, especially for local jurisdictions, within the United States disaster policy. The Disaster Mitigation Act of 2000 (DMA 2000) requires local jurisdictions to plan for and implement mitigative strategies in order to access federal grant funding options for emergency management. After DMA 2000 went into effect in the mid-2000s, a supporting study by the Multi-Hazard Mitigation Council (MMC 2005) found that on average, mitigation projects yielded a benefit-cost ratio of 4:1 at the local level.1 This paper evaluates and compares predisaster mitigation spending and postdisaster assistance spend-ing at the state and FEMA Regional levels, hypothesizing that as mitigation spending increases, postdisaster spend-ing should decrease. The results however indicate the opposite, with most states showing increasing in both types of spending over time.

Differences in Sense of Belonging, Pride, and Mental Health in the Daegu Metropolitan Region due to COVID-19: Comparison between the Presence and Absence of National Disaster Relief Fund.

Korea's Daegu Metropolitan City once had the second highest rate of COVID-19 infection after Wuhan in China. Following the outbreak, the government provided the first national disaster relief fund to citizens as financial aid. This study investigated whether the sense of regional belonging, pride, and mental health among 550 citizens of Daegu differed between the times before and after COVID-19, based on the presence or absence of the disaster relief fund. Frequency analysis, descriptive statistical analysis, and t-tests were conducted using the SPSS 25.0 program. Results showed that the sense of belonging was higher after COVID-19 than before, while pride was lower. Individuals who received the disaster relief fund showed higher levels of regional belonging and pride with statistical significance. The prevalence of melancholy and depression increased after COVID-19, but the presence or absence of the fund did not lead to a significant difference. Thus, in case of a future national disaster level, provision of the disaster relief fund can raise the sense of regional belonging and pride, in order to elicit communication among local residents toward overcoming difficulties. Furthermore, during challenging disaster situations, central and local governments should provide diverse programs for the citizens' mental health care.

Spatial and temporal patterns and the socioeconomic impacts of landslides in the tropical and mountainous Colombian Andes.

Landslides are a natural hazard that presents a major threat to human life and infrastructure. Although they are a very common phenomenon in Colombia, there is a lack of analysis that entails national and comprehensive spatial, temporal, and socioeconomic evaluations of such events based on historical records. This study provides a detailed assessment of the spatial and temporal patterns and the socioeconomic impacts associated with landslides that occurred in the country between 1900 and 2018. Two national landslide databases were consulted and this information was complemented by local and regional landslide catalogues. A total of 30,730 landslides were recorded in the 118-year period. Rainfall is the most common trigger of landslides, responsible for 92 per cent of those registered, but most fatalities (68 per cent) are due to landslides caused by volcanic activity and earthquakes. An 'fN curve' revealed a very high frequency of small and moderate fatal landslides in the time frame.

Qualitative Assessment of Environmental Health Risk Perceptions and Community Challenges in a Puerto Rican Community: Change and Continuity in Response to Hurricanes Irma and María.

Culebra, a geographically isolated island located 17 miles from the eastern coast of Puerto Rico's main island, suffers from an amalgam of significant environmental health risk and associated social determinants of health that are affecting the community. In 2017, two major Hurricanes (Irma and María) impacted Culebra, resulting in an increase of preexisting environmental health risk. The present study's primary aim was to explore community attitudes, beliefs, and perceptions of environmental health risk, and to describe the social priorities of Culebrenses in relation to these risks and challenges. Semi-structured interview guide and Rapid Qualitative Inquiry (RQI) focused on topics of environmental health risk was followed. Qualitative focus groups and individual interviews were conducted among community members in Culebra before and shortly after Hurricanes Irma and María affected the island. Environmental health factors identified included: presence of mosquitoes, trash disposal, water quality and tourism. Additionally, a strong sentiment of island pride was found potentially generating a sense of community that could facilitate solutions to the existing environmental health challenges. Preexisting environmental health risk magnified after the pass of Hurricanes Irma and María. Sustainable and community engagement approaches are needed to develop strategies that can assist in the mitigation and resolution of the identified environmental health risk and challenges, including factors associated with threats such as disasters and pollution.

[Chapter 7.Climate changes and insurance] / Chapitre 7. Changements climatiques et assurance.

Chapter 7. Climate changes and insuranceClimate change challenges insurance, confronting it with uncertainty: risks evolves over time in frequency and intensity, leaving us incapable of measuring the extent of these changes. The following contribution first addresses the way insurance takes into account climate change, from an actuarial and a political point of view. Indeed the principles and the normativity of insurance are solicited. It will then consider the different types of insurance cover, from the most classic, the sustainability of which is threatened by climate change, to the most innovative, which have more to do with finance than insurance.

Livelihoods, precarity, and disaster vulnerability: Nicaragua and Hurricane Mitch.

How livelihoods determine vulnerability to disasters is a recent topic of inquiry. Few quantitative works have been produced to date. The empirical analysis that follows draws on household-level data available for Nicaragua, preceding and following Hurricane Mitch, a devastating Category 5 storm that made landfall in Central America in October 1998, to examine differentials in disaster recovery outcomes vis-à-vis household livelihood profiles. Livelihoods are distinguished according to economic sector along with ownership of productive means, a central mechanism of vulnerability under sociological labour frameworks. The findings indicate uneven recovery outcomes in relation to livelihoods. During the year immediately following the event, agricultural wage earners and agricultural owner-producers experienced marked losses owing to the disaster, whereas business owners saw an improvement in condition. Analysis of long-term recovery reveals that households reliant on agricultural wage employment exhibit lagged recovery relative to other livelihood profiles. The findings are discussed with respect to the dynamic pressures posed by contemporary developmental processes.

Comparative Review on the Cost-Effectiveness Analysis of Relief Teams' Deployment to Sudden-Onset Disasters.

When a disaster exceeds the capacity of the affected country to cope with its own resources, the provision of external rescue and health services is required, and the deployment of relief units requested. Recently, the cost of international relief and the belief that such deployment is cost-effective has been questioned by the international community; unfortunately, there is still little informed debate and few detailed data are available. This paper presents the results of a comparative review on the cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) of search and rescue (SAR) and Emergency Medical Team (EMT) deployment. The aim of this work is to provide an overview of the topic, highlight the criteria used to assess the effectiveness, and identify gaps in existing literature. The results show that both deployments are highly expensive, and their success is strongly related to the time they need to be operational; SAR deployments are characterized by limited outcomes in terms of lives saved, and EMTs by insufficient data and lack of detailed assessment. This research highlights that the criteria used to assess the effectiveness need to be explored further, considering different purposes, lengths of stay, and different activities performed, especially for any comparison. This study concludes that data reporting should be mandatory for humanitarian response agencies.

Social media usage patterns during natural hazards.

Natural hazards are becoming increasingly expensive as climate change and development are exposing communities to greater risks. Preparation and recovery are critical for climate change resilience, and social media are being used more and more to communicate before, during, and after disasters. While there is a growing body of research aimed at understanding how people use social media surrounding disaster events, most existing work has focused on a single disaster case study. In the present study, we analyze five of the costliest disasters in the last decade in the United States (Hurricanes Irene and Sandy, two sets of tornado outbreaks, and flooding in Louisiana) through the lens of Twitter. In particular, we explore the frequency of both generic and specific food-security related terms, and quantify the relationship between network size and Twitter activity during disasters. We find differences in tweet volume for keywords depending on disaster type, with people using Twitter more frequently in preparation for Hurricanes, and for real-time or recovery information for tornado and flooding events. Further, we find that people share a host of general disaster and specific preparation and recovery terms during these events. Finally, we find that among all account types, individuals with "average" sized networks are most likely to share information during these disasters, and in most cases, do so more frequently than normal. This suggests that around disasters, an ideal form of social contagion is being engaged in which average people rather than outsized influentials are key to communication. These results provide important context for the type of disaster information and target audiences that may be most useful for disaster communication during varying extreme events.

From Disaster Response to Community Recovery: Nongovernmental Entities, Government, and Public Health.

In this article, we examine the role of nongovernmental entities (NGEs; nonprofits, religious groups, and businesses) in disaster response and recovery. Although media reports and the existing scholarly literature focus heavily on the role of governments, NGEs provide critical services related to public safety and public health after disasters. NGEs are crucial because of their ability to quickly provide services, their flexibility, and their unique capacity to reach marginalized populations. To examine the role of NGEs, we surveyed 115 NGEs engaged in disaster response. We also conducted extensive field work, completing 44 hours of semistructured interviews with staff from NGEs and government agencies in postdisaster areas in Texas, Florida, Puerto Rico, Northern California, and Southern California. Finally, we compiled quantitative data on the distribution of nonprofit organizations. We found that, in addition to high levels of variation in NGE resources across counties, NGEs face serious coordination and service delivery problems. Federal funding for expanding the capacity of local Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster groups, we suggest, would help NGEs and government to coordinate response efforts and ensure that recoveries better address underlying social and economic vulnerabilities.