scholarly journals Public perceptions for managing coastal hazards-study on Indian sundarbans

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (6) ◽  
pp. 220-229
Author(s):  
Rakesh Bera

Community perception becomes a central issue for hazard mitigation of an area. Present study made an attempt to assess public opinion regarding various problems associated with life and livelihood of Sundarbans. A survey was conducted over 254 households located along 22 mangrove fringe villages of Kultali, Gosaba and Hingalganj. Waterlogging, erosion, salinity, storm surges and embankment breaching are the major challenges identified during the survey. Details account of causes, consequences and their spatial extension have been presented and future coping strategies are also recommended. Elevating houses (92%), green buffering (80%) and construction of pucca house (9.8%) are the desired coping strategies for different hazards. Regarding future strategies, 48% like to stay if Govt. initiated for hazard mitigation and 37% like to live with the disaster.

2012 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-211
Author(s):  
Bernard Doherty

Beginning in 2005 the tiny Christian sect then known as the Exclusive Brethren suddenly underwent a media transformation from a virtually unknown or ignored group of quirky and old-fashioned Protestant sectarians to being touted as “Australia’s biggest cult” by tabloid television programs. This explosion of controversy came on the heels of media revelations about the involvement of Brethren members in providing financial donations to conservative political causes across the globe and a snowballing effect in response which brought forth a number of ex-members eager to expose their former group. This article looks at how this media transformation has been received by the wider Australian public. By studying the hitherto little utilized data contained in readers’ letters to Australia’s three mainstream broadsheet newspapers this article identifies which events or undertakings had the most impact on public perceptions of the Exclusive Brethren and which specific articles and issues struck the most responsive chord with readers. This content analysis found that Australian public opinion toward the Exclusive Brethren, while on the whole negative, was more indicative of their political involvement than their beliefs. The study also found that prior to what I call “The Brethren Controversy” the Exclusive Brethren had maintained a high degree of “sectarian tension” in Australia for almost four decades with little public outcry or media vilification.


2010 ◽  
Vol 64 (3) ◽  
pp. 443-479 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew A. Baum ◽  
Tim Groeling

AbstractPrevailing theories hold that U.S. public support for a war depends primarily on its degree of success, U.S. casualties, or conflict goals. Yet, research into the framing of foreign policy shows that public perceptions concerning each of these factors are often endogenous and malleable by elites. In this article, we argue that both elite rhetoric and the situation on the ground in the conflict affect public opinion, but the qualities that make such information persuasive vary over time and with circumstances. Early in a conflict, elites (especially the president) have an informational advantage that renders public perceptions of “reality” very elastic. As events unfold and as the public gathers more information, this elasticity recedes, allowing alternative frames to challenge the administration's preferred frame. We predict that over time the marginal impact of elite rhetoric and reality will decrease, although a sustained change in events may eventually restore their influence. We test our argument through a content analysis of news coverage of the Iraq war from 2003 through 2007, an original survey of public attitudes regarding Iraq, and partially disaggregated data from more than 200 surveys of public opinion on the war.


Author(s):  
Yasser Hamdi ◽  
Emmanuel Garnier ◽  
Nathalie Giloy ◽  
Claire-Marie Duluc ◽  
Vincent Rebour

Abstract. This paper aims to demonstrate the technical feasibility of a historical study devoted to French Nuclear Power Plants (NPPs) which can be prone to the extreme marine flooding events. It has been shown in the literature that the use of HI can significantly improve the probabilistic and statistical modeling of extreme events. There is a significant lack of historical data about marine flooding (storms and storm surges) compared to river flooding events. To address this data scarcity and to improve the estimation of the risk associated to the marine flooding hazards, a dataset of historical storms and storm surges that hit the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region during the five past centuries were recovered from archival sources, examined and used in a frequency analysis (FA) in order to assess its impact on the frequency estimations. This work on the Dunkirk site (representative of the Gravelines NPP) is a continuation of previous work performed on the La Rochelle site in France. Indeed, the frequency model (FM) used in the present paper had some success in the field of coastal hazards and it has been applied in previous studies to surge datasets to prevent marine flooding in the La Rochelle region in France. In a first step, only information collected from the literature (published reports, journal papers and PhD theses) is considered. A 1954 Coastal Engineering journal issue (Le Gorgeu and Guitonneau, 1954) on the reconstruction of the eastern dyke in Dunkirk has been more than a reference for this paper. It has indeed served as a main source of historical information (HI) in this study. Although this first historical dataset has extended the gauged record back in time to 1897, serious questions related to the exhaustiveness of the information and about the validity of the developed FM have remained unanswered. Additional qualitative and quantitative HI were extracted in a second step from many older archival sources. This work has led to the construction of storms and marine flooding sheets summarizing key data on each identified event. The quality control and the cross-validation of the collected information, which have been carried out systematically, indicate that it is valid and complete as regards extreme storms and storm surges. Most of the HI gathered displays a good agreement with other archival sources and documentary climate reconstructions. The probabilistic and statistical analysis of a dataset containing an exceptional observation considered as an outlier (i.e. the 1953 storm surge) has been significantly improved when the additional HI gathered in both literature and archives are used. As the historical data tend to be extreme, the right tail of the distribution has been reinforced and the 1953 exceptional event don't appear as an outlier any more. This new dataset provides a valuable source of information on storm surges for future characterization of coastal hazards.


2021 ◽  
pp. 001112872110647
Author(s):  
Anneke Koning

This study examines the impact of social and spatial distance on public opinion about sexual exploitation of children. A randomized vignette experiment among members of a Dutch household panel investigated whether public perceptions of child sexual exploitation were more damning or more lenient when it occurred in a country closer to home, and explored theoretical explanations. The results show that offenses committed in the Netherlands or U.S. are overall perceived as more negative than those committed in Romania or Thailand. Social distance affects public perceptions about crime severity, and victims are attributed more responsibility in socially close than socially distant conditions. The study concludes that public perceptions are contingent upon the crime location, even when applied to child sexual exploitation.


Author(s):  
Daron R. Shaw ◽  
Brian E. Roberts ◽  
Mijeong Baek

Chapter 3 aims to gauge both the reality of, as well as public opinion on, the central issue of corruption. It investigates public opinion on corruption among elected officials, source of corruption, effectiveness of laws and regulations in mitigating corruption, support for campaign finance reforms, etc. The data strongly suggest that people think corruption is rampant despite limited evidence that quid pro quo corruption is anything more than a minor problem. This fundamental attitude has not changed much in the wake of the Citizens United decision. Furthermore, they believe the problem is mostly intractable and that most of the commonly proposed reforms of the campaign finance system will not work. Nevertheless, they still support these reforms. Moving from simple descriptive data to more associational analyses, this chapter also explores the effect of campaign finance laws on campaign spending and then the effect of both on corruption attitudes. The results are not what the Court would have expected.


1981 ◽  
Vol 31 ◽  
pp. 37-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. R. Vincent

The central issue in most wars is how to win. The central issue in the Crimean War was whether there should be a war. Throughout most of the war, the question of peace or war remained an open one, dependent on military prospects, diplomatic vicissitudes, and the shuttlecock of parliamentary faction. That British public opinion was hotly for war was interpreted by players of the parliamentary game only as meaning that it might become pacific with equal volatility. The supposed political invincibility of Palmerston in 1855–6 had some reality outside Parliament, but little inside Parliament where it mattered. If events in Parliament varied in line with the war, it was also true that parliamentary prospects could affect the war.


2019 ◽  
Vol 69 (4) ◽  
pp. 513-517
Author(s):  
Val Swail ◽  
Jose-Henrique Alves ◽  
Øyvind Breivik ◽  
Jennifer Brown ◽  
Diana Greenslade

Geosciences ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 131 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zai-Jin You

The mainland coast of China is about 18,000 km long and houses about 70% of China’s largest cities and 50% of its population. For the last few decades, the rapid growth of the Chinese economy has resulted in extensive development of the coastal infrastructure and property, large-scale expansion of coastal ports, excessive reclamation of coastal land, and a significant increase in the coastal population. Previous studies have indicated that tropical cyclones (TCs) have struck the coast of China at a higher frequency and intensity, and TC-induced coastal hazards have resulted in heavy human losses and huge losses to the Chinese coastal economy. In analyzing the long-term and most recent coastal hazard data collected on the coast of China, this study has found that TC-induced storm surges are responsible for 88% of the direct coastal economic losses, while TC-induced large coastal waves have caused heavy loss of human lives, and that the hazard-caused losses are shown to increase spatially from the north to south, peak in the southern coastal sector, and well correlate to storm wave energy flux. The frequency and intensity of coastal hazards on the coast of China are expected to increase in response to future changing TC conditions and rising sea levels. A simple two-parameter conceptual model is also presented for the assessment of coastal inundation and erosion hazards on the coast of China.


2011 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 125-145 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fahed Al-Sumait

AbstractIn contemporary political discussions, the Middle East is often lamented as democratically deficient. During the last decade, processes of democratization in the region have gained considerable momentum as accepted goals of the international community—a condition noticeably accelerated following the events of 11 September 2001 and recent revolutions in North Africa. With democratization promoted as an explicit foreign policy objective, new discourses have emerged examining democracy's efficacy when translated into these contexts. Such discourses are heavily influenced by strategic political rhetoric rather than empirical assessments; a condition with significant consequences for public perceptions and policy decisions. Public opinion polls are starting to play an important role in these emerging discourses, yet polling research in the Middle East is still in its infancy. Major reports from three large-scale polls are used to highlight existing gaps between theoretical assessments of democratic attitudes and their empirical measures. Applying a four-part definition of democratization, this article assesses the relative ability of these polls to communicate the diversity of transnational perspectives concerning democracy's tenets. It is concluded that many Arab populations are not given adequate voice since polls often over-generalize attitudes based on interests in regional measures of central tendency rather than reflecting on the diversity among individual nation states.


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