Overcoming the Barriers to Emergency Management in Asia

Abstract

This special issue features a collection of key papers that cover emerging theoretical considerations and practical challenges of emergency management in Asia. Recently, disastrous events such as the Wenchuan earthquake of 2008 in China and the Japan earthquake and tsunami of 2011 have had to be managed efficiently and effectively despite high uncertainty and environmental and social risk. While many scholars and practitioners in the field of emergency management have focused on the United States and European countries, little research has been conducted to understand the different contexts of emergency preparedness, response, and recovery procedures in Asian countries. Asian countries may overlook the importance of effective emergency management regarding sharing resources among principal organizations, physically evacuating citizens to shelters, and risk communication through social and news media, even though recent extreme events -the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan, the 2013 Jakarta flood in Indonesia, and the 2013 Lushan earthquake in China -highlight the significant impacts of disasters. Nevertheless, developing emergency management systems in Asian countries is much harder to achieve than anticipated despite efforts to cope with catastrophic events through collaborative emergency management.To examine these issues, this special issue focuses on overcoming the barriers to emergency management by extending conceptual frameworks and practical implications, to assist researchers and policy makers in understanding the complex problems of emergency management. This is important because the critical challenge that Eastern Asia faces is that the effects of catastrophic events such as earthquakes, typhoons, and floods may spread well beyond a single country and aggravate existing problems with Asian economic growth, environmental degradation, and social tensions. This special issue includes seven papers dealing with diverse issues in Asian countries. Specifically, Jiwon Kim et al. as well as Kyungwoo Kim and Minsun Song raise critical issues for understanding emergency management systems by extending our understanding of social media use and hazards mitigation in South Korea. Moreover, Jingran Sun and Xiangyu Li and Wei-Ning Wu examine the relationship between government agencies and affected citizens in local communities by employing in-depth interviews and structured surveys in China and Taiwan. Lastly, research by Esmaeil Esfandiary and Jesus Valero and a book review by Brian