Special Issue: Water-Related Disasters and Risks
A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section Hazards and Sustainability.
Complex and excessive interactions and interlinkages between human activities and the water cycle result in water-related disasters. Such disasters are frequently visible globally, such as floods, droughts, landslides, storms, and deterioration of water quality due to industrial, agricultural, and pharmaceutical wastes. These disasters are expected to increase further due to climate change, having an unprecedented impact on modern civilization in terms of lives lost, property damages, and economic losses. The effects increased are attributable to increases in magnitude and frequency of disaster events, ecosystem degradation, unplanned urbanization, ageing infrastructure, and inaccurate public perception of disaster threat and risks. Poor water governance and inefficient disaster management/mitigation policies coupled with a lack of adequate infrastructure, limited technical knowledge and funds, efficiencies of disaster management institutions, and infrastructures diminish society’s capacity to cope with disastrous events and, therefore, increase the risk to life and the environment and property. Accurate estimations of disaster threats and preemptive actions are critical to inclusive disaster management strategy at local, national, regional, and global levels.
This Special Issue intends to create a platform to discuss state-of-the-art developments in identifying, estimating, and mitigating water-related disasters, their threats, and risks, aiming to find solutions in order to build a resilient society. Supporting global agendas such as Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) is another dimension of this Special Issue. We aim to strengthen the global efforts on disaster management and risk reduction by improving scientific knowledge and understanding water-related disaster risks.
Academics, postgraduate students, scientists, DRR professionals, and policymakers are invited to contribute to this Special Issue in the following areas: hydrological processes linked to water-related disasters including water quality-related disasters; numerical modeling and simulations to predict extreme hydrological processes and their interactions and feedbacks with socio-ecological systems; disaster risks, DRR policy developments, and their links with ecosystems and human society; early warning systems; techniques and innovations for disaster data integration and risk assessments (society, economy, agriculture, etc.); climate change impacts; sustainable alternatives and adaptation strategies for resilient communities, emerging risks for water environments’ sustainability, etc.
