Non-traditional health threats: Redefining the emergency management landscape

The study of disaster risk is primarily aimed at identifying who may be at risk (vulnerable populations) from specific events (causes) so as to prevent and/or facilitate timely responses to them. These causes are predominantly defined by historical data rather than from forecasting potential risks. Many of the threats to health and security today are transnational, whether it is the spread of an infectious disease, migration of displaced people, or the widespread impact of a weather event. There is a paucity of discussion and literature that attempts to describe new and emerging causes of disasters, or the potential impact of these events. Reasons for this may include perceptions of these causes as being non-traditional threats and, therefore, not readily interpreted as causes of disasters and thus not as disasters at all. They may include climate change, social disruptions such as terrorism, economic crisis, drug trafficking or increased drug usage. The risks and impacts are changing because of societal and social change, economic changes and rapidly changing technology and interconnectedness. Traditional views of disaster are limiting, as they do not include high-impact events that are not associated with emergency service responses. The health consequences of these events are complex to understand. Nevertheless, careful analysis of these events reveals alignment of their human impact against established criteria that define disasters. The aim of this paper is to examine emerging causes of disasters and non-traditional health threats, consider their relationship to contemporary emergency management risk assessment, and consider what is required for emergency management to adapt and confront this emerging reality.

CUTHBERTSON Joseph;  ARCHER Frank;  ROBERTSON Andrew;  RODRIGUEZ LLANES Jose Manuel; 

2019-02-20

AUSTRALIAN EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT INSTITUTE

JRC115646

1324-1540 (online),   

https://ajem.infoservices.com.au/items/AJEM-32-03-19,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC115646,