Disaster risk management has a long way to go —— Written on ＂May 12th＂ Disaster Prevention and Mitigation Day
China Meteorological News reporter Guo Qihao Zhang Yong Tan Yuan
It also falls on "May 12th" Disaster Prevention and Mitigation Day. This year’s theme is "Identifying disaster risks and mastering disaster reduction skills". Throughout the country, all kinds of comprehensive practical drills for disaster prevention and relief are once again popular, and many members of the public have also developed an eye for identifying disaster risks in practical drills, and mastered disaster prevention and mitigation skills in a subtle way.
However, for most people, "disaster risk" is a strange word. "Their ability to identify and resolve disaster risks is limited." Zhu Changhan, a researcher at the National Climate Center, said that the key is to tell the public where there are disaster risks and how to deal with them.
In recent years, although disaster risk reduction has been listed as an important part of national development planning, compared with the national conditions with frequent natural disasters, the ability to reduce the risk of natural disasters, especially meteorological disasters, is still quite unsuitable.
In the face of extreme weather and climate, many people are often either passive or helpless. How to reduce the risk of meteorological disasters and strive for the initiative of disaster prevention and mitigation? How to strengthen the risk management of meteorological disasters in a down-to-earth manner, so as to really benefit the public? What do we lack in meteorological disaster risk management?
Urgent risk management
Beijing residents still remember the rainstorm on July 21, 2012. Although the meteorological department has accurate forecast and early warning, the rainstorm process still caused great casualties and property losses. The most severely affected places are some tourist attractions and highways in Fangshan area.
"Some people build houses in rivers, build villas, engage in tourism development, block flood channels, and increase flood risks. The road planning is unreasonable, some road sections are seriously flooded, and the information is not smooth. In the case of floods, vehicles are still released, which increases the disaster losses. " Qin Dahe, an academician of China Academy of Sciences, believes that the lack of scientific assessment in urban and rural planning, especially the failure to consider the risk of meteorological disasters, leads to increased vulnerability and exposure.
In this regard, Jiang Tong, a researcher at the National Climate Center, explained that when disaster risks appear, exposure areas and vulnerability are the key factors affecting disaster risks. When there are many exposed areas and the vulnerability of the exposed areas is high, the collection of non-extreme events may also bring extreme influence. Proactive disaster risk management and adaptation can not only reduce existing risks and disasters, but also help to avoid future risks and disasters.
Meteorological disasters in China account for about 71% of all kinds of natural disasters, with many types, wide distribution, high frequency, great intensity and heavy losses. In the past 10 years, about 2,000 people died each year due to meteorological disasters, and the economic loss was about 200 billion yuan. With the rapid development of China’s economy and society, the population is more concentrated in cities and towns, and the mobility of economic and social activities is increased. As a result, the social disaster-prone environment will be more fragile and sensitive, the disaster-bearing bodies will be more exposed and the disaster-causing factors will be more complex and diverse. The economic losses and social impacts caused by the same extreme weather events will be much greater than in the past, and the difficulty, breadth and depth of coping with meteorological disasters will be significantly increased.
With the attention and efforts of the CPC Central Committee, the State Council and local governments at all levels, China’s meteorological disaster emergency management capability has been significantly improved, and the level of meteorological disaster prevention has been effectively improved. Taking typhoon disaster prevention as an example, in view of the possible impact of typhoon, grass-roots governments can organize hundreds of thousands or even millions of people to move, effectively reducing the casualties caused by the disaster. The achievements and practices of meteorological disaster prevention and mitigation in China have been recognized and used for reference by the international community.
"However, the emergency management of meteorological disasters, in terms of its function, is mainly the emergency defense before the disaster and the emergency relief after the disaster, which belongs to a passive disaster prevention." Jiao Meiyan, deputy director of China Meteorological Bureau, pointed out that to improve the ability of meteorological disaster prevention, it is necessary to co-ordinate the current and long-term work of meteorological disaster prevention and mitigation, not only pay attention to the emergency prevention of disasters, but also pay attention to the long-term meteorological disaster risk prevention, cultivate meteorological disaster risk awareness and establish the concept of meteorological disaster risk management.
Due to the lack of meteorological disaster risk awareness and corresponding disaster prevention and avoidance skills, meteorological disasters in some places could have been avoided. Urban floods caused by heavy rains are often due to the fact that the fortification standards for flood control and drainage in urban infrastructure construction do not fully consider the impact of meteorological disasters; Most of the casualties caused by geological disasters of mountain torrents are due to the fact that the impact of geological disasters of mountain torrents is not considered in the site selection of residential facilities in disaster-prone areas.
"By strengthening risk management, the port of meteorological disaster prevention will be moved forward, and passive disaster prevention will be changed into active response, and the transformation of meteorological disaster prevention and mitigation work from reducing meteorological disaster losses to reducing meteorological disaster risks will be realized. This is also a new trend in the development of international meteorological disaster prevention and mitigation." Jiao Meiyan said.
Disaster risk management, facing difficulties
"For the accuracy of weather forecast, it is as difficult to improve by one percentage point as it is to improve the performance of the 100-meter race by 0.1 second." Zheng Guoguang, director of China Meteorological Bureau, thinks that if we make efforts to strengthen the risk zoning and management of meteorological disasters, we can greatly reduce the property losses and casualties caused by meteorological disasters.
Prevention, prediction, disaster relief and reconstruction are the four lines of defense built by people in the face of disasters. Gao Jianguo, deputy secretary-general of China Disaster Prevention Association, believes that pre-disaster prevention is not only more humane than post-disaster relief, but also more economical. The response mechanism after a disaster event, no matter how effective, is never enough. Therefore, we must not highlight emergency and put "prevention" on hold.
Disaster risk early warning is an important link of "prevention". As an important part of meteorological disaster risk management, meteorological disaster risk early warning is an important part of China’s meteorological disaster prevention and mitigation system. Jiao Meiyan pointed out that it is necessary to accelerate the meteorological risk early warning service from the height of improving China’s meteorological disaster prevention and mitigation system, consolidate the technical foundation of the meteorological disaster prevention and mitigation system, and improve the effectiveness, practicality and pertinence of meteorological disaster prevention and mitigation.
In recent years, the geological disasters of floods and mountain torrents in small and medium-sized rivers caused by heavy rains have a tendency of frequent recurrence, which has become the main body of flood losses in China. The heavy casualties caused by a series of sudden meteorological disasters induced by mountain torrents have put forward higher requirements for monitoring and early warning of sudden meteorological disasters and meteorological services for disaster prevention and mitigation.
"At this stage, the meteorological risk early warning service for floods and mountain torrents in small and medium-sized river basins induced by heavy rain is carried out. The goal is to dynamically monitor and forecast meteorological signals and symptoms that may cause floods and mountain torrents in small and medium-sized rivers in real time by setting meteorological risk early warning indicators. Once the critical value of early warning indicators is exceeded, risk early warning will be issued and services will be carried out." Chen Zhenlin, Director of Emergency Disaster Reduction and Public Service Department of China Meteorological Bureau, said.
However, China’s meteorological disaster risk business is still in its infancy, and there is still a certain distance from the requirements for the prevention and control of geological disasters in small and medium-sized rivers. For example, it is difficult to collect basic data, and the key technologies such as the calculation of critical (area) rainfall, the division of risk grade and the extraction of watershed boundary need to be further studied; The temporal and spatial resolution and accuracy of quantitative precipitation forecast and estimation can not meet the needs of meteorological risk early warning service.
It is understood that while doing a good job in monitoring, forecasting and early warning of meteorological disasters, China Meteorological Bureau has carried out meteorological disaster risk assessment and early warning services, and gradually established a meteorological disaster risk business system integrating meteorological risk survey, risk identification, risk early warning and risk assessment, which has played an active role in meteorological services for disaster prevention and mitigation. Not long ago, China’s meteorological department launched the 2013 storm flood disaster risk survey, which provided basic support for the pilot business of meteorological risk early warning service for small and medium-sized river floods and mountain torrents induced by heavy rains.
Reducing disaster risk is a long way to go in Xiu Yuan.
In the context of global warming, it is particularly critical to pay more attention to defending against extreme weather and climate events. Cen Zhiming, director of the Hong Kong Observatory, said that there will be more and more extreme weather in the future, and the risk management of meteorological disasters should be strengthened as soon as possible. The global climate service framework also lists reducing the risk of meteorological disasters as one of the key areas.
In this regard, Zheng Guoguang stressed: "We must stand at the strategic height of supporting sustainable economic and social development and serving people’s well-being, take broader and more effective measures, attach importance to and strengthen the prevention of extreme weather and climate events, reduce the disaster risk of climate change, and resolve the impact of climate change on natural ecology and economy and society."
"More attention should be paid to resolving the climate risks of economic and social development." He pointed out that it is necessary to strengthen the study of the occurrence and variation of extreme weather and climate events under the background of global warming; Improve the ability of early warning and forecasting of frequent disasters; Strengthen the risk assessment of meteorological disasters and strictly implement the risk demonstration system of meteorological disasters; Establish meteorological disaster risk transfer mechanism, develop weather index insurance, and rationally use social resources and market mechanisms to reduce meteorological disaster losses; Strengthen popular science propaganda, and enhance the public’s awareness and ability of meteorological disaster prevention and mitigation and coping with climate change.
Shi Peijun, deputy director of the Expert Committee of the National Disaster Reduction Committee, said that at present, several frontier issues concerned by disaster risk science, including the construction of comprehensive disaster risk evaluation model, the quantitative evaluation model of disaster vulnerability, the rapid evaluation technology and method of catastrophe losses, and the comprehensive disaster risk prevention model, are still very difficult topics for diagnosis and prediction.
"Natural disaster risk assessment and zoning is a developing discipline and not yet mature." Meteorologist Zhang Guocai said that as far as meteorological disasters are concerned, risk assessment focuses on pointing out what the possible risks are, finding out the critical meteorological conditions that cause disasters, assessing the possible risks of disasters in real time, issuing early warnings and proposing defensive measures; Risk zoning focuses on making urban and rural planning, engineering construction and regional development avoid high-risk areas of meteorological disasters.
Critical meteorological conditions causing disasters are technical difficulties in meteorological risk assessment and early warning services. Zhang Guocai believes that meteorological disasters should be classified according to the severity of the impact on disaster-bearing bodies, and the critical meteorological conditions that cause disasters should be the necessary and sufficient conditions for the occurrence of meteorological disasters. The risk zoning we need is actually the risk zoning, that is, the exceeding probability zoning of the critical meteorological conditions that cause disasters. When the disaster-prone environment and disaster prevention projects change, it is necessary to re-establish the risk zoning. If human society is already in a high-risk area and it is difficult to move, what engineering measures should be taken to prevent the occurrence of risks and provide scientific basis for the design standards of disaster prevention projects.
Of course, meteorological disaster risk management also depends on strong legal norms. Qin Dahe pointed out that some administrative regulations and normative documents on meteorological disasters are not high enough in legal effect and pertinence from the demand of strong systematicness, wide coverage and high attention of meteorological disaster risk management. He suggested that the responsibility and obligation of the whole society to participate in meteorological disaster prevention and mitigation should be regulated by law, and the decision-making coordination mechanism with multi-sector participation should be established and improved, and the action mechanism with wide participation of the whole society should be established and improved, so that the meteorological disaster prevention system of "government-led, departmental linkage and social participation" can be more perfect and effective.
The "last mile" problem of risk early warning has attracted much attention. Jiao Meiyan hopes to extend the risk early warning service to grass-roots townships, villages and key affected areas, and bring the emergency responsible persons at the local governments, functional departments and villages and towns in key areas into the meteorological risk early warning service system. Once the possible occurrence of disasters is detected, the risk early warning service will be provided in time through the means of rural meteorological early warning information release, and the personnel will be transferred in time through the grass-roots meteorological disaster prevention organization system under the government-led mechanism to minimize disaster losses.
(Editor: Sun Wei)