Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Disaster management

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  1. Disaster definition, scope & structure
  2. Jan 2006 - Jun 2006


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[edit] Assessment page on Natural disasters

Not sure if anyone else here knows about this page: Wikipedia:Article_assessment/Natural_disasters. Gives an idea of the range of quality of articles on natural disasters. Carcharoth 16:02, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] FEMA Urban Search and Rescue Task Forces

I created the main entry for the FEMA US&R Task Forces as well as stubs for each of the teams. So far, only AZ-TF1, CA-TFs 1, 2 and 3 have anything beyond very basic stubs. If anyone is familiar with one of these Task Forces (or would like to do the research to flesh out the basic stub), I would be very appreciative.

I would also be interested in having the FEMA Urban Search and Rescue Task Force article reviewed. Any feedback would be appreciated as I am an amateur US&R enthusiast with no real life experience in the field.

Thanks!

Epolk 17:59, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Portal:Disasters

Hey guys, I just wanted to let you know that I spent yesterday making Portal:Disasters and it is almost complete.

Feel free to contribute to the portal by any means. --Nishkid64 01:35, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Looks good. I've started the talk page for the portal. Carcharoth 15:53, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Rail Crash AfD

One of the articles within the scope of this project has been listed at AfD. If you have an opinion either way please see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2006 Rome metro crash. Blood red sandman 20:07, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Assessing articles

Does anyone here want to start going through Category:Disasters and tagging lots of article talk pages with this project's banner? We could then start assessing them, for the purposes of the project here. Or maybe the assessment in some areas should be left to other wikiprojects (eg. earthquakes and hurricanes), and we should restrict ourselves to those disaster articles not looked after by other wikiprojects? Carcharoth 06:23, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Comprehensive Emergency Management

The four areas referred to - mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery and also commonly referred to as Comprehensive Emergency Management. Also, these terms are not consistent from country to country, therefore we need to be careful to create a NPOV. In New Zealand we have the Four R's - Reduction, Readiness, Response and Recovery for example. --Rediguananz 05:49, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Category for Disaster relief organizations

How about a category for organizations like those mentioned in Emergency management as well as Médecins Sans Frontières & RedR? Call it Category:Disaster relief organizations? --Singkong2005 · talk 00:32, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Using Special:Prefixindex, I looked for categories starting with the words 'Disaster' and 'Emergency', and I found the following categories that are similar to what you are proposing:
Maybe you could organise all these into a better category structure? With suitable thought given to the differences between emergencies and disasters, and between immediate responders and those that follow up in the mid- to long-term after a disaster. Difficult, but would be good to see some sort of category, as you say. Those categories I pointed out give a few ideas of organisations that could populate such a category. Carcharoth 00:42, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
Good job finding those cats...
It seems like a challenge - there's a lot of overlap with Category:Development charities. Can't do it now, but will give it thought... --Singkong2005 · talk 13:21, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] An interesting question

Here is an unusual question - do we count the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event as a disaster? After all, for all it wasn't humans, it was certainly disasterous, and in my opinion it is certainly worth inclusion. What about in the opinions of the rest of the project? Blood red sandman 18:18, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Stablepedia

Beginning cross-post.

See Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team#Stablepedia. If you wish to comment, please comment there. ★MESSEDROCKER★ 03:05, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

End cross-post. Please do not comment more in this section.

[edit] Sea Empress

Wanted do know if this article comes under the scope of your WikiProject? No loss of human life was experienced but thousands of birds and other wildlife were killed and the coastline was covered in oil resulting in a large cleanup operation. Alexj2002 17:11, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Short answer: yes. Long answer: It is in Category:1996 disasters, so someone considers it a disaster. Category:Environmental disasters contains oil spills, and there is also Category:Industrial disasters. Loss of human life is not the only common criterion for disasters - loss of property and environmental damage are also referred to as disasters, if on a sufficiently large scale. Carcharoth 17:17, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
I would say no. I expressed a strong argument on Talk:Environmental_disaster for removing the Environmental disaster page from Emergency Management (and renaming it). I stand by the position that Emergency Management categorizes emergencies and disasters by their cause and not the type of loss. The Sea Empress incident is probably an environmental loss (as determined by an environmentalist). As viewed by Emergency Management, it was an industrial emergency (possibly a badly-managed one). The current article lacks sufficient information about the handling of the emergency to be relevant to Emergency Management. Parradoxx 19:04, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
Just because it doesn't currently say enough about how it was managed doesn't make it irrelevant. In fact, that's exactly what we should do at a project like this - expand articles such as Sea Empress to show the management side of the incident, which makes this article one of those which currently needs our attention - all the more reason to be attached to this project. Blood red sandman 21:03, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
After more consideration: I recant. This project does embrace disasters as well as disaster management. I maintain that the ecological system has a vast, natural capacity for managing events like foreign substances and meteor strikes -- and that capacity may well be beyond the lifespan of any individual to measure. However, because it was man-made, the introduction of a foreign substance by the Sea Empress was unnatural and so too the loss of life, even if the local ecosystem was not overwhelmed. I agree that the Sea Empress article should be expanded, nay - must be expanded, to include more description of its management. Any reservations which remain for me would be better expressed on Talk:Environmental_disaster. Parradoxx 22:01, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2006 Milwaukee explosion

The article on the 2006 Milwaukee explosion is up for AfD. Sinse it is within the scope of the project, it seems apropriate to say here that anyone with an opinion on this AfD should make it heard! Blood red sandman 17:26, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 1979 Nice tsunami

I think that this event deserves its own article, seeing that it is one of the few in modern Europe with significant human casualties. I have, however, not found much material on what little I can find is in French. The article on tsunamis has some relevant references to it. I hope that there is a Francophone that is intereted in taking on the task of writing the article. --rxnd ( t | € | c ) 12:14, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree. Good to see more activity on this wikiproject! Any plans for collaborations, or should we just continue beavering away in our little corners on various articles? How many people are watching this page anyway? Carcharoth 12:37, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
I keep an eye on it, but you might probably have guessed that by how many posts I've made here. As for writing that article, I might give it a go based on a Babelfish translation of the references, if no-one who actually speaks French turns up. Finally, as far as a plan goes for the project, I'm probably going to be out of any collaborations because starting just after Chris--rxnd ( t | € | c ) 13:58, 19 March 2007 (UTC)tmas I intend to try to go systematicaly through records of historic aviation disasters, and create articles on them, as currently there is a pretty appalling lack of articles on such crashes. Blood red sandman 17:31, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
I thought there were rather a lot. Are there just a lot missing as well? I tried to find a French Wikipedia article on that tsunami, but drew a blank in both the Nice and tsunami articles. Carcharoth 17:43, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
"I thought there were rather a lot. Are there just a lot missing as well?" What, French-speakers or aviation accidnets? I might look for something as well tonight, but not right now - things in the real world to do. If you rp, I'll get back in an hour or so, signing out now. Blood red sandman 18:16, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
So, I got back to looking at this again. There are several references in the tsunami article. --rxnd ( t | € | c ) 13:58, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Active members?

Can any active members of this WikiProject (or anyone wanting to join) sign in below, please? Thanks. Carcharoth 12:36, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Earthquake naming conventions

Please see Talk:Basel earthquake for a discussion on the name for an earthquake article. Thanks. Carcharoth 01:03, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia Day Awards

Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 23:07, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Assessment and infoboxes

I've added some info about the assessment process to the project page...I'm hoping there will be some interest in getting this process started. I've noticed some systematic deficiencies from disaster articles, so I put together a checklist of things to look for when assessing articles.

I've also noticed some disaster articles have infoboxes, and others don't. I've found the infoboxes to be very helpful when updating lists, and I think they are useful to readers in general. Existing infobox templates include Template:Infobox hurricane, Template:Infobox winter storm, and Template:Infobox tornado single. It would be nifty if there were more of these for different kinds of disasters. -- Beland 01:46, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for that. Do you have a link to this systematic deficiencies list? I noticed several historical earthquakes missing (and recently requested the translation that created 1356 Basel earthquake), but I'm sure there is a lot more missing. One thing I did think was that we need a lot more ties to history WikiProjects. Disaster management tends to be more focused on present-day disasters and management and preparation. I'd like to see more focus on the history of disasters. Do you think adding a "and history" bit to the WikiProject title would work, or is it best to deal with something like this another way? (Hey, Beland! A blast from the past!) Carcharoth 04:09, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
I don't know whether changing the title will change the amount of interest in the project. Certainly if you think disaster history is underattended, just diving into it would certainly help a lot. You can also specifically add disaster history-related tasks to this project's todo list, or tag those articles for attention, to help recruit more editors to work on those articles. My checklist of things to look for is right on the project page at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Disaster_management#Article_checklist. The most useful thing (from my perspective) to have on every article would be the infobox. I didn't make a list of which articles were deficient (though I have left notes and tags here and there) because I thought any systematic surveys would be most efficiently accomplished at the same time as article assessment for the release project. -- Beland 03:22, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Naming conventions?

In Wikipedia:Naming conventions, the closest thing that comes to a standard convention for disasters is Wikipedia:Naming conventions (events), but that really is geared more to military conflicts and terrorist attacks. Curiously, in the discussion at Talk:2006 New York City plane crash#Rename to 2006 New York City plane crash or Cory Lidle plane crash, there is this statement: "The naming convention for disasters (well, most) is <<year>> <<place>> <<event>>". While I can't find any actual guideline that says this, it's not a bad thought. I have followed it for two recent articles I wrote (one of which was tagged as part of this project), 1996 New Hampshire Learjet crash and 1999 South Dakota Learjet crash. What would others in the project think about adding this guideline to first the project page, then getting it put into the Naming conventions guideline? Akradecki 01:01, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

I've allways followed that guidline, as unwritten but generally best, and I would support making it 'official' naming convention. I have once been told that for aircrash articles without flight numbers, I should use Year Airline Aircraft airplane crash, but to be honest I prefer <<year>> <<place>> <<event>>. By the way, I've tagged the other article for this project, too. Blood Red Sandman Open Up Your Heart - Receive My EviLove 07:30, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
I'd support that. It also takes the word "disaster" or "incident", etc, out of the title, and just says what it is. Then Chernobyl_accident would become "1986 Chernobyl reactor meltdown". I think that would really help with classifying certain projects in the Disaster structure as well. Can we make it manditory? As in, if an article cannot be renamed as such, then its not part of our project (at least, not part of the disaster structure)? --Parradoxx 05:26, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
I've been looking through Category:Earthquakes and they often follow that structure as well. The exception seems to be when there is a popular name that is more commonly searched for, but the <<year>> <<place>> <<event>> name should be created anyway, as a redirect. 1906 San Francisco earthquake is one example. An example of a common name is Great Chilean Earthquake (note the capital 'E' for the named event, and the small 'e' for the generic <<year>> <<place>> <<event>> name). Carcharoth 13:18, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
I've put this subject up for discussion (and hopefully consensus building) at the official policy page, Wikipedia:Naming conventions (it's at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions#Disaster article names as adopted by the Disaster management WikiProject), and there's been some discussion already. I'd appreciate it if the folks who have weighed in here to help make this a project guideline also weigh in there to help make it policy. Thanks! Akradecki 17:27, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
I went to the page, only to discover that it has already been decided to add it to Wikipedia:Naming conventions (numbers and dates)#Other events. Well, that went pretty quickly. Blood Red Sandman Open Up Your Heart - Receive My EviLove 18:29, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
Given the above, I've taken the liberty to copy the text from there to Wikipedia:Naming conventions (events). Akradecki 18:47, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
Well, my edit to Wikipedia:Naming conventions (events) has been reverted due to "lack of consensus". We, therefore, need consensus. Please weigh in. Akradecki 00:12, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Mississauga house explosion on AfD

I have nominated an article within the scope of our project, Mississauga house explosion, to be deleted. Please join the discusion. Blood Red Sandman Open Up Your Heart - Receive My EviLove 18:31, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Disaster Mitigation and Risk Reduction and the term "Non-Structural"

Congrats on the work so far. And glad you are open to more inputs. Two general observations: "mitigation" is presently getting short shrift. In addition to "assessement" I think it should be expanded with "risk reduction measures" where the various types of risk reduction measures can be elaborated and links made to the other good material already available. Reading the archives we should try to keep this internationally relevant. N. American may provide examples, but good to keep them as such so that many other models can be offered side by side.

I'm distressed to see the huge categorization of "Structural" and "Non-Structural". This is using "structural" loosely to mean what engineers refer to as "load-bearing" which is an odd way to define the world of disaster risk reduction. The widespread use of the terms in this way does not qualify it as a NPOV. From a social scientist or community organizers pov it is just unhelpful.

In the area of physical risk reduction an important set of actions is known by the term "non-structural mitigation" and refers to fasten furnishings, building contents and non-structural building elements to reduce the impacts of falling, hitting, sliding and flying objects in earthquakes and windstorms. Is this "non-structural" really "structural" or is it a subset of the big non-structural? See, it gets confusing? Similarly is planting mangroves structural or non-structural?

Any objection to calling these categories: "physical risk reduction measures" and "social, political and educational risk reduction measures" instead and expanding the mitigation section to reveal this richness?

M Petal 17:06, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

THANK YOU!! I've been dinking with trying to wrestle Structural and Non-structural into separate corners. I would recommend using the word "mitigation" still as part of the label ("physical mitigation", etc) but I do like your suggestion of using non industrial terms. (And I fully support using "risk reduction" and similar wording throughout the narrative). --Parradoxx 00:17, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
I am all for your suggestion MPetal. All we need is a reference using your suggestion as Original Research is not allowed on Wikipedia. Now we are using Alexander. Welcome to Wikipedia BTW! I suspect that we are colleagues IRL. --rxnd ( t | € | c ) 13:32, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] 2006 Milwaukee explosion

There is some discusion about renaming the above article on it's talk page. Although the new name goes against the naming convention, it is not without it's merrits, and should at least be considered. Please join the discusion. Thanks Blood Red Sandman Open Up Your Heart - Receive My EviLove 19:26, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] 2007 Iberian Peninsula earthquake

A newly created article. Please help update it. -- Szvest - Wiki me up ® 13:42, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Peer review/1991 Hamlet chicken processing plant fire

Comments at the above peer review from members of this project would be greatly apreciated, I am pushing for FA status on this article. Blood Red Sandman Open Up Your Heart - Receive My EviLove 19:10, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Pressed on to the next stage. Please now see Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/1991 Hamlet chicken processing plant fire Blood Red Sandman (Talk) (Contribs) 12:52, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Article Creation and Improvement Drive - Tunguska event

Tunguska event is a current candidate for the Article Creation and Improvement Drive.
Please see the article's entry to support or comment on the nomination.

[edit] What is the point...

Just curious, what is the point in putting the Disaster management on a lot of tropical cyclone articles? The scope of the project is defined as any article relating to policies as well as implementations of disaster management. However, is there really a need to include it in every single landfalling tropical cyclone? The template was recently added to Tropical Depression One (1992), which has very little related to disaster management. I just wanted to get a word on this. Hurricanehink (talk) 17:29, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Well, historically the disasters articles form a nice subset. This WikiProject should theoretically cover both the management of disasters and the history of disasters, despite the name. I tried to generate interest in a historical subset, working group, separate group, what-have-you, but not really enough. FWIW, hurricanes and other weather events are well covered by the Tropical Cyclones and Meteorology WikiProjects. I suspect that the other large categories of non-weather disasters are also covered by things like the Aviation WikiProject (air crashes), though as far as I know there are no WikiProjects on Earthquakes. Military History WP covers wars and stuff. Industrial disasters would be a nice group of articles for some people to work on. What would you suggest is the best way to handle this? Carcharoth 17:37, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
I guess I sort of see the point, though it seems like attempting to cover the history of disasters is making the project needlessly large. I would think the best way to handle it is including only those that did have significant problems or successes in the management of disasters. Some tropical cyclones would and should still be included, such as Katrina or Andrew, though I'm not sure where an appropriate cutoff would be. Hurricanehink (talk) 17:45, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
Maybe you can integrate the templates? that's what we did over at WP:PLANTS with the carnivorous plants and Banksia projects.Circeus 21:12, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
Maybe that could work. I'm really not sure, now. Hurricanehink (talk) 19:46, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
I must say I like the idea of integrated templates. I feel kinda silly adding the tag when it's already covered by the Tropical Cyclones project. Blood Red Sandman (Talk) (Contribs) 21:04, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
If it's not too much work, then I suppose it's a good idea. Hurricanehink (talk) 22:15, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

I'd suggest that the project is renamed to WP Disasters. "Disaster management" inherently less-clear - do the effects of a minor TD have anything to do with disaster management? Because of POV issues the scope of the project should exclude War, "Terrorism" and other conflicts of that nature; but include natural disasters and things like plane crashes. If this was done, then this project could act as a central clearing house for disaster-related projects: for instance "how should we best present monetary cost of disasters?" is relevant to all projects with disasters in their remit. As it is not entirely clear if ALL tropical cyclones would be within the scope of this project (could you really say Tropical Storm Lee (2005) is)? If the project members here want it, I will edit {{hurricane}} to do the following:

  • Add an optional disaster parameter - if =yes then it is included in this projects scope.
  • This will add it to the WP 1.0 categories for the project (which are not hard to establish, again if you want that say), in a similar manner to how the meteorology ratings are handled: automatically use the WPTC class but leave the importance blank for editors of this project to determine.

If we can get it established successfully for WPTC and its template; then we can make similar modifications to other templates that relate.--Nilfanion (talk) 22:26, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Renaming the project would be wrong. We could, however, create a subproject named Disasters. There are a lot of issues relating to Disaster/Emergency management that we have not yet covered. As for the scope of the disastrous events that we want to cover it should include human-induced, sociological and natural disasters. For my professional work, I use EM-DAT and GLIDE as references for what to define as a disaster. An integrated template for cyclones/hurricanes sounds like a great idea. It could also be useful to discuss whether we want include the GLIDE identifiers in the articles. --rxnd ( t | € | c ) 10:06, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
The reason I suggested that is when I see the tag on TC articles I get a bit confused; there is little info on disaster management in the typical article on a disaster. "Disaster management" is a clearly a subconcept of "disasters" themselves. The scope of this project would be unaffected it just clears the definitions up with this sort of thing.--Nilfanion (talk) 19:07, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
I think we should keep our existing structure - all disasters are included - but rename the project to 'WikiProject Disasters and disaster management', since both halfs of the equation - disasters and management - are likely to be of interest to exactly the same set of people, and might as well be treated together. Blood Red Sandman (Talk) (Contribs) 19:12, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] 2007 French coach crash for deletion

Mention since it seems in the scope of this project: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2007 French coach crash.Circeus 21:12, 20 March 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Project Award????

Are we gonna make a project award? Or are we gonna stay like this and I'll be template boy?--Pupster21 19:37, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] GA nominee: Civil engineering and infrastructure repair in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina

The article on Civil engineering and infrastructure repair in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina has been nominated for GA status. I think that it should be interesting for some of the participants in our project. --rxnd ( t | € | c ) 18:41, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Major clean up of Disaster

FYI, I will try to clean up Disaster as per my descripton here. Comments and help will be appreciated. --rxnd ( t | € | c ) 12:38, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "Disaster management" of labor struggles?

I have created an inquiry about what (some of) you folks are doing, here:

Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Organized_Labour#.22Disaster_Management.22_of_labor_struggles.3F

best wishes, Richard Myers 22:18, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

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