In Case Of Emergency, Read Blog

A new study  says “individualistic” Americans may be too optimistic about the risk of disasters, including terrorism, as opposed to more “interdependent” cultures such as in Asia. The report argues that the perception of disaster risk is influenced by culture more than experience.
It may help explain why many Americans still do not prepare for disasters (and, [...]

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On Wednesday, China held its second National Day of Disaster Prevention and Reduction. May 12th is the anniversary of the 8.0-magnitude 2008 earthquake that hit the nation’s Sichuan Province. China joins Japan which has its Disaster Prevention Day on the anniversary of the catastrophic 1923 Tokyo earthquake.

Students drilling in Donghu Primary School, Nanchang City, Jiangxi [...]

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I wanted to bring to your attention two news stories from this week that highlight the significant role the Chinese public is having in the nation’s response to their major earthquake and how this may have a major impact on citizen involvement in their government generally. 

The lead story by Maureen Fan on the Washington Post’s front page Thursday, “Citizen Groups Step Up In [...]

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NPR’s Melissa Block had an interesting story about how many Chinese throughout the country communicated with each other directly after the earthquake using text messaging:
The first word about the massive earthquake in China did not come from the news media. In China, some 600 million people have cell phones, and when the quake hit, many reached for them — but not [...]

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The aftermath of both major Asian natural disasters – the earthquake in China and the Burmese cyclone — has displayed the web’s ability to be an source and aggregator of multi-media information in the wake of disaster situations.
This phenomenon is being well covered by Global Voices, a non-profit citizens’ media project founded at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society.
This post combines post-earthquake video mashups [...]

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The aftermath of the major earthquake that struck central China has underscored the importance and potential of personal technology in helping the public deal with major disasters. 
As this posting from Matthew Ingram’s 2.0 blog in Canada’s Globe and Mail newspaper explains, Twitter broke the news of the earthquake and its ‘coverage’ has filled a news niche.
Like many others, I woke up this morning [...]

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