Special Issue "Risk Management Challenges: Mitigate the Risk from Natural Hazards"

Guest Editor
Prof. Dr. Douglas Paton
School of Psychology, University of Tasmania, Newnham Campus, Building O, 004 Newnham, 7248 Tasmania, Australia
Website: http://fcms.its.utas.edu.au/scieng/psychol/pagedetails.asp?lpersonId=1360
E-Mail: douglas.paton@utas.edu.au
Phone: +61 3 6324 3193
Fax: +61 3 6324 3168
Interests: community resilience; risk communication; cross cultural risk management; community recovery

Dear Colleagues,

Within minutes of the March 2011 earthquake in Japan, news media provided unprecedented coverage of an unfolding natural catastrophe. Events such as this place natural disasters firmly in the public eye but only for a short time. It falls to the research community to learn the lessons offered by these events and turn them into opportunities for developing more effective risk management and mitigation strategies and identifying the factors that contribute to the vulnerability and resilience of communities and response and recovery agencies. Disasters such as the Japanese tsunami also highlight the ever-present need for systematic, rigorous research into the risk posed by natural hazards and how these risks can be managed. Of course it is vital to ensure that the findings from such research endeavours are disseminated to those who can use the findings.

This means that journals that disseminate these lessons are important resilience and adaptive resources for all those involved in risk and disaster management. Journals such as Challenges provide outlets for scholarly and professional debate on the causes and consequences of disasters and how their effects may be mitigated and managed. This special edition of Challenges will give voice to research into the causes of human and societal losses and ensure that the lessons learned from such disasters can be readily disseminated to the humanitarian, academic and political arenas where that knowledge can provide the evidence base necessary to inform effective risk management intervention.

Prof. Dr. Douglas Paton
Guest Editor

Submission

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. Papers will be published continuously (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are refereed through a peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Challenges is an international peer-reviewed Open Access biannual journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. For the first couple of issues the Article Processing Charge (APC) will be waived for well-prepared manuscripts. English correction and/or formatting fees of 250 CHF (Swiss Francs) will be charged in certain cases for those articles accepted for publication that require extensive additional formatting and/or English corrections.

• disaster risk reduction
• land use planning
• structural mitigation
• warning systems
• evacuation
• resilience
• vulnerability
• risk management
• community
• disaster preparedness
• recovery planning