People with disabilities around the world face discrimination in their daily lives, including in their abilities to access public services and infrastructure. But what are the experiences of people with disabilities during disasters and emergencies? Do emergency responses take into account their needs? In this blog, Obindra B. Chand and Pallav Pant look at the current challenges facing people with disabilities during times of crisis in Nepal.
Nepal witnessed a 7.8 magnitude earthquake on 25th April and a 7.3 quake on 12th May, the worst natural disasters since 1900 in terms of number of dead, population affected and economic losses (A). The earthquakes killed more than 9,000 people and affected at least 8 million. Economic losses are estimated between 3.86 billion US$ and indirect losses and macroeconomic effects to 10 billion US$, half of the GDP of the country (19.3 billion US$ in 2013).
The first quake (25th April) was the most devastating, triggering landslides and avalanches in the mountainous areas, and destroying remote villages. The magnitude of the earthquake is similar to the earthquake that shook the country in 1934, 80 years ago.
Monitoring of social media conversations in the aftermath of the Nepal earthquake was found mainly to be useful in two ways:
1. Analysing public reactions to media reports: The data enabled the team and clients to see which issues were widely discussed, and whether these conversations led to sustained discussion or merely short-term spikes. (See detailed example in Annex 1.)
2. Seeing the relative prevalence of topics and identifying changes: Where a pure quantitative analysis can only show that a certain area of discussion is gaining or losing volume, a qualitative analysis was able to identify which sub-topics gained importance. For example, a shift in conversation from response-related topics towards reconstruction.
