PHD GEOGRAPHY
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Funded by a three-year Vice Chancellor PhD Scholarship (2016-2019) at Liverpool Hope University, my thesis was entitled Natural Hazards, Vulnerability and Resilience in the Maltese Islands.
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Director of Studies: Associate Professor Janet Speake (profile here)
Supervisors: Reverend Professor David Chester (profile here), Dr Kevin Crawford (profile here), Associate Professor Janet Speake and Professor Angus Duncan (profile here)
Examiners: Dr Christopher Kilburn (profile here) and Dr Victoria Kennedy (profile here); examined and passed subject to minor modifications on May 20th 2019
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Thesis abstract:
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International rankings of disaster exposure and risk frequently classify the Maltese Islands as being one of the least exposed and at risk countries. For the small island developed state, such rankings may be criticised because: (1) they fail to take into account the historic and seasonal increases in population; (2) they are based on inadequately researched and incomplete historical catalogues of damaging events and their impacts and (3), they do not take into account implications of restricted land area. Building upon and extending the largely incomplete historical record of damaging hazardous events on the Maltese Islands, this thesis is situated within the complex interaction between natural hazards and human society and grounded within three strands of academic and practitioner literature related to both the Maltese Islands and small island states in which significant gaps in understanding are found. In this thesis, the bricolage crystal is used as a novel methodological approach for a study of this nature with its inherent flexibility, eclecticism and plurality. Through this approach, the author draws upon six research tools which are: (1) interviews; (2) surveys; (3) the use of archival and contemporary official documents; (4) social media and (5), fieldwork in collecting, revising and synthesising knowledge of the Islands’ natural hazard exposure and identifying and critically evaluating factors of vulnerability and resilience on the Islands.
It is argued in this thesis that first, the Maltese Islands are exposed to local, distal and regional hazardous events which include: effects of major earthquakes in southern Italy and Greece and their accompanying tsunamis; major ash producing volcanic eruptions; coastal and inland mass movements; large low-pressure cyclonic systems; flooding; desert sand storms and drought. A further argument is that despite the development and instigation of some hazard mitigation/relief programmes and the presence of ingrained cultural and community resilience, hazard vulnerabilities are manifest in the Maltese Islands, some being more pronounced than others, but they are not always recognised or addressed.
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Within the latter argument, three significant factors have been found to contribute to the vulnerability: (1) an increasing urban footprint; (2) a cultural feature of ‘everyone knows everyone’ which is both a factor of vulnerability and resilience and (3), an increasing seasonal population and associated infrastructure.
In conclusion, with such significant hazard exposure and vulnerabilities, the Maltese Islands are far from ‘safe’ or being at ‘least risk’ from disasters. It is not a question of if an event will occur, but when.