Call For Papers

GUIDELINES FOR ABSTRACTS

Conference Format:

The conference will be organized around five key themes presented in five Sessions:

Key Themes:

1. Lessons Learnt from Past Events
2. Risk Assessment
3. Loss Reduction Strategies
4. Risk Transfer
5. Response

Authors and/or presenters are encouraged to submit abstracts that relate to any of the above five session themes. Abstracts should not be more than 250 words. Write the title of the paper, name(s) of the author, presenter, contact information including an e-mail address, and affiliated institution/organization above the abstract. The abstract must describe in a very succinct manner the purpose of the paper, a brief methodology for the research, a concise summary of the findings and a brief statement of the conclusions.
Where applicable, presentations should provide case studies, especially with lessons learnt and not learned; and both proven and potential solutions.

Your abstract, as well as the research paper will also appear in the conference proceedings CD, which will be distributed free at the conference to all registrants.

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PRESENTATION FORMATS

Presentations will be conducted in the form of Plenary Sessions and Concurrent Panels:

Plenary Sessions

Plenary session presentations will last for 1½ hour and have broad appeal. Each plenary session will feature a panel of three members, a moderator and a recorder. Each member of the panel will give a 20-minute presentation followed by 30 minutes of general discussion involving the general audience.

NDMC 2008 will feature two such plenary sessions:

 Plenary Session 1: “Earthquake and Landslide Science in the 21st Century,” March 6, 2008, 10:50 a.m. to 12:20 p.m..
 Plenary Session 2: “Young Professionals and Graduate Students Special Segment,” March 7, 2008, 9:00 to 10:30 a.m.

Concurrent Panels

NDMC 2008 will feature three concurrent panels appearing in each of the five Sessions for the duration of the Conference. Each panel will last for 1½ hour and will be of a more in-depth nature, allowing participants the option of focusing on areas of personal or organizational interest. Each member of the panel will give a 20-minute presentation followed by 30 minutes of general discussion involving the panel audience.

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SELECTION CRITERIA

All abstracts will be reviewed by the NDMC 2008 Planning Committee and will be selected using the following criteria:

 Relevance to one or more of the conference or panel themes
 Strength of the rationale
 Quality of the methodology and data sources used in the research
 Significance of the findings and conclusions of the research
 Applicability of the findings of the research
 Strength of the data analysis.

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CONDITIONS OF ACCEPTANCE

 The deadline for submission of all abstracts is December 31, 2007.
 All submissions must be sent via email to kmorris@odpem.org.jm or kaikens@odpem.org.jm.
 Incomplete abstracts or abstracts that do not conform to the above guidelines will be rejected.
 Where the same author submits several abstracts on a similar subject, only one presentation will be accepted.

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REVIEW PROCESS

The steps for the review process are as follows:

 Confirmation of receipt of all abstracts will be made via e-mail within one day of receipt by the ODPEM.
 All abstracts will be reviewed against the selection criteria and abstract guidelines by a three-member panel of the ODPEM.
 Notification of acceptance of abstracts will be communicated via e-mail to the author(s) and/or presenter(s) by January 11, 2008.
 The notification of acceptance will contain guidelines and deadlines for submission of conference papers and presentations.

Confirmed presenters will be required to provide a presentation description of not more than 50 words and a photo (jpeg., bmp or tiff format) for the conference website and brochure.