Disaster Literature Research Articles

조선시대의 재난 데이타베이스 구축 및 대응에 관한 연구

Cultural heritage passing down to posterity is a global concern. But there are many culture heritage that not remained to now disappeared by various disasters. It is told that disaster is learnt from disaster. The most fundamental task in disaster prevention is to collect and analyze cases of accidents so as not to repeat a disaster. In other words, an analysis of various disaster-related materials and their countermeasures in the Joseon period is an actual condition-based phenomenological methodology used to prevent disasters at cultural properties today. In this context, it is important to collect histories of disasters in the Joseon period, to extract disaster-related historical data and to categorize the data to build a disaster literature database. This study has produced [Database of Disasters in the Joseon Era], a collection of articles on fire outbreaks based on The Annals and The Daily Records belonging to the Memory of the World. On the basis of this chronology, human and property damages caused by fires in Joseon have been examined, identified by districts, as well as disaster technologies, have been analyzed. It has also built disaster vulnerability maps in the Joseon Dynasty Era.

Making Sense of Disaster: Towards a Contextual, Phase-Based Understanding of Organizationally Based Acute Civilian Disasters

Notwithstanding their visibility and the evident harm they cause, criminological attention to organisationally based acute civilian disasters (OBACDs) has been sporadic and the field has been left, in the main, to practitioners and scholars from other disciplines. This article suggests a research template for the contextual analysis of OBACDs examining the actions and omissions of key stakeholders through a succession of phases. A review of disaster literature was undertaken using this framework and used to develop a simple model of OBACDs elucidating issues around three criminological themes: the origins of OBACDs; the impact of and response to OBACDs; and the processes of sense-making, learning and accountability that follow OBACDs.

The Representation of Kyoto in Japanese Disaster Literature Work after The Great Earthquake of March 11 of East Japan

The Representation of Kyoto in Japanese Disaster Literature Work after The Great Earthquake of March 11 of East Japan

A Framework and Methodology for Navigating Disaster and Global Health in Crisis Literature

Both ‘disasters’ and ‘global health in crisis’ research has dramatically grown due to the ever-increasing frequency and magnitude of crises around the world. Large volumes of peer-reviewed literature are not only a testament to the field’s value and evolution, but also present an unprecedented outpouring of seemingly unmanageable information across a wide array of crises and disciplines. Disaster medicine, health and humanitarian assistance, global health and public health disaster literature all lie within the disaster and global health in crisis literature spectrum and are increasingly accepted as multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary disciplines. Researchers, policy makers, and practitioners now face a new challenge; that of accessing this expansive literature for decision-making and exploring new areas of research. Individuals are also reaching beyond the peer-reviewed environment to grey literature using search engines like Google Scholar to access policy documents, consensus reports and conference proceedings. What is needed is a method and mechanism with which to search and retrieve relevant articles from this expansive body of literature. This manuscript presents both a framework and workable process for a diverse group of users to navigate the growing peer-reviewed and grey disaster and global health in crises literature. Methods: Disaster terms from textbooks, peer-reviewed and grey literature were used to design a framework of thematic clusters and subject matter ‘nodes’. A set of 84 terms, selected from 143 curated terms was organized within each node reflecting topics within the disaster and global health in crisis literature. Terms were crossed with one another and the term ‘disaster’. The results were formatted into tables and matrices. This process created a roadmap of search terms that could be applied to the PubMed database. Each search in the matrix or table results in a listed number of articles. This process was applied to literature from PubMed from 2005-2011. A complementary process was also applied to Google Scholar using the same framework of clusters, nodes, and terms expanding the search process to include the broader grey literature assets. Results: A framework of four thematic clusters and twelve subject matter nodes were designed to capture diverse disaster and global health in crisis-related content. From 2005-2011 there were 18,660 articles referring to the term [disaster]. Restricting the search to human research, MeSH, and English language there remained 7,736 identified articles representing an unmanageable number to adequately process for research, policy or best practices. However, using the crossed search and matrix process revealed further examples of robust realms of research in disasters, emergency medicine, EMS, public health and global health. Examples of potential gaps in current peer-reviewed disaster and global health in crisis literature were identified as mental health, elderly care, and alternate sites of care. The same framework and process was then applied to Google Scholar, specifically for topics that resulted in few PubMed search returns. When applying the same framework and process to the Google Scholar example searches retrieved unique peer-reviewed articles not identified in PubMed and documents including books, governmental documents and consensus papers. Conclusions: The proposed framework, methodology and process using four clusters, twelve nodes and a matrix and table process applied to PubMed and Google Scholar unlocks otherwise inaccessible opportunities to better navigate the massively growing body of peer-reviewed disaster and global health in crises literature. This approach will assist researchers, policy makers, and practitioners to generate future research questions, report on the overall evolution of the disaster and global health in crisis field and further guide disaster planning, prevention, preparedness, mitigation response and recovery.

The making of public health emergencies: West Nile virus in New York City

In this article we use the case of the West Nile virus (WNV) to investigate the social construction of public health emergencies (PHEs) and the subsequent changes in public health governance that they instigate. Informed by medical sociological literature on the social construction of illness, science and technology studies, and risk and disaster literature, we create a conceptual framework for connecting health and crisis. Our investigation of the WNV analyses PHEs as brief, but vitally important, moments in which a 'crisis' is co-constructed between states, affected populations and disease vectors. In these moments of crisis new interventions are enacted, which have long-term effects for institutional structures and disease management. Using extensive qualitative data collection, we conceptualise two mechanisms that underlie the declaration of PHEs and the expansion of related 'emergencies' across space and time: (i) crisis interventions that have the potential to marginalise the interaction of citizens with state institutions and (ii) institutional rearrangement of state agencies stemming from the original crisis issue, resulting in altered networks and institutional practices and drawing heavily upon the crisis as a symbol of similar, future public health threats.

Material Convergence: Important and Understudied Disaster Phenomenon

AbstractThis paper reports the research conducted on material convergence, which is one of the most important and, ironically, one of the most understudied disaster phenomena. This spontaneous flow of supplies, equipment, and general donations to the impacted area brings much-needed relief and major complications to the operations. The paper reviews empirical evidence from disaster literature and complements it with lessons learned from fieldwork to identify the problems created by the nonpriority component of the material convergence. The paper ends with policy suggestions regarding the use of appropriate material convergence management and control strategies.

Hurricane Katrina Families

Hurricane Katrina has profoundly altered the lives of New Orleans residents as they continue for years following the storm to attempt to rebuild their community and their lives. Natural disaster literature has historically focused on the impacts on individuals and correlating variables. Significant literature gaps exist regarding family systems and disaster and analysis of the relationship of social class to recovery. Further, social class has traditionally been examined solely as it relates to socioeconomic status. This qualitative investigation situated in an emancipatory paradigm investigated the relationship between social class and family changes for seven families recovering from Hurricane Katrina. Participants self-identified as members of marginalized social classes. Cross-case themes emerging as significant in the process of familial recovery included Relationship to Community, Interpersonal Relationships, Constructions of Class, and Growing and Changing. Study conclusions revealed significant shifts in family identities evolving around participant geographic connectivity to kinship networks, perceptions of social class status, and levels of cohesion between individual and relational domains within a family. Implications for professionals in the fields of disaster preparedness and recovery are outlined, with emphasis on the connection between practice and study findings.

Neighbors Helping Neighbors

This article argues that planning for community resilience to environmental disasters needs to give greater consideration to the potentials for response and recovery contributions available through local-level, informal social capital networks, as well as from the more formal policy and planning channels. To demonstrate the potential for mobilizing social capital resources to aid disaster response and recovery, the article provides a microlevel examination of the social capital mobilization process that occurred after tornadoes unexpectedly struck a rural Appalachian region in April 2011. It examines the mobilization process and types of labor and supply resources rapidly generated through community-level social networks in the first weeks of disaster response and recovery. The article situates this study in the context of social capital disaster literature, and considers its lessons and applications for disaster planning.

Building a Theory of Recovery: Institutional Dimensions

This article discusses the institutional arrangements that influence pre-disaster planning for recovery, and, more importantly, post-disaster recovery outcomes. The importance and value of planning for disaster recovery is well known in the disaster literature, although not often practiced as well as it could be. A theory of disaster recovery must therefore account for the institutional environment referred to here as the disaster recovery assistance framework. Describing the underlying dimensions of this network will help to clarify the process of recovery, uncover ways to improve recovery outcomes, and define the factors that influence the achievement of improved outcomes. Part of the challenge will be in defining these improved outcomes, which could include increased levels of disaster resilience or achieving a more sustainable disaster recovery.

Disasters Out of the Box: A New Ballgame?

Findings of recent disaster research make mention of a changing disaster landscape. According to the disaster literature, there has been a general increase of the quantity of disasters per time frame during the last decades. On the other hand, several academics refer to a more important qualitative shift in the disaster landscape. Although this qualitative shift is very credible, there exists no academic study approving this evolution. If suchlike evolution is concrete, we will have to strengthen our emergency management in a substantial way in order to be better prepared for managing future disasters. After discussing the changing nature of disasters, we concentrate on a study of randomly selected disasters, using the Disaster and Complexity Diagram, a tool permitting to study qualitative trends in disaster evolution.

Agency, Capacity, and Resilience to Environmental Change: Lessons from Human Development, Well-Being, and Disasters

Human agency is considered a key factor in determining how individuals and society respond to environmental change. This article synthesizes knowledge on agency, capacity, and resilience across human development, well-being, and disasters literature to provide insights to support more integrated and human-centered approaches to understanding environmental change. It draws out the key areas of agreement across these diverse fields and identifies the main points of contestation and uncertainty. This highlights the need to consider subjective and relational factors in addition to objective measures of capacity and to view these as reflexive and dynamic, as well as differentiated socially and temporally. These findings can help distinguish between coping, adaptation, and transformation as responses to environmental and other stressors.

Allocating Scarce Resources in Disasters: Emergency Department Principles

Decisions about medical resource triage during disasters require a planned structured approach, with foundational elements of goals, ethical principles, concepts of operations for reactive and proactive triage, and decision tools understood by the physicians and staff before an incident. Though emergency physicians are often on the front lines of disaster situations, too often they have not considered how they should modify their decisionmaking or use of resources to allow the "greatest good for the greatest number" to be accomplished. This article reviews key concepts from the disaster literature, providing the emergency physician with a framework of ethical and operational principles on which medical interventions provided may be adjusted according to demand and the resources available. Incidents may require a range of responses from an institution and providers, from conventional (maximal use of usual space, staff, and supplies) to contingency (use of other patient care areas and resources to provide functionally equivalent care) and crisis (adjusting care provided to the resources available when usual care cannot be provided). This continuum is defined and may be helpful when determining the scope of response and assistance necessary in an incident. A range of strategies is reviewed that can be implemented when there is a resource shortfall. The resource and staff requirements of specific incident types (trauma, burn incidents) are briefly considered, providing additional preparedness and decisionmaking tactics to the emergency provider. It is difficult to think about delivering medical care under austere conditions. Preparation and understanding of the decisions required and the objectives, strategies, and tactics available can result in better-informed decisions during an event. In turn, adherence to such a response framework can yield thoughtful stewardship of resources and improved outcomes for a larger number of patients.

(A109) Systematic Literature Review on Pediatric Sleep Disturbance Management Post-Disaster: Implications of Post-Disaster Pediatric Clinical Management in Developing Countries

IntroductionSleep disturbances are common symptoms during the immediate and long-term aftermath of exposure of traumatic events. While stress affects sleep in all age groups, due to differences in physiological, psychological, and socio-behavorial risk factors, the clinical management of pediatric patients with sleep disturbances post-disaster might be different. This study aims to systematically review scientific literature on the clinical management of pediatric sleep disturbances post-disaster and its clinical implication in developing countries. Methods: A keyword-based, systematic review was conducted for scientific publication in academic and disaster literature databases (Medline, PUBMED, Academic Search Premier, Google Scholar, ELDIS, PsycINFO, PILOTS and RELIEFWEB) until October 2010. Abstracts of all the hits were inspected to remove non-relevant articles, and all relevant articles were reviewed and scored by two reviewers to determine relevancy before being included in the final study database. Quality, relevance, and applicability of the reported literature were examined critically with the EBM level of evidence and EPPHPPQ (2003) assessment tool.Results and DiscussionThe literature disproportionally emphasized the clinical effects and psychological impacts of traumatic events on pediatric patients, and most reported studies were reported as a subset within PTSD study literature. Management of younger children, gender differences, clinical effectiveness of cross-disciplinary management modalities, and experiences in middle- and low-income countries were extremely limited. While principles of sleep hygiene and clinical guidelines for management of adult sleep disturbance are available, the application of clinical effectiveness and appropriateness of these guidelines in pediatric population must be examined further.Conclusion and ImplicationsCurrently, there is limited literature on the acute management of pediatric sleep disturbances post-disaster in developing countries. Evidence-based studies are needed to identify the appropriate clinical approaches to support the pediatric population with sleep disturbances post-disaster.

Disaster medicine reporting: The need for new guidelines and the CONFIDE statement

[Extract] Government agencies, professional societies, trade associations and special interest groups produce vast literature on various aspects of disasters. Much of this literature worldwide is 'grey'– print published or web published – but unobtainable through electronic indexing services. The electronic information alone is now so extensive that the US National Library of Medicine has created a Disaster Information Management Research Center to help with national emergency preparedness and response efforts. Within the published biomedical literature, a recent 30 years review canvassing a range of electronically indexed databases found the majority of event-specific literature indexed in MEDLINE was published across a broad spectrum of disciplines. The top 10 journals cited are listed in Table 1. Over the last decade, disaster literature accelerated markedly prompted by the events of September 11, 2001, at the World Trade Center, which yielded the greatest number of event-specific, peer-reviewed publications to date (686)New journals devoted to disasters continue to emerge with recent ones receiving MEDLINE indexation before their first full year of publication.

Chronic Disease as an Evacuation Impediment: Using a Geographic Information System and 911 Call Data after Katrina to Determine Neighborhood Scale Health Vulnerability

AbstractThis paper will add to the health and disasters literature by considering the spatial patterns of a factor not commonly associated with evacuation decisions, the existing chronic health burden of the population. 911 calls for the period from August 29 to September 8, 2005, were mapped using a Geographic Information System for 15 neighborhoods of New Orleans. For each neighborhood the total number of calls was reduced to unique residences, and any mention of a health‐related problem was recorded. By using single locations and then reinterpreting medical attributes as a percentage of all such locations, or as a percentage of those mentioning medical information, an approach is presented to spatially standardize knowledge from these data. The results show that a sizable portion of those who did not evacuate from Katrina before landfall were suffering from some ailment, especially chronic diseases commonly associated with the urban poor. Of particular note is the diabetes rate, with six different neighborhoods having approximately 10% of their 911 calls mentioning the disease. The paper concludes with suggestions as to how this research should progress, with fine spatial scale geographic analysis of health data becoming more common in understanding evacuation impediments and the post‐disaster landscape in general.

Developmental Differences in Children's and Adolescents' Post-Disaster Reactions

Disaster literature suggests that children's and adolescents’ post-disaster reactions vary according to their developmental levels. Preschool children show less psychological problems as compared to older children and adolescents, but they have a higher incidence of trauma-specific fears and behavioral problems (e.g., dependency, clinging). School-age children's disaster responses include sleep and eating disturbances, behavioral problems, and poor school performance. Adolescents tend to exhibit symptoms such as posttraumatic stress disorder, depression, anxiety, belligerence, and pessimistic views about the future (Korol, Green, & Gleser, ).

Shifting the Narrative: Child‐led Responses to Climate Change and Disasters in El Salvador and the Philippines

Children and young people are commonly treated in the climate change and disasters literature as victims of natural events requiring protection by adults. This article critiques that narrative, drawing on examples from the Philippines and El Salvador that explore how children’s groups have responded to such issues through child‐centred initiatives. This highlights the importance of understanding children’s perception and communication of risks facing their lives and livelihoods, their potential as agents of change in preventing disasters and adapting to climate change, and the implications for the theory and practice of child participation, particularly in developing countries.

Success in Kashmir: a positive trend in civil–military integration during humanitarian assistance operations

The modern cast of disaster relief actors includes host nations, non-governmental organisations, private volunteer organisations, military organisations and others. Each group, civilian or military, has valuable skills and experiences critical to disaster relief work. The goal of this paper is to supplement the study of civil-military relief efforts with contemporary anecdotal experience. The paper examines the interaction between US military forces and other disaster relief actors during the 2005 Kashmir earthquake relief effort. The author uses direct observations made while working in Pakistan to contrast the relationships and activities from that effort with other accounts in prevailing scholarly disaster literature and military doctrine. Finally, this paper suggests that the Kashmir model of integration, coordination and transparency of intent creates a framework in which future humanitarian assistance operations could be successfully executed. Recommendations to improve civil-military interaction in future relief efforts will also be addressed.

Surgery and Refugee Populations

Although infectious diseases, malnutrition and diarrhea account for the vast majority of deaths in many crisis situations, many individuals also suffer from traumatic injuries and other surgically treatable conditions. Understanding the determinants involved in surgical interventions is facilitated by defining baseline, emergent and chronic phases for refugees and internally displaced populations. International aid organizations often expend vast resources on surgical interventions. More detailed assessments and further study may help provide insight into optimizing the success and minimizing the cost of such interventions. This article is a review of the surgical and disaster literature and defines issues for further study.

Alternatives to Evacuation— Protecting Public Safety during Wildland Fire

Remaining inside fire-safe structures or at designated safety zones to actively defend against wildland fire events is an underrepresented area of scholarship. Although research on chemical spills and tornadoes has long advocated a similar practice of shelter-in-place during certain types of emergency situations, its applicability to the field of wildland fire management appears only infrequently in conferences and necessitates a more active view of participants in ensuring their safety. This article suggests that the Australian model of fire response, “prepare, stay and defend, or leave early,” may emerge as a viable alternative to evacuation in some, but not all, wildland‐urban interface (WUI) fire situations. Several communities in the West have begun to explore opportunities for alternatives to evacuation during wildland fire. Because of the lack of US experience with these types of responses during fire events we attempt to draw lessons from disaster and risk communication literature related to other types of hazards. An overview of associated fire literature will provide background and situate these concerns in a larger social context. We maintain that this literature provides insight into the considerations, precautions, and initial steps needed for testing the applicability of the Australian model of “prepare, stay and defend, or leave early” during wildland fire events threatening WUI populations.