Disaster Research Research Articles

Future drought risks in the Yellow River Basin and suggestions for targeted response

Drought risk has posed severe challenges to social development and human security in the Yellow River Basin (YRB), which is vulnerable to water scarcity. When dealing with drought, the insufficient coordination among various departments caused by the uncertainty of the comprehensive drought risk under climate change could lead to water conflict. Therefore, in this study, the drought risk changes in the YRB under shared socioeconomic pathway (SSP) scenario 5–8.5 were assessed by integrating the temporally dynamic hazard with the static vulnerability and exposure. Then, suggestions for drought risk management were developed according to the spatial differentiation of the drought risk characteristics. The results show that the drought hazard may increase as the standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index (SPEI) decreases from the baseline (1985–2014; −0.04 ± 0.26) to the mid-term period (2041–2070; −0.09 ± 0.21), and may decrease as the SPEI increases (0.14/10 yr) significantly (p < 0.01) during the long-term period (2071–2100). As a result, the drought risk in the upstream, midstream, and downstream areas may change by 0.26 ± 0.56, −0.05 ± 0.49, and −0.86 ± 0.38 levels in the long term, respectively, compared with the baseline. To reduce the drought risk, it is suggested that agricultural technology be further developed in the southwestern upstream, central upstream, and northern midstream areas; the water management be strengthened in the Hetao Plain and Ordos Plateau; the scale of exposure be controlled in the provincial capitals, southeastern midstream, and downstream areas; and the drought disaster research and early warning system be improved in the areas between 105°E and 110°E. Detailed suggestions for drought risk response were developed for each specific region.

Methods and lessons for business resilience and recovery surveys

Surveys are important tools in business resilience and recovery research because of their ability to capture disaggregated economic information; however, they can be difficult and costly due to business operational dynamics and the larger challenges of disaster research. The COVID-19 pandemic serves as a recent example where demand for business data was high across both research and practice. Yet, the methods and modes for collecting data were limited due to safety, health, and ethical concerns. This research seeks to address the lack of tailored guidance for conducting business resilience and recovery surveys by collecting and synthesizing instruments and best practices from previous survey efforts. These previous surveys were undertaken by a diverse group of organizations with varied research questions, objectives, and hazard events of interest. This paper discusses six broad lessons: clearly define purpose, objectives, and concepts; recognize that response rates will be low, consider disaster dynamics in the research design, address bias that can be exacerbated by disasters, take care to acknowledge the unique ethical considerations of disaster resilience surveys in the business and economic context, and verify and validate data at all stages of the survey process. These lessons, in addition to the published instruments themselves, support researchers or practitioners who wish to conduct their own business resilience and recovery surveys in the future.

Ethical research practice in health and disasters

Research on health and disasters within the social sciences and public health is produced from a wide range of methodological and disciplinary perspectives. Major disaster events continue to highlight the need for health and disaster researchers to further reflect on the procedural and practical aspects of research ethics. We conduct a scoping review and qualitative frame analysis of 76 empirical articles from 2000 onwards, with the aim of uncovering the dominant framings of ‘ethical practice’ within health and disaster literature. The review demonstrates that the literature presents competing framings of risk – namely, a more individualist and biomedical understanding of trauma, and a focus on community-level and contextual aspects of risk, respectively. These competing frames of risk determine how different parts of the field negotiate ethical processes and practices. Additional points of tension are found in the way in which disaster-affected people and places are characterised as (or as not) particularly vulnerable, and the role of formal ethical review committees. This review synthesises proposed solutions from literature to improve both procedural and practical ethics and finds there are continued disagreements surrounding even the most frequently called-for changes. The contrasting framings of ethics problems and solutions within this field indicate the need for consensus around the practical ethics of health and disaster research. Further reflection is warranted for more coherent engagement between this research field and disaster-affected communities.

Creating a Health Emergency and Disaster Risk Management (EDRM) Learning Community

Introduction:Disaster research is primarily posthoc analysis, locally focused or within response organizations, overlooking the wellness and safety of first and second responders or the broad multi- and interdisciplinary activities necessary to foster and sustain recovery. A broad framework to span locality, institutional, and professional boundaries supports the development of a true learning community–a health EDRM sector that supports society in recognizing lessons, refining findings, and free and fluid global sharing.Method:Several organizations joined to create a robust disaster health learning community: CREDO, GloHSA, ICDM, and ECDM, a multi-national, multi-disciplinary collaborative network of patients, universities, societies, regulators, publishing, healthcare, and technology partners designed to foster expert level education and training with shared educational design concepts, milestones, and core curricula that embrace the strength of a standardized base upon which to link unique pillars of excellence of separate functions, institutions, nations, and regions.Results:The Emergency Disaster Global Health Sciences (EDGHS) model developed by University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center is interactive, open, and responsive. EDGHS addresses critical gaps in applied research by convening leaders across the healthcare and public health continuum to map the way forward, designing and implementing high-quality, evidence-based practical and policy research.This defines essential public health functions for national contexts, including a focus on emergency preparedness and response, strengthening competency-based education on essential public health functions, and mapping and measurement of occupations delivering EDRM functions, offering an exportable model of global relevance.Conclusion:Putting disaster prevention into recovery processes is a strategic opportunity to improve the well-being of future generations. The survivability and well-being needs of present and future generations are contingent on knowledge-based, lived experiences of recoverable disaster loss and damage, and the capacity to thrive sustainably. This presentation serves as an invitation to join the growing momentum of creating a learning health EDRM community.

Navigating Theories of Actions on Disaster Prevention: A Systematic Review on Disaster Research in Japan

Navigating Theories of Actions on Disaster Prevention: A Systematic Review on Disaster Research in Japan

Deployed in Disaster: Exploratory Study of Personnel Deployed into Ontario Long-Term Care Homes during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Introduction:The COVID-19 pandemic had a devastating impact on long-term care in Canada, exacerbating an existing crisis of staff shortages, inadequate infrastructure and funding, into a disaster. In response, the province of Ontario enacted emergency legislation and requested federal government support, resulting in the deployment of personnel from the Canadian Armed Forces and acute care hospitals into long-term care homes across the province. This exploratory study aims to develop a rich description of the long-term care context during the pandemic, deployed personnel's perspectives on providing care in the context, and identification of lessons learned while working during the pandemic.Method:Descriptive exploratory design with demographic questionnaire and semi-structured interviews will be used to understand the background and perspective of deployed personnel and managers on working in long-term care during the pandemic. Thematic analysis will be used to analyze the transcripts, organize codes, and identify and describe major themes. Findings will also be compared with disaster literature to understand how the perspectives of deployed personnel compare with existing disaster research.Results:21 interviews were initially conducted. Analysis of these interviews identified key challenges experienced by those deployed, including human resources, leadership and accountability, and policies and regulations. Perspectives and strategies for overcoming these challenges were also shared.Conclusion:The scale, duration, and context of the redeployment of personnel into long-term is unprecedented and has seen little research. This exploratory study shares the experiences of personnel who deployed into long-term care and helps identify lessons learned from overcoming challenges in the disaster context. These findings will be able to inform future disaster research and how to better prepare responders in the future.

Designing a Robust Methodology to Evaluate Emergency Health and Medical Responses to Disasters

Introduction:Health and medical disciplines have traditionally preferred experimental and quasi-experimental methods to evaluate interventions. More recently, mathematical modeling was used to test intervention efficacy in the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. The challenge for disaster researchers is neither approach suits examining phenomena about emergency health responses in disasters. This study applied an alternative methodology to examine questions of how and why emergency health and medical responses reduced mortality during six different natural hazard disaster events.Method:The case study methodology is orientated by the researcher’s perspective and ‘not assigned a fixed ontological, epistemological or methodological position’. This flexibility allows alignment of the researcher’s worldview with the methodology best fitting the research problem and its context, such as post-positivism. Qualitative case study design carefully links five key design elements and sequences, including research questions, propositions, a unit of analysis, data collection, and data analysis.Results:Six holistic single case studies described how and why the emergency health response reduced mortality risk of people affected by different disasters. An evidenced-based theoretical emergency health program logic model compared and contrasted inputs, activities, outputs, and outcomes between theoretical and actual responses. Rival explanations were tested before data collection for each single case and applied to challenge the logic model. Each case applied four strategies to increase the validity and reliability of the holistic single case study findings.Conclusion:Qualitative case study methodology provides a robust and flexible framework to examine complex questions about emergency health and medical responses, including questions about events, processes, activities, performance, and outcomes. The methodology is equally suited to real-time or retrospective studies. The strength of the approach is the high compatibility for examining phenomena within the context they occur, and linking program logic, data collection, and data analysis methods to the specific question being investigated.

Public safety messaging during super bowl LVI: A pilot study and modified framework.

The Super Bowl is one of the most widely attended sporting events and requires proper communication to ensure emergency preparedness for everyone in the city. This pilot study used Super Bowl LVI as a setting to inform future research evaluating the effectiveness of the public health messaging during mass-gathering events. This pilot study modifies past theoretical frameworks and research tools to create a novel survey instrument focused on public safety message effectiveness. This survey was sent to all of those that opted-in to the Joint Information Center's notification platform during Super Bowl LVI. The results show that message comprehension, source credibility, and perceived risk might not be associated with proactive behavior for public safety messaging. However, modality preference results showed that individuals might prefer to receive public safety and emergency alerts by text message. Factors that influence proactive response towards public safety messaging might differ from emergency alerts. This pilot study has yielded results from a major mass-gathering event that can be used to understand errors that arise during public health and emergency preparedness and strengthen future disaster planning and research.

Acupuncture for military veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder and related symptoms after combat exposure: Protocol for a scoping review of clinical studies.

Posttraumatic stress disorder is caused by traumatic events such as death, serious injury, and sexual violence. Military personnel and veterans are at high risk for posttraumatic stress disorder. Conventional posttraumatic stress disorder treatments have certain limitations. Complementary and integrative medicine treatments, especially acupuncture, are potential novel first-line treatments that may overcome these limitations. We aim to investigate the current status of the available clinical evidence related to acupuncture treatment for posttraumatic stress disorder in war veterans. We will follow the scoping review process as previously described. The study question is as follows: "Which types of clinical research designs, study types, study durations, adverse events, and clinical outcomes have been reported regarding acupuncture therapy for posttraumatic stress disorder in military veterans?" We will perform a comprehensive search of Medline, Excerpta Medica dataBASE, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, Web of Science, Scopus databases, Allied and Complementary Medicine Database, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature, and PsycArticles databases, as well as Chinese, Korean, and Japanese databases, from inception to June 2022. Data from the included studies will be collected and descriptively analyzed in relation to our research question. The extracted data will be collated, synthesized, and summarized according to the analytical framework of a scoping review. The protocol of this study adheres to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses Extension for Scoping Reviews to ensure the clarity and completeness of our reporting in all phases of this scoping review (Protocol registration: https://osf.io/t723f/). The findings of this scoping review will provide fundamental data that will help researchers identify appropriate research questions and design further studies on the use of acupuncture for PTSD management in military veterans. These results will be helpful for developing disaster site-specific research protocols for future clinical trials on this topic.

Challenges and opportunities in rapid disaster research: lessons from the field in New Mexico and Vanuatu.

Rapid research is essential to assess impacts in communities affected by disasters, particularly those communities made "hard-to-reach" due to their active marginalization across history and in contemporary practices. In this article, we describe two rapid research projects developed to assess needs for and experiences of communities hard-hit by disasters. The first is a project on the COVID-19 pandemic in southern New Mexico (USA) that was developed to provide information to local agencies that are deploying programs to rebuild and revitalize marginalized communities. The second is a project on population displacement due to a volcanic eruption in Vanuatu, a lower-middle income country in the South Pacific, with mental and physical health outcomes data shared with the Vanuatu Ministry of Health. We describe the similar and unique challenges that arose doing rapid research in these two different contexts, the potential broader impacts of the research, and a synthesis of lessons learned. We discuss the challenges of rapidly changing rules and regulations, lack of baseline data, lack of survey instruments validated for specific populations and in local languages, limited availability of community partners, finding funding for rapid deployment of projects, rapidly training and working with research assistants, health and safety concerns of researchers and participants, and communicating with local and international partners. We also specifically discuss how we addressed our own personal challenges while also conducting time-intensive rapid research. In both studies, researchers shared results with governmental and non-governmental partners who may use the data to inform the design of their own relief programs. While different in context, type of disaster, and research strategy, our discussion of these projects provides insights into common lessons learned for working with communities at elevated risk for the worst outcomes during disasters, such as the need for flexibility, compromise, and good working relationships with community partners.

Slope stability prediction based on a long short-term memory neural network: comparisons with convolutional neural networks, support vector machines and random forest models

The numerical simulation and slope stability prediction are the focus of slope disaster research. Recently, machine learning models are commonly used in the slope stability prediction. However, these machine learning models have some problems, such as poor nonlinear performance, local optimum and incomplete factors feature extraction. These issues can affect the accuracy of slope stability prediction. Therefore, a deep learning algorithm called Long short-term memory (LSTM) has been innovatively proposed to predict slope stability. Taking the Ganzhou City in China as the study area, the landslide inventory and their characteristics of geotechnical parameters, slope height and slope angle are analyzed. Based on these characteristics, typical soil slopes are constructed using the Geo-Studio software. Five control factors affecting slope stability, including slope height, slope angle, internal friction angle, cohesion and volumetric weight, are selected to form different slope and construct model input variables. Then, the limit equilibrium method is used to calculate the stability coefficients of these typical soil slopes under different control factors. Each slope stability coefficient and its corresponding control factors is a slope sample. As a result, a total of 2160 training samples and 450 testing samples are constructed. These sample sets are imported into LSTM for modelling and compared with the support vector machine (SVM), random forest (RF) and convolutional neural network (CNN). The results show that the LSTM overcomes the problem that the commonly used machine learning models have difficulty extracting global features. Furthermore, LSTM has a better prediction performance for slope stability compared to SVM, RF and CNN models.

재난현장 소방지휘관 지휘 능력 향상을 위한 교육·훈련 지휘능력지표 개선에 관한 연구

The critical issue of the lack of command ability of fire commanders who exercise independent command authority throughout the entire disaster process continues to be raised by firefighting organizations, the media, and disaster researchers. Therefore, this study aims to secure the fire commander’s ability to command a disaster site to prevent damage to firefighters working in the field, the purpose of this study is to suggest improvement plans limited to the command capability indicators in terms of education and training that can demonstrate successful command in the entire process of disaster response operations to prevent the spread of damage through early disaster responnes. The research method sets seven major research and analysis indicators such as information analysis/situation judgment ability, on-site situation judgment ability, command/control ability, contingency response ability, resource management ability, leadership, and knowledge of related knowledge, which are the core command competencies of commanders. We quantitatively analyzed whether the set indicators were reflected in the jop training process in firefighting, maritime police, and police training institutions, which are public officials organizations for specific positions. As a result of the analysis, the fire department, the on-site commander of the fire department, is required to have a higher level of command ability than the fire brigade, but the same command ability index was set as that of the fire brigade. In particular, it was found that in the fire department, which is performing the important duties of the regional emergency control group compared to the fire brigade and the fire department, acquisition of expertise, response to contingency situations, and information analysis judgment werw not even set in the command capability index, It was analyzed that firefighting had the lowest rate of reflection of the 7 key indicators of direct competency in the curriculum compared to the Coast Guard and the police. In conclusion, compared to the maritime police and the police, the seven core indicators of the on-scene commander’s command ability in the fire service are significantly insufficient in the reflection rate of the command competency indicators that suggest the direction of order to strengthen the command competency of firefighting field commanders, the command competency development competency and command capability index must be developed and reconfigured as soon as possible, and then the competency elements must be designed in detail to correct and supplement the insufficient competency within a short period of time. This is because education and training without a clear goal and direction are nothing more than a building in that cannot carry out the mission assigned to the organizations. Firefighting develops a process in which non-executives can participate in the process of non-executive participation, such as the police job training process, and prepares for unexpected developments of disasters. It is suggested that the entire shift be centered on virtual reality actual experience, such as acquiring, analyzing, and judging scientific disaster information that can be done. when the proposal is implemented, it is necessary to operate the process of conducting a preliminary evaluation of the fire commander’s 7 command ability indicators, develop a command ability index reflecting the evaluation results, and conduct a command ability test after completion of the course, and continue to revise and supplement according to the achievement of command ability.

Law, justice and the role of courts in changing the social superstructure narrative in climate litigation

Law, justice and the role of courts in changing the social superstructure narrative in climate litigation

A Qualitative Study of Disaster Resilience of Chinese Adolescents Five Years after Super Typhoon Rammasun

Adolescents and younger children are more vulnerable during and after disasters than adults, and their ability to develop resilience depends on many factors, including culture and context. However, adolescents’ experiences and voices need to be considered more often in disaster research, since their understanding of disaster resilience is not known in depth. This study aimed to understand Chinese adolescents’ disaster resilience experiences five years after their exposure to the Super Typhoon Rammasun. A qualitative descriptive design was applied. As far as the researchers are aware, this was the first qualitative study in China to explore adolescents’ disaster experiences and disaster resilience. In-depth interviews were conducted in Hainan province, on an island in the South China Sea, with 30 high school adolescents exposed to Super Typhoon Rammasun. Data were collected from March to October 2019 and analyzed using content analysis.Analysis revealed rich findings and three categories emerged reflecting how the adolescents experienced disaster resilience: 1) Experiencing challenges, with three subcategories (Disrupted daily life, Loss and damage, and Negative emotions); 2) Coping and adaptive strategies, with four subcategories (Seeking support, Gaining strength from role models, Role engagement, and Self-managing); and 3) Adaptation after facing typhoon, with three subcategories (Being strong to deal with difficulty, Having good immunity, and Improved knowledge and skills in dealing with typhoons). The findings can provide understanding and inform nurses and other healthcare professionals in disaster preparation, disaster management and community resilience, as well as educators and policymakers, to support and develop disaster resilience in adolescents. Disaster resilience is enhanced by fostering interventions to help those exposed to disasters respond and recover from disaster impacts, considering culture and context. Future clinical screening and research could use the adaptive outcomes in our findings as indicators for developing long-term disaster resilience among adolescents.

Optimization Study on the Design Parameters of Sand Barriers along the Hami-Lop Nor Railway Line

In order to solve the current problems of the single effect of traditional sand control measures, the high cost of cleaning and maintenance, and the inability to provide long-term sustainable protection, this paper proposes a new type of sand barrier with the dual effect of sand conduction and sand blocking. Through field research of wind and sand disasters along the Hami-Lop Nor Railway, wind tunnel testing and numerical simulation of the new sand barrier, the wind velocity flow field, wind speed variation curve, wind protection effectiveness and sand barrier retention rate of the new sand barrier under different design parameters were studied. The results show that the sand barrier with 10H spacing (H is the height of the sand barrier) has the worst sand guiding and blocking effect. The sand barriers with 6H and 8H spacing have less difference in sand guiding and sand blocking effects. Both of them are better than the sand barrier with 10H spacing. The sand blocking effect of the new sand barrier was proportional to the angle (α). The sand guide effect was the opposite. When the angle is certain, the greater the wind speed and the better the sand guide effect. The results show that the new sand barrier is different from the traditional sand barrier in that it has both sand guiding and sand blocking functions, which provides a new method and scientific basis for sand damage control of Hami-Lop Nor Railway.

Post-disaster research: challenges and opportunities conversation on disasters: deconstructed on 11th of June 2021

PurposeThis conversation presents the reflections from five prominent disaster scholars and practitioners on the opportunities and challenges associated with research following disasters and explores the importance of ethics in disaster research.Design/methodology/approachThis paper is based on the conversations that took place on Disasters: Deconstructed Podcast livestream on the 11th of June 2021.FindingsThe prominent themes in this conversation include ethical approaches to research, how we–as disaster researchers and practitioners–collaborate, engage, and cooperate, and whose voices are centred in a post-disaster research context.Originality/valueThe conversation contributes to ongoing discussions around the conduct and practice of disaster research.

Earthquakes as a natural occurrence and disaster: A qualitative research from the perspective of chaos theory

AbstractA concept that inspired social sciences as well as many other fields of science was developed from chaos theory. Disaster researchers are also trying to approach, understand, explain and manage disasters with this new concept. However, it has been observed that studies investigating disasters from this perspective do not focus on disaster sources. With this starting point, in this research, the chaotic factors that prepare the disaster formation were investigated with the example of earthquake. The study was carried out with the qualitative method. Data were collected by semi‐structured online interview. Participants were selected by purposive sampling method. The interview data obtained from a total of 10 participants were managed with the MAQXDA 2018 software package using the traditional content analysis method. All codes were classified into three themes and 11 categories. According to the findings, earthquakes can be dealt with in three different chaotic periods: a natural event, a natural event that turns into a disaster, and disaster response and recovery. Future research is recommended to explain the dynamics of occurrence of other disasters such as floods, storms, explosions, and epidemics. It is recommended that disaster management practitioners integrate the chaos management approach into disaster management. With this, it is hoped that disaster management will shift from a linear, bureaucratic, command‐control approach to a community‐based, flexible, continuous planning approach in which even the smallest occurrences are carefully monitored.

Psychiatryai.com: An exploratory online Artificial Intelligence and Data Science platform to enable near real-time psychiatry and mental health evidence-based medical research and data dissemination

IntroductionPsychiatryai.com is a prototype Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Data Science (DS) platform and research project developed for my Evidence-Based Healthcare (EBHC) course at University of Oxford in MSc studies (Kellogg College). This is a singular, multi-disciplinary, and beta-testing project in Computing Science, Psychiatry, and Mental Health for oral presentation at EPA 2023.ObjectivesAI and DS in Psychiatry and Mental Health have emerged as important research areas in the post Covid-19 pandemic era. This prototype University project (Psychiatryai.com) was launched on 22nd November 2021. It aims to develop a free, secure, and open access platform in near real-time about psychiatry and mental health evidence-based research - for healthcare professionals, doctors, and researchers in psychiatry. The project also aims to integrate findings from the Goldacre Review (2022) into practice and develop novel computing solutions utilising AI and DS, and present findings.MethodsA WordPress site (Psychiatryai.com) was developed with syndicated RSS feeds across 330 psychiatry topics and refreshed by data servers hourly, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. A total of 43 WordPress plugins were utilised to develop this secure platform. The site is powered by intuitive data modelling and analytics in near real-time and available in open access coding format for peer-review, future development, and research. The primary sources of live evidence for the project are PubMed and University of Helsinki, Finland. The server performance data analytics will be available for poster presentation at EPA 2023. This includes full statistical results and discussion since its inception and launch (including traffic, MESH tags, and PubMed ID), and robust technical analysis and performance outcomes - available freely online to promote research in psychiatry and mental health.ResultsKnowledge Synthesis and Dissemination:Total Words: 4356886 *Live Psychiatry and Mental Health Citations from PubMed: Exceeds 325000Total Evidence Alerts Published: 54391 *Total Algorithms/Topics: 330Total site visitors: 8023 ** Since launch of Psychiatryai.com on 22 November 2021 inclusive to 31 October 2022ConclusionsPsychiatryai.com was able to demonstrate succesful development of an effective and viable platform to study AI and DS in Psychiatry and Mental Health, as evidenced by results table. The platform has also incorporated findings from the Goldacre Review (2022) and aims to continue to collect valuable insights towards full real-time data analytics and dissemination of peer-reviewed current evidence in the future. The emergence of these technologies will be useful in settings such as disaster psychiatry, psychiatry e-training and research, and e-mental health awareness/promotion ahead.Disclosure of InterestP. Naik Consultant of: Dr Paras Naik (Psychiatryai.com) Non-profit University Project

Recognition and ethical research practices: The role of community specialists

Researchers engaged in long-term disaster research are uniquely positioned to influence, inform, and shape long-term disaster recovery trajectories of communities being studied. For this reason, it is crucial for researchers to be critical of their methodological choices and make ethical decisions about the research methods they employ to generate and communicate data. In this article, we argue that making ethical decisions about research processes requires an emphasis on recognition, the acknowledgment, and respect of difference, a key pillar of environmental justice. We share an experience implementing a long-term disaster research protocol (Project Building Resilience through Innovation and Diverse Group Engagement) that includes the deliberate involvement of community members in the research process as Community Specialists and discuss how their engagement contributed to recognition and more ethical research practices. Throughout the article, we provide a blueprint for other long-term disaster researchers seeking to integrate Community Specialists into their own work and discuss potential implementation barriers and recommendations to overcome challenges.

Longitudinal impacts of pre-existing inequalities and social environmental changes on life recovery: Results of the 1995 Kobe Earthquake and the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake recovery studies

Nearly 50 years of disaster research findings have been accumulated on how pre-existing vulnerability/inequality as well as post-event environmental changes affect the long-term recovery process. While most previous studies have been based on cross-sectional survey results, more recently, studies based on longitudinal surveys have been reported. By following the trajectories of individual recoveries, longitudinal studies allow for a more rigorous analysis of factors related to better recovery. They can also provide findings based on causal inference analysis with a higher level of evidence for factors affecting recovery. This article reviews the results from longitudinal studies conducted over a 10-year period after the 1995 Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake and the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, respectively. The findings are integrated into two broad categories: (1) correlational studies, which investigated factors associated with specific patterns of recovery trajectories, such as stagnation, and (2) causal inference studies, in which evidence is provided on the effect of specific factors on better recovery trajectories. Based on these reviews, a refined model of long-term disaster recovery processes is proposed. The key point of the model illustrates that there are pre-existing vulnerabilities/inequalities and post-disaster social environmental changes that make a longitudinal impact upon both subjective and objective measures of individual and collective recovery. The current review showed such pre-existing vulnerability/inequality variables as smaller size households with older aged, female heads of the household, mental and/or physical health issues, disabilities, unemployment due to disaster, low income, and a lack of social support network. The review also extends domain-knowledge-based inferences to those individuals whose traits/characteristics were not overtly covered. Regarding post-disaster social environmental changes, the improvements in housing, physical and mental health, livelihood as well as community and personal social ties showed evidence to cause upward recovery trajectories. A case study of Chinese community recovery was presented as an example of how these predictor variables were acted upon. Finally, this article reviews how the introduction of disaster case management has accelerated the pace of housing reconstruction and closed the housing reconstruction gap between the haves and have-nots.