Impact Of Large-scale Disasters Research Articles

Impact of large-scale disasters on breast cancer care: A qualitative analysis of patient experiences during the 2011 triple disaster in Fukushima, Japan

Large-scale disasters can severely impact breast cancer care, leading to treatment disruptions and delays. While empirical studies on these effects are limited, patient narratives provide valuable insights. This study explored treatment continuity and medical access among local breast cancer patients affected by the 2011 triple disaster through qualitative research methods.The study involved 21 local breast cancer patients diagnosed before the disaster. After obtaining consent, semi-structured interviews ranging from 20 min to an hour were conducted, and data were analyzed using inductive thematic analysis.The analysis identified five key themes: medical challenges, family roles and burdens, information access and communication, mental health effects, and evacuation difficulties. These themes highlight the range of challenges from immediate response to long-term recovery, showcasing the profound impacts of infrastructure damage and treatment disruptions, exacerbated by familial constraints and the need for reliable information, contributing to psychological and logistical complexities during evacuation.The findings underscore the critical need for ongoing care and address key challenges for breast cancer patients during disasters. Future research should focus on developing practical and prompt solutions to address these issues in disaster settings.

Robust scheduling for large scale evacuation planning

It is crucial to develop appropriate strategies to reduce the evacuation time in a disaster situation. The negative impact of large scale disasters can be mitigated by proactive and efficient (time optimal) evacuation planning. The present study aims to develop strategies for public transit-based evacuation for better control and reduced congestion. Mathematical models are formulated for both strategic and operational aspects of evacuation planning to result in efficient, optimal evacuation. The study also presents methods to manage the external environment uncertainties, in particular, evacuation demand uncertainty, by providing robust solutions. To test the efficacy of the models, a case study for a radiological accident in a nuclear plant in India is presented. The results of the case study demonstrate that the models can provide live, efficient and robust results during actual emergencies in acceptable time.

Long term recovery from mega-disasters: regional and business recovery periods, differential vulnerability, and business continuity

Understanding the underlying variables that contribute to the economic impact of large scale disasters is crucial to mitigating the effects on regions and businesses. However, depending on the approach used – secondary research on regions, using macroeconomic variables, vs. primary, survey-based business research – contradictions exist on the extent and nature of the recovery, and on the contributing variables. Further research is needed on characterisation of long-term recovery of regions and businesses in the wake of catastrophic disasters, to better pinpoint relevant factors and to inform the planning, response and mitigation efforts of communities and businesses in disaster-prone regions. This empirical work reviews and incrementally advances the literature in this area, by examining disaster recovery periods using a conceptual framework, broad-based economic indicators, and results from select case studies. Factors influencing business continuity and economic recovery of businesses are highlighted, and some best practices are discussed.

Impact of Large-Scale Disasters on the Built Environment

Large-scale disasters cause considerable damage to the built environment, resulting in serious disruptions to normal human activities and billions of dollars in property damages. Such disasters reveal vulnerabilities in infrastructure design and construction and test to the limit the planning, design, and construction abilities of engineers. This paper briefly reviews the impact of several large-scale disasters on the built environment and explores what engineers can do to be better prepared to deal with future disasters. The disasters examined in this paper are Hurricane Irene (2011), the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, Hurricane Katrina (2005), and the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

Escaping to and being active in neighbourhood parks: park use in a post‐disaster setting

Neighbourhood parks may serve as a coping resource in post-disaster communities, yet little is known about the impact of large-scale disasters on park use. The objective of this study is to explore the impact of Hurricane Katrina (August 2005) on park use by visitors from flooded areas of New Orleans, Louisiana, compared to visitors from non-flooded areas. In 2006 and 2007, following Hurricane Katrina, 201 adults who visited 27 New Orleans parks were interviewed. Visitors from flooded neighbourhoods used their parks less often and were less likely to engage in animal interaction than visitors from non-flooded neighbourhoods. They placed more importance on escape and physically-active motivations than visitors from non-flooded areas. Social reasons were also more important to visitors from flooded areas, but these differences disappeared after adjusting for race. Neighbourhood parks are a community asset that may play a role in the post-disaster recovery process by providing opportunities for escape and physical activity.

Governing Ignorance: Emerging Catastrophic Risks—Industry Responses and Policy Frictions

The growing interconnections between people, markets and networks together with the development of new technologies have increased the frequency and impact of large-scale disasters around the globe. Many of these events, defined as emerging catastrophic (or systemic) risks, have no previous record. At the same time there is a strong probability that their frequency and impact will increase in the future. This paper takes a governance perspective by assuming that policy actions should be designed to cope with ignorance and large-scale losses, being the primary features characterising such emerging catastrophic risks. Precisely, the governance activity should aim both at expanding the industries’ capacity to absorb losses and at acquiring more information about frequency and impact of such losses. However, it appears that some solutions may conflict with policy objectives. In particular, direct governmental interventions to compensate victims and stringent antitrust policy goals might block the development of a market for first-party property insurance for emerging systemic risks. This paper elicits crucial points that require further elaboration by policy-makers, thereby stressing the importance of providing a workable legal definition of such line of risk that embraces the precautionary principle.

遠隔操作性を考慮した双頭ヘビ型レスキューロボットＫＯＨＧＡの開発

The long and thin snake-like robots have became popular for searching narrow spaces, such as debris of the collapsed buildings under the impact of large-scale disasters. Till now, most of the previous research efforts on snake-like robots have primarily focused on development of its mobility or its locomotion. In this research we present the development of a snake-like robot under remote control operation. The present paper gives a detailed description of the mechanism and the construction of the developed snake-like rescue robot KOHGA. This double headed snake-like rescue robot KOHGA can present an operator the image from the viewpoint of a robot's rear side by changing its form into scorpion shape mode. The usefulness of the scorpion mode is amply verified by performing several successful experiments.