Management Of Large-scale Disasters Research Articles

Standardization Gaps in European Disaster Management

Abstract The management of large-scale disasters, caused for example by natural hazards, industrial accidents or terror attacks, requires collaboration of different types of organizations. The organizations can use different equipment and tools, follow different strategies and procedures, or have different understandings of relevant terms. These differences, increasingly complex when it comes to international cooperation, can cause severe lack of interoperability that can result in vital time delays. An approach to increase interoperability in European disaster management is to standardize solutions, such as technical tools, procedures or terminology. However, standardization is not always trivial, in some cases it is impossible, in others there are challenges to overcome. In context of an EU initiative to facilitate and push standardization across all fields of European disaster management, an initial step was to gather standardization gaps in a comprehensive manner. Standardization gaps are the result of comparing end-users’ standardization needs with existing standards. Selected results of the gap analysis are presented in this article, and put into context of the general structure of disaster management standardization. Related challenges such as the proper involvement of all relevant stakeholders, and specific characteristics of the disaster management domain are addressed, and suggestions for a way forward are provided.

Organizational Changes Needed in Disasters and Public Health Emergencies: A Qualitative Study among Managers at a Major Hospital

Most hospitals have a contingency plan, based on all-risks and all-hazards assessment principles. However, emerging threats and risks often necessitate a flexible approach to emergency management at several levels of a disaster response system, for example, in hospitals. Sweden, and possibly other countries, has limited possibilities of surge capacity in the management of large-scale disasters and emergencies, which necessitates a local/national partnership and a flexible local disaster and contingency plan. This study evaluates the opinions of a selected managerial group, both at operative and strategic levels, regarding possible changes in a major hospital’s contingency plan during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Semistructured interviews were conducted to explore the elements of surge capacity and an operational tool, consisting of command and control, safety, communication, assessment, triage, treatment, and transport. The results show a need to create feasible management methods that can be evaluated, establish clear leadership, put preparedness as a constant point on the highest managerial agenda, improve external monitoring, and create a regional coordinating center. Furthermore, the results emphasize the significant role played by the incident command system and qualified leadership to facilitate competent and crucial medical decision making, as well as to provide reliable communication, collaboration, and coordination in a multi-agency response system during dynamic and unexpected emergencies. These steps enable a constant connection between reactive contingency plans and the proactivity in continuous risk assessment and enhance the flexibility of the contingency plans.

Provider Burnout and Fatigue During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Lessons Learned From a High-Volume Intensive Care Unit.

Provider Burnout and Fatigue During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Lessons Learned From a High-Volume Intensive Care Unit.

Building urban and infrastructure resilience through connectivity: An institutional perspective on disaster risk management in Christchurch, New Zealand

The management of large-scale disasters in urban agglomerations often reveals fragmented governance structures. Accordingly, recent debates in the field of disaster risk management call for better coordination of agencies and actors across organisational and territorial boundaries, arguing that this would ultimately improve the resilience of urban areas. However, our analysis of the metropolitan area of Greater Christchurch, which experienced a series of devastating earthquakes in 2010/2011, shows that this conclusion inadequately acknowledges the uncertainties and institutional complexities in the governance of resilience. We show that debates on urban resilience can benefit from the concept of institutional connectivity – defined as institutionalised forms of vertical, horizontal or cross-territorial interaction – to systematically address these complexities. Our empirical results suggest that the efficacy of different forms of institutional connectivity depends on prevailing circumstances. Therefore, particular forms of connectivity should be prioritised on a case-by-case basis. Our empirical study reveals that enhancing institutional connectivity is a resource-intensive and contested process that might induce negative trade-offs. We contend that because institutions shape how different agencies and organisations interact, scholarly debates on urban resilience should put more emphasis on processes of institutional reform and stress the political dimension of institution building for urban resilience.

NFV and SDN-Based Distributed IoT Gateway for Large-Scale Disaster Management

Large-scale disaster management applications are among the several realistic applications of the Internet of Things (IoT). Fire detection and earthquake early warning applications are just two examples. Several IoT devices are used in such applications, e.g., sensors and robots. These sensors and robots are usually heterogeneous. Moreover, in disaster scenarios, the existing communication infrastructure may become completely or partially destroyed, leaving mobile ad-hoc networks the only alternative to provide connectivity. Utilizing these applications raises new challenges such as the need for dynamic, flexible, and distributed gateways which can accommodate new applications and new IoT devices. Network functions virtualization (NFV) and software defined networking (SDN) are emerging paradigms that can help to overcome these challenges. This paper leverages NFV and SDN to propose an architecture for on-the-fly distributed gateway provisioning in large-scale disaster management. In the proposed architecture, the gateway functions are provisioned as virtual network functions that are chained on-the-fly in the IoT domain using SDN. A prototype is built and the performance results are presented.

Reverse Triage to Increase the Hospital Surge Capacity in Disaster Response.

Introduction:Successful and effective management of large-scale disasters and epidemics requires pre-established systematic plans to minimize the damage and control the situation. With an increasing number of people in need of urgent medical care, hospitals must improve their response capacity, being at the forefront of responding to disasters and incidents. One way to develop the hospital capacity in disaster response is by reverse triage (RT). Objective:The current study was conducted to investigate the role of RT to create additional hospital surge capacity in one of the major referral academic hospitals of Isfahan, Iran. Method:This cross-sectional study was conducted in 2015 at Al-Zahra Subspecialty Hospital, Isfahan, Iran. The ten most common diseases leading to hospitalization in each ward of the hospital in 2014 were reviewed and, based on the prevalence, sorted and listed. Academic instructions for making a decision and possibility of early discharge was written and approved by an expert panel. On a day that was not set previously, the pre-selected in-charge person of each department was asked to run the RT following the instructions, and the number and percentage of those who were eligible for discharge via RT were determined.Results:The total BOR in Al-Zahra Hospital in 2014 was about 80%, so it was estimated that almost 140 out of 700 beds are vacant. The results showed that by using RT, 108 (20%) hospitalized cases could be discharged, and considering the bed occupancy rate of about 80% and 140 vacant beds, a total of 248 beds could be provided following RT. Conclusion:Running RT in 41 wards and units of Isfahan Al-Zahra Hospital, on average, added 108 beds to the hospital capacity. This increment is not the same in all wards, as the role of intensive care units in RT for surge capacity is insignificant.

Large-scale, seasonal flood risk analysis for agricultural crops in Germany

In recent years, large-scale flood risk analysis and mapping has gained more attention. Regional to national risk assessments are needed, for example, for national risk policy developments, for large-scale disaster management planning and in the (re-)insurance industry. Despite increasing requests for comprehensive risk assessments, some sectors have not received much scientific attention and one of these is the agricultural sector. In contrast to other sectors, agricultural crop losses depend strongly on the season. Also flood probability shows seasonal variation. Thus, the temporal superposition of high flood susceptibility of crops and high flood probability plays an important role for agricultural flood risk. To investigate this interrelation and provide a large-scale overview of agricultural flood risk in Germany, an agricultural crop loss model is used for crop susceptibility analyses and Germany-wide seasonal flood frequency analyses are undertaken to derive seasonal flood patterns. As a result, a Germany-wide map of agricultural flood risk is shown as well as the crop type most at risk in a specific region. The risk maps may provide guidance for federal statewide coordinated designation of retention areas.

Business Recovery Conditions of Private Enterprises after the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Issues on Business Continuity Measures for Large-Scale Disaster Management — A Case Study of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises in Miyagi —

Business Recovery Conditions of Private Enterprises after the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Issues on Business Continuity Measures for Large-Scale Disaster Management — A Case Study of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises in Miyagi —

An activity theory analysis of boundary objects in cross-border information systems development for disaster management

Abstract One of the main challenges in cross-border disaster management is the development and use of information systems that cater the needs of heterogeneous relief agencies, policies, activities and cultures. Drawing upon activity theory, this paper examines cross-border information systems development for disaster management. We infuse the concept of boundary objects into activity theory by the characterization of the artifacts. This allows articulating how the socio-technical objects are meshed with the process of cross-border collaboration for systems development. Our longitudinal ethnographic field study on a cross-border flood management project, VIKING, revealed how the project was empowered and developed by four key boundary objects, i.e. the governance structure of the program, two information systems (a disaster management information system and an online collaboration portal), and recurring cross-border exercises as an evaluation and feedback mechanism. The selective institutionalizations of these key boundary objects helped the participants overcome various contradictions existed in the systems development. The study results also show that both goal-oriented actions and boundary objects can affect the outcomes of long-term large-scale disaster management systems development.

The role of biomedical engineering in disaster management in resource-limited settings

The costs of natural disasters, such as earthquakes and floods, and of wars and other man-made catastrophes go beyond the immediate loss of life, property, infrastructure and livelihood. The public health crisis that unfolds over ensuing weeks and months leaves much deeper, permanent scars in the form of reduced quality of life and disrupted national economies.1 These effects are compounded in resource-limited settings, where catastrophes result in population displacement and undermine health facilities’ capacity to provide care, since fully-established disaster management programmes are often lacking.2 Large-scale disasters that displace populations and strain the existing health-care infrastructure, such as the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, have two well-defined stages: the crisis during the event, and the slower, more devastating catastrophe that puts the lives of millions of people at risk. Local government response is often focused on the former, with little attention to the latter. Crisis management in remote settings is particularly complicated. In this perspective piece we argue in favour of improved management of large-scale disasters through investment in biomedical engineering.

Group value and intention to use — A study of multi-agency disaster management information systems for public safety

This paper examines and extends the theory of information systems success in the context of large-scale disaster management (DM) for public safety. In the recent past, various evaluation reports on DM efforts have concluded that information quality and system quality are major hurdles for efficient and effective multi-agency DM and are critical antecedents for information systems (IS) success. In contrast to the wealth of literature on IS success in profit-oriented business environments, research regarding drivers of public sector IS success is scarce. This research develops and empirically tests a model that explains IS usage intention as a reflective measure of IS success in the public sector DM domain. In this paper, the effects of the expected value of IS for the entire group of collaborating DM agencies, task support, user satisfaction, and three specific information/service quality dimensions on usage intention are examined. Data was collected from emergency responders using a questionnaire survey method during multi-agency, cross-national DM exercises at the Dutch–German border. The results of the data analysis revealed that expected group value is a key determinant of intention to use in the public sector DM domain. The data analysis also showed that perceived task support only has an indirect effect, through user satisfaction, on the usage intention. These findings imply that previously suggested IS success models for business environments are likely to fall short in their explanatory power and applicability for highly volatile complex disaster environments that require immediate coordinated responses from a large number of organizations. Possible directions for future research are also discussed along with other findings and implications.

Climate Change and Insurance: Integrative Principles and Regulatory Risks

In medicine, an iatrogenic risk is a risk that arises from the medical treatment itself, such as side effects of surgery or drugs. The same phenomenon arises in the process of regulatory and legislative actions intended to facilitate mitigating and financing of catastrophic risks. Unanticipated regulatory or legislative fiats can have fundamental effects on insured risks. Moreover, economic disruptions in the much more densely interdependent global economy can also have systemic effects well beyond their direct locus of impact. These systemic risks are likely to become more evident in the catastrophe risk area in the years ahead, as the effects of climate change become more apparent. One can expect as a result increasing demands on regulators and parliamentarians who, in turn, are likely to look to the insurance and reinsurance industries for solutions. This paper describes the challenges likely to arise in this process, with a particular focus on catastrophe risks that may result from climate change (of course, weather-related events will continue to occur whether or not discernible climate change the culprit). These challenges include the magnitude of the hazards themselves, the complex interactions of mitigation with the Kyoto-driven carbon economy and the uncertainties associated with climate change itself. I review some principles that derive from the economics of insurance regulation and from the decision sciences. Some of these have been recently put forward as policy recommendations at the World Economic Forum and in the OECD Advisory Board on Financial Management of Large-scale Disasters. These recommendations on the role of insurance in mitigation and financing of catastrophe risks must be seen as part of a larger international debate on these issues. They are set against the background of increasing losses from catastrophes due to increased assets and population in vulnerable areas, the increased scale of weather-related events, possibly related to climate change, and increased interdependencies in the global economy. Given the magnitude of these risks, there is growing recognition on the importance of greater collaboration between the public and private sectors in identifying and quantifying risks from large-scale catastrophes and in the design of mitigation and residual risk financing mechanisms to cope with them. I argue here that it is essential that the insurance industry take a leadership role in developing principles and actions to address these risks.

Standards in Collaborative International Disaster Drills: A Case Study of Two International Search and Rescue Drills

During the last few decades, various global disasters have rendered nations helpless (such as Thailand's tsunami and earthquakes in Turkey, Pakistan, Iran, and India). A lack of knowledge and resources make it difficult to address such disasters. Preparedness for a national disaster is expensive, and in most cases, unachievable even for modern countries. International collaboration might be useful for coping with large-scale disasters. Preparedness for international collaboration includes drills. Two such drills held by the Israeli Home Front Command and other military and civilian bodies with the nations of Greece and Turkey are described in this article. The data were gathered from formal debriefings of the Israeli teams collaborating in two separate drills with Greek and Turkish teams. Preparations began four months before the drills were conducted and included three meetings between Israeli and foreign officials. The Israeli and foreign officials agreed upon the drill layout, logistics, communications, residence, real-time medicine, hardware, and equipment. The drills took place in Greece and Turkey and lasted four days. The first day included meetings between the teams and logistics preparations. The second and third days were devoted to exercises. The drills included evacuating casualties from a demolition zone and treating typical injuries such as crush syndrome. Every day ended with a formal debriefing by the teams' commanders. The fourth day included a ceremony and transportation back home. Members in both teams felt the drills improved their skills and had an important impact on creating common language that would enhance cooperation during a real disaster. A key factor in the management of large-scale disasters is coordination between countries. International drills are important to create common language within similar regulations.

The concept of assisted management of large-scale disasters by horizontal organizations.

Management of large-scale disasters is impeded by inadequately designed organizational infrastructure. The vertical organizational structures of most agencies responding to disasters contribute to a poorly integrated response, especially when collaboration, information sharing, and coordination are required. Horizontal (or lateral) organizations have assisted traditionally vertical civilian and military agencies by enhancing their capacity to operate successfully in complex human emergencies and large-scale natural disasters. Because of the multiagency and highly technical multidisciplinary requirements for decision-making in chemical and biological disasters, similar horizontal management options must be considered.

Future Trends in Management of Hazardous Envhionments - Panel Summary

Coming decades almost certainly will see a continuing process of change in the nature and distribution of workplace and environmental safety hazards and risks. This session discusses future trends in the management of hazardous environments, particularly in terms of how such management can benefit from the application of macroergonomic principles and methods, Thomas Albin points out that although the application of ergonomics will remain a key strategy for abating musculoskeletal problems in the workplace, there is need for a broader systems approach to ergonomics program design. Michael Smith deals with new types and patterns of hazards and risks related to the emergence of new technologies. Markku Mattila addresses future trends in management of workplace hazards from a Scandinavian and European perspective, including the integration of ergonomics and quality management. Victor Koscheyev and Gloria Leon discuss future needs and trends in systems management of large-scale disasters and in the psychological consequences of human exposure to such disasters. Thomas Smith notes that a number of prevailing concepts and practices in the safety profession remain contrary to the principle of ‘fitting the job to the worker,’ and that perhaps the greatest challenge facing the safety and hazard management field in the decades to come will be to broaden the acceptance and application of this principle to enhance safety performance in the workplace.