Post-disaster Aid Research Articles

A Decision-Making Model to Determine Dynamic Facility Locations for a Disaster Logistic Planning Problem Using Deep Learning

Disaster logistics management is vital in planning and organizing humanitarian assistance distribution. The planning problem faces challenges, such as coordinating the allocation and distribution of essential resources while considering the severity of the disaster, population density, and accessibility. This study proposes an optimized disaster relief management model, including distribution center placement, demand point prediction, prohibited route mapping, and efficient relief goods distribution. A dynamic model predicts the location of post-disaster distribution centers using the K-Means method based on impacted demand points’ positions. Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) aid in predicting assistance requests around formed distribution centers. The forbidden route model maps permitted and prohibited routes while considering constraints to enhance relief supply distribution efficacy. The objective function aims to minimize both cost and time in post-disaster aid distribution. The model deep location routing problem (DLRP) effectively handles mixed nonlinear multi-objective programming, choosing the best forbidden routes. The combination of these models provides a comprehensive framework for optimizing disaster relief management, resulting in more effective and responsive disaster handling. Numerical examples show the model’s effectiveness in solving complex humanitarian logistics problems with lower computation time, which is crucial for quick decision making during disasters.

Erosion and Culture

Erosion and Culture

Does post-disaster aid promote community resilience? Evidence from federal disaster programs

Does post-disaster aid promote community resilience? Evidence from federal disaster programs

A discrete choice experiment exploring farmer preferences for insurance against extreme weather events

Agriculture represents one of the most vulnerable sectors to extreme weather events that are projected to increase with climate change. Insurance has been advocated as a more efficient means to ensure financial security to farmers, than post-disaster aid for damages. A potential drawback of insurance however, is that unless carefully designed it could dis-incentivise farmers to engage in wider farm adaptation measures or lead to more risk-taking behaviour. This paper analyses the attractiveness of publicly-backed climate risk insurance offerings to farmers and explores their preferences for elements of insurance schemes that do not negatively affect incentives for wider farm adaptation. Specifically, a discrete choice experiment is used to reveal Irish farmers’ preferences for multi-annual insurance contracts and weather-indexed versus traditional indemnity insurance and cost. Results indicate that a majority of farmers are willing to buy publicly-backed insurance for protection from extreme weather events. Younger farmers, farmers who currently have farm insurance, farmers from certain geographical locations and farmers who have been previously affected by extreme weather events are more likely to buy insurance. With respect to the design of insurance schemes, farmers prefer multi-annual coverage versus annual renewal. They also prefer indexed-insurance and have a strong preference for cheaper coverage. Despite the important role that insurance could play in protecting farms financially from damage caused by extreme weather events, few studies have examined preference for weather-indexed insurance within a European context. New evidence on farmer preferences and intended behaviours is therefore critical to inform policy in this area.

Actor-Network and Non-Government failure in Jakarta flood disaster in January 2020

This research aims to discuss actors’ network in handling flood disasters in DKI Jakarta in January 2020. With the increasing number of disasters globally and in Indonesia, the discussion about non-government actors’ role in disaster response is relevant to disaster management studies. Disaster response, as one of the disaster management phases in the case of flood disasters, is crucial for reducing the impact of a catastrophe and increasing the public sector’s resilience and society after a disaster happens. This research was conducted with mass-media content analysis, using the keyword “DKI Jakarta flood” to collect published news between 1-6 January 2020. Then, the collected news was analyzed with Discourse Network Analyzer. The analysis found that there were contributions from both government and non-government. Food support is the most common type of contribution that was chosen for disaster management assistance. The private sector and community organizations were the non-state actors that played a huge part in post-disaster aid. Although there are roles of non-state actors in disaster management, there are obstacles in its implementation. Some of those are unsupportive regulation, the absence of an institutional framework, and various actors’ commitment to collaborative disaster management.

Robust Optimization for Handling Time Uncertainty in Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem for Post-Disaster Aid Logistical Distribution

In post-disaster aid logistical distribution, time is the most important thing to minimize the number of victim. But, time travelling become uncertain as the impact of disaster occurrence. In this paper, Robust Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem (RCVRP) for post-disaster aid logistical distribution under time uncertainty is discussed to handle the uncertain travelling time. The robust optimal solution derivation is presented using Robust Optimization. The time uncertainty is assumed to be lied in a box and a polyhedral uncertainty set. This assumption yields a Robust Counterpart (RC) of the RCVRP model which are computationally tractable. Case study and simulation presented in this paper and shows a robust optimal solution.

A House of One’s Own: The Moral Economy of Post-Disaster Aid in El Salvador by Alicia Sliwinski

A House of One’s Own: The Moral Economy of Post-Disaster Aid in El Salvador by Alicia Sliwinski

An investigation of the targeting and allocation of post-flood disaster aid for rehabilitation in Punjab, Pakistan

Pakistan is listed among the countries that are extremely susceptible to climate changes and it has experienced several natural disaster shocks with tremendous impacts. However, post-disaster recovery and rehabilitation is still a major challenge due to difficulty in targeting the right beneficiaries and the effectiveness of post-disaster aid. This study proposes a conceptual framework and rehabilitation measures for the judicious allocation of two post-disaster aid programmes in the context of 2010 super flood disasters in Pakistan. Using primary data sets from the most severely affected district of province Punjab, it employs Probit and Tobit models and empirically investigates the determinants of better targeting and aid allocation. The results show that ‘cash aid’ for house reconstruction was much better targeted than agricultural assistance in compensating the affected households. The targeting and the effectiveness of aid programmes were mainly determined by gender, membership, farmer size and injured members. Finally, this study suggests that for better targeting of post-disaster aid programmes, local governments and international organizations should pay attention to those families with fewer adult females and injured members, and those without CBO membership.

Natural disasters, aid distribution, and social conflict – Micro-level evidence from the 2015 earthquake in Nepal

Abstract How do natural disasters influence social conflict? We build on previous research by drawing more attention to conditional effects. We argue that damage and destruction tend to increase local-level cooperation and cohesion, as common threats and challenges supersede pre-existing communal cleavages. Irregular distribution of reconstruction aid, in the presence of pre-existing social inequalities, however, can dampen these effects and foster social conflict. We test this argument with a village-level analysis of the effects of the 2015 earthquake in Nepal: we rely on data on the exogenous spatial distribution of earthquake intensity, the number of violent events, and the patterns of post-disaster aid distribution. Our findings show that villages exposed to the earthquake experienced a reduction in the number of social conflict events. This pacifying effect is mediated by government aid distribution: as more aid is distributed, the conflict-mitigating effects of the earthquake are weakened. These results highlight the need for more conflict-sensitive reconstruction aid in the aftermath of natural disasters.

Effects of Post-Disaster Aid Measures to Firms: Evidence from Tohoku University Earthquake Recovery Firm Survey 2012–2015

Panel data of individual firms are a valuable source of information on the disaster resilience of the regional economy. Such data also helps to assess the effectiveness of government aids to recovery. Every year after the Great East Japan Earthquake 2011, from 2012 to 2015, Tohoku University’s Graduate School of Economics and Management conducted the Tohoku University Earthquake Recovery Firm Survey (TERFS) to obtain such information. The survey collected 25,826 responses over the 4-year period from a total of 11,090 firms in the east Tohoku region, the most severely affected region. Based on this survey, this paper assesses the effects of the conventional and new government recovery aid measures introduced to help firms affected by the disaster on the levels of business activity. The paper finds that group subsidy and debt reduction had important roles in the recovery of business activities, and demonstrates the importance of a panel survey in understanding and guiding policies for the resilience of the regional economy.

The Asian Tsunami and Post-Disaster Aid

For a disaster event that shaped the international humanitarian system of the 21st century (for example, following the 2004 tsunami, the United Nations reformed its humanitarian architecture, which was implemented the following year after the Kashmir earthquake), the retrospective analysis of humanitarian relief and recovery assistance after the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004 remains woefully inadequate. This book is a commendable effort to fill the gap. Published nearly a decade and a half after the event, it provides a longitudinal view of the effectiveness of post-tsunami relief and recovery assistance. The book also broaches some important questions related to post-disaster aid, but stops short of answering them.

Post-disaster aid and development of the manufacturing sector: Lessons from a natural experiment in China

We adopt a disaggregate approach to study the link between aid and Dutch Disease dynamics, using a natural experiment in China. Specifically, we examine whether post-disaster aid provided to a subsample of Chinese counties, devastated by an earthquake in 2008, affects the sectoral composition of local economies. Using different methods we consistently find that counties receiving (more) aid — even “nearby counties” not directly damaged by the earthquake — tend to suffer from a contraction of the manufacturing sector. Innovative features of the paper include its regional perspective; its identification strategy (resting on a special provision in Chinese policy—pairwise aid); and its focus on Dutch disease effects in the context of post-disaster aid.

Cognition and attitude of Chinese people toward postdisaster psychological crisis intervention: Scale development and validation

Our aim was to develop a scale to measure the cognition and attitude of Chinese people toward postdisaster psychological crisis intervention and to evaluate the psychometric properties of the measure. The study was divided into three stages: (a) Designing the scale items; (b) administering the pilot measure and performing psychometric analysis; (c) implementing administration of the final version of the measure, and performing confirmatory factor analysis with 1,195 participants residing in the Shandong and Sichuan Provinces in China. The Cognition scale contains 15 items in 3 subscales we labeled as theoretical cognition, professional cognition, and objective cognition. The Attitude scale contains 17 items in 3 subscales of obligatory attitude, constructive attitude, and positive attitude. Both scales exhibited adequate validity and internal consistency reliability. The Chinese People's Cognition and Attitude Toward Postdisaster Psychological Crisis Intervention Scale is reliable and valid and can be used by postdisaster aid providers and researchers to assess the cognition and attitude of Chinese people who have experienced a disaster.

Pre-disaster planning and post-disaster aid: Examining the impact of the great East Japan Earthquake

In this paper we examine the extent to which pre-disaster planning and post-disaster aid can help firms recover from the negative impact of a natural disaster. Using detailed plant-level data covering the areas affected by the March 2011 Great East Japan earthquake and tsunami we find that the number of stopped days of operation was negatively impacted by the disaster although we find that only the tsumani-affected plants experienced reduced sales six months after the earthquake. However, we do find evidence to suggest that post-disaster sales was influenced by a number of pre and post-disaster policies. More specifically, we find that pre-disaster policies such as having alternative transport arrangements and a diversified supplier network positively affect post-disaster sales. We also find that post-disaster aid from local banks and trading partners positively influences post-disaster sales but that direct cash payments from government appears to have no statistically significant effect.

CARE

Over the past 20 years, an increasing number of emergency aid products for personal and family purposes have become available on the market. However, little attention has been focused on public facilities. This article is based on a joint design research project conducted by teams from Hong Kong, the United States, and the Chinese mainland. It is review in nature with the supplement of empirical fieldwork findings. Fieldwork was conducted in Wenchuan of China after an earthquake. Other cases include earthquakes (e.g., those in Japan, Taiwan, and mainland China) and floods (e.g., those in the United States and on the mainland China) were also reviewed as supplementary reference for the analysis. The article reviews the importance, design, and management of public post-disaster emergency aid facilities. It focuses on how the facilities can be designed and managed to achieve a better public living environment for victims immediately after disasters. It also aims to discuss how to maximize the cost-effectiveness of resources and benefits to victims and enhance recovery times. The key findings of the research show that it is necessary to have the provision of better-quality public post-disaster emergency facilities for victims who suffer immediately after disasters. A new approach of the directions and considerations in design and management called CARE, that is, comfort, accessibility, rapid, and effectiveness, is identified and discussed.

Earth observation data based rapid flood-extent modelling for tsunami-devastated coastal areas

Earth observation (EO)-based mapping and analysis of natural hazards plays a critical role in various aspects of post-disaster aid management. Spatial very high-resolution Earth observation data provide important information for managing post-tsunami activities on devastated land and monitoring re-cultivation and reconstruction. The automatic and fast use of high-resolution EO data for rapid mapping is, however, complicated by high spectral variability in densely populated urban areas and unpredictable textural and spectral land-surface changes. The present paper presents the results of the SENDAI project, which developed an automatic post-tsunami flood-extent modelling concept using RapidEye multispectral satellite data and ASTER Global Digital Elevation Model Version 2 (GDEM V2) data of the eastern coast of Japan (captured after the Tohoku earthquake). In this paper, the authors developed both a bathtub-modelling approach and a cost-distance approach, and integrated the roughness parameters of different land-use types to increase the accuracy of flood-extent modelling. Overall, the accuracy of the developed models reached 87–92%, depending on the analysed test site. The flood-modelling approach was explained and results were compared with published approaches. We came to the conclusion that the cost-factor-based approach reaches accuracy comparable to published results from hydrological modelling. However the proposed cost-factor approach is based on a much simpler dataset, which is available globally.

Where is the money? Post-disaster foreign aid flows

AbstractThis paper describes the flows of aid after large catastrophic natural disasters by using the extensive record of bilateral aid flows, by aid sector, available through the OECD's Development Assistance Committee. For each large donor, the extent of cross-sector reallocation is identified that is occurring in the aftermath of large disasters whereby humanitarian aid increases but other types of aid may decrease. The evidence in this paper suggests that the expectation of large surges in post-disaster aid flows is not warranted given the past diversity of experience of global foreign post-disaster aid by donor and by event. No evidence is found, however, that donors reallocate aid between recipient countries (cross-recipient reallocation). These observations suggest that countries which are predicted to face increasing losses from natural disasters in the coming decades (and almost all are) should be devoting significant resources to prevention, insurance and mitigation, rather than expecting significant post-disaster aid inflows.

An evaluation of the usefulness of actor network theory in understanding the complexities of vulnerability and resilience in post-disaster reconstruction

The literature is replete with accounts of the struggle to effectively target and deploy postdisaster aid so as to achieve maximum benefit to recipients, both direct and indirect, over the short- and longer-term. Generally these stories balance success with lessons learned from failure, in order to inform practice in future recovery and reconstruction events. They are often derived from the heroic accounts of key actors in case studies, on the understandable basis that these carefully selected individuals will have been pivotal in designing and directing the implementation of aid programmes. The influence of non-humans such as organisations, systems, processes, or elements of the constructed environment are considered only insofar as they impact upon the experiences of the raconteurs. However actor network theory, a technique originally developed to examine phenomena at the sociotechnological interface, ascribes human characteristics such as motives and behaviours equally to human and non-human actants, ultimately to better explain the worldly consequences of their interaction. This paper reports on the ex post application of ANT to data collected in an earlier actor-centric study, to both evaluate its usefulness in disaster research and to identify potential gaps in the disaster research agenda.

Ethical dilemmas related to predictions and warnings of impending natural disaster

Scientists and policy makers issuing predictions and warnings of impending natural disaster are faced with two major challenges, that is, failure to warn and issuing a false alarm. The consequences of failure to warn can be serious for society overall, for example, significant economic losses, heavy infrastructure and environmental damage, large number of human casualties, and social disruption. Failure to warn can also have serious for specific individuals, for example, legal proceedings against disaster research scientists, as in the L'Aquila earthquake affair. The consequences of false alarms may be less serious. Nevertheless, false alarms may violate the principle of nonmaleficence (do no harm), affect individual autonomy (eg, mandatory evacuations), and may result in the "cry wolf" effect. Other ethical issues associated with natural disasters include the promotion of global justice through international predisaster technical assistance and postdisaster aid. Social justice within a particular country is promoted through greater postdisaster aid allocation to the less privileged.

‘Aceh thanks the world’: The possibilities of the gift in a post‐disaster society (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

While it has often been argued that post‐disaster aid is humiliating for its beneficiaries, based on my ethnographic research in post‐tsunami Aceh, Indonesia, I argue that such aid may also come to mean the opposite. Rather than feeling humiliated by foreign aid, people in Aceh actively glossed post‐tsunami foreign assistance as ‘gifts’ for which they often expressed their gratitude. Building on Marcel Mauss's classic argument, as well as on more recent works on the nature of the gift, I argue that they did so because they felt that the gift of post‐disaster aid brought with it both a long wished‐for recognition of Aceh and the possibility of establishing long‐term relationships between Aceh and ‘the world’. Therefore, rather than something humiliating, the post‐disaster aid became a medium for imagining what James Ferguson has called a ‘place‐in‐the‐world’ for Aceh.