Disaster Victims Research Articles

Feasibility of anomalous event detection based on Mobile Spatial Statistics: A study of six cases in Japan

One of the primary goals of disaster risk management is to minimize the loss of life in the event of a disaster. To reduce the number of victims in disasters is important to know the amount of exposed population to a hazard. Similarly, population distribution in real-time is required to estimate post-disaster needs and resources for disaster relief. In this study, we explore the use of Mobile Spatial Statistics (MSS) as the basis to acquire offline and online population data and detect anomalies that may relate to a disaster. For instance, mobile spatial data could identify sudden changes in the number of people indicating an anomalous event or change in population dynamics. Here we use the Matrix Profile (MP) method in time-series analysis to test the feasibility of detecting anomalies in the MSS data. We selected mass gatherings and disaster events with rapid and slow onset and small and large scales. We discuss the applicability of this method for real-time anomaly detection of spatial population distribution within the context of disaster risk management. Our results show that the applicability of the MP method in anomaly detection is sensitive to the size of the areas used during monitoring and analysis, the subsequence length and the threshold applied.

Bone mineral density and geometric morphometrics: Indicators of growth in the immature pars basilaris

The pars basilaris forms a central component of the immature basicranium and owing to its resilience to post-mortem and taphonomic changes, holds significance across evolutionary, clinical, and forensic contexts. While size and shape parameters of the pars basilaris have been investigated, little is known about the influence of the underlying bone mineral density on the morphometry of this bone during growth. This study aimed to investigate the development and growth of the pars basilaris with specific reference to changes in bone density patterning and development of osteological features, during the prenatal and early postnatal periods of life. A total of 109 pars basilari were sourced from the Johannesburg Forensic Paediatric Collection, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. The study sample was subdivided into early prenatal (<30 gestational weeks), prenatal (30–40 gestational weeks) and postnatal (birth to 7.5 months) groups and micro-CT scanned to assess bone mineral density patterns across seven regions of interest. Size and shape changes were analysed using 11 digitized landmarks and geometric morphometrics. When comparing across age groups, the assessed dimensions increased with growth manifesting as a deepening at the anterior border of the foramen magnum, development of the lateral angles and widening of the bone at the lateral projections and spheno-occipital synchondrosis. However, no significant changes in the distribution of bone mineral density were observed. An appreciation of morphological changes and bone quality at specific growth sites in the pars basilaris is essential when analyzing remains of unknown provenance for the purposes of identification in disaster victim settings.

A review of the contributions of forensic archaeology and anthropology to the process of disaster victim identification.

Forensic archaeology and anthropology have developed significantly over past decades and now provide considerable assistance to the investigation process of disaster victim recovery and identification. In what are often chaotic death and crime scenes, the formal process of utilizing archaeological methods can bring control, order, and ensure systematic search. Procedures assist in defining scene extent, locating victims and evidence, rule out areas for consideration, and provide standardized recording and quality assurance through dedicated use of standardized forms (pro formas). Combined archaeological and anthropological search methods maximize opportunities to recovery the missing through identifying remains, mapping distributions, and providing accounting of victims at the scene. Anthropological assistance in examinations contributes to individual assessment, resolving commingling and fragmentation issues, and utilizing DNA sampling methods and matching data to reassociate and account for the missing. Utilization of archaeology, anthropology, and DNA matching data provides scope to review crime scene recovery and determine requirements and potential for further survey and retrieval. Adopting the most suitable methods for a particular context can maximize recovery, efficiency, and resource use. Case studies demonstrate the utility of archaeological methods in a range of scenarios. They exemplify the success of multidisciplinary analysis in providing evidence of the sequence of events, the timing of events, the impact of taphonomic processes, the location and accounting of victims, and the demonstration of systematic scene search. The considerations provided in this article, utilizing archaeology and anthropology processes, may assist investigators in planning and implementing responses to mass fatalities.

Disasters and Religious Resilience in Indonesia: A Review

Various disasters that occur in Indonesia are caused by several factors that can trigger casualties, environmental damage, property losses, and even adverse psychological impacts. The presence of such disasters causes pressure on disaster victims both from external and internal factors that can raise doubts or difficult situations that can threaten one's religious practice. This paper aims to show the role of religious communities towards disaster victims in Indonesia in order to increase the religious resilience of people affected by disasters. From the results of the research that has been done, it can be concluded that disaster victims in Indonesia will be able to go through the difficulties and pressures caused by disasters if they stick to religious practices and teachings socialized by religious communities. Religion teaches many important things concerning social benefit. Individuals and communities who feel pressure and sadness when faced with trials must hold fast to religious values in order to survive and find a way out of the complexity of the problem at hand.

Transformer fusion-based scale-aware attention network for multispectral victim detection

The aftermath of a natural disaster leaves victims trapped in rubble which is challenging to detect by smart drones due to the victims in low visibility under the adverse disaster environments and victims in various sizes. To overcome the above challenges, a transformer fusion-based scale-aware attention network (TFSANet) is proposed to overcome adverse environmental impacts in disaster areas by robustly integrating the latent interactions between RGB and thermal images and to address the problem of various-sized victim detection. Firstly, a transformer fusion model is developed to incorporate a two-stream backbone network to effectively fuse the complementary characteristics between RGB and thermal images. This aims to solve the problem that the victims cannot be seen clearly due to the adverse disaster area, such as smog and heavy rain. In addition, a scale-aware attention mechanism is designed to be embedded into the head network to adaptively adjust the size of receptive fields aiming to capture victims with different scales. Extensive experiments on two challenging datasets indicate that our TFSANet achieves superior results. The proposed method achieves 86.56% average precision (AP) on the National Institute of Informatics—Chiba University (NII-CU) multispectral aerial person detection dataset, outperforming the state-of-the-art approach by 4.38%. On the drone-captured RGBT person detection (RGBTDronePerson) dataset, the proposed method significantly improves the AP of the state-of-the-art approach by 4.33%.

Facial recognition for disaster victim identification

Mass disaster events can result in high levels of casualties that need to be identified. Whilst disaster victim identification (DVI) relies on primary identifiers of DNA, fingerprints, and dental, these require ante-mortem data that may not exist or be easily obtainable. Facial recognition technology may be able to assist. Automated facial recognition has advanced considerably and access to ante-mortem facial images are readily available. Facial recognition could therefore be used to expedite the DVI process by narrowing down leads before primary identifiers are made available. This research explores the feasibility of using automated facial recognition technology to support DVI. We evaluated the performance of a commercial-off-the-self facial recognition algorithm on post-mortem images (representing images taken after a mass disaster) against ante-mortem images (representing a database that may exist within agencies who hold face databases for identity documents (such as passports or driver's licenses). We explored facial recognition performance for different operational scenarios, with different levels of face image quality, and by cause of death. Our research is the largest facial recognition evaluation of post-mortem and ante-mortem images to date. We demonstrated that facial recognition technology would be valuable for DVI and that the performance varies by image quality and cause of death. We provide recommendations for future research.

Development and implementation of a rehabilitation triage algorithm for disasters in the subacute phase: an experience from the 2024 Noto peninsula earthquake

Early rehabilitation during disasters such as earthquakes is an important but often undervalued responsibility of medical teams. Both the development of simple tools for assessing the life functioning of evacuees and the standardization of intervention methods are urgent issues in disaster rehabilitation. The Japanese Rehabilitation Assistance Team (JRAT), an officially recognized organization consisting of 10 suborganisations, was established after gaining important experience with disaster rehabilitation in the aftermath of the Great East Japan Earthquake. We, the Hiroshima JRAT, were dispatched to the Monzen area of Wajima City to support disaster recovery after the 2024 Noto Peninsula Earthquake. Since disaster rehabilitation assistance was not well established in the Monzen area of Wajima City, the medical team consulted JRAT for guidance on triaging evacuees based on their life functioning. We developed a rehabilitation triage algorithm that classifies evacuees into four triage tags based on their ability to perform three simple movements: sitting up, standing up from the floor, and one-leg standing. In our triage algorithm, an inability to sit up is classified as a red tag (difficulty living in a shelter without assistance), an inability to stand up from the floor is classified as a yellow tag (individual intervention: introduction of beds and handrails), one-leg standing for &amp;lt; 2 s is classified as a green tag (group intervention: installation of toilets and bath rails and use of walkers to prevent falls), and standing on one leg for more than 2 s is classified as a white tag (independent in ADLs). We worked with medical teams to triage 922 evacuees in 27 evacuation centers, resulting in the extraction of four red and eight yellow evacuees in 1 day. Our rehabilitation triage system has the potential to be a simple assessment tool for classifying the life functioning of disaster victims and linking them to appropriate supports.

Disaster victim identification: Stable isotope analysis and the identification of unknown decedents.

Within the complex world of disaster victim identification, or DVI, forensic science practitioners use a variety of investigative techniques to work toward a common goal: identification of the decedents, bringing closure to the affected communities. Identification is a complex undertaking; the event (disaster) also can be extraordinarily complex, as it may be an acute event, or one that spans months or years. Compounding this time issue, remains may be heavily fragmented, dispersed, commingled, or otherwise disrupted by either the perpetrators or the disaster itself. To help solve these complexities, we explore the use of stable isotope analysis (SIA) in DVI events. SIA can be used with a variety of body tissues (hair, nail, bone, and teeth), and each represents different time depths in a decedent's life. Bone collagen and tooth enamel carbonate are useful to reconstruct an individual's diet and source water intakes, respectively, leading to likely population or geographic origin determinations. Additionally, the carbon and nitrogen isotopic signatures of bone collagen have calculated intraperson ranges. These facts allow investigators to determine likely origin of remains using isotopic data and can be used to link skeletal elements (to an individual), or perhaps more importantly, show that remains are not linked. Application of SIA can thus speed remains identification by eliminating individuals from short lists for identification, linking or decoupling remains, and reducing the need for some DNA testing. These strategies and hypothesis tests should commence early in the DVI process to achieve maximum effectiveness.

Challenges in urban-rural food supply chains for disaster resilience in Nepal

Urban and rural areas are interconnected in fulfilling the food demands of both sides. However, both unprecedented and predictable disasters are disrupting the food service. To address this issue, this paper discusses the need and significance of urban-rural coordination, which promotes use of local resources, solving direct and indirect problems related to food. A smooth food system chain with adequate storage capacity, transportation, and food quality is essential not only during normal days but also throughout times of disaster. Therefore, this research aims to identify the factors disrupting the food system chain in the mid-hill area of Nepal. It explores the interconnection between urban and rural areas in maintaining the food system chain and investigates ways to improve it from a disaster resilience perspective. Kathmandu and Melamchi, urban and rural areas in Nepal are taken for the study. After completing interviews with disaster victims, focus group discussion was conducted with farmers, municipality government officers, disaster experts, and local people. Additionally, further discussion held with traders who are mainly involved in the food system chain from the disaster resilience perspective. Grains, milk, and vegetables primarily flow from rural areas to Kathmandu, while manufactured goods are predominantly supplied from urban areas. The food supply chain services are generally disrupted every monsoon season due to floods and were severely affected during the 2021 flood in the Melamchi area. The results of the study are clustered into five categories, depending on the city region's food system cycle.

Predicting Post-Disaster Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Symptom Trajectories: The Role of Pre-Disaster Traumatic Experiences.

The mental health impact of disasters is substantial, with 30-40% of direct disaster victims developing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). It is not yet clear why some people cope well with disaster-related trauma while others experience chronic dysfunction. Prior research on non-disaster trauma suggests that an individual's history of traumatic experiences earlier in the life course, prior to the disaster, may be a key factor in explaining variability in psychological responses to disasters. This study evaluated the extent to which pre-disaster trauma predicts PTSD trajectories in a sample of Hurricane Katrina survivors followed for 12 years after the storm. Four PTSD trajectories were identified using latent class growth analysis: Resistant (49.0%), Recovery (29.3%), Delayed-Onset (8.0%), and Chronic-High (13.7%). After adjusting for covariates, pre-Katrina trauma had only a small, positive impact on the probability of long-term, chronic Katrina-specific PTSD, and little effect on the probability of the Resistant and Delayed-Onset trajectories. Higher pre-Katrina trauma exposure moderately decreased the probability of being in the Recovery trajectory, in which Katrina-specific PTSD symptoms are initially high before declining over time. When covariates were added to the model one at a time, the association between pre-Katrina trauma and Chronic-High PTSD was attenuated most by the addition of Katrina-related trauma. Our findings suggest that while pre-disaster trauma exposure does not have a strong direct effect on chronic Katrina-specific PTSD, pre-Katrina trauma may impact PTSD through other factors that affect Katrina-related PTSD, such as by increasing the severity of Katrina-related trauma. These findings have important implications for the development of disaster preparedness strategies to diminish the long-term burden of disaster-related PTSD.

An Extensive Analysis of Contemporary Studies Forensics Sciences in India

: Forensic science in India has evolved over 100 years, with the first official laboratory being the Calcutta Forensic Science Laboratory in Kolkata founded in 1952. Modernization has led to the establishment of numerous central, state, and regional forensic laboratories and advancements in technology such as DNA profiling, pathology, forensic toxicology, and forensic anthropology. As the need for forensic education in India increases, educational institutions and universities have started offering forensic science as a subject. India has collaborated with international forensic organizations to stay updated on global developments. Contemporary studies in forensic sciences are crucial for adapting to technological advancements, addressing emerging crimes, improving DNA analysis, promoting interdisciplinary approaches, and maintaining quality assurance and standards. Forensic science plays a significant role in the humanitarian efforts, including the identification of missing people and victims of mass disasters. Advanced imaging techniques are crucial in forensic investigations. Indian forensic science education is divided into undergraduate and postgraduate programs, offering bachelor's degrees and specialized courses in areas like forensic toxicology, DNA analysis, and digital forensics.

Analysis of changes in legislation on the provision of psychiatric care

Mental disorders are a serious problem in modern society. They affect millions of people around the world and have a significant impact on the quality of life and people's ability to function in a normal environment. In this regard, the issues of ensuring the rights of citizens suffering from mental disorders do not lose their relevance and require special attention from doctors, lawyers and the scientific community. There are a number of reasons for this, including: 1) an increase in the incidence of mental disorders among the population, especially among socially vulnerable groups such as refugees, orphans, victims of hostilities and natural disasters; 2) medical care for mentally ill people can be provided forcibly, and therefore requires firmly established procedural standards; 3) mentally ill people often pose a danger to both for themselves and for society, therefore, the existence of fair law-restrictive measures is necessary; 4) persons with the status of mentally ill should have guarantees of social protection and integration into society without violating personal freedom (in the case when patients are not socially dangerous). On September 1, 2024, Federal Law No. 465-FZ dated 08/04/2023 «On Amendments to the Law of the Russian Federation «On Psychiatric Care and Guarantees of Citizens' Rights in its Provision» will enter into force. This paper analyzes the adopted amendments, how they will affect law enforcement practice, whether they will create even more grounds for restricting the rights of patients in psychiatric hospitals, or are aimed at improving the legal regulation of psychiatric care.

Factors influencing disaster response self-efficacy among registered nurses in Bangladesh

BackgroundNurses are the most prominent healthcare professional group that receives disaster victims and provides regular healthcare support to them at the forefront of disasters and emergencies. As a result, assessing their disaster response self-efficacy (DRSE) level is critical. ObjectivesThis quantitative study assessed the level of registered nurses' disaster response self-efficacy in Bangladesh and determined the factors influencing DRSE. MethodsIn this cross-sectional study, five hundred sixty registered nurses' data were collected from 12 public and private hospitals in four districts of Bangladesh between August and September of 2023. The data was gathered using a self-administered questionnaire that included the modified Disaster Response Self-Efficacy Scale. To analyze the data, we utilized IBM SPSS 26 and Jamovi 2.3.21. ResultsThe study found a high level of disaster response self-efficacy (M = 3.96, SD = 0.58) among the registered nurses, while their disaster knowledge, skill, and preparedness levels were moderate. Low to moderate correlations were found between self-efficacy in disaster response and disaster-related knowledge (r = 0.349, p < 0.001), disaster skills (r = 0.526, p ˂0.001), and preparedness for disaster (r = 0.589, p ˂0.001) of the registered nurses. Older age, higher nursing designation, working experience in the emergency unit, and higher levels of disaster knowledge significantly influenced registered nurses' self-efficacy while responding to disasters. ConclusionRegistered nurses in Bangladesh have reported high self-efficacy while responding to disasters. However, to enhance their effectiveness, they need to improve their disaster knowledge, skills, and preparedness. To better respond during disasters, it is advisable that nurses receive training in disaster triage, post-disaster mental and psychological health, as well as primary and advanced life support.

“Land Without Identifiable Ownership” in the Post-East Japan Earthquake Recovery: Lawful Land-Grabbing in Neoliberal Japan

AbstractThis paper, with a focus on the status of tsunami disaster victims affected by the 2011 East Japan Earthquake, investigates into the status of private property rights in facing with the reviving legal instrumentalism in Japan, under the campaign of land law reform for the elimination of “land without identifiable owners” in the name of facilitating the disaster recovery, by means of the “special zone” method or the designation of lawless areas where the normal time law is excluded, with the particularly targeted area for such exclusion being the constitutional requirements of due process and fair compensation in public taking. Under the extraordinary setting of absolute majority of conservative party at the National Diet in the aftermath of the 2011 great disaster, legislations in Japan during this decade have been characterized by a manifestation of neo-liberal policy, driving the entire Japanese legal system into a corner. Facts observed in present Japanese society are not different from those observed in other authoritarian regimes in Asia, including the phenomenon of “land grabbing” by the governmental projects, which Asia once experienced a century ago for the colonial land enclosure by “wasteland management.”

Forensically Valuable Odonatological Records Documentation in an Era of Electronics: How Aware Are the Dental Fraternity?

Forensic odontology plays a pivotal role in the identification of victims in mass disasters with the help of "Preserved dental records" available to general dental practitioners (GDPs). Comparison of dental data obtained from the deceased person with dental data obtained by the dentist from the person's file is a primary method of identification through dental evidence. We explored the practice of maintaining dental records among GDPs, as well as their knowledge of legal regulations and the application of dental records in forensic odontology. Two hundred fifty dentists participated in an online survey. Questions covered general information on dentists, maintenance of dental records, and knowledge of legal requirements and forensic odontology. Overall, 85.2% of dentists obtain and archive written informed consent, while 73.2% retain records in the form of dental cast. Generally, non-carious dental lesions and developmental dental anomalies were not recorded. About 90.8% of dentists use Fédération Dentaire Internationale (FDI) notation. The survey revealed different practices in the maintenance of dental records, including significant flaws and a lack of awareness of their forensic importance. This obvious need for additional education on the proper maintenance of dental records could be met by including forensic odontology in compulsory undergraduate courses and postgraduate dental education. Establishing national and international standards in dental charting would comply with contemporary trends in health care and the requirements of forensic expertise.

Validation of the Korean version of the impact of event scale-revised in disaster victims using the Rasch model

ABSTRACT This study is to verify the validity of the Impact of Event Scale-Revised (IES-R) by reflecting the Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) structure and gender differences of disaster victims with the Rasch model. The analysis is based on 2,253 disaster victims in South Korea. Results reveal that items on sleep problems are inappropriate in accounting for the concept of this scale. The difficulty of the item was highly recognised by disaster victims. It was found that there were items that functioned differently by gender. Further studies need to verify the items considering cultural and disaster-related contexts for adjusting the difficulty of the items.

Science Fun Learning for the Students Affected of Natural Disasters

Fun learning will attract students to classroom learning activities learning, especially for victims of natural disasters. Students who experience natural disasters fear doing various things at home and outside the home (school). This study aims to find out whether fun science learning carried out by planting plants can improve students' understanding of learning science. This quantitative descriptive research uses test instruments to measure students' knowledge of family medicinal plant material. The population in this study was elementary school students who were victims of the earthquake natural disaster earthquake in 2022, while the research sample was 15 elementary school students. This sampling is done randomly. The data obtained were analyzed descriptively to determine improved student understanding of learning science. The results of data analysis showed that science fun learning applied through outdoor learning activities by planting family medicinal plants can increase students' understanding related to science material. However, the improvement is categorized as low based on the N-gain score 0.2. The recommendation of this study is to improve student understanding of when fun science learning should be supplemented with other methods by referring to the local wisdom of participants. Thus, the feeling of trauma that saddens the survivors will be slightly forgotten with fun activities and education.

Earthquake damage detection and level classification method for wooden houses based on convolutional neural networks and onsite photos

AbstractThe results of earthquake damage certification (EDC) surveys are the basis of support measures for improving the lives of disaster victims. To address issues such as a limited workforce to perform EDC surveys and difficulties in judging the level of damage, a damage detection and level classification method for wooden houses using multiple convolutional neural network models is proposed. The proposed method, including detection, filtering, and classification models, was trained and validated based on photographs collected from EDC surveys in Uki City, Kumamoto Prefecture. Then, a software system, which deployed these models, was developed for the onsite EDC surveyors to detect damages shown in the photographs of the surveyed house and classify damage levels. The test results based on 32 target buildings indicate that the detection model achieved high recall in detecting damage. Moreover, the redundant detected regions can be precisely filtered by the filtering model. Finally, the classification model achieved relatively high overall accuracy in classifying the damage level.

Efektivitas Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) Terhadap Kecemasan, Stres dan Peningkatan Resiliensi Pada Korban Pascabencana Banjir : Literature Review

This research aims to describe Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) for anxiety, stress, and increasing resilience in post-flood disaster victims through a literature study search. The method used is a journal review approach from the Proquest, Science Direct, Pubmed, Scopus databases with the keyword Cognitive Behavior Therapy AND Anxiety, Cognitive Behavior Therapy AND Stress AND Resilience. with inclusion criteria, full paper articles, English, Indonesian, publications in the last 10 years, namely from 2020 to 2024, disaster victims. The results of the research show that of the 10 articles that can be used for literature reviews, CBT is effective in reducing anxiety disorders, stress and increasing resilience. Conclusion Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) is effective in reducing anxiety, stress and increasing resilience in victims of natural disasters who experience anxiety, stress and low resilience. Keywords: Cognitive Behavior Therapy, Anxiety, Stress, Resilience, Post-Flood DisasterVictims.

Humanitarian Facial Recognition for Rare Craniofacial Malformations.

Children with congenital disorders are unfortunate collateral victims of wars and natural disasters. Improved diagnosis could help organize targeted medical support campaigns. Patient identification is a key issue in the management of life-threatening conditions in extreme situations, such as in oncology or for diabetes, and can be challenging when diagnosis requires biological or radiological investigations. Dysmorphology is a central element of diagnosis for craniofacial malformations, with high sensibility and specificity. Massive amounts of public data, including facial pictures circulate daily on news channels and social media, offering unique possibilities for automatic diagnosis based on facial recognition. Furthermore, AI-based algorithms assessing facial features are currently being developed to decrease diagnostic delays. Here, as a case study, we used a facial recognition algorithm trained on a large photographic database to assess an online picture of a family of refugees. Our aim was to evaluate the relevance of using an academic tool on a journalistic picture and discuss its potential application to large-scale screening in humanitarian perspectives. This group picture featured one child with signs of Apert syndrome, a rare condition with risks of severe complications in cases of delayed management. We report the successful automatic screening of Apert syndrome on this low-resolution picture, suggesting that AI-based facial recognition could be used on public data in crisis conditions to localize at-risk patients.