A scenario-based study on information flow and collaboration patterns in disaster management

Disaster management (DM) is a continuous, highly collaborative process involving governments, DM organisations, responders, the construction sector, and the general public. Most research approaches to DM include the development of information and communication technologies (ICT) to support the collaboration process rather than the creation of a collaboration process to provide information flows and patterns. An Intelligent Disaster Collaboration System (IDCS) is introduced in this paper as a conceptual model to integrate ICT into DM and the mitigation process and to enhance collaboration. The framework is applicable to the collaboration process at the local, regional and national levels. Within this context, the deployment of ICT tools in DM is explored and scenario-based case studies on flooding and terrorism—examples of natural and human-induced disasters, respectively—are presented. Conclusions are drawn regarding the differences found in collaboration patterns and ICT used during natural and human-induced disasters and the differences between currently available ICT and proposed ICT.     

中国洪涝灾害结构式与非结构式减灾措施耦合协调性研究

结构式与非结构式减灾措施是构成洪涝灾害防治体系的两个相互补充、相互促进的子系统,基于2008—2018年的面板数据,构建中国洪涝灾害结构式与非结构式减灾措施耦合协调度评价指标体系,引入耦合协调度模型测度中国洪涝灾害结构式与非结构式减灾措施建设水平以及两者间的耦合度和耦合协调度,以期进一步提升我国洪涝灾害防治体系的防灾减...     

处置气象灾害中与电视媒体合作机制的思考

在概括媒体报道“气象灾害”的基础上,指出了现存的问题,并对日本电视台的自然灾害预警信号发布机制进行了评述,从建立气象灾害预警信号发布及电视传播机制方面提出了对策和建议。     

Disaster coordination preparedness of soft-target organisations

This paper introduces a network‐enabled model to examine the disaster coordination preparedness of soft‐target organisations (STOs). Little attention is devoted to this matter in recent research. This study places emphasis on such organisations and the proposed model tests hypotheses related to network relation and coordination preparedness. It analyses the data set entitled ‘Preparedness of large retail malls to prevent and respond to terrorist attack, 2004′, which contains 120 completed surveys of security directors of retail malls in the United States. ¹ 1 See http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/TPDRC/studies/21140 .
The following questions form the basis of this study: ‘What do STOs need to be better prepared to respond to a disaster?’; ‘How does network relationship between STOs and emergency agencies affect the coordination preparedness of STOs for disaster recovery?’; and ‘Which centrality measure needs to be followed to measure network variables in order to analyse coordination preparedness?’ The results show that STOs with a high level of connectedness and strong ties to other emergency agencies are better prepared for disaster response.     

Collaborative emergency management: better community organising, better public preparedness and response

Community coordination requires communication and planning of precautions to take when faced with a severe threat of disaster. The unique case of the four Florida hurricanes of 2004--Charley, Frances, Ivan, and Jeanne--is used here to assess community responses to repeated threats of hurricanes. The paper examines how effectiveness in coordinating community disaster response efforts affects future public preparedness. The findings suggest that pre-season planning, open communication between emergency managers and elected officials, and the use of technology all had a significant impact on community responses. The repeated threat scenario indicates that emergency managers must work vigilantly to keep residents informed of the seriousness of a situation. The study describes how emergency managers in Florida countered public complacency during four hurricanes in six weeks. The strategies identified as useful by public managers in the context of hurricanes are applicable to other natural and man-made disasters.     

从汶川大地震看减灾国际合作

汶川大地震给中国造成了严重的损失,也再一次提醒国内外的决策者和研究人员必须注重发挥科学技术和国际合作在灾害防治和抗灾救助中的巨大作用。从当前国际减灾救援所面临的挑战出发,通过总结中国减灾国际合作的发展过程、发展现状以及在这次汶川大地震中减灾国际合作所发挥的作用,论述了在中国加强国际减灾合作的必要性及下一步的工作重点,以期为灾区的恢复重建和科学总结抗震救灾经验提供参考。     

城市综合承灾能力与经济发展协调性研究

构成城市综合承灾能力的防灾能力、抗灾能力、救灾能力和灾后恢复能力是相互联系的。城市综合承灾能力与城市经济发展水平紧密相连。利用灰关联熵方法,分析了某城市各种承灾能力的关联性大小,以及综合承灾能力与城市经济发展水平的关联强度。但关联性强,却不能说明协调得就好。因此,又利用灰色系统理论的思想,分析了城市综合承灾能力与城市经济发展水平的协调关系,发现城市综合承灾能力对城市经济发展水平有明显的滞后性。分析得出该滞后性存在的原因后,通过对序列进行时间平移,证实了对滞后性原因的判断,并提出了加快加强城市综合承灾能力建设的建议,为后续发展奠定坚实基础。     

自然灾害多媒体地图传输功能研究

论述了自然灾害地图传输的传统模式与现代模式,通过基于计算机多媒体技术编制自然灾害地图的实践,给出了自然灾害多媒体地图语言系统,指出现代自然灾害多媒体地图具有导读传输,实景传输和动态变化传输输等特殊功能;多媒体地图符号与注记的动态设计与自然灾害地图可视化传输功能具有重要影响;多媒体皎互性与超媒体结构实现了人性化的自然灾害地图传输功能;自然灾害多媒体地图是一种更突出人工智能的加工产品和便于用户接受的实     

International NGOs and the role of network centrality in humanitarian aid operations: a case study of coordination during the 2000 Mozambique floods

In February 2000, Mozambique suffered its worst flooding in almost 50 years: 699 people died and hundreds of thousands were displaced. Over 49 countries and 30 international non-governmental organisations provided humanitarian assistance. Coordination of disaster assistance is critical for effective humanitarian aid operations, but limited attention has been directed toward evaluating the system-wide structure of inter-organisational coordination during humanitarian operations. Network analysis methods were used to examine the structure of inter-organisational relations among 65 non-governmental organisations (NGOs) involved in the flood operations in Mozambique. Centrality scores were used to estimate NGO-specific potential for aid coordination and tested against NGO beneficiary numbers. The average number of relief- and recovery-period beneficiaries was significantly greater for NGOs with high relative to low centrality scores (p < 0.05). This report addresses the significance of these findings in the context of the Mozambican 2000 floods and the type of data required to evaluate system-wide coordination.     

Facilitating disaster preparedness through local radio broadcasting

The 2008 Disaster Mitigation Preparedness (DMP) study took place in Aceh province, Indonesia. It sought to help develop radio programmes and messages to increase resilience to disasters. The role of radio was evaluated during and after the 2004 Asian tsunami disaster. The study team interviewed 984 tsunami survivors from nine sub-districts of Banda Aceh, and local nongovernmental organisations convened eight focus groups around the area of Aceh Besar. Six key informant interviews were held with government disaster management agencies. The DMP survey is the first of its kind to interview a representative random sample of Banda Aceh residents. It reveals the importance of community and social networks, during disaster situations, when essential communications are down. A disaster warning information system based on a multi-media approach needs to be developed. The wider community should be involved in the planning, education and training of Banda Aceh and Aceh Besar residents to facilitate appropriate personal and community survival strategies.     

Engaging pet owners in disaster risk and preparedness communications: simplifying complex human–animal relations with archetypes

The influence of human–animal relationships upon owners' perceptions and behaviours can lead to situations that place owners and animals at risk of harm. Pet ownership particularly is considered a risk factor for unsafe responses to natural hazards, though conversely, it can also be viewed as a protective factor that motivates disaster preparedness. However, each relationship should not be treated equivalently, as characteristics considered most meaningful within them differ across various types of pet–owner relationship and along multiple dimensions. A one-size-fits-all approach to applying the pets-as-protective-factor principle is then too broad in scope. This review outlines a novel psychographic profiling approach for archetypes of pet–owner relationship characteristics as a means of describing risk-preparedness foci and risk propensities within disaster contexts. Understanding those differences as detailed archetypes can help emergency services more effectively target pet owners through reframing disaster risk and preparedness communications in relation to prominent characteristics of relationship archetypes. We argue that this approach can improve the effectiveness of risk and preparedness communications by increasing pet owners' receptivity to, and cognitive involvement with, message content.     

Communication,neighbourhood belonging and household hurricane preparedness

This paper reports on an examination of data on how local residents in Tuscaloosa, a mid‐sized city in the state of Alabama, United States, responded to Hurricane Ivan of September 2004. The evaluation revealed that an integrated connection to community‐level communication resources—comprising local media, community organisations and interpersonal networks—has a direct impact on the likelihood of engaging in pre‐hurricane preparedness activities and an indirect effect on during‐hurricane preparedness activities. Neighbourhood belonging mediated the relation between an integrated connection to community‐level communication resources and during‐hurricane preparedness activities. Neighbourhood belonging was determined to increase the likelihood of taking preparedness actions during Hurricane Ivan, but not prior to it. In addition, we discovered an interesting pattern for two different types of risk perceptions: social and personal risk perceptions. Social risk perceptions increase the likelihood of taking preventative steps before a hurricane while personal risk perceptions are positively related to engaging in preventative action during a hurricane.     

安徽省短波通信网在防震减灾事业中的应用

本文介绍了短波通信的工作原理和安徽短波通信网的建设情况。10多年来,它在安徽的防震减灾工作中发挥了重要作用,取得了可喜的成绩。     

The 9/21 earthquake in Taiwan: a local government disaster rescue system1

This paper employs a three‐element model to examine how the disaster rescue system of the government of Nantou County in Middle Taiwan functioned following the earthquake of 21 September 1999. The three elements are information gathering, local government mobilisation, and inter‐organisational cooperation. The paper finds that the Nantou County government needs to address many problems associated with these three elements. Disaster information, for example, was not processed instantly because of the destruction of the electricity and telephone systems in the earthquake. Insufficient information caused ineffectiveness in the realms of mobilisation and inter‐organisational cooperation. As for mobilisation, while the Nantou County magistrate successfully used specific information to encourage flows of huge resources in the county, he did not successfully mobilise human resources there. With regard to inter‐organisational cooperation, myriad voluntary actors and international rescue teams travelled to Nantou County, but the fire and police services experienced cooperation and coordination problems.     

NGO collaboration in community post‐disaster reconstruction: field research following the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake in China

The number of communities affected by disasters has been rising. As a result, non‐governmental organisations (NGOs) that attend community post‐disaster reconstruction are often unable to deliver all requirements and have to develop cooperative approaches. However, this collaboration can cause problems because of the complex environments, the fight for limited resources and uncoordinated management, all of which result in poor service delivery to the communities, adding to their woes. From extensive field research and case studies conducted in the post‐Wenchuan earthquake‐stricken communities, this paper introduces an integrated collaboration framework for community post‐disaster reconstruction with the focus on three types of NGOs: international, government organised and civil. The proposed collaboration framework examines the three interrelated components of organisational structure, operational processes and reconstruction goals/implementation areas. Of great significance in better promoting collaborative participation between NGOs are the crucial concepts of participatory reconstruction, double‐layer collaborative networks, and circular review and revision.     

Disaster response preparedness coordination through social networks

Studies of coordination in human networks have typically presented models that require stable working relationships. These models cannot be applied to emergency response management, which demands distributed coordination in volatile situations. This paper argues that changes to interconnectedness of nodes in a network may have implications for the potential to coordinate. A social network‐based coordination model is proposed to explore an organizational actor's state of readiness in extreme conditions. To test this hypothesis, the study investigates survey data from state law enforcement, state emergency services and local law enforcement, presenting agency‐based (macro) and cross‐agency (micro) analysis on 224 completed questionnaires. The main findings are: (i) there is a positive correlation between network connectedness and the potential to coordinate; (ii) the concept of tiers within an emergency response network may exist and be characterized by the sub‐network with which an organization associates; (iii) a range or threshold characterizes how interconnected an organization at a given tier should be.