Measuring Natural Hazard-Related Disasters through Self-Reports

Measuring the true human cost of natural disasters.

Brunkard and colleagues provide a detailed assessment of direct mortality rates in Louisiana from Hurricane Katrina, the deadliest hurricane to strike the US Gulf Coast since 1928.1 The authors should be commended on their efforts because this solidly contributes to the evidencebased literature, but the scope of this examination needs to be expanded if we are to calculate the true human cost of...

Natural Disasters

Measuring Resilience to Natural Hazards: Towards Sustainable Hazard Mitigation

Measuring resilience to natural hazards is a central issue in the hazard mitigation sciences. This paper applied a confirmatory factor methodology to operationalize the biophysical, built-environment, and socioeconomic resilience dimensions for local jurisdictions in large urban metropolitan areas in South Korea. Mapping the factor scores of the dimensions revealed great spatial variations. The...

Epidemics after Natural Disasters

The relationship between natural disasters and communicable diseases is frequently misconstrued. The risk for outbreaks is often presumed to be very high in the chaos that follows natural disasters, a fear likely derived from a perceived association between dead bodies and epidemics. However, the risk factors for outbreaks after disasters are associated primarily with population displacement. T...

Underground transportation system risk assessment to mitigate vulnerability against natural disasters through intelligent urban management

Quantitative and qualitative monitoring and evaluation of risk management programs will play an important role in the development of Tehran metropolitan railway transport. Considering the tectonic studies, seismic zones, land degradation and faults in north and south of Tehran, the development of underground railway lines, the assessment of the vulnerability of subway stations and the escalatio...