Purpose – Terrorist attacks, natural disasters, and regional power outages from the past several years have all highlighted the low levels of disaster preparedness that exist at many firms. Supply chain disruptions caused by external events can have a significant financial and operational impact on firms not properly prepared. Therefore, improving disaster preparedness in supply chains is criti...

Disaster studies address the social and behavioral aspects of sudden onset collective stress situations typically referred to as mass emergencies or disasters. These situations can be created by natural hazards, technological accidents, violent intergroup conflicts, shortages of vital resources, and other major hazards to life, health, property, well-being and everyday routines. Disaster studie...

OBJECTIVES When a soccer stadium stampede occurred in Zimbabwe on 9 July 2000, the hospital disaster (medical emergency) plan failed. This report describes the use of the audit technique to change the hospital's disaster preparedness. METHOD A literature review was done to establish international standards of best practice in major medical incident response. The hospital disaster plan (major ...

There are an increasing amount and variety of disasters occurring throughout the United States. Many of these disasters require physicians to provide medical assistance. This article provides a brief introduction to disaster preparedness and its recent history and physicians' obligations, role, education, preparation, and response. It is the intent of this article to increase awareness and prov...

This article discusses lessons learned about disaster preparedness when the authors' institution, the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, was buffeted by Hurricane Hugo.

OBJECTIVE Hazmat disaster preparedness is critical, especially as Hong Kong prepares for major international events, such as the 2008 Olympic Equestrian Games. No published medical study describes the identities and quantities of hazardous materials (HMs) in Hong Kong and lists what antidotes are needed for these dangerous goods (DGs). This study describes what HMs are most common in Hong Kong ...

Opioid Substitution Treatment (OST) is a harm reduction strategy enabling opiate consumers to avoid withdrawal symptoms and maintain health and wellbeing. Some research shows that within a disaster context service disruptions and infrastructure damage affect OST services, including problems with accessibility, dosing, and scripts. Currently little is known about planning for OST in the reductio...

Local preparedness against earthquakes has been recently highlighted in research and policies on disaster management and risk reduction promotion in Iran. To advance the understanding of public preparedness and how it can be applied in diverse localities, further information is required about the predictors of people’s adoption of mitigation activities and earthquake preparedness. A synth...

The increasing number of victims from disasters in recent years results in several challenges for authorities aiming to protect and provide support to affected people. Humanitarian logistics represents one of the most important fields during preparedness and response in cases of disaster, seeking to provide relief, information and services to disaster victims. However, on top of the challenges ...