Challenges associated with the allocation of limited resources to mitigate the impact of natural disasters inspire fundamentally new theoretical questions for dynamic decision making in coupled human and natural systems. Wildfires are one of several types of disaster phenomena, including oil spills and disease epidemics, where (1) the disaster evolves on the same timescale as the response effor...

This paper presents a domain-level user, task and context analysis for response technology, based on sociological studies of disaster and disaster response. The analysis examines three dimensions of disasterscale, kind and anticipabilitythat have been linked to differences in response characteristics, including differences in individual and organizational responders and behaviors. It yields a...

The dynamically evolving environment of the post-disaster scene—where unpredictable scenarios and uncertain data are commonplace—can bring about considerable complexity into response tasks. The multiplicity and interdependence of approaches to undertaking these tasks may yield many decision alternatives, further complicating the response effort. Additionally, because emergencies are evolving, e...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: After having struck in a major natural disaster like an earthquake, different organizations run about to decrease losses. The lack of accurate demand information is a common problem that all emergency response organizations have to encounter such a crisis. Evaluation of the City disaster level is a mean to feed this informati...

Introduction The overall effectiveness of an emergency response to a large scale disaster is a difficult entity to measure. Every disaster is different and every response is different. In fact, similar events leave totally different results in their aftermath. For example a category two hurricane might inflict much more damage than a category four, depending on the location of impact. Additiona...

Doctors Juffermans and Bierens are to be commended for their paper published in this issue of Prehospital and Disaster Medicine entitled " Recurrent Medical Response Problems in Five Recent Disasters in the Netherlands. " In the study, it is noted that health disaster response problems are repeated disaster after disaster. This finding seems to be consistent with the recurrent problems of commu...

At the global scale, high magnitude – low frequency natural disasters are a damaging phenomenon. There is growing recognition that successful disaster response strategies depend upon access to real-time spatial data/information that can be effectively utilized by not only relief agencies but also by local decision makers. Currently, many local and regional authorities are developing geographic ...

Depending on their nature and severity, disasters can create large volumes of debris and waste. The waste can overwhelm existing solid waste management facilities and impact on other emergency response and recovery activities. If poorly managed, the waste can have significant environmental and public health impacts and can affect the overall recovery process. This paper presents a system overvi...