Biological invasions and natural disasters are similar phenomena: Their causes are well understood, but their occurrences are generally unpredictable and uncontrollable. Both invasions and natural disasters can generate enormous environmental damage, and the frequency of damaging events is inversely proportional to their magnitude. Many nations invest in personnel training, disaster preparednes...

Natural disasters may be powerful and prominent mechanisms of direct and indirect hazardous material (hazmat) releases. Hazardous materials that are released as the result of a technologic malfunction precipitated by a natural event are referred to as natural-technologic or na-tech events. Na-tech events pose unique environmental and human hazards. Disaster-associated hazardous material release...

This article presents an overview of natural disasters in Asia, as well as mental disorders and psychosocial interventions related to disasters. Although most of the top ten worst natural disasters occurred in Asia over the past century, little is known about the mental health and psychosocial aspects. After the tsunami incident in 2004, research reports in international journals related to Asi...

BACKGROUND Natural disasters affect the health and well-being of adults throughout the world. There is some debate in the literature as to whether older persons have increased risk of mental health outcomes after exposure to natural disasters when compared with younger adults. To date, no systematic review has evaluated this. We aimed to synthesize the available evidence on the impact of natura...

Taiwan is affected by three primary types of natural disaster: typhoons, earthquakes, and floods. Natural disasters in Taiwan can cause human causalities and loss of housing. Therefore, a method for evaluating the severity of losses caused by natural disasters would be beneficial for disaster management institutes in Taiwan when developing further supply chain management (SCM) strategies. To ev...

This study aimed to describe the characteristics of natural disasters and associated losses from 1985 to 2014. The Mann-Kendall method was used to detect any long-term trends and abrupt changes. Hotspot analysis was conducted to detect the spatial clusters of disasters. We found an increasing trend in the occurrence of integrated natural disasters (tau = 0.594, p < 0.001), particularly for floo...

BACKGROUND A number of studies have shown a range of negative psychological symptoms (e.g. depression) after exposure to natural disasters. The aim of this study was to determine risk factors for depression in both children and adults who have survived natural disasters. METHODS Four electronic databases (PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, and PsychInfo) were used to search for observational stu...

Although disasters have exacted a heavy toll of death and suffering, the future seems more frightening. Good disaster management must link data collection and analysis to the decision-making process. The overall objectives of disaster management from the viewpoint of public health are: 1) needs assessments; 2) matching available resources with defined needs; 3) prevention of further adverse hea...