Received: 22 February 1995 Accepted: 25 July 1995 The need for search and rescue and medical care following a sudden impact disaster is immediate and often overwhelming. In the past, governments and international organizations have relied on external assistance for these efforts. Because the life expectancy of severely injured and trapped victims is limited, the response must come first from th...

Results for 160 samples of disaster victims were coded as to sample type, disaster type, disaster location, outcomes and risk factors observed, and overall severity of impairment. In order of frequency, outcomes included specific psychological problems, nonspecific distress, health problems, chronic problems in living, resource loss, and problems specific to youth. Regression analyses showed th...

Use of social media has established itself as one of the important information carriers in the field of disaster management. However, use of Twitter and Facebook by victims, first responders and others generates information that is varied, unstructured and unreliable. On the other hand, NGOs, operating in the disaster area, are often involved in intra-organizational communication using messagin...

A b s t r a c t To relieve damages of earthquake disaster, " The Special Project for Earthquake Disaster Mitigation in Urban Areas " have been kicked off in Japan. Our researcb group is a part of the sub-project " modeling of disaster environment for search and rescue " since 2002. In this project, our group aims to develop a three-dimensional mapping's algorithm that is installed in a mobile r...

Although most victims of disasters, terrorism, or other shocking events recover on their own, a sizable amount of these victims develops long-term disaster-related problems. These victims should receive timely and appropriate psychosocial help. This article describes the development of guidelines on psychosocial interventions during the first 6 weeks after a major incident. Scientific literatur...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the process of transport and immediate Emergency Department (ER) management of mass casualties following the recent bomb blasts in Karachi and review in detail the medical response and management of victims undertaken in these two incidents. METHODS Eyewitness accounts of the victims, medical personnel and newspaper clippings were used to understand and identify difficul...

A disaster scenario is a very dynamic environment where agents have to face surrounding environmental changes constantly. In this kind of scenarios, the quality of the tasks allocation is highly relevant because every minute spent reduces the chance of successfully rescuing the victims. In this approach, a real time sequencing technique is presented in order to schedule victims taking into acco...

INTRODUCTION The ongoing threat of a terrorist attack places public agencies under increasing pressure to ensure readiness in the event of a disaster. Yet, little published information exists regarding the current state of readiness, which would allow local and regional organizations to develop disaster preparedness plans that would function seamlessly across service areas. The objective of thi...

A victim detection system is proposed for rescue operations in urban disaster areas. This system consists of autonomous mobile robots and a stationary monitor station connected by a wireless ad hoc network with an active network operation. Robots are instructed to detect victims in a disaster area and send the information to the monitor station through the ad hoc network, and active network ope...

This talk presents two NLP systems that were developed for helping disaster victims and rescue workers in the aftermath of large-scale disasters. DISAANA provides answers to questions such as “What is in short supply in Tokyo?” and displays locations related to each answer on a map. D-SUMM automatically summarizes a large number of disaster related reports concerning a specified area and helps ...