This paper gives a brief explanation of the earthquake in Bam. It also reports on the rescue and relief operations, including the construction of emergency shelters and temporary housing, and on the country’s plan for the reconstruction of the city, which includes debris removal, the rebuilding of rural and urban residential and commercial units, the reconstruction of state and public buildings...

The Ms 8.0 Wenchuan earthquake, occurred on 12 May 2008 in Sichuan Province, caused enormous property damages and human casualties. Right now, the secondary disasters caused by strong earthquake, especially landslides, have drawn much attention in the affected area. For this reason, it is necessary to research on susceptibility assessment in Wenchuan which is helpful to decrease landslide damag...

On September 21, 1999 the 921 or Chi Chi earthquake struck the centre of Taiwan. The earthquake’s magnitude was ML 7.3, and MW 7.7 and the epicentre depth was 8 km. The earthquake hit at 1:47 am, and left about 2,471 dead and 11,305 seriously injured. Over 10,000 buildings collapsed and direct losses were estimated at US$14 billion. This paper describes some of our preliminary findings on a Nat...

Car accidents and gun-shot injuries are the most common causes of spinal cord injury. Five percent of those patients who have a complete spinal cord injury will experience improvement, to some extent. The lack of specific data in the literature regarding the outcome of earthquake related spinal cord injury justified us to design this study where we evaluated the neurological outcome and related...

BACKGROUND An earthquake measuring 6.8 on the Richter scale struck the Niigata-Chuetsu region of Japan at 5.56 P.M. on the 23rd of October, 2004. The earthquake was followed by sustained occurrence of numerous aftershocks, which delayed reconstruction of community lifelines. Even one year after the earthquake, 9,160 people were living in temporary housing. Such a devastating earthquake and life...

An understanding of the precise nature of the non -linear response of structures is essential for future improvement of earthquake resistant design procedures. This paper presents a summary of observations of dynamic behaviour which were made on two typical modern buildings during a period of about ten years. These structures underwent numerous tests and experienced three strong earthquake grou...

On 22 February 2011, Christchurch New Zealand (population 367,700) experienced a devastating earthquake, causing extensive damage and killing one hundred and eighty-five people. The earthquake and aftershocks occurred between the 2009 and 2011 waves of a longitudinal probability sample conducted in New Zealand, enabling us to examine how a natural disaster of this magnitude affected deeply held...

The literature offers no descriptions of the adaptive outcomes of people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) after natural disasters. Aim of this study was to evaluate the adaptive behaviour of participants with ASD followed for 1 year after their exposure to the 2009 earthquake in L'Aquila (Italy) compared with an unexposed peer group with ASD, by administering the Italian form of the Vineland...

This paper provides an inside look at an international effort to deploy the free and open source (FOSS) Sahana disaster management system in China in the aftermath of the May 2008 earthquake. It describes how a diverse, multidisciplinary team—professional programmers, software engineers, executives from a large global enterprise, students, faculty, and humanitarian IT specialists from a global ...