What is the relationship between politics and disasters and how does this relate to the recent boom in disaster studies? The introduction to this volume argues that the recent interest in disasters is not because there are more disasters, but because of two recent developments within the social sciences: first, a focus on rupture rather than on continuity and second, a focus on materiality. Dis...

This study addresses the following questions in the context of a developing country. Do crimes increase following natural disasters? Does an upcoming election or the presence of a strong local media, which potentially increases the incentive of the government to provide disaster relief, mitigate the effect of disasters on crime rates? I find that crime rates tend to increase following moderate ...

The United States has no comprehensive national warning strategy that covers all hazards in all places. Instead, public warning practices are decentralized across different governments and the private sector. Uneven preparedness to issue warnings exists across local communities; hence, people are unevenly protected from the surprise onset of natural disasters. Without changes in this situation,...

Relief demand and transportation links availability is the essential information that is needed for every natural disaster operation. This information is not in hand once a disaster strikes. Relief demand and network condition has been evaluated based on prediction method in related works. Nevertheless, prediction seems to be over or under estimated due to uncertainties and may lead to a failur...

Pain management in the U.S. Military, particularly in combat, shares many of the same principles found in civilian heath care organizations and institutions. Pain is one of the most common reasons for which soldiers seek medical attention in the combat environment, which mirrors the civilian experience. However, the combat environment exacerbates the typical challenges found in treating acute p...

Recent research on automatic analysis of social media data during disasters has given insight into how to provide valuable and timely information to formal response agencies—and members of the public—in these safety-critical situations. For the most part, this work has followed a bottom-up approach in which data are analyzed first, and the target audience’s needs are addressed later. Here, we a...