As the threat of international terrorism rises, there is an increasing requirement to provide evidence-based information and training for the emergency personnel who will respond to terrorist incidents. Current major incident training advises that emergency responders prioritize their own personal safety above that of the 'scene and survivors'. However, there is limited information available on...

The Search and Rescue (SAR) of individuals who become lost, injured, or stranded in wilderness presents a unique and worthwhile spatiotemporal challenge to investigate. Once incidents are georeferenced they can be spatially queried and analyzed. However, one major challenge for evaluating SAR in a spatial context is the lack of explicitly spatial data (addresses or coordinates) for historic inc...

The nerve gas sarin has been responsible for tragic disasters in Matsumoto city, Nagano in 1994 and in the Tokyo subway system in 1995, which was a terrorist attack against non-military citizens. These chemical weapons exposures shocked the world, and have become sources of social concern. Thereafter there were several toxic substance-evoked incidents in Japan, specifically a poisoning due to c...

Catastrophic earthquakes during the past decade in developing countries in Asia (Bam, Iran, 2003; Kashmi, Pakistan, 2005; and Sichuan, China, 2008) have resulted in large numbers of severe traumatic injuries including bone fracture, amputation, brain injury, and spinal cord injury (SCI). Experience managing these disabling injuries has demonstrated the benefit of high quality medical rehabilita...

OBJECTIVE The objectives of this study were to develop a novel training model for using mass-casualty incident (MCI) scenarios that trained hospital and prehospital staff together using Microsoft Visio, images from Google Earth and icons representing first responders, equipment resources, local hospital emergency department bed capacity, and trauma victims. The authors also tested participants'...

Radiological disasters can takemany forms. While they all share a general hazard—radioactive contamination— it is important for policymakers to understand how radiological incidents differ from each other in order to make more informed decisions about preparedness and response. This brief provides a general overview of 3 different types of radiological disasters: a terrorist nuclear detonation ...