Natural disasters strike several parts of the globe at different seasons through out the year, resulting in enormous destruction of properties and untold human sufferings. Due to diverse geo-climatic conditions prevalent in different parts of the world, different types of natural disasters like floods, droughts, earthquakes, cyclones, landslides, volcanoes, etc, strike respective vulnerable are...

Asks the reader to: assume there is incredible technological progress in endeavours to solve problems of energy scarcity, pollution and congestion; imagine a super Super Car powered by a pollution-free perpetual motion engine; imagine a super Internet which provides free and efficient access to all the databases and libraries in the world. The result would be a social and environmental disaster...

People depend on human infrastructure for a range of activities in their daily lives, such as work and socializing. In this paper we consider three different intertwined types of infrastructures of a society that may be affected in crisis situations: the physical, technological, and human infrastructures. We argue that when the human infrastructure is damaged, e.g. in a natural catastrophe or w...

This paper examines the relationship between collaborative disaster mapping and conceptions of risk. It looks at improvised mapmaking during the 2007 wildfires in Southern California to identify and analyze social and technological issues in creating a shared understanding through collaboration. By comparing and contrasting two different, yet intertwined, mapping practices this paper focuses on...

S S S Chapter One INTRODUCTION ABSTRACT Disasters continue to increase in frequency and affect more and more citizens of the world community. Economic costs are increasing at an alarming rate. The death toll in the last 50 years has been in excess of 12 million persons, billions of people have been “affected”, and economic costs are estimated as high as US$4 trillion. Human and economic costs h...

Rationale Humanitarian agencies and actors from all corners of the world work to serve communities and people affected by conflicts, technological and natural hazards. Over the past decade, the roles, responsibilities and visibility of organisations engaged in humanitarian activities in the international arena have increased exponentially, as have the resources committed to such endeavours. As ...

Disasters serve as shocks and precipitate unanticipated disturbances to the health care system. Public health surveillance is generally focused on monitoring latent health and environmental exposure effects, rather than health system performance in response to these local shocks. The following intervention study sought to determine the long-term effects of the 2005 chlorine spill in Granitevill...

Identifying and quantifying factors influencing human decision making remains an outstanding challenge, impacting the performance and predictability of social and technological systems. In many cases, system failures are traced to human factors including congestion, overload, miscommunication, and delays. Here we report results of a behavioral network science experiment, targeting decision maki...

it is widely accepted in many parts of the world thatcommunity nurses are of vital importance in various phases of disaster response and management. in china, however, it is not clear whether the chinese community nurses are able to assume disaster-related duties due to the lack of a systematic assessment.a pre-designed and well-tested questionnaire was employed to evaluate the competency in di...