In 1983, Fred Cuny published his seminal work on Disasters and Development. Although a number of studies had been published previously on the theme of disasters and social change, Cuny provided a first systematized and comprehensive series of ideas on the ways disasters may interrupt development processes, whilst, at the same time, offering opportunities for future development. Important consid...

BACKGROUND Though the US civilian trauma care system plays a critical role in disaster response, there is currently no systems-based strategy that enables hospital emergency management and local and regional emergency planners to quantify, and potentially prepare for, surges in trauma care demand that accompany mass-casualty disasters. OBJECTIVE A proof-of-concept model that estimates the geo...

Certain groups with preexisting mental and behavioral health conditions, such as substance use disorders, may be especially vulnerable during and shortly after disasters. Researchers have found that substance abuse treatment programs and the individuals they serve experienced major disruptions after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and after Hurricane K...

D isasters are rarely natural, hazards always are! Extreme weather events are natural physical phenomena, but it is their interactions with vulnerabilities of human life that makes them disasters. Although definitions vary, disasters are a combination of complex, interdependent, mutually influential factors, in action simultaneously. They are best described as 'serious disruptions of the functi...

A problem exists in that the classifications used by the Federal Emergency Management Agency ~FEMA! for weather-related disasters do not always allow analysts to clearly link declared disasters to their ultimate meteorological cause. This research focuses on those disasters related to flooding resulting from tropical cyclones. Neither FEMA nor the states that request federal disaster aid distin...

BACKGROUND Population movements following disasters can cause important increases in morbidity and mortality. Without knowledge of the locations of affected people, relief assistance is compromised. No rapid and accurate method exists to track population movements after disasters. We used position data of subscriber identity module (SIM) cards from the largest mobile phone company in Haiti (Dig...

Disasters, natural and man-made, have a considerable impact on communities. Most recently, disasters stemming from terrorist attacks have become a leading cause of concern. The importance of work in the lives of employees, coupled with the vulnerability of workplaces as potential targets of terrorist attacks, suggests that workplaces can and should play a role in planning for, and responding to...

This article presents an overview of natural disasters in Asia, as well as mental disorders and psychosocial interventions related to disasters. Although most of the top ten worst natural disasters occurred in Asia over the past century, little is known about the mental health and psychosocial aspects. After the tsunami incident in 2004, research reports in international journals related to Asi...