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Studies on human behaviour during a seismic emergency in tall buildings are scant. During such emergencies, occupants need to reach a safe place. The purpose of this paper is to address some of the emotional and behavioural responses of the occupants of three multi-storey buildings during the 19 September earthquake that hit Mexico City in 2017.

A cross-sectional and non-probability study was conducted using a questionnaire-based survey; the sample size was n = 352, and the study was conducted from 4 October to 20 November 2017.

(1) In the 11 storey-building, women, age (18–49 years old [yo]) and participants with higher education exhibited flight behaviour, and those of the six storey-building within the age category 18–49 yo also exhibited a similar behaviour; (2) Women and age (18–49 yo) in the six and 11-storey buildings were significantly associated with fear of the earthquake; (3) Women were significantly more fearful and felt more intense the tremors than men in the 11-storey building; (4) Women were significantly more fearful of the 11-storey building collapsing; (5) The taller the building, the more fearful were the occupants of the building collapsing.

First, the sample considered in the study was no probability; consequently, the results should not be generalised to the existing high-rising buildings in Mexico City. Second, some of the variables considered herein were of the Likert-type scale but have been assumed as continuous; in fact, some future work could be the design of a valid and reliable questionnaire to address human behaviour during earthquakes in tall buildings.

The presented results may be the great value to key decision-makers on how to address the lack of earthquake preparedness during a seismic emergency. Further, the results have shed light on the negative emotions (fear) experienced by the occupants of tall buildings.

Gaining a better understanding of human behavioural in tall buildings is essential in devising measures to mitigate the impact of earthquake disasters.

Research on human behaviour during a seismic emergency in high-rise buildings is scant. To gain a better understanding of human emotional and behavioural response to earthquakes in tall buildings, it becomes necessary to conduct research such as the present case study. This may help decision-makers to devise measures so that the impact of earthquake disasters may be limited.

The expected learning outcomes are: to clarify the meaning of resilience and its attributes. To explore the influence of the leader on the development of organizational resilience. To identify critical decisions for the recovery of a business after an external event such as the earthquake that took place on September 19th in Mexico City. To point out the stages for the development of organizational resilience, in the short, and long term: anticipation, coping and adaptation. To clarify the actions that could be taken to prepare an organization for an extreme event or respond to a large-scale crisis.

The case is framed within the context of the September 19, 2017 earthquake in Mexico City. ProActive Strategies’ offices collapsed, causing some people to lose their lives and others to be injured. The protagonist needed to decide if the organization could survive and recover or needed to be closed after the earthquake. After ProActive Strategies survived and recovered, it was possible to identify the main stages to develop organizational resilience in this organization: anticipation, coping and adaptation. Also, the paper provides empirical evidence about how organizational resilience is anchored in the attributes at individual and community levels that include human, economic, social and political capitals, enhanced by technological capital. Furthermore, the enablers of resilience add external entities and the ecosystem at a macro-level, considering political, social and economic aspects of the context.

The study level and expertise required to address this case is medium. The richness of the discussion from the perspective of the students is related to the possibility to empathize with the protagonist and the different actors involved and to build on previous experience with crisis management to observe the potential risks and courses of action. Moreover, the professor also requires taking a neutral position to balance the requirements from a humanitarian perspective, with the business needs.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 6: Human resource management.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce a three-echelon multimodal transportation problem applied to a humanitarian logistic case study that occurred in Mexico.

This study develops a methodology combining a transshipment problem and an adaptation of the multidepot heterogeneous fleet vehicle routing problem to construct a mathematical model that incorporates the use of land-based vehicles and drones. The model was applied to the case study of the Earthquake on September 19, 2017, in Mexico, using the Gurobi optimization solver.

The results ratified the relevance of the study, showing an inverse relationship between transportation costs and delivery time; on the flip side, the model performed in a shorter CPU time with medium and small instances than with large instances.

While the size of the instances limits the use of the model for big-scale problems, this approach manages to provide a good representation of a transportation network during a natural disaster using drones in the last-mile deliveries.

The present study contributes to a model that combines a vehicle routing problem with transshipment, multiple depots and a heterogeneous fleet including land-based vehicles and drones. There are multiple models present in the literature for these types of problems that incorporate the use of these transportation modes; however, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, there are still no proposals similar to this study.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate the effects of a major disaster on the management of human resources in the construction sector. It sets out to identify the construction skills challenges and the factors that affected skills availability following the 2010/2011 earthquakes in Christchurch. It is hoped that this study will provide insights for on-going reconstruction and future disaster response with respect to the problem of skills shortages.

A triangulation method was adopted. The quantitative method, namely, a questionnaire survey, was employed to provide a baseline description. Field observations and interviews were used as a follow-up to ascertain issues and potential shortages over time. Three focus groups in the form of research workshops were convened to gain further insight into the feedback and to investigate the validity and applicability of the research findings.

The earthquakes in Christchurch had compounded the pre-existing skills shortages in the country due to heightened demand from reconstruction. Skills shortages primarily existed in seismic assessment and design for land and structures, certain trades, project management and site supervision. The limited technical capability available nationally, shortage of temporary accommodation to house additional workers, time needed for trainees to become skilled workers, lack of information about reconstruction workloads and lack of operational capacity within construction organisations, were critical constraints to the resourcing of disaster recovery projects.

The research findings contribute to the debate on skills issues in construction. The study provides evidence that contributes to an improved understanding of the industry’s skills vulnerability and emerging issues that would likely exist after a major disaster in a resource-limited country such as New Zealand.

From this research, decision makers and construction organisations can gain a clear direction for improving the construction capacity and capability for on-going reconstruction. Factors that affected the post-earthquake skills availability can be considered by decision makers and construction organisations in their workforce planning for future disaster events. The recommendations will assist them in addressing skills shortages for on-going reconstruction.

Although the study is country-specific, the findings show the nature and scale of skills challenges the construction industry is likely to face following a major disaster, and the potential issues that may compound skills shortages. It provides lessons for other disaster-prone countries where the resource pool is small and a large number of additional workers are needed to undertake reconstruction.

This chapter analyzes the way in which challenge-based learning (CBL) is conceptualized and used in a private university in Puebla, Mexico, to promote social innovation. The university has recently changed its educational model, incorporating more integrative teaching and learning methodologies. The university has considered the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), especially the first goal to end poverty and the 10th regarding reducing inequality. These goals are relevant because the university is located in the state of Puebla, which has ranked fifth in the country (out of 32) in terms of poverty, especially in rural areas, where 58% of the population is living in poverty or extreme poverty conditions (CONEVAL, 2018). An example of a successful CBL project will be presented, showing how students have worked with their professors, community experts, and other stakeholders. In 2020, the university was recognized by the Times Higher Education World University Ranking as the number one university in Mexico to fight poverty based on the United Nations SDGs because of its CBL activities and social projects. Through these projects, students, administrators, and professors put into practice and develop different skills such as teamwork, analysis, facing new realities, innovating to design solutions to the problems in their environment, and beyond.

The purpose of the paper is to provide an overview on two specific issues of reconstruction process: environment disaster linkage, and cross‐learning among affected countries. The paper also demonstrates a unique community‐based reconstruction program in three affected countries.

Two approaches are adopted in the paper: one, description of salient features of past reconstruction process, roles of different stakeholders, and vulnerability reduction – human security context. The other part is description of a specific program highlighting its goal, objective, scope and activities. Focus is given on the community‐based reconstruction process with in‐depth analysis, followed by the dissemination of the results to wider communities.

The major finding of the paper is that the reconstruction process should be considered as development opportunity, and should be linked to vulnerability reduction measures of the community, which, in long term, will lead to enhancement of human security.

The long‐term impact of the reconstruction process is yet to be verified. It will remain as future challenge how the community‐based initiatives are linked to policy and plans of the government.

The paper describes field‐based reconstruction process in three countries, which are implemented in cooperation with local communities and local non‐government organizations. Thus, the findings of the paper are directly related to its practical implications.

The original part of the paper is that it highlights two very important issues of the reconstruction process. The paper also provides detail description of the innovative community‐based reconstruction process. It gives a unique analysis to link reconstruction process with vulnerability reduction and enhancement of human security.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the dynamical behavior of a combined three-story building with a 3D panel wall system including a soft story irregularity at the very first floor by doing a shaking table test. The upper two stories of the model were made out of the 3D panel system, while the first story was constructed only with moment-resisting RC frames.

Besides the experimental program, the numerical finite element method was implemented for the verification of the experimental results. In the experimental study, the building responses including the floors’ accelerations and drifts were considered, and the seismically vulnerable zones were reported and compared with that provided by the implemented FEM-based program.

After the shaking table test, the major cracks appeared at the end of each column and beam-column connections. Some negligible cracks were also visible around the beam-panel connections. However, no crack was seen in the upper stories. The lateral deformation of the studied building was investigated under the applied ELC25 and NGH135 earthquakes. Under the both aforementioned ground motion records, the first story drift was larger than two upper stories, since the moment-resisting frame was a soft story. The hysteretic relation between the shear and displacement for each story was studied. Under the applied ELC25 earthquake, the system remains linear and the stiffness of each story is obtainable as well.

This is the first time when the dynamical behavior of a combined system is studied and tested experimentally and numerically for data validation. Regarding the response of the assumed combined structure, the 3D panel system has a remarkable rigidity with respect to the conventional RC frames, also 3D panels have less weight than the moment-resisting frames.

At present, Higher Education Institutions around the world are developing and implementing university social responsibility(USR) as part of their strategy. They do so because they seek to assure the quality of higher education systems, as well as to positively impact their surrounding environment. This chapter aims to analyze the university’s role in the process of building social responsibility in line with efforts to adequately fulfill its three missions of teaching, research, and linking with society. The case study herein refers to the Universidad Panamericana (UP), a private university in Mexico with humanistic and Christian roots, which recently celebrated its 50th year. The analysis demonstrates the UP’s significant efforts to build a social responsibility system and its achievement of significant social impact through programs that support the community, healthcare, and people with disabilities. However, management of USR should be done at an institutional level and across the board.