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This study aims to investigate patterns of social media posting occurring during the initial post-disaster recovery period. In addition, the study investigates the antecedents of user engagement with Twitter posts or “tweets.”

This study uses Hurricane Harvey as the research focus because of its $125bn in damage and the recovery effort associated with it. Analyzing nearly 38,000 tweets related to 2017’s Hurricane Harvey and specifically focuses on rescuers who became to be known as the “Cajun Navy.”

The popularity of the tweet significantly influences social media engagement; disaster relief organizations first should seek out alliances and partnerships with those who already are well-known or influential in social media. In addition, by regularly monitoring and participating in social media, such as encouraging retweets and mentions even when not responding to a disaster, agencies will gain social media followers and influence when these are most needed.

By analyzing patterns of social media posts during and after Hurricane Harvey, this study attempts to quantify social media’s effectiveness during this disaster, in particular with a focus on what characteristics of Harvey-related Twitter posts most influenced user engagement.

Findings underscore the need for agencies to strengthen their social media presence and use it in all three phases of disaster conceptualization. Beyond managing communication with other agencies and the community, which alone is critical for an agency’s impact, social media offers the world as a potential audience for agencies that can deftly leverage it.

Social media has revolutionized not only communication but also inter-connectivity as people have normalized its use. Its ubiquity and efficiency have seen its incorporation into the critical area of emergency management, both during and after disasters. The main objective of this paper is to investigate and evaluate the usefulness of social media in disaster recovery efforts, focusing on its advantages in relation to a recent disaster event.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the issues and challenges in humanitarian logistics and to develop a framework for effectively managing the humanitarian logistics in disaster relief supply chain operations in India.

This paper presents a framework to manage humanitarian logistics effectively in disaster management through qualitative analysis. First, the author examines the challenges facing the humanitarian logistics and supply chain through the reviews of the literature on various disasters. Then, the author presented a framework based on the best practices and initiatives taken worldwide in the preparedness and response stage of the humanitarian supply chain to manage and reduce the aftermath of any disaster in context to India.

A framework has been developed to manage humanitarian logistics in the disaster relief operation, which would improve the humanitarian supply chain in India and help to effectively manage natural disasters in the preparedness and response stage at the state and district levels.

The paper mainly emphasises on the preparedness and response stage of disaster supply chain management in Indian context.

None of the disaster incidents can be stopped from taking place, but the impact can be minimised by proper preparedness and effective response during the operations of humanitarian logistics. With this hope, the framework has been developed, which if implemented would help to plan and manage any disaster incident in an effective manner, which ultimately would save millions of lives and cost in terms of infrastructure, property, assets etc.

As natural disaster incidents are occurring frequently in Indian states, there is an urgent need for a framework to manage the logistics operations effectively and efficiently during any disaster relief operations. Limited literature is found on developing and presenting a framework focusing on the preparedness and response phase of disaster supply chain management in context to India. Hence, this paper is believed to be the first to fulfil this gap with main emphasis on the preparedness and response stage of disaster supply chain management in Indian scenario.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the concept of gathering places in disaster recovery, and describe types of active gathering places where residents and aid workers in Southern Texas, USA, came seeking resources, information and emotional support one month after Hurricane Harvey.

Semi-structured interviews in the field with 81 residents and 44 aid workers identified active gathering places and their functions. Researchers utilized a snowball sample design to identify and visit further gathering places until saturation. Field observations and a regional damage survey conducted by car add further context to interview data.

In total, 22 distinct types of gathering places were identified from the 123 unique gathering places documented. Overall, the displacement of residents created an obstacle to their recovery and access to resources and gathering places; residents characterized a lack of formalized emotional support centers – primarily relying on informal gatherings with friends and neighbors to meet their needs; and gathering places were limited in their ability to foster a communal recovery among the residents.

This study addresses a gap in the research, focusing on where and how individuals access resources, information and emotional support in the short-term recovery following a disaster event. This research combines two traditions, hazards geography and disaster sociology, to investigate what gathering places exist one month after a major disaster, where those places are located, and what purpose they serve.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and describe the long-term impacts of hurricanes on schools and discuss approaches to improving recovery efforts.

Interviews with 20 school districts in Texas and North Carolina after Hurricanes Harvey (2017) and Matthew (2016). In total, 115 interviews were conducted with teachers, principals, district superintendents and representatives from state education agencies. Interview questions focused on the impact of storms and strategies for recovery.

The authors uncovered three long-term impacts of hurricanes on schools: (1) constrained instructional time, (2) increased social-emotional needs and (3) the need to support educators.

This paper focuses on two storms, in two states, in two successive years. Data collection occurred in Texas, one academic year after the storm. As compared to the North Carolina, data collection occurred almost two academic years after the storm.

This paper illuminates strategies for stakeholders to implement and expedite hurricane recovery through; (1) updating curricula plans, (2) providing long-term counselors and (3) supporting educators in and out of school.

To date, very few studies have explored the ways in which schools face long-term impacts following a disaster. This paper provides insight to the challenges that prolong the impacts of disasters and impede recovery in schools. With hurricanes and related disasters continuing to affect schooling communities, more research is needed to identify the best ways to support schools, months to years after an event.

The purpose of this study was to explore issues related to the food environment from a systems perspective using a quick response disaster research methodology in New Bern, North Carolina during the immediate response to Hurricane Florence in 2018.

A four person reconnaissance team arrived six days after Hurricane Florence made landfall to observe community food and meal provision, interview individuals working in food related response, assess the price, quality and availability of food, and interview individuals affected by the storm during the immediate response period to Hurricane Florence in New Bern, North Carolina.

Multiple issues emerged that are important for the understanding of food in a disaster recovery context including food access issues for households with flooding damage as well as those with minor impacts like electricity loss or evacuation without damage, disruption to farming and retail food business, and changes in food availability.

When examining food access and food security, many community members were affected that did not experience housing disruption and there were shifts in community food availability after Hurricane Florence. Understanding these disruptions is critical for evaluating food-related response and assistance following disaster to ensure unmet needs are addressed. Further, addressing community food needs is an important lever for bolstering disaster recovery.

This is the first study in the USA to examine the food system following disruption from an environmental disaster and to identify issues in the post-disaster food environment.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the community recovery efforts undertaken by Houston, Texas, sport organizations following Hurricane Harvey in 2017.

Forty-eight media articles, 138 social media posts from Houston athletes and five semi-structured interviews with Houston sport organization executives underwent a content analysis to categorize responses of disaster relief activities. All eleven categories were identified. Three themes emerged from additional analysis: organizations serving as communication hubs, earned trust and internal organizational support. Benchmark examples in key categories are also discussed.

This paper provided focused analysis of the reactions of several Houston area sport organizations during the immediate disaster recovery period. Organizations participated in both tangible and emotional recovery efforts. The long-term impacts of these efforts will require additional investigation. The findings of this case study are specific to the relief efforts in Houston, Texas, following Hurricane Harvey in 2017 and may not be generalizable beyond this scope.

Sport organizations and community leaders can better prepare for future disaster responses by gaining insight into the roles and procedures enacted by the Houston teams following the Hurricane in 2017.

This study provides a detailed examination of the responses of several Houston sport organizations following Hurricane Harvey, including perspectives from executives inside of the organizations. Utilizing social anchor theory, this paper expands our understanding of the impacts sport organizations may produce in their roles as social anchors during disaster relief and recovery.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the Houston Police Department (HPD)’s public engagement efforts using Twitter during Hurricane Harvey, which was a large-scale urban crisis event.

This study harvested a corpus of over 13,000 tweets using Twitter’s streaming API, across three phases of the Hurricane Harvey event: preparedness, response and recovery. Both text and social network analysis (SNA) techniques were employed including word clouds, n-gram analysis and eigenvector centrality to analyze data.

Findings indicate that departmental tweets coalesced around topics of protocol, reassurance and community resilience. Twitter accounts of governmental agencies, such as regional police departments, local fire departments, municipal offices, and the personal accounts of city’s police and fire chiefs were the most influential actors during the period under review, and Twitter was leveraged as de facto a 9-1-1 dispatch.

Emergency management agencies should consider adopting a three-phase strategy to improve communication and narrowcast specific types of information corresponding to relevant periods of a crisis episode.

Previous studies on police agencies and social media have largely overlooked discrete periods, or phases, in crisis events. To address this gap, the current study leveraged text and SNA to investigate Twitter communications between HPD and the public. This analysis advances understanding of information flows on law enforcement social media networks during crisis and emergency events.

This chapter addresses the topic of social action in catastrophic situations. The main phenomenon to be explained is how social actors cope and adjust to a sudden and unexpected change in the ecological pressures around them, such as during natural and technological disasters, in war zones, in the aftermath of accidents, and so on.¹ Using interpretative and phenomenological methods (Bentz & Shapiro, 1998), this chapter builds toward a Weberian kind of “ideal type” model outlining key sociological variables that try to explain differential social responses from human beings as they experience catastrophic circumstances.² Human beings must act very differently during catastrophes than they do during normal life. Just why is it that some people just succumb to the elements, whereas others struggle to persevere? How do some social actors manage to rely on their intelligence, resources, skill sets and other assets to control an otherwise hostile environment while others fail to do so?

Purpose – This study examines the legal system's responses to the disaster of Hurricane Katrina and the flooding of New Orleans particularly in the first two weeks after the storm. During this period, issues of law and order were a primary concern of government decision makers, and these issues framed those of rescue of and aid to the survivors.

Approach – The chapter draws on the analytic concept of the carceral state as it is publicly displayed in official reactions to disaster rumors of disorder and violence. The empirical focus is on policing activity and on events at the Orleans Parish Prison and Camp Greyhound, a temporary detention center established after the storm.

Findings – Largely unfounded rumors of disorder, including roaming gangs, extensive looting, rape, and murder, fueled the emphasis on law and order and policing and carceral decisions of officials. Actions intended to facilitate an individual's survival or comfort or evacuation were often treated as criminal. New Orleans became a prison city.

Originality – The analysis develops the concept of a “prison city” as an embodiment of the carceral state and suggests that the carceral state prompts and reinforces rumors about disorder and the tendency to designate policing and incarceration as essential first responses to disasters in the United States.