Search results

Disaster responders play a crucial role in providing aid to individuals and communities following catastrophic events. Being tasked to protect and preserve life and property, these groups of professionals are constantly exposed to various hazards, which puts them at risk of negative mental health consequences. This chapter describes and discusses these mental health effects and interventions for disaster responders in Southeast Asia. The chapter defines who the disaster responders are in Southeast Asian countries. Drawing from the literature, this chapter enumerates the various positive and negative psychological consequences of disaster response, and the risk and protective factors associated with disaster response work. This chapter also describes the different interventions, such as psychological first aid and psychotherapy, following the Inter-agency Standing Committee (IASC) (2007) guidelines on conducting mental health and psychosocial support services (MHPSS), and focusing on the Southeast Asian context. This chapter ends with a discussion of the different challenges of providing MHPSS in Southeast Asia and with some recommendations on how to improve the delivery of these services and the mental health of disaster responders in general.

This paper aims to discuss how a high level of situation awareness (SA) has the potential to enhance first responders' performance and manage work demand resulting from distributed, dynamic, and chaotic situations resulting from a disaster in modern urban environments. It also aims to present a theoretical framework to address needs of an effective disaster response, enhanced collaboration and improved SA. The purpose of this is to help better understand current disaster response schemes in terms of SA, based on the understanding, find a way to improve the disaster response effectiveness, and quantitatively evaluate existing and future disaster response processes. The paper seeks to characterize current disaster response operations by various shortcomings, including inability to access information, lack of coordination, and poor communications. All this makes it difficult to deal with dynamic work demand resulting from disasters.

A response framework, integrating IT and Civil Engineering components is presented highlighting the relationship between situation awareness, collaboration and performance. Also, the implementation approach is discussed.

The paper finds that SA is very relevant to ensuring how much a current disaster response system is effective cognitively and physically, and in understanding how well disaster response systems support the responders at both strategic and operational levels.

Support of Civil Engineers and IT components can increase the response performance by facilitating collaboration through improved SA.

The paper presents a comprehensive framework and implementation approach to ensure effectiveness of disaster response operations. The framework ensures high situation awareness while supporting collaboration among first responders, including improved civil engineers' roles and exploiting IT components to collect, analyze, and share information.

This chapter reviews the empirical evidence for Psychological First Aid (PFA) in the context and experience of the Southeast Asian (SEA) region. First, this chapter provides the definition and background of PFA and its core principles, to explain the basis for doing PFA as part of an integrated approach to disaster mental health. Second, the existing literature on the effectiveness of PFA is reviewed. Third, this chapter examines the application and adaptation of PFA in SEA. Implications and recommendations are provided at the end of the chapter.

Advances in disaster prevention and mitigation in Southeast Asia (SEA) have increasingly included plans for mental health and psychosocial support. However, substantial challenges remain, particularly in the areas of (a) disaster communication and preparedness, (b) institutionalized disaster education, (c) culturally adapted and evidence-based tools and interventions, (d) developing capacities and caring for disaster responders, and (e) enabling collective resilience. In addition, the impacts of poverty, lack of access to education, and other forms of marginalization result in less resources to prepare for hazardous event and increased vulnerability to environmental hazards for SEA countries. These issues highlight the need for SEA governments to address deeply rooted human development issues that put communities at risk and heighten vulnerabilities of SEA populations.

The role of first responders in mitigating the effects of earthquakes is vital. Unlike other disasters, earthquakes are not single events, and exposure to dangerous and trauma-inducing events may be ongoing. Understanding how first responders cope in the face of such conditions is important, for both their own well-being as well as the general public whom they serve. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Using questionnaires, this study measured posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), psychological resilience, and reactive coping styles in a sample of first responders active during the 2011 Canterbury earthquake in New Zealand.

The prevalence of PTSD was similar to that reported in the literature. Psychological resilience, but not disaster exposure, was found to be associated with PTSD. Maladaptive coping strategies best predicted resiliency, but there were significant gender differences.

These findings can inform those managing first responder disaster workers through the consideration of preventive and treatment interventions.

Ethics is the foundation on which societies and cultures are based and are fundamental to political, social and economic decision making. Ethical dilemmas have created controversy and heated debate over the years. Disasters have been defined in public health terms as destructive events that result in the need for a wide range of emergency resources to assist and ensure the survival of the stricken population. Lack of medical resources, in conjunction with a mass casualty situation, can present specific ethical challenges. The purpose of this paper is to explore the ethics of disaster management.

In and after a disaster, ethical questions arise regarding appropriate and fair allocation of relief funds to help with recovery. Research in disaster settings poses unique ethical dilemmas. The researcher must determine how to balance the critical need for research with the ethical obligation of respect for, and protection of, the interests of research participants. Ethics as part of an educational program made available to health care providers may assist disaster responders to make the difficult ethical decisions involved in disasters. This literature review discusses these issues in conjunction with disaster response and recovery.

The cardinal virtues of disaster response are prudence, courage, justice, stewardship, vigilance, resilience, self‐effacing charity and communication. These eight virtues are not considered all inclusive, no more than Aristotle considered that his morals or virtues were all inclusive. Ongoing work in disaster management will help to ensure that such situations are managed in an ethical manner that respects the rights and privileges of all those involved.

The literature reviewed for this paper was based on peer reviewed scholarly writings. Concepts of ethics and justice are important issues in disaster situations. This paper offers ideas to prompt further discussion among disaster managers and students of disaster studies.

Social changes are reliant on an understanding of ethics and how it affects society. This paper puts forward ethical concepts to prompt discussion by disaster responders and managers with the hope of improving disaster management.

The paper is an original document that may be useful to students of disaster management and those who teach disaster management

The purpose of this paper is to describe risk and protective factors for symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) experienced over a 1.5-year period among both frontline and “non-traditional” responders to the 2010 and 2011 earthquakes in Christchurch, New Zealand.

A longitudinal survey administered to Christchurch workers with referents from the city of Hamilton at 6, 12 and 18 months after the 2011 earthquake. Potential risk and protective determinants were assessed by questionnaire items at baseline and over time, the outcome being PTSD as assessed by the PTSD Checklist-Civilian version. A longitudinal latent class analysis identified groups with similar trajectories of PTSD.

A total of 226 individuals, 140 (26 per cent) from Christchurch and 86 (16 per cent) from Hamilton, participated at baseline, 180 at 12 and 123 at 18 months, non-traditional responders forming the largest single group. Two latent classes emerged, with PTSD (21 per cent) and without PTSD (79 per cent), with little change over the 18-month period. Class membership was predicted by high scores in the Social Support and Impact of Events scale items, Health-related Quality of Life scores being protective. PTSD scores indicative of distress were found in females, and predicted by burnout risk, behavioural disengagement and venting.

Non-traditional responders should be screened for PTSD. Social support should be considered with the promotion of adaptive coping mechanisms.

The strength was longitudinal follow-up over an 18-month period, with demonstration of how the potential determinants influenced the course of PTSD over time.

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 case study is to develop a lean six sigma (LSS) define–measure–analyze–improve–control (DMAIC) procedure to optimize the willingness to respond (WTR) of Louisiana-based law enforcement officials (LEO) to disasters.

Various LSS tools were used to implement DMAIC to clearly define the problem of WTR, measure the self-reported WTR through a survey, perform statistical analysis on the measured data to identify significant variables to WTR, brainstorm issues and improvements with stakeholders, develop mitigation strategies, implement a pilot solution survey and develop control measures.

Louisiana LEO showed an average of 73.9% of WTR to all disasters. Seven significant variables influenced WTR, which are prior experience, transportation, duty to organization, risk to self, conflicting roles, training and incentive pay. The results from pilot solutions showed that utilizing incentive pay, adequate training and personal protective equipment (PPE) increased WTR from 0.5% up to 16%.

This study developed and validated a unique procedure to improve LEO WTR to disasters, providing a set of DMAIC tools and concepts that can be used by other emergency response agencies. This research was performed during the COVID-19 pandemic and after Hurricane Laura impacted Louisiana.

The following conceptual exposition is presented in light of the growing number of scholars who indicate need for a comprehensive and coherent approach to disaster reduction, while practitioners seem to be continually faced with dynamic and seemingly contradictory goals and strategies.

This article reviews arguments from an assorted collection of literature in order to increase theoretical understanding of disasters and attempts to integrate various concepts, paradigms and policy proposals.

The discussion points out the strengths and weaknesses of alternative viewpoints about disasters, and suggests that a broad conceptualization of vulnerability may be best suited to assimilate findings for academia and simplify policy guidance for professionals in the field.

Because this is a cursory exploration of the casting of vulnerability management in terms of liability reduction and capacity building, additional research on the matter will undoubtedly be needed. Nonetheless, it is hoped that this article may pull together diverse academic frameworks, in order to avert recurring mistakes among those designing and implementing policy.

By updating the author's prior work in this area with additional considerations regarding the natural hazards, civil defense, risk management and homeland security schools, this article may be useful for scholars and practitioners interested in reversing the trend of more frequent and intense disasters.