Search results

The impact of extreme heat on prisons and carceral facilities is becoming increasingly visible, yet remains overlooked by scholars, practitioners and policymakers. Prisons are a unique type of infrastructure designed to severely limit and control the movement of hundreds and even thousands of individuals as a form of punishment. This leads to many significant challenges to mitigating the risk of heat-related illness in prisons and other carceral spaces that have remained overlooked across many disciplines including emergency management, disasters, corrections and public health.

For this study, we analyzed 192 surveys from incarcerated persons in state prisons throughout Texas to understand how incarceration and the punitive prison environment create challenges to managing extreme heat in prisons.

We found that characteristics of modern incarceration, including communal distribution of resources, crowded conditions and a lack of agency for incarcerated people, create barriers to accessing resources during periods of extreme heat. Furthermore, the punitive nature of the prison environment as manifested in the relationship between staff and incarcerated persons and certain prison policies also create barriers to incarcerated persons accessing resources to reduce their risk of heat-related illness and death.

These issues are particularly relevant to the health and safety of incarcerated persons during periods of extreme temperatures but also speak broadly to the implications of incarceration, disaster risk, and the advancement of human rights for incarcerated people.

This article addresses a gap in the literature by including the perspectives of persons incarcerated in Texas prisons experiencing extreme heat and implicates the characteristics of incarceration and punishment in the production of disaster risk.

How to identify the critical success factors (CSFs) of public health emergencies (PHEs) is of great practical significance to carry out a scientific and effective risk assessment. The purpose of this paper is to address this issue.

In this paper, the authors propose a new approach to identify the CSFs by hesitant fuzzy linguistic set and a Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) approach. First, a larger group of experts are clustered into three groups according to similarity degree. Then, the weight of each cluster is determined by the maximum consensus method, and the overall direct influence matrix is obtained by clustering with hesitant fuzzy linguistic weighted geometric (HFLWG) operators. Finally, the overall direct influence matrix is transformed into the crisp direct impact matrix by the score function, and 11 CSFs of PHEs are identified by using the extended DEMATEL method.

In addition, an example of PHEs shows that the approach has good identification applicability. The approach can be used to solve the problems of fuzziness and subjectivity in linguistic assessments, and it can be applied to identify the customer service framework with the linguistic assessments process in emergency management.

This paper extends the above DEMATEL method to study in the hesitant fuzzy linguistic context. This proposed hybrid approach has a wider application in the high-risk area where disasters frequently occur.

To critically assess the reconstruction process's outcomes four months after a wildfire disaster in Viña del Mar, Chile, comparing the governmental reconstruction plan and the actual rebuilding efforts by the dwellers.

A geographic information system (GIS)-based analysis to deliver a spatial-based comparison of (1) the cadastre of damaged dwellings; (2) the Ministry of Housing and Urbanism’s (MINVU) reconstruction plan and (3) the actual reconstruction that has been carried out by the dwellers themselves up to November 2023 (as surveyed through fieldwork and drone flights).

Around 307 dwellings (97.7% of the 314 examined households) had been rebuilt by November 2023, all through the dwellers’ self-reconstruction efforts, except for two houses delivered by MINVU. Around 105 of these dwellings (34.2%) were granted a reconstruction subsidy by MINVU, while 155 (49.4% of the sample of 314 dwellings) were rebuilt without this aid. Also, 47 houses were rebuilt by dwellers in areas deemed “non-rebuildable” due to their high-risk levels.

We use a mixed-methods approach to examine disruptions between planned reconstruction and actual rebuilding processes following a wildfire disaster in areas with significant informality.

Metro stations have become a crucial aspect of urban rail transportation, integrating facilities, equipment and pedestrians. Impractical physical layout designs and pedestrian psychology impact the effectiveness of an evacuation during a metro fire. Prior research on emergency evacuation has overlooked the complexity of metro stations and failed to adequately consider the physical heterogeneity of stations and pedestrian psychology. Therefore, this study aims to develop a comprehensive evacuation optimization strategy for metro stations by applying the concept of design for safety (DFS) to an emergency evacuation. This approach offers novel insights into the management of complex systems in metro stations during emergencies.

Physical and social factors affecting evacuations are identified. Moreover, the social force model (SFM) is modified by combining the fire dynamics model (FDM) and considering pedestrians' impatience and panic psychology. Based on the Nanjing South Metro Station, a multiagent-based simulation (MABS) model is developed. Finally, based on DFS, optimization strategies for metro stations are suggested.

The most effective evacuation occurs when the width of the stairs is 3 meters and the transfer corridor is 14 meters. Additionally, a luggage disposal area should be set up. The exit strategy of the fewest evacuees is better than the nearest-exit strategy, and the staff in the metro station should guide pedestrians correctly.

Previous studies rarely consider metro stations as sociotechnical systems or apply DFS to proactively reduce evacuation risks. This study provides a new perspective on the evacuation framework of metro stations, which can guide the designers and managers of metro stations.

The widespread uptake of digital technology tools for online teaching and learning reached its peak during the nationwide lockdown triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. It transformed the higher education institutions (HEIs) marketplace both in developed and developing countries. However, in this process of digital transformation, several HEIs, specifically from developing countries, faced major challenges. That threatened to affect their sustainability and performance. In this vein, this study conducts a bibliometric review to map the challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic and suggest strategies for HEIs to cope with post-pandemic situations in the future.

This comprehensive review encompasses 343 papers published between 2020 and 2023, employing a systematic approach that combines bibliometrics and content analysis to thoroughly evaluate the articles.

The investigation revealed a lack of published work addressing the specific challenges faced by the faculty members affecting their well-being. The study underscores the importance of e-learning technology adoption for higher education sustainability by compelling both students and teachers to rely heavily on social media platforms to maintain social presence and facilitate remote learning. The reduced interpersonal interaction during the pandemic has had negative consequences for academic engagement and professional advancement for both educators and students.

This has implications for policymakers and the management of HEIs, as it may prove useful in reenvisioning and redesigning future curricula. The paper concludes by developing a sustainable learning framework using a blended approach. Additionally, we also provide directions for future research to scholars.

This study has implications for policymakers and HEI management to rethink the delivery of future courses with a focus on education and institute sustainability. Finally, the research also proposes a hybrid learning framework for sustainability and forms a robust foundation for scholars in future research.

Our study investigates the role of the Human Resources Management (HRM) system strength in supporting Italian healthcare managers during times of uncertainty and change. The perceived HRM system strength and its relationship with managers’ taking charge behaviors, perceived procedural constraints, and work engagement were examined.

Two surveys were conducted to gather empirical data from a pooled sample of 121 healthcare managers located in hospitals across Italy. We use regression analysis to test our hypotheses.

The data show that strong HRM systems facilitate managers taking charge behaviors and work engagement. Additionally, the findings highlight the mitigating effect of a strong HRM system on procedural constraints, such as red tape, in public healthcare organizations.

Emphasizing the positive outcomes associated with strong HRM systems, the findings suggest that public health organizations should make efforts to put in place robust HR practices to bolster engagement and proactive behaviors among healthcare managers in times of uncertainty and change.

Analyzing a unique data set, the study extends the understanding of HRM system strength in the public sector, specifically in post-pandemic healthcare organizations. Overall, the study contributes to the growing literature on HRM system strength by offering novel insights into its nomological network.

Studies have shown that teachers' perceptions and expectations of their working environment shape their perceived stress. The present study draws upon implicit leadership theory and builds on the job demands-control (JD-C) model to investigate whether there are differences in the implications of participative decision-making and paternalistic leadership for teachers' perceived stress in the Israeli Arab education system.

Data were collected through validated questionnaires returned by a two-stage cluster random sampling of 350 teachers randomly chosen from 70 Israeli Arab elementary schools. Paternalistic leadership and participative decision-making were considered as group-level variables to lower the risk of common method variance. The proposed model was tested through hierarchical regression analysis. Finally, to test the hypothesis that paternalistic leadership and participative decision-making standardized beta weights were statistically significantly different from each other, their corresponding 95% confidence intervals were estimated via bias corrected bootstrap (1000 re-samples).

The findings indicated differences in the levels of the principal's paternalistic leadership and participative decision-making as perceived by the Israeli Arab teachers. Also, the results indicated that participative decision-making was negatively correlated with teachers' perceived stress beyond the influence of paternalistic leadership.

Examining teachers' working conditions and resources can be important since they affect teachers' perceived stress, which may in turn affects school results in the Arab education system in Israel. This study can contribute to the development of training programs for teachers to improve and adapt principals' leadership practices to the sociocultural context of the Arab education system in Israel.

This study aims to deepen our understanding of how inclusionary practices are used within organizations and how they satisfy specific inclusion needs.

We adopt a qualitative research design, reporting on data from semi-structured interviews conducted with 15 diversity and inclusion (D&I) directors/leads and using a thematic approach to analysis.

Our study expands understanding of inclusion practices, showing that they are not uniformly implemented and that practices may satisfy both needs to belong and differences valued, with interviewees prioritizing belonging. Well-being and career development are seen as important inclusion practices demonstrating support and appreciation of difference, thus as inputs, not outputs, of inclusion challenging existing assumptions. Inclusionary practices are malleable, and their impact depends critically on the leaders involved and their commitment to EDI.

Our study shows how practices satisfy inclusion needs and that the implementation of practices varies depending on the leaders involved.

With the worldwide open government data (OGD) movement and frequent public health emergencies in recent years, academic research on OGD for public health emergencies has been growing. However, it is not fully understood how to promote OGD on public health emergencies. Therefore, this paper aims to explore the factors that influence OGD on public health emergencies.

The technology–organization–environment framework is applied to explore factors that influence OGD during COVID-19. It is argued that the effects of four key factors – technical capacity, organizational readiness, social attention and top-down pressure – are contingent on the severity of the pandemic. A unique data set was created by combining multiple data sources which include archival government data, a survey of 1,034 Chinese respondents during the COVID-19 outbreak and official COVID-19 reports.

The data analysis indicates that the four factors positively affect OGD, and pandemic severity strengthens the effects of technical capacity, organizational readiness and social attention on OGD.

This study provides theoretical insights regarding how to improve OGD during public health emergencies, which can guide government efforts in sharing data with the public when dealing with outbreak in the future.

This study provides a configurational examination of how policy designs influence the innovation performance of the emergency industry in China.

This study employs the Data Envelopment Analysis Malmquist index (DEA-Malmquist) to quantify the innovation performance of the emergency industry and then codes the innovation policies to calculate the syntactic components based on institutional grammar tools (IGTs). The configurations of syntactic components were determined by applying the fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA).

The results indicate that rules- and norms-oriented policy designs would improve the innovation performance of China's emergency industry. In the developed provinces, the “Deontic” and “aIm” combinations in the policy are useful for improving performance. In the developing provinces, the ambiguity of the “aIm” and “Context” conditions in the policy is leading to low performance. Additionally, a lack of strategy-oriented policy design would also result in poor performance.

Most previous studies used substitute variables to understand policy impacts. This study contributes to identifying the impacts of the syntactic components of policy designs on the innovation performance of the emergency industry. The findings can assist policymakers in developing more effective policies to stimulate innovation development in the emergency industry.