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The intensifying effects of climate change and the growing concentration of population in hazardous locations mean that, for many communities, disasters are increasingly becoming not only foreseeable, but inevitable. While much attention is, and should be, focused on what these foreseeable disasters require in terms of disaster planning and mitigation, attention should also be focused on a related and equally pressing phenomena: mismanagement of disaster response, particularly as climate proves an increasing stressor. Like disasters themselves, disaster mismanagement – while not entirely predictable – may exhibit some predictable patterns. This chapter explores past disaster management failures, considers how climate change may alter or exacerbate certain response pathologies, and evaluates some potential remedies that might mitigate these challenges.

Subway systems are highly susceptible to external disturbances from emergencies, triggering a series of consequences such as the paralysis of the internal network transportation functions, causing significant economic and safety losses to cities. Therefore, it is necessary to analyze the factors affecting the resilience of the subway system to reduce the impact of disaster incidents.

Using the interval type-2 fuzzy linguistic term set and the K-medoids clustering algorithm, this paper improves the Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) method to construct a subway resilience factor analysis model for emergencies. Through comparative analysis, this study confirms the superior performance of the proposed approach in enhancing the precision of the DEMATEL method.

The results indicate that the operation and management level of emergency command organizations is the key resilience factors of subway operations in China. Furthermore, based on real case analyses, the corresponding suggestions and measures are put forward to improve the overall operation resilience level of the subway.

This paper identifies four emergency scenarios and 15 resilience factors affecting subway operations through literature review and expert consultation. The improved fuzzy DEMATEL method is applied to explore the levels of influence and causal mechanisms among the resilience factors of the subway system under the four emergency scenarios.

This paper aims to determine the influence of physical ability on initial emergency response performance among emergency response teams.

In an emergency incident, emergency responders are involved in vigorous physical activities. Previous attempts have demonstrated that job performance of emergency responders depends a great deal on their ability to perform strenuous physical activity. This paper examines the influence of physical ability namely weight, height, and cardiovascular endurance on emergency response performance among fire fighting teams in Malaysia. Emergency response performance was defined as team member's speed in responding to emergency situations. Data on team member's physical ability and emergency response time were collected for the duration of five months. The distance from the waiting room to the fire truck in each selected fire station was used to measure performance.

This study found that the team with higher average weight and cardiovascular endurance level had better initial response to emergency situations, contrary to the research hypothesis. But it is speculated that the relationship could be further understood by considering the proportion of fat in the body. The relationship between cardiovascular endurance and initial emergency response performance further validates and justifies the use of physical fitness test as a criterion for job performance of fire fighters.

This paper offers empirical evidence of emergency response performance in Malaysia. Specifically, it presents findings on the influence of physical ability measures on initial emergency response performance from a team perspective. In addition, the emergency response performance was measured by the distance traveled by the responders, which serves as a meaningful performance indicator.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the initial emergency response time of fire fighting teams in Malaysia.

In an emergency incident time is of the essence, and the basic philosophy of an emergency response agency is to respond as quickly as possible to minimize the loss of life and property damage. In the current study, emergency response performance refers to team members' speed in responding to emergency situations, which was measured as the time taken for the team members to get to the fire truck from the waiting room in selected fire stations in Malaysia. The data collection period lasted for five months.

This study found that the overall average initial emergency response time was 84 seconds, while the overall average weighted initial emergency response time was 3.71 seconds per meter. The current study has demonstrated that the average initial emergency response performed by fire fighting teams in Malaysia is apparently better than that reported by previous studies by other emergency responders.

This paper presents empirical evidence of the initial emergency response time of fire fighters in Malaysia, by taking into account the distance traveled by the responders. As such, the performance measure obtained gives a meaningful indicator. The finding of the current study is then compared to emergency response performance by other emergency response agencies in other countries.

The study examined library personnel awareness of the availability of emergency response plans, their forms and roles in safety routine preparedness and control in federal and state university libraries in Southwest Nigeria.

The survey research design alongside a multi-stage sampling procedure comprising purposive, randomisation and total enumeration techniques guided the study. The population consisted of 327 library personnel drawn from 12 federal and state university libraries (i.e., six each). The questionnaire and structured interview methods were used for data gathering. Of the 327 copies of the questionnaire administered, 249 copies, representing 76.1%, were duly completed and found valid for analysis. Whereas the acceptance threshold of ≥90% response rate and a criterion mean of 2.50 were adopted for making judgements regarding the research questions, while the hypothesis was tested using chi-square statistics with cross-tabulation.

The state university libraries in the studied region are extremely lagging behind their federal counterpart in terms of emergency preparedness, judging by the availability of emergency response plan (ERPs). However, documenting the plans for routine emergency response is not widespread among the university libraries; thus, the extent of response preparedness is both simplistic and doubtful. Despite the seemingly proactive nature of the federal university libraries over their state counterpart, librarians in both settings do not perceive effectiveness and preference in either the written emergency response plan (WERP) or unwritten emergency response plan (UERP) as an emergency preparedness and control measure.

The research increases knowledge of emergency preparedness in university libraries beyond the mere availability of ERPs. Through a comparative empirical analysis, the desirability of the WERP as a measure of emergency response preparedness in university libraries has been strengthened.

This paper summarizes the emergency measures taken by Canada in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and discusses the key political, economic, and social factors that influenced the design of these measures.

This paper collects the announcement of emergency measures in the Canadian provincial and federal governments between March 18 and May 30, 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and categorizes them by type of emergency response.

Canada has a diversified response of emergency measures mediated by its various provinces. This suggests that Canada may be more robust to biological and economic threats than nations that have less policy diversity.

Canada's diversity of emergency measures allows for several different avenues for future research, including countercyclical spending by subnational polities, organizational diversity's effect on resilience, the effect of tax breaks versus direct or indirect payments, effectiveness of public-private partnerships, and the effect of transparency on citizen satisfaction.

The purpose of this study is to measure the willingness of general education schools (governmental and private) in the Mecca region to deal with the threat of earthquakes through the identification of the preparedness of school buildings, the differences in the willingness of schools, and examine the relationship between the exposure to previous crises and readiness for future crises.

The authors used a survey method to explore and determine the readiness range of schools by distributing a questionnaire to school principals. The questionnaire measures the readiness range of the institutions to counter earthquake threat through six main fields which were developed based on Federal Emergency Management Agency Resources (www.fema.gov) and were used in developing an earthquake consequences model (Al Momani), namely: previous emergencies measures, previous earthquake experience measures, earthquake mitigation measures, earthquake preparedness measures, earthquake response measures and earthquake recovery measures.

It is apparent that schools are not prepared to deal with future earthquakes regardless of their types (public vs private) and levels (primary, elementary, secondary) which require establishing a department for disaster and crisis management within the public administration of Education headed by a specialist in disasters and crises management to make sure that current school campus, under construction campus, or leased buildings be prepared to deal with disasters and crises as they occur in non‐hazardous locations, compatible with building codes, and equipped with safety means. It is important to prepare a public emergency plan for disasters and crises and to train school administrators and teachers to prepare contingency plans for disaster management in school. Finally, there is a need to prepare disasters awareness programs benefiting from public and private media, internet, and workshops through utilizing experiences of other developed countries in disasters and crises management especially for schools.

This research could be used to augment the need of developing education system preparedness in Jeddah Province through implementing effective mitigation, preparedness, and response, as well as recovery options.

Studies have examined strategies implemented to strengthen quality of emergency care in healthcare provider institutions in Ghana. But few studies have focused on what determines quality of emergency care from the patient’s perspective. The purpose of this paper is to fill that gap by examining factors salient to gauging quality of emergency care and priority areas for care improvement.

Cross-sectional data were collected from patients admitted in emergency units of public hospitals in two regions: Greater Accra and Central Regions. A structured questionnaire designed with inputs from emergency medicine physicians and patients was used to collect data from 381 patients. Principal component analysis (PCA) and logistic regression models were computed to respectively determine salient measures of emergency care quality and their association with patient overall perceived quality of emergency care.

Using the PCA, four factors (social and relational care, attentive prehospitalised care, ward quality and privacy and medical supplies) were derived as salient measures of emergency care quality. All the factors derived had statistically significant association with patient overall perception of quality.

Emergency care quality improvement strategies that incorporate the dimensions identified can produce effective therapeutic outcomes.

The need to adapt to the effects of climate change requires the sharing of responsibility between the authorities and the public. It has been shown before that private building precautionary measures are able to significantly mitigate flood losses. The purpose of this paper is to investigate which factors are motivating people to undertake mitigation measures, with a particular focus on the perceptions of climate change.

A total of 605 households in Dresden have been interviewed and their answers statistically analysed.

Correlation and principal component analysis show a slight influence of the perception about consequences of climate change on the motivation to undertake flood emergency measures. However, other socio‐economic factors such as the ownership of the residential building and the size of the household are much more important.

In order to improve the uptake of flood mitigation and climate change adaptation measures, public awareness raising campaigns and schemes utilizing financial and non‐financial incentives should be undertaken. Such campaigns should particularly focus on specific social‐groups, like tenants or singles. Awareness raising campaigns focusing on the causes and consequences of climate change are expected to have little effect on peoples' motivation to act.

This study has discovered very weak links between perceptions of climate change and the motivation of households to undertake precautionary measures, which is important for the design of awareness raising campaigns.