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This chapter focuses on the experiences and processes of earthquake recovery to discuss the general state of disaster recovery in Japan. In this way, it is expected that the outcome and discussion can provide effective insights for both domestic and international disaster-related efforts. First, the characteristics of natural disasters in Japan are summarized using statistical data. Quantitative and qualitative methods are flexibly used to analyze published data, materials, and semistructured interview data. Published data and materials are collected from various sources. Interview data were gained from diverse interviewees. Then, four case studies of earthquake recovery are introduced and the application of their recovery experiences to future disaster risk reduction is proposed. Finally, conclusions have been drawn from these case studies to show the practical influence of disaster-recovery experiences to regions that are currently experiencing or are likely to experience natural disasters in the future. More specifically, the chapter illustrates what challenges and influences past earthquakes can have on our present preparedness against a Nankai Trough Earthquake, which is predicted to occur in the near future.

The purpose of this paper is to review the nature of Japanese non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in international disaster response and analyzes their distinctive characteristics.

A literature review was conducted of secondary English and Japanese sources including peer-reviewed journals, books, and non-academic journals published by government and NGOs.

First, Japanese disaster response NGOs are relatively young compared to Western ones and they continue to increase in number. Second, the scale of disaster response NGOs is much larger than that of other NGOs in the development field not only because of the availability of government funds but also because of the presence of internationally affiliated NGOs and religious-based organisations with strong fundraising programs. Third, Japanese disaster response NGOs have a long-term engagement with the local community, not only during the emergency phase, but also during the recovery and development phases in various fields. Finally, coordination NGOs play an important role in networking, advocating and supplementing NGOs that often lack financial and human resources.

The limitation of this study is the definition of Japanese NGOs in the context of international disaster response; therefore, this paper adopts MOFA’s definition, which includes NGOs engaged in overseas activities through direct intervention.

There has been little research in English on the scale and nature of Japanese NGOs involved in disaster response activities.

The purpose of this paper is to explore what would make disaster donors different from non-donors, with particular attention paid to differences in two forms of donations: the monetary donation that directly benefits the beneficiary and the charitable donation that is used by charitable organizations to support their disaster relief activities. Differences in the perceived effectiveness of other disaster relief activities, skepticism about charitable organizations, disaster experience, disaster preparedness, and disaster insight were also examined between the two groups.

A total of 300 Japanese participants were asked to complete a14-item questionnaire online. A series of comparative analyses were conducted to examine differences between donors and non-donors in the questionnaire items.

Although non-donors evaluated the effectiveness of the monetary donation more positively than the charitable donation, donors evaluated the effectiveness of all the disaster relief activities more positively than non-donors. Moreover, donors were more prepared for disasters and more insightful into the current situation of the disaster victims than non-donors.

Along with the internal and external factors previously found, disaster awareness may be a key to increasing people's intention to donate for disaster victims. Such awareness could be fostered through successful disaster education and appropriate media coverage of disasters.

The findings that non-donors generally have a less positive view of disaster relief activities imply that non-donors may be less knowledgeable than donors about how charitable activities can work and benefit disaster victims.

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in enormous challenges, but also presented opportunities that have notable implications for the future. The aim of this paper is to explore and discuss the experiences, perspectives, challenges and opportunities of Library and Information Science Educators (LISE) during the pandemic. The aim is articulated in the following three research questions: How is the COVID-19 pandemic experienced by LISE and in research? What are the perceptions formed during the period? And what are the challenges and opportunities?

This is an interpretivist qualitative study informed by disaster management theories. The study involved the content analysis of existing literature with a focus on COVID-19 and higher education, particularly LISE, in conjunction with an open-ended email questionnaire that was sent to selected LIS educators/faculty/staff from major LIS Schools from eight sub-Saharan African countries. The author used personal experiences and observation to supplement the data and the interpretation.

Results show more similarities than differences in how the COVID-19 pandemic is experienced and perceived, as well as the challenges and opportunities that it brings to the sector. As a whole, political factors are most pronounced, meaning that administration and decision-making need more attention in the sector. Also notable is that opportunities are mostly linked to technological factors, which will determine the “new normal” for LISE in the future. Almost all the narratives focused on the middle level of (during) the disaster life cycle, which is understandable as the complete cycle of the disaster is yet to come, likely when COVID-19 ceases to be a threat.

The sample was small, as related studies focus more on COVID-19 and higher education, with hardly any focusing on LISE. The COVID-19 pandemic has not ended, so the disaster management life cycle cannot be fully exploited. Furthermore, the author’s categorization of responses within PEST was largely judgmental.

New research, teaching and learning developmental paths have been created for LISE. The study provides practical reflection on the effects of COVID-19 on the sector and HEIs that can inform discourse and responses to the pandemic.

The study explores a new research domain in LISE and due to limited research in the domain brings together important voices/narratives – based on their experiences – of LIS educators in Africa on the research area. Further, it proposes the future of LISE under COVID-19 within the 4IR framework.

The World Trade Center disaster generated many of the features seen in other disasters in the U.S., including post-disaster convergence. We conceptualize emergency management activities as taking place within a multilocational “response milieu,” and we suggest that the study of convergence should focus on the negotiated legitimacy of people in and wishing to enter it. We discuss the five types of personal convergers and how the access of each of these groups to the response milieu was related to their legitimation status. We then identify two additional forms of convergence: supporters or fans, and those who came to mourn or to memorialize. We conclude by discussing implications for policy.

The number of natural and man-made disasters is remarkable and threatened human lives at the time of occurrence and also after that. Therefore, an efficient response following a disaster can eliminate or mitigate the adverse effects. This paper aims to help address those challenges related to humanitarian logistics by considering disaster network design under uncertainty and the management of emergency relief volunteers simultaneously.

In this paper, a robust fuzzy stochastic programming model is proposed for designing a relief commodity supply chain network in a disaster by considering emergency relief volunteers. To demonstrate the practicality of the proposed model, a case study is presented for the 22 districts of Tehran and solved by an exact method.

The results indicate that there are many parameters affecting the design of a relief commodity supply chain network in a disaster, and also many parameters should be controlled so that, the catastrophe is largely prevented and the lives of many people can be saved by sending the relief commodity on time.

This model helps decision-makers and authorities to explore optimal location and allocation decisions without using complex optimization algorithms.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, employee workforce management models have not received adequate attention despite their role in relief and recovery efforts. Hence, the proposed model focuses on the problem of managing employees and designing a disaster logistics network simultaneously. The robust fuzzy stochastic programming method is applied for the first time for controlling the uncertainties in the design of humanitarian relief supply chains.

Uneven distribution and mistarget beneficiaries are among problems encountered during post-disaster relief operations in 2010 Mount Merapi eruption. The purpose of this paper is to develop an empirically founded agent-based simulation model addressing the evacuation dynamics and to explore coordination mechanism and other promising strategies during last-mile relief delivery.

An agent-based model which was specified and parameterized by empirical research (interviews and survey) was developed to understand the mechanism of individual decision making underlying the evacuation dynamics. A set of model testing was conducted to evaluate confidence level of the model in representing the evacuation dynamics during post-disaster of 2010 Mount Merapi eruption. Three scenarios of last-mile relief delivery at both strategic and operational levels were examined to evaluate quantitatively the effectiveness of the coordination mechanism and to explore other promising strategies.

Results indicate that the empirically founded agent-based modeling was able to reproduce the general pattern of observable Internal Displaced Persons based on government records, both at micro and macro levels, with a statistically non-significant difference. Low hazard perception and leader-following behavior which refuses to evacuate are the two factors responsible for late evacuation. Unsurprisingly, coordination through information sharing results in better performance than without coordination. To deal with both uneven distribution and long-term demand fulfillment, coordination among volunteers during aid distribution (at downstream operation) is not sufficient. The downstream coordination should also be accompanied with coordination between aid centers at the upstream operation. Furthermore, the coordination which is combined with other operational strategies, such as clustering strategy, using small-sized trucks and pre-positioning strategy, seems to be promising. It appears that the combined strategy of coordination and clustering strategy performs best among other combined strategies.

The significant role of early evacuation and self-evacuation behavior toward efficient evacuation indicates that human factor (i.e. hazard perception and cultural factor) should be considered in designing evacuation plan. Early warning system through both technology and community empowerment is necessary to support early evacuation. The early warning system should also be accompanied with at least 69 percent of the population performing self-evacuation behavior for the effective evacuation. As information sharing through coordination is necessary to avoid redundant efforts, uneven distribution and eventually to reduce unmet demand, the government can act as a coordinating actor to authorize the operation and mobilize the resources. The combination of coordination and another strategy reducing lead time such as clustering analysis, thus increasing responsiveness, is seemly strategy for efficient and effective last-mile relief distribution.

Literature on coordination is dominated by qualitative approach, which is difficult to evaluate its effectiveness quantitatively. Providing realistic setting of the evacuation dynamics in the course of the 2010 Mount Merapi eruption, the empirically founded agent-based model can be used to understand the factors influencing the evacuation dynamics and subsequently to quantitatively examine coordination mechanisms and other potential strategies toward efficient and effective last-mile relief distribution.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the past events where communication challenges have occurred during a disaster, and events in which amateur radio had played a vital role in creating reliable communication links during the disaster response. Furthermore, this paper identifies the modern technology available with amateur radio operators that can be used to create reliable communication networks in order to meet the high demand of disaster communication.

In this paper the author has conducted an integrative literature review, while analyzing case studies of disasters where communication challenges have occurred and the amateur radio has provided communication support during a disaster response.

In today’s world there is a heavy reliance on centralized communications infrastructure such as cell towers, which are very likely to fail during a disaster. Failure or overload of such infrastructure will cause disruptions in communications and make the disaster response inefficient. Amateur radio does not rely on centralized communications infrastructure, and has the ability to be used to meet the demand during many disaster situations. Thus, it is very important for emergency professionals to understand the value of including amateur radio operators in emergency operations plans.

Research is qualitative in nature, with an aim to write a short paper introducing the issues of Disaster Communications.

This paper is intended to provide an insight about the importance of reliable communications during a disaster. Communication interruptions can create a lot of problems and cause inadequate coordination between response agencies. In order to mitigate such challenges it is crucial to study the vital role of amateur radio in supporting the communications when all other mediums of communication fail.

Examine and understand how an informal volunteer’s goals and actions develop from the moment they first learn about a disaster.

We examine informal volunteerism (the activities of people who work outside of formal emergency and disaster management arrangements) through the theoretical lens of entrepreneurial effectuation to explain informal volunteer behavior and cognition and gain insight on how they develop their disaster relief ventures.

We find that informal volunteers follow an effectual logic, relying on available means to take advantage of opportunities as they are recognized or created. Application of effectuation vs causation processes depended on whether the informal volunteers were categorized as traditional, emergent or extended volunteers.

Informal volunteers’ disregard for the Affordable Loss Principle task governments and disaster relief organizations with the important challenge of managing and assuring the safety and well-being of informal volunteers. Their entrepreneurial behavior also invites the establishment of formal processes to counsel and guide informal volunteers, helping them fill out the necessary paperwork and funding applications to develop their efforts.

Through their experimentation and flexibility, informal volunteers accelerate disaster recovery, recognizing opportunities, working around bureaucracy and other roadblocks that hinder the efforts of established organizations. They also demonstrate entrepreneurial behavior that helps revitalize and jumpstart the local economy, making for stronger and more resilient communities

This study borrows from Effectuation Theory from the entrepreneurship field in order to bring a much needed theoretical lens to the topic and greatly assists informal volunteerism research, moving from past efforts that simply define and categorize the concept.

The use of volunteers is one of the approaches to capacity building, preparedness and the response of the health system in disasters. Appropriate management of volunteers during disasters and emergencies is essential. This study aimed to explain the challenges of volunteer management in the Pandemic COVID-19 in Iran.

Qualitative research was conducted using the content analysis based on the Graneheim method. The participants' selection was done based on purposeful sampling and theoretical sampling until data saturation. Direct field observation and 26 interviews were applied to collect data.

Four categories and 15 sub-categories emerged to describe the challenges of volunteer management during the COVID-19 crisis including policymaking barriers (including legal barriers, insurance and support coverage and risk governance), managerial barriers (including planning, coordinating and organizing, training and awareness, command and leadership and information management and documentation), socio-cultural barriers (personal safety attitude and culture, attitudes and expectations of the community and perspectives on volunteers) and executive-operational barriers (monitoring and evaluation, cost and needs assessment).

It is essential to increase managers', officials' and volunteers' perceptions of COVID19 risk through education and information. Preparing a database for volunteers' information, including non-governmental organization and governmental organization volunteers, planning for needs assessment, establishing a mechanism for recruiting volunteers and using their capacities and appropriate organizing, tracking and monitoring of volunteers can be among effective strategies.