Disasters

Difficulties in the disaster management process are caused by many factors such as the complexity and fast-spreading harmful effects of hazards, lack of timely and accurate information, difficulty in making key decisions, inability to assess the situation in a short time, the complexity of managing necessary resources, etc. For these reasons, effective disaster response is conditioned by the availability of a variety of data stored in numerous international and national databases that can be used in real-time. In addition, decision-makers are forced to use a variety of information systems and tools that allow them to make quick and accurate calculations in order to make appropriate decisions in a particular situation. Guided by this, the authors, using the method of content analysis and literature review, identify, analyze and comprehensively systematize and describe the significant characteristics of such databases and information systems. The aim of this paper is the scientific description of information and logistics systems and databases that are important for disaster management. The scientific significance of the paper is reflected in the systematization of scientific knowledge about the advantages and disadvantages of using information systems and databases on disasters. In contrast, the social implications of the paper are reflected in informing competent services about the existence and possibilities of using information systems and databases in specific cases of disaster management. Keywords: security, disasters, management, databases, information systems, logistics systems. Poteškoće u procesu upravlјanja u katastrofama uslovlјene su delovanjem mnogobrojnih faktora kao što su složenost i velika brzina širenja štetnih dejstava opasnosti, nedostatak pravovremenih i tačnih informacija, komplikovanost donošenja klјučnih odluka, nemogućnost sagledavanja celokupne situacije u kratkom vremenskom periodu, složenost upravlјanja neophodnim resursima itd. Iz tih razloga, efikasno reagovanje na katastrofe je uslovlјeno dostupnošću različitih podataka koji su pothranjeni u mnogobrojnim međunarodnim i nacionalnim bazama podataka koje se mogu koristiti u realnom vremenu. Osim toga, donosioci odluka su prinuđeni da koriste različite informacione sisteme i alate koji im omogućavaju brze i tačne proračune u cilјu donošenja odgovarajućih odluka u konkretnoj situaciji. Rukovodeći se time, autori u radu primenom metode analize sadržaja i pregledom literature, identifikuju, analiziraju i sveobuhvatno sistematizuju i opisuju značajne karakteristike takvih baza i informacionih sistema. Cilј naučnog rada predstavlјa naučna deskripcija informaciono-logističkih sistema i baza podataka od značaja za upravlјanje u katastrofama. Naučni značaj rada ogleda se u sistematizaciji naučnih saznanja o prednostima i nedostacima korišćenja informacionih sistema i baza podataka o katastrofama. Nasuprot tome, društvene implikacije rada ogledaju se u informisanju nadležnih službi o postojanju i mogućnostima korišćenja informacionih sistema i baza podataka u konkretnim slučajevima upravlјanja u katastrofama. Klјučne reči: bezbednost, katastrofe, upravlјanje, baze podataka, informacioni sistemi, logistički sistemi.

Participate in an international competition for a project in China, design a project for Dubai, build a school in the favellas of Brazil. Those are some of the challenges that firms in the fields of architecture, urban planning and construction must now face in a globalizing construction sector. However, the international context of construction shows different faces, ranging from prestige buildings designed by foreign “star” architects in
world-class cities, to emergency shelters produced by humanitarian international initiatives in rural areas in developing countries. For many, this context offers great commercial opportunities, but also risks and threats.

Participants from different countries working in foreign contexts are confronted with major challenges that range from cultural adaptation to contractual know-how. A careful understanding of organizational design and procurement is crucial in this context. The procurement strategies - that is, the initial decisions made by the client(s) to create the temporary multi-organization in charge of the project – can determine the success or failure of the initiatives.

This 2008 conference-workshop discusses these challenges and seeks to clarify the scope of and opportunities for construction projects in the international context. It focuses on the procurement-related aspects of international construction projects, and it opens the door to a wide range of subjects related to the performance of these initiatives.

The conference-workshop addresses the following issues:
• How to procure a building project abroad?
• How do architects participate in international construction?
• What are the main risks of international procurement? What are the main risks of working
abroad?
• Is there such a thing as a real international supply chain?
• What are the differences between local procurement and international procurement?
• What are the main opportunities for construction companies interested in working abroad?
• How must the relations between foreign organizations and local actors be established?

Groundwater radon data were recorded at monthly intervals from two selected monitoring sites of the northern extension of the Dead Sea Fault System in western Syria during 1993 and 1994. This set of data was utilized to estimate the basic radon background content and the range of its normal variations in groundwater along the fault zone. The results suggest that the establishment of such range is important when attempting to separate the usual groundwater radon fluctuations from other anomalous or earthquake related values. In addition, the seismic activity in the study region was statistically analyzed, and the completeness of the earthquake catalogue during the given time-window was estimated to be at magnitude M > 3.5.

The assessment of the response of a prehospital/hospital system to a disaster will prove a complex and challenging undertaking for those who attempt it. Data availability and quality will prove to be an immediate problem. Finding the time to devote to assessment is usually difficult. Identifying qualified and interested members of the required multidisciplinary team and, in particular, an individual with health services research background who can assist in all phases of the design and implementation of the project, is often difficult. Obviously, these problems will be less severe if they are addressed to some degree in the disaster plan. That is, a general protocol for assessment could be developed as part of the disaster planning effort and evaluation staff could tentatively be identified by position (e.g., emergency department medical director). The issue of data availability could be confronted and provisions made for the recording of at least minimal information on patient log ...

The means of designing an effective user interface software package varies from one application to another. Almost the entire ICT infrastructure was damaged following the impact of the tsunami tidal wave. Under such circumstances, transporting critically ill patients is a must and becomes the first priority. Many considerations are needed when designing a specific user interface for emergency situations in developing countries. In this study we proposed how to design the user interface in order to support emergency medical care in the early stages of disasters. The user interface was classified into two tabs, firstly to indicate critically ill patients and secondly to notify details of the medicine having been administered to the patients. Classifying the user interface of emergency medical care information systems by using VHF radio connections will be beneficial, especially for the early stages of disaster-stricken developing countries, in order to preserve the lives of more victims.

Background. After Hurricane Katrina, an estimated 200,000 persons were evacuated to the Houston metropolitan area, 127,000 of whom were housed in 1 large "megashelter," the Reliant Park Complex. We investigated an outbreak of gastroenteritis reported among the evacuees who resided in the Reliant Park Complex to assess the spread of the infectious agent, norovirus, and to implement and evaluate the effectiveness of interventions used for control. Methods. Public health authorities conducted surveillance of gastroenteritis among evacuees treated at the Reliant Park Medical Clinic during 2-12 September 2005. Basic demographic and clinical data were recorded. Specimens of stool and vomitus were collected and tested for bacteria, parasites, and viruses. Shelter census data were used to estimate the daily incidence of disease. Results. During a period of 11 days, 11000 patients were treated at the clinic for gastroenteritis, which accounted for 17% of all clinic visits. Norovirus was the sole enteric pathogen identified, but multiple different strains were involved. Among the evacuees residing in the Reliant Park Complex, the incidence of gastroenteritis was estimated to be 4.6 visits per 1000 persons per day, and among the evacuees who resided there for 9 days, 1 (4%) of 24 persons would have been ill. Intensive public health measures were promptly instituted but did not definitively slow the progression of the outbreak of norovirus gastroenteritis. Conclusions. Our investigation underscores the difficulties in managing such outbreaks in crowded settings and the need for rapid, sensitive laboratory assays to detect norovirus. Additional research is needed to establish more effective measures to control and prevent this highly contagious gastrointestinal illness. On 29 August 2005, Hurricane Katrina, a category 4 storm, made landfall on the Louisiana coast and caused catastrophic damage in many areas, resulting in many deaths and leaving thousands homeless and displaced,

The long-term psychological after-efects of the 1992 Erzincan earthquake are examined. 461 subjects from Enincan were administered a semi-structured interuiew. Emotional distress was measured by a symptom checklist containing 40 items. 129 subjects from Ankara, the capital of Turkey, were also used as a comparison sample. The factor analysis revealed that distress symptoms can be grouped into phobic anxiety, somatizution, depression and hostility. The comparison of the Erzincan and Ankara samples showed that the Erzincan sample had higher phobic anxiety scores, the females from Enincan had higher distress as compared to the males from Enincan and to both males and females from Ankara. Regression analyses showed that being female and evaluating one's home as insecure against future earthquakes were related to elevated levels of distress. Results showed that, even after sixteen months, Erzincan residents had higher phobic anxiety and that females seemed to be especially vulnerable to distress. Implications of the results for psychosocial intervention are discussed.

In cases of mass disaster, there is often a need for managing, analyzing, and comparing large numbers of biological samples and DNA profiles. This requires the use of laboratory information management systems for large-scale sample logging and tracking, coupled with bioinformatic tools for DNA database searching according to different matching algorithms, and for the evaluation of the significance of each match by likelihood ratio calculations. There are many different interrelated factors and circumstances involved in each specific mass disaster scenario that may challenge the final DNA identification goal, such as: the number of victims, the mechanisms of body destruction, the extent of body fragmentation, the rate of DNA degradation, the body accessibility for sample collection, or the type of DNA reference samples availability. In this paper, we examine the different steps of the DNA identification analysis (DNA sampling, DNA analysis and technology, DNA database searching, and concordance and kinship analysis) reviewing the "lessons learned" and the scientific progress made in some mass disaster cases described in the scientific literature. We will put special emphasis on the valuable scientific feedback that genetic forensic community has received from the collaborative efforts of several public and private USA forensic laboratories in assisting with the more critical areas of the World Trade Center (WTC) mass fatality of September 11, 2001. The main challenges in identifying the victims of the recent South Asian Tsunami disaster, which has produced the steepest death count rise in history, will also be considered. We also present data from two recent mass fatality cases that involved Spanish victims: the Madrid terrorist attack of March 11, 2004, and the Yakolev-42 aircraft accident in Trabzon, Turkey, of May 26, 2003. A mass disaster is an unexpected event that causes serious injury and death to a number of people. Mass disaster events may be natural disasters (earthquakes, flooding, and tornadoes), accidental disasters (aircraft crashes, train crashes and derailments, and building fires), or intentioned terrorism acts (direct attacks on significant objectives, and bombing of populated areas, including suicide attacks and deployments of chemical and bio-logical weapons). Forensic identification of victims is essential for humanitarian reasons, but also for civil or criminal investigative needs, and it is essentially based on forensic anthropology, fingerprints, forensic odontology, radiology, and DNA typing (1).

The Philippines is a country that is both largely dependent on marine resources for its people's socio-cultural and economic activities, yet also highly vulnerable to extreme weather events caused by climate change. Recognizing this, a Climate Change Adaptation Project, with support from the Norwegian Trust Fund, studied three coastal communities in three (3) different provinces in the Bicol region, widely known to lie in the so-called 'Philippine typhoon belt'. The project sought to establish a community-based adaptation strategy in pilot sites by providing guidance on setting appropriate policies, climate proofing livelihoods with adaptation measures, and institutionalizing science-based-decision support systems. The project also sought to develop a replicable template that can be used by and adapted to all other similar sites in the Philippines. The project had four major components: (1) policy and legislation, (2) vulnerability assessment, (3) bio-physical adaptation...

Levels of parasitism and the dynamics of helminth systems is subject to the impact of environmental conditions such that we may expect long term increases in temperature will increase the force of infection and the parasite's basic reproduction number, R0. We postulate that an increase in the force of infection will only lead to an increase in mean intensity of adults when adult parasite mortality is not determined by acquired immunity. Preliminary examination of long term trends of parasites of rabbits and grouse confirm these predictions. Parasite development rate increases with temperature and while laboratory studies indicate this is linear some recent studies indicate that this may be non-linear and would have an important impact on R0. Warming would also reduce the selective pressure for the development of arrestment and this would increase R0 so that in systems like the grouse and Trichostrongylus tenuis this would increase the instability and lead to larger disease outbr...

Purpose Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) is one of the main providers of orthopaedic surgery in natural disaster and conflict settings and strictly imposes a minimum set of contextspecific standards before any surgery can be performed. Based on MSF's experience of performing orthopaedic surgery in a number of such settings, we describe: (a) whether it was possible to implement the minimum standards for one of the more rigorous orthopaedic procedures-internal fixation-and when possible, the time frame, (b) the volume and type of interventions performed and (c) the intra-operative mortality rates and postoperative infection rates. Methods We conducted a retrospective review of routine programme data collected between 2007 and 2014 from three MSF emergency surgical interventions in Haiti (following the 2010 earthquake) and three ongoing MSF projects in Kunduz (Afghanistan), Masisi (Democratic Republic of the Congo) and Tabarre (Haiti).

The continued professionalization of the humanitarian workforce requires sound underpinning by appropriate educational programs. The international disaster medicine and emergency health community requested the World Association for Disaster and Emergency Medicine (WADEM) develop international standards and guidelines for the education and training for disaster medicine. The Working Group of the WADEM Education Committee prepared and circulated an Issues Paper to structure input on this significant international task. Subsequently, the Working Group facilitated an Open International Meeting convened in Brussels, Belgium, 2004. The "Issues Paper" also was used as a framework to structure this International Meeting, which utilized case studies selected to represent the scope of disaster medicine, and prepared a meeting consensus on a framework for disaster health and for related educational programs. The two-day Brussels meeting attracted 51 participants from 19 countries, re...

Natural disasters, industrial accidents , terrorism attacks, and pandemics all have the capacity to result in large numbers of critically ill or injured patients. This supplement provides suggestions for all of those involved in a disaster or pandemic with multiple critically ill patients, including front-line clinicians, hospital administrators, professional societies, and public health or government offi cials. The current Task Force included a total of 100 participants from nine countries, comprised of clinicians and experts from a wide variety of disciplines. Comprehensive literature searches were conducted to identify studies upon which evidence-based recommendations could be made. No studies of suffi cient quality were identifi ed. Therefore, the panel developed expert-opinion-based suggestions that are presented in this supplement using a modifi ed Delphi process. The ultimate aim of the supplement is to expand the focus beyond the walls of ICUs to provide recommendations for the management of all critically ill or injured adults and children resulting from a pandemic or disaster wherever that care may be provided. Considerations for the management of critically ill patients include clinical priorities and logistics (supplies, evacuation, and triage) as well as the key enablers (systems planning, business continuity, legal framework, and ethical considerations) that facilitate the provision of this care. The supplement also aims to illustrate how the concepts of mass critical care are integrated across the spectrum of surge events from conventional through contingency to crisis standards of care.

Purpose: The main objective of this study is to develop a tsunami emergency response plan for a coastal community by adopting a community-based disaster preparedness approach. Design/methodology/approach: A multi-strategy research design utilizing both quantitative and qualitative methods was used. The weaknesses and strengths of the different agencies involved in responding to the 2004 tsunami disaster were identified through a focus group discussion. A survey was used to assess the preparedness of the community. Tsunami awareness and education were imparted through lectures, sermons, radio talk shows, informal briefings, workshops and printed materials. Tsunami evacuation routes, safe zones, warning protocols and evacuation plans were finalized through a consultation process with the community. A tsunami evacuation plan was verified during a table-top exercise and was tested through a drill. Findings: It is evident from the study that a community-based approach (where the local community is taken as the primary focus of attention in disaster reduction) to tsunami mitigation and preparedness is viable. This process has provided an opportunity for tapping traditional organizational structures and mechanisms (including formal and informal community leaders) and capability-building activities with the community disaster committees and volunteers. Originality/value: Tsunami 2004 is the first ever tsunami disaster experienced in the country and thus the study provides significant lessons learned from the event. The community-based approach to disaster preparedness is not the current practice in the country. Thus, the study demonstrates that the approach is a viable tool to enhance community preparedness to tsunami and other types of disasters as well.

The solar energy potential of underutilized urban rooftops in Peru was analyzed. • A model was elaborated for mediumsized Peruvian cities with GIS. • Life Cycle Assessment was used to compute environmental impacts. • Results demonstrate that self-sufficiency in electricity production is attainable. • Substantial climate change mitigation could be accomplished with this layout.

BACKGROUND Much scholarly and practitioner attention to the impact of Hurricane Katrina on the city of New Orleans, Louisiana has focused on the failures of government disaster prevention and management at all levels, often overlooking the human strength and resourcefulness observed in individuals and groups among the worst-affected communities. OBJECTIVES This preliminary study sought to investigate human resilience in the city of New Orleans, State of Louisiana, eighteen months after Hurricane Katrina struck the Mississippi delta region. METHODS The Sense of Coherence scale, short form (SOC-13) was administered to a sample of 41 residents of Lower Ninth Ward and adjacent Wards who had been displaced by Hurricane Katrina but were either living in or visiting their home area during March 2007. Study participants were recruited through the local branch of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), a nation-wide grassroots organization whose mission is to promo...

In 1922, the Commonwealth Bank opened in Cairns, North Queensland, on the corner of Abbott and Spence Street, not far from the Esplanade and the waters of the Trinity Inlet. A single-story timber building, “bolted together” and pinned to the ground by sunken concrete piers, the structure was described in the local press as “cyclone proof” and the strongest timber building in Australia. Cooled by fifty exhaust vents and simplex windows, the banking chamber also met the requirements of its tropical context and was described as an “ideal office interior” in which the “health and fitness of the staff have been considered in all essentials from first class sanitation to an up-to-date ventilation system.”

In this paper the entanglement of comfort—the health and fitness of the bank’s workers, both physical and psychological—with the bank’s design—both tropical and cyclone proof—will be examined. I will argue that the Commonwealth Bank was an early example of a commercial building designed to respond to tropical cyclones, a common occurrence in Northern Australia, but one which had little impact on the planning and construction of buildings at this time. While the bank was built to replace an earlier, smaller building inadequate to the institution’s needs, it was also a direct response to a catastrophic cyclone—the strongest on record—which hit Cairns and surrounding districts on February 2, 1920. Devastating the city and neighboring towns, the cyclone produced a significant storm surge, described in the press as a “tidal wave,” that inundated the city’s central business district, including Abbott Street, where the bank building was located. The structural properties and technical innovations of the new building effectively addressed the anxieties that this event, and subsequent cyclone seasons, would continue to evoke.

It will also be argued that the bank building and its widely publicized innovations were part of a larger campaign by the institution (and other northern businesses) to attract staff from the cooler southern parts of Australia (Brisbane, Sydney, and Melbourne), and particularly men (managers and accountants) with wives and children. Promising both safety and comfort for its workers and their families, the bank, it will be argued, also sought to counter the popular conviction that Northern Australia was not suitable for settlement and must remain empty and unproductive. This was achieved by the banking corporation through the national promotion of the lifestyles (and especially sporting activities) of the bank workers, the climatic suitability of the bank buildings, and the technical innovations that ensured it was “cyclone proof.”

Mass casualty incidents and large-scale disasters involving children are likely to overwhelm a regional disaster response system. Children have unique vulnerabilities that require special considerations when developing pediatric response systems. Although medical and trauma strategies exist for the evaluation and treatment of children on a daily basis, the application of these strategies under conditions of resource-constrained triage and treatment have rarely been evaluated. A recent report, however, by the Institute of Medicine did conclude that on a day-to-day basis the U.S. healthcare system does not adequately provide emergency medical services for children. The variability, scale, and uncertainty of disasters call for a set of guiding principles rather than rigid protocols when developing pediatric response plans. The authors propose the following guiding principles in addressing the well-recognized, unique vulnerabilities of children: (1) terrorism prevention and preparedness...

The human's Micro-Doppler signatures resulting from breathing, arm, foot and other periodic motion can provide valuable information about the structure of the moving parts and may be used for identification and classification purposes. In this paper, we carry out simulate with FDTD method and through wall experiment with UWB radar for human being's periodic motion detection. In addition, Advancements signal processing methods are presented to classify and to extract the human's periodic motion characteristic information, such as Micro-Doppler shift and motion frequency. Firstly, we apply the Principal Component Analysis (PCA) with singular value decomposition (SVD) to denoise and extract the human motion signal. Then, we present the results base on the Hilbert-Huang transform (HHT) and the S transform to classify and to identify the human's micro-Doppler shift characteristics. The results demonstrate that the combination of UWB radar and various processing methods has potential to detect human's Doppler signatures effectively. Downloaded From: http://spiedigitallibrary.org/ on 03/18/2014 Terms of Use: http://spiedl.org/terms Proc. of SPIE Vol. 8734 873402-2 Downloaded From: http://spiedigitallibrary.org/ on 03/18/2014 Terms of Use: http://spiedl.org/terms

Individuals with disabilities are disproportionately vulnerable in evacuation emergencies, and they face numerous challenges accessing resources for response and recovery.The aim of this study was to compare the preparedness behaviors of households with and without special-needs members.A random-digit-dial telephone survey was conducted of 501 adults in southeastern Pennsylvania in 2008. The survey instrument gathered data on sociodemographic characteristics, disability status/functional limitations, and preparedness behaviors related to an evacuation emergency. Analyses were conducted in 2009 and included multiple logistic regressions. Data were weighted to correct for unequal probabilities of selection and response.Nineteen percent (n=95) of respondents reported living in a household in which someone had a transportation-related special need requiring assistance in case of an emergency. Households with a special-needs member had greater odds of having arranged a place to meet (OR=2.2; 95% CI=1.26, 3.88); located a shelter (OR=1.8; 95% CI=1.05, 3.24); or packed a bag (OR=1.8; 95% CI=1.02, 3.21). No significant differences were identified with respect to awareness of evacuation routes, purchasing of food and water, or creation of an emergency plan to guide evacuation decision-making.Despite both greater vulnerability to disaster and numerous messages by governmental and nongovernmental organizations, households with special-needs members are not more likely to engage in time-consuming preparedness behaviors such as planning and buying. Understanding the motivations and behaviors of special-needs groups is critical to designing informed risk-communication messages and interventions to bolster the preparedness of the most vulnerable populations.

The article briefly reviews the UN Human Rights Committee’s (HRC) decision in the case Teitiota v New Zealand. At stake was the applicant’s claim that New Zealand should not send him back to Kiribati, his country of origin, as the effects of climate change there put him at risk of being exposed to life-threatening events and indecent living conditions. Despite a disappointing outcome for the applicant, the ruling has been hailed by commentators as a 'landmark determination’. After providing a brief introduction to the facts, the article will offer some comments on certain aspects of the decision, as well as a few suggestions on how the applicant could recalibrate his litigation strategy before UN treaty monitoring bodies.

This paper presents interview survey data by social scientists using established health measures on the health effects of flooding for residents in 30 locations in England and Wales. Firstly, it examines the extent to which flooded residents reported suffering physical and psychological health effects during and after the event. Secondly, it explores the issue of whether these effects were long-lasting by comparisons with the general population and with those at risk but not flooded. In the study, about two thirds of the flood victims were found to have scores on the General Health Questionnaire-12 scale indicative of mental health problems (scores of 4+) at their worst time after flooding. The evidence of the study also suggests that some flood victims suffered long term mental health effects as a result of their experience of flooding. The study examines the influence of a wide range of factors: characteristics of the flood event, types of property, and socio-demographic and the i...

Quantitative risk analysis (QRA) of industrial facilities has to take into account multiple hazards threatening critical equipment. Nevertheless, engineering procedures able to evaluate quantitatively the effect of seismic action are not well established. Indeed, relevant industrial accidents may be triggered by loss of containment following ground shaking or other relevant natural hazards, either directly or through cascade effects ('domino effects').

Sustainable redevelopment following disasters has been a main policy objective of post-disaster recovery efforts over the past few decades. Yet, nine years after the 1999 Marmara earthquake in Turkey, the redevelopment of risky housing areas is still a point of debate on the urban planning and disaster mitigation agenda. However, planning studies on mildly and moderately damaged areas located in the centre of Istanbul are ongoing. This article presents the evidence of a pilot project undertaken by Zeytinburnu Municipality, Istanbul, four years after the Marmara earthquake. 2 The aim is to generate a debate on the preconditions required for a sustainable urban regeneration approach in the post-disaster recovery phase. The results of the pilot project underline the importance of capacity building in sustaining social capital, strengthening the legal framework, restructuring planning regulations, and managing the housing redevelopment process by taking advantage of a window of opportunity afforded by the disaster recovery period.

On Dec. 12, 1985, a military charter DC-8 crashed shortly after takeoff at Gander, Nfld., Canada. All 256 aboard were killed, making this the deadliest US military aircraft accident in history. The investigation team (consisting of forensic pathologists, odontologists, ...

In a representative sample of 2,030 U.S. children aged 2-17, 13.9% report lifetime exposure to disaster, and 4.1% report experiencing a disaster in the past year. Disaster exposure was associated with some forms of victimization and adversity. Victimization was associated with depression among 2-to 9-year-old disaster survivors, and with depression and aggression among 10-to 17-year-old disaster survivors. Children exposed to either victimization only or both disaster and victimization had worse mental health compared to those who experienced neither. More research into the prevalence and effects of disasters and other stressful events among children is needed to better understand the interactive risks for and effects of multiple forms of trauma.

Complex humanitarian emergencies have been a major political, security and public health feature of the post-Cold War world. These man-made disasters account for more morbidity and mortality than all natural and technological disasters combined. In order to deliver effective aid during complex humanitarian emergencies, international relief agencies must have a solid understanding of the political and social climates in which they are operating. In addition, they should base their health interventions on objective epidemiological data, especially standardized rates of morbidity and mortality. Most deaths during complex humanitarian emergencies are due to preventable causes, especially increased rates of infectious diseases malnutrition and violent trauma. The most appropriate health interventions are therefore based on the models of public health and primary health care, emphasizing disease prevention and health promotion. The field of humanitarian assistance has become increasingly professionalized in recent years, with its own professional standards, literature, research agenda and training opportunities. It is an unfortunate reflection on the current state of international affairs that the number of complex humanitarian emergencies and the enormous levels of suffering associated with them are unlikely to decline in the foreseeable future.

This paper looks at how the principles of internationalism have been integral to the Cuban health care system and to Cuba's cooperation and medical support in other countries around the world. The paper details the range and scope of Cuban health internationalism and the principles that underpin the Cuban approach of long term collaboration: humane care, contextualisation, trans-disciplinarity, respect for collective/historical memory and an ethical stance. The paper focuses on the role of Cuban psychologists who contribute to disaster relief work and gives an example of the Cuban approach in relation Haiti following the earthquake in 2010.

In the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake (GEJE), successful medical and public health coordination by pre-assigned disaster medical coordinators saved many affected people, though the coordination itself had difficulties. This study aims to clarify the implementation and the challenges of disaster medical coordinators in Japan. We performed questionnaire surveillance in 2012 and 2014 to all prefectural government on assignment of disaster medical coordinators, their expected roles and supporting system. Out of all 47 prefectures, assignment or planning of disaster medical coordinators jumped up from four (8.5%) to 43 (91.5%) by the end of 2015. The most expected role is the coordination with Japan Disaster Medical Assistant Team (DMAT) and with other early responders. The evacuation center management, public health coordination and preparedness before disaster are less frequently expected. The supporting materials, human resource, and tools for communication vary according to the prefecture. Successful implementation requires the effort of health and governmental stakeholders. The coordination between prefectural and local coordinators and the coordination between medical and public health authorities still need to be improved. The roles of disaster medical coordinators depend on the local context and types of hazards. Education and training to build fundamental capacity is necessary. In conclusion, Japanese disaster medical system rapidly implemented disaster medical coordinator after GEJE. Their roles and standardization are challenging, but education, training and systematic support by the local government will enhance the effective preparedness and response of the health sector in disasters.

Psychological distress is common in the aftermath of a disaster. This study investigated psychological distress and morbidity in individuals who had experienced severe exposure to a wildfire disaster in a part of Greece. The study was a cross sectional case control of an adult population (18-65 years old). Face to face interviews were used in the collection of the data which were demographics, the type and number of losses and the Symptom Checklist 90-Revised for assessment of psychological symptoms. The results showed that those exposed to wildfires disaster scored significantly higher on the symptoms of somatization, depression, anxiety, hostility, phobic anxiety, and paranoia; had significantly more symptoms of psychopathology and were more distressed, compared to controls. Risk factors for potential psychiatric cases were those exposed to disaster; those who had lower education, and those who were widowed. It was concluded that wildfires may cause considerable psychological symp...

From February to May 1997, three devastating earthquakes occurred in rural areas of north and east of Iran. Considering the three consequent earthquakes in bad weather conditions and remoteness of the affected areas, the overall performance of the rescue and relief operations was excellent. In all these earthquakes 95 per cent of people were rescued within first 24 hours and by 48 hours all the affected people were settled in 70,000 tents as temporary shelters. Because of severe winter in north of Iran, reconstruction started one month after the earthquakes and 21,000 new dwellings (out of 29,000 planned) were built before the cold season started. The new seismically designed units are one storey with area of 40 to 60m 2. The units were built by the owner with free interest loans, subsidized construction material and under government supervision. By July 1997, 1,500 units and by January 1998, 20,000 units were finished and people were moved in. The overall evaluation of the rescue operation to reconstruction process is satisfactory and the lessons learned during the Manjil earthquake were useful and played a key role in this success. This reconstruction method now so far proved to be successful in rural areas and can be used in future in order to save time, money and reduce social consequences. Gives a brief description of these earthquakes from seismological and structural point of view, evaluation of the rescue and relief operation and reconstruction programme.

A community survey was conducted in Al awayda village, one of eight villages selected for study in the rural Gezira province of Sudan. The objective of the survey was to identify the main health, social and economic problems of people in rural areas and to set priorities as a first phase in a rural development program. The results showed a

Se realiza la caracterización de lo que se asume como un desastre en acervos documentales, sus elementos distintivos y sus dimensiones en cuanto a nivel de impacto; a partir de ello, se dan pautas para poder brindar los “primeros auxilios” a fondos y colecciones siniestrados.