On Friday, 14 April 2017, a heavy flash flood occurred in North-West of Iran that affected 12 cities; the most severely affected and damaged ones were Ajabshir and Azarshahr in East Azerbaijan Province. These Flash floods claimed the lives of 42 people. Major casualties occurred when the victims were trapped inside their cars. According to preliminary analyses, flood damages in East Azerbaijan ...

The Internet is widely valued for distributing control over information to a lateral network of individuals, but it is not clear how these networks can most effectively organize themselves. This chapter presents a descriptive study of distributed networks of volunteers that emerged online following Hurricane Katrina. Online communities responded to the disaster by facilitating the distribution ...

Disasters can cause many casualties and considerable destruction mainly because of ineffective preventive measures, incomplete preparedness, and weak relief logistics systems. After catastrophic events happen, quick and effective response is of great importance, so as to having an efficient logistic plan for distributing needed relief commodities efficiently and fairly among affected people. In...

All emergency response service providers in developed countries are using Information and Communication Technology (ICT) tools and technologies. Recent studies shows majority of the public protection and disaster relief (PPDR) organizations are using ICT services in very heterogeneous and customized delivery methods. Many organizations have tailored processes, contracts and technologies. PPDR o...

INTRODUCTION: The present article aimed to study field observations of the 2017 Sefid Sang earthquake, Razavi Khorasan Province, Iran, measuring 6 on the Richter scale with the approach of assessing the behaviors and performing a short analysis on the rescue and relief operations. METHODS: This qualitative study has followed the conceptual analysis approach to research. The sample population w...

Do voters effectively hold elected officials accountable for policy decisions? Using data on natural disasters, government spending, and election returns, we show that voters reward the incumbent presidential party for delivering disaster relief spending, but not for investing in disaster preparedness spending. These inconsistencies distort the incentives of public officials, leading the govern...

In this paper, we present a model that identifies seven success factors for the development of crowdsourcing platforms for disaster recovery. This model integrates two existing theories. The first theory focuses on success factors of crowdsourcing initiatives in general. The second theory states how disaster relief operations can improve when they take the psychological components of resilience...

Information delivery and sharing are vital for survival during and following a disaster. Information and communication technology (ICT) is supposed to support these processes effectively. To promote information delivery and sharing, the primary actors in charge of conducting a disaster relief operation at all levels of government have invested in developing a supposedly disaster-proof communica...

Disastrous events are one of the most challenging applications of multihop ad hoc networks due to possible damages of existing telecommunication infrastructure.The deployed cellular communication infrastructure might be partially or completely destroyed after a natural disaster. Multihop ad hoc communication is an interesting alternative to deal with the lack of communications in disaster scena...