n recent years, there has been a great deal of interest in emergency preparedness. This is especially true in light of concerns about a pandemic of the H5N1 virus, the “bird flu.”* Ethical concerns include ensuring access to basic resources such as health care, and the duties of professionals to perform their task in the face of such events.1† Like other states, Oregon set out to establish an e...

The preparedness phase is crucial in the emergency management process for reaching an adequate level of readiness to react to potential threats and hazards. During this phase, emergency plans are developed to establish, among other procedures, evacuation and emergency escape routes. Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) can support and improve these procedures providing appropriate, ...

STUDY HYPOTHESIS Since the 1990s, Italian hospitals are required to comply with emergency disaster plans known as Emergency Plan for Massive Influx of Casualties. While various studies reveal that hospitals overall suffer from an insufficient preparedness level, the aim of this study was to better determine the preparedness level of Emergency Departments of Italian hospitals by assessing the kn...

Chemical incidents such as the methylisocyanate release at Bhopal and the aluminium sulphate incident in Lowermoor, Cornwall, are uncommon. However, five chemical incidents occurred in Somerset in 12 months between 1990 and 1991, and District Health Authorities are required to have plans to deal with such events. A survey of the plans held by the Consultants in Communicable Disease Control in S...

Disasters are quite experienced in our days. They are caused by floods, landslides, and building fires that is the main objective of this study. To cope with these unexpected events, precautions must be taken to protect human lives. The emphasis on disposal work focuses on the resolution of the evacuation problem in case of no-notice disaster. The problem of evacuation is listed as a dynamic ne...

In emergency planning, consideration of emergency priorities is a necessity. This paper presents new formulations of the facility location problem (FLP) and vehicle routing problem with time windows (VRPTW) with considerations of priority. Our models ensure that higher priority locations are considered before the lower priority ones, for both facility and routing decisions. The FLP is solved us...