The Bandar Bushehr, Iran earthquake of April 9, 2013 gravely illustrates how disaster-prone areas of the world are compounding their risk of disaster and major public health emergencies when there is a geographical convergence of natural and technological hazards. Scientists must emphasize to policy makers that ever-increasing regional industrialization and the broader introduction of nuclear f...

Background: The 2008 Wenchuan earthquake triggered many rapid and long runout landslides, which directly caused great loss of property and human lives and were responsible for a large percentage of total damages caused by the earthquake. It is very important for the purposes of landslide disaster prevention and mitigation to understand the earthquake triggered mechanism of initiation and motion...

This paper investigated the belief of the news of impending earthquake from any source in the context of the Cry Wolf hypothesis as well as the belief of the news of any other imminent disaster from any source. We were also interested in the correlation between preparedness, risk perception and antecedents. This explorative study consisted of interviews, literature and Internet reviews. Samplin...

BACKGROUND Long-term disability following natural disasters significantly burdens survivors and the impacted society. Nevertheless, medical rehabilitation programming has been historically neglected in disaster relief planning. 'NHV' is a rehabilitation services program comprised of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) (N), local health departments (H), and professional rehabilitation voluntee...

On January 25, 1 week after the most devastating earthquake in Los Angeles history, the Southern California Hospital Council released the following status report: 928 patients evacuated from damaged hospitals. 805 beds available (136 critical, 669 noncritical). 7,757 patients treated/released from EDs. 1,496 patients treated/admitted to hospitals. 61 dead. 9,309 casualties. Where do we go from ...

Global Disaster Alert Coordination System (GDACS) is a cooperation framework of the United Nations, the European Commission and disaster managers around the world, aiming to exchange disaster information and coordinate relief in the first phase of a disaster’s aftermath. As for a subject for analyzing information architecture, GDACS is quite an interesting system to analyze because it has vario...

After an earthquake, disaster sites pose a multitude of health and safety concerns. A rescue operation of people trapped in the ruins after an earthquake disaster requires a series of intelligent behavior, including planning. For a successful rescue operation, given a limited number of available actions and regulations, the role of planning in rescue operations is crucial. Fortunately, recent d...

Recent disasters such as the 2003 SARS outbreak, the 2004 Asian tsunami, the 2005 Kashmir/Pakistan earthquake and 2005 hurricanes Katrina and Rita clearly identified the shortcomings of IT solutions for disaster rescue and recovery. Of particular note was the accompanying disaster of the lack of viable or deployed data management solutions, specifically information integration and information s...

Recovery funding from disasters is a complex system of cooperation between formal and informal stakeholders. Network analysis can shed light into the underlying mechanisms that occur during the post-disaster recovery phase. In this study, we apply a data-driven approach on online news articles and other publicly available information about the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake to construct networks o...

BACKGROUND The Great East Japan Earthquake of March 11, 2011, and subsequent tsunami took nearly 20 000 lives in Tohoku, the northeastern part of Japan's main island. Most victims were either carried away by the tsunami or drowned. The ability to collect blood was disrupted on the Pacific coast of Tohoku. Inland areas were less affected, but allogeneic blood collected in Tohoku is tested at the...