Low-income immigrant Latinos are particularly vulnerable to disasters because they are both ill-prepared and disproportionately affected. Disaster preparedness programs that are culturally appropriate must be developed and tested. To develop such a program, we conducted 12 focus groups with low-income immigrant Latinos to understand their perceptions and understanding of disaster preparedness, ...

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...

In the aftermath of earthquakes, tsunamis, such as the 2011 Great East Japan Tsunami, caused enormous damage around the world. With the extreme disaster events of the past, nations improved disaster preparedness and response through sensors and tsunami early warning systems. Even with system usage, however, governments still need to warn the targeted citizens – who may be anywhere within the vu...

INTRODUCTION The large number casualties caused by the 1995 Great Hanshin and Awaji Earthquake created a massive demand for medical care. However, as area hospitals also were damaged by the earthquake, they were unable to perform their usual functions. Therefore, the care capacity was reduced greatly. Thus, the needs to: (1) transport a large number of injured and ill people out of the disaster...

The Great East Japan Earthquake caused many casualties and radiation contamination from the Fukushima nuclear power plant, and many problems still remain in the disaster area. The communication network was severely affected by the earthquake. The network disconnection greatly delayed the rescue work and isolated many residential areas. This lack of robust network connection has become one of th...

In post-disaster reconstruction the social aspects of housing provision are important for the success of both emergency shelters and permanent housing, particularly in settlements that have been permanently relocated or entirety rebuilt. The social dimensions of housing reconstruction after disaster are discussed in the context of the long-term effects of reconstruction after the Yungay, Peru E...

BACKGROUND Increases in blood pressure were reported in overworked public workers following the Mid-Niigata earthquake. This study aimed to compare blood pressure changes between public employees and the general population after the Great East Japan Earthquake of March 2011. METHODS We analyzed 1,776 individuals from the general population and 240 public employees of the town of Watari who re...

Earthquake is a natural disaster, which causes many psychological problems in survivors. Complicated grief is one of these sequelae. A devastating earthquake with a magnitude of 6.3 on the Richter scale destroyed the city of Bam in Kerman Province, Iran. Twenty-six thousand people were killed. Many of the survivors should have developed psychological problems in the aftermath of the disaster. I...

BACKGROUND Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a common psychological problem following natural disasters. Although pre-disaster risk factors are important for early detection and proactive support, the examination of such has been limited to sociodemographic factors, which were largely unaffected by the disasters. We examined the association between pre-disaster physical functioning and l...