INTRODUCTION In Japan, participants in the disaster-specific medical transportation system have received ongoing training since 2002, incorporating lessons learned from the Great Hanshin Earthquake. The Great East Japan Earthquake occurred on March 11, 2011, and the very first disaster-specific medical transport was performed. This article reviews in detail the central government's control and ...

Between August 15th and 19th, 2011, eight 5th-year medical students from the Keio University School of Medicine had the opportunity to visit the Peking University School of Medicine and hold a discussion session titled "What is the most effective way to educate people for survival in an acute disaster situation (before the mental health care stage)?" During the session, ...

Several web sites providing disaster-related information failed repeatedly after the Great East Japan Earthquake, due to flash crowds caused by Twitter users. Twitter, which was intensively used for information sharing in the aftermath of the earthquake, relies on URL shorteners like bit.ly to offset its strict limit on message length. In order to mitigate the flash crowds, we examine the curre...

Objective: “5.12” Wenchuan Earthquake killed 70,000 people and left more than 90,000 people injured seriously. This study was to analyze the wound features and early treatments in Wenchuan earthquake victims and investigate treatment strategies in major disasters, to provide a reference to future disaster rescue. Methods: Total of 1420 earthquake patients who were admitted to Deyang People’s Ho...

We examined cumulative and specific types of trauma exposure as predictors of distress and impairment following a multifaceted community disaster. Approximately 3 months after the 8.8 magnitude earthquake, tsunami, and subsequent looting in Bío Bío, Chile, face-to-face interviews were conducted in 5 provinces closest to the epicenter. Participants (N = 1,000) were randomly selected using milita...

BACKGROUND The Wenchuan earthquake in China caused shock and grief worldwide. Sudden bereavement caused by the earthquake led to physical disorders as well as psychological disturbances in the bereaved individuals. The bereaved had a high risk for complicated grief (CG), which may have led to significant distress and impairment in their health. However, there was few available studies on CG amo...

The present study investigated the role of intensive care units (ICU) during disasters, including the responses of our ICU following the Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11, 2011. Our ICU comprises 8 beds for postoperative inpatients and those with rapidly deteriorating conditions; 20 beds in an emergency unit for critically ill patients; and 17 beds for neonates. It is important to secure ...

Problems on earthquake disasters in rural area are discussed through the experiences due to recent damaging earthquakes attacked Hokkaido, northern Japan. In the field of earthquake disaster engineering, main concern has been focused on the problems in the densely populated area in large cities. It is obvious that in a large city seismic risk is very high because of concentration of vulnerable ...

Background: In 2008, the Southern California Earthquake Center in collaboration with the U.S. Geological Survey Earthquake Hazards Program launched the first annual Great ShakeOut, the largest earthquake preparedness drill in the history of the United States. Materials and Methods: We collected online survey data from 2052 campaign registrants to assess how people participated, whether audience...

As earthquake research has expanded beyond the geophysics community to include the requirements of rapid emergency response and disaster management, the computational infrastructure that supports this research must also expand to deliver both data and analysis tools to a wide variety of users. In this article, we investigate service-based Geographical Information System (GIS) technologies that ...