Slam Technology on Disaster Response

Disaster response demands rapid, accurate, and comprehensive situational awareness. This study explores the potential of Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) technology to enhance disaster response efforts. By integrating sensors and algorithms, SLAM enables autonomous systems to create detailed maps of disaster-stricken areas while simultaneously determining their own location. This research investigates the application of SLAM in various disaster scenarios, assesses its performance in challenging conditions, and analyzes its potential to improve search and rescue, damage assessment, and resource allocation. The findings highlight the advantages of SLAM in providing real-time data, supporting decision-making, and increasing the efficiency of disaster response operations.

Path Selection in Disaster Response Management Based on Q-learning

Suitable rescue path selection is very important to rescue lives and reduce the loss of disasters, and has been a key issue in the field of disaster response management. In this paper, we present a path selection algorithm based on Q-learning for disaster response applications. We assume that a rescue team is an agent, which is operating in a dynamic and dangerous environment and needs to find a safe and short path in the least time. We first propose a path selection model for disaster response management, and deduce that path selection based on our model is a Markov decision process. Then, we introduce Q-learning and design strategies for action selection and to avoid cyclic path. Finally, experimental results show that our algorithm can find a safe and short path in the dynamic and dangerous environment, which can provide a specific and significant reference for practical management in disaster response applications.

Synergistic Integration of Detailed Meteorological and Community Information for Evacuation from Weather-Related Disasters: Proposal of a ‘‘Disaster Response Switch’’

Meteorological information used for disaster prevention has developed rapidly in terms of both type and specificity.The latest forecasting models can predict weather with very high resolutions that can characterize disaster risk at the local level.However,this development can lead to an overdependency on the information and a wait-and-see attitude by the public.At the same time,residents share and use various types of information for disaster response,such as local conditions,in addition to official disaster information.Our research in Japan verified the practicality and efficiency of synergistically integrating these types of information by examining actual evacuation cases.The current numerical forecasting models sufficiently identify locality from the viewpoint of various administrative scales such as prefectures,municipalities,and school districts,but the improvements to these models have failed to improve residents’judgment in successful evacuation cases.We therefore analyzed the relationship between meteorological information and residents’disaster response and confirmed that they were strongly correlated and were contributing factors in preventing disasters.We revealed differences between a community’s disaster prevention culture and the disaster information provided.This led us to propose a new concept in community disaster prevention that we call the‘‘disaster response switch,’’which can serve as a data-driven risk management tool for communities when used in combination with advanced meteorological disaster information.

Near-Real-Time Analysis of Publicly Communicated Disaster Response Information

Analysis of a disaster event can identify strengths and weaknesses of the response implemented by the disaster management system;however, analysis does not typically occur until after the response phase is over.The result is that knowledge gained can only benefit future responses rather than the response under investigation. This article argues that there is an opportunity to conduct analysis while the response is operational due to the increasing availability of information within hours and days of a disaster event. Hence, this article introduces a methodology for analyzing publicly communicated disaster response information in near-real-time. A classification scheme for the disaster information needs of the public has been developed to facilitate analysis and has led to the establishment of best observed practice standards for content and timeliness. By comparing the information shared with the public within days of a disaster to these standards,information gaps are revealed that can be investigated further. The result is identification of potential deficiencies in communicating critical disaster response information to the public at a time when they can still be corrected.

Medical students as disaster volunteers:A strategy for improving emergency department surge response in times of crisis

Disasters resulting in mass casualty incidents can rapidly overwhelm the Emergency Department(ED).To address critical manpower needs in the ED’s disaster response,medical student involvement has been advocated.Duke-National University of Singapore Medical School is in proximity to Singapore General Hospital and represents an untapped manpower resource.With appropriate training and integration into ED disaster workflows,medical students can be leveraged upon as qualified manpower.This review provides a snapshot of the conceptualization and setting up of the Disaster Volunteer Corps-a programme where medical students were recruited to receive regular training and assessment from emergency physicians on disaster response principles to fulfil specific roles during a crisis,while working as part of a team under supervision.We discuss overall strategy and benefits to stakeholders,emphasizing the close symbiotic relationship between academia and healthcare services.

Advancing the Field of Disaster Response Management:Toward a Design Science Approach

Multiorganizational response to emergencies and disasters requires collaboration.How to improve the collective response is therefore an essential question,but not easy to answer.In disaster research,normative research with a focus on providing evidence for how to improve professional practice has traditionally received less attention than explanatory ones.The aim of this article,using insights from design science where normative research is more common,is to suggest a complementary approach to response management research.Our approach,which combines experimental and explanatory research,is applied to a study of goal alignment.Goal alignment among response actors is often recommended despite literature’s contradictory evidence regarding its effect.We conducted an experiment with 111 participants,who,in groups of three,played a computer game under one of two conditions(goal alignment or not).Our results show that aligning goals did not improve the outcome in the game.Although this may serve as a counterargument to implementing goal alignment interventions,there are concerns with such conclusions.These reservations include,but are not limited to,the lack of validated models to use in experiments.Nevertheless,our suggested research approach and the goal alignment experiment highlight the importance of testing interventions and their effectiveness before implementation.

Women on boards of directors and corporate philanthropic disaster response

In this study we conduct firm-level analysis of the impact of women in the boardroom on corporate philanthropic disaster response(CPDR).We propose that CPDR contains agency costs and that female directors are more likely to restrain the associated agency costs of CPDR.We predict a negative relationship between the ratio of women on boards of directors(WoBs) and philanthropic contribution,which is weaker in firms with political connections and stronger in firms with better-developed institutional environments.Data was collected from the philanthropic responses to the Wenchuan earthquake on May 12,2008 of privately-owned listed Chinese firms.The results support the hypothesized negative relationship,which is found to be weaker in firms with political connections.However,marketization-related factors do not significantly moderate this relationship.These results indicate that CPDR contains agency costs and that female directors do not facilitate the corporate donation process,but rather evaluate the benefits and restrain the associated agency costs.

Robotics for Disaster Warning and Response in the UAE

Over the past decade,robot systems have become more commonplace and increasingly autonomous.In recent years,first responders have started to use novel technologies at the scene of disasters in order to save more lives.Technologies are also used for early warning,surveillance and to enhance disaster response capabilities.Increasingly,technologies like robots are used for warning people,monitoring compliance,SAR(Search and Rescue),damage assessment,to search disaster sites.In the case of emergency situations,emergency guidance robots are sent inside of buildings or deployed to search for victims,guide evacuees to safety and other unsafe response tasks.This paper explores the application of robotics for disaster warning and response,benefits and factors influencing deployment of robots,in order to justify the effective usage of robotics for disaster management in the UAE(United Arab Emirates).A pilot study is conducted to achieve this aim,with 24 participants selected through random sampling from three emergency organizations in the country.To increase knowledge and usage of robotics for future disaster warning and response in UAE,it is needful to continue to highlight the role of robotics deployment in helping to minimize risks and disaster impacts on first responders and the public.

Evacuating Populations with Special Needs Using Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) Method and GIS

The present study is focused on the development of a methodology pertaining to the evacuation plans improvement in a scenario where infrastructures are located in residential settlements that might be threatened by fires;the aforesaid settlements are oftentimes found to be resided by vulnerable population groups, namely elderly people, handicapped people and children. The study pinpoints Evacuation Assembly Points (E.A.P.s) on the outskirts of their settlement and examines the evacuation routes accessibility and safety by way of utilizing Geographic Information Systems (GISs). What is more, our meticulously planned methodology combining quantitative analysis, as well as participatory planning, allows for improve strategies targeted on how to effectively ensure the vulnerable population groups evacuation. The study’s results exhibit how vital it is to integrate technological tools in combination with each community’s partaking in the process of preparing and implementing evacuation plans. The study’s findings furthermore suggest the need to further research the evolution of dynamic evacuation models, which would take the ever-changing and ever-evolving needs of vulnerable population groups into account.

Autonomous Eyewitness Identification by Employing Linguistic Rules forDisaster Events

Social networking platforms provide a vital source for disseminating information across the globe,particularly in case of disaster.These platforms are great mean to find out the real account of the disaster.Twitter is an example of such platform,which has been extensively utilized by scientific community due to its unidirectional model.It is considered a challenging task to identify eyewitness tweets about the incident from the millions of tweets shared by twitter users.Research community has proposed diverse sets of techniques to identify eyewitness account.A recent state-of-the-art approach has proposed a comprehensive set of features to identify eyewitness account.However,this approach suffers some limitation.Firstly,automatically extracting the feature-words remains a perplexing task against each feature identified by the approach.Secondly,all identified features were not incorporated in the implementation.This paper has utilized the language structure,linguistics,and word relation to achieve automatic extraction of feature-words by creating grammar rules.Additionally,all identified features were implemented which were left out by the state-of-the-art model.A generic approach is taken to cover different types of disaster such as earthquakes,floods,hurricanes,and wildfires.The proposed approach was then evaluated for all disaster-types,including earthquakes,floods,hurricanes,and fire.Based on the static dictionary,the Zahra et al.approach was able to produce an F-Score value of 0.92 for Eyewitness identification in the earthquake category.The proposed approach secured F-Score values of 0.81 in the same category.This score can be considered as a significant score without using a static dictionary.

Optimizing Response Strategies of Healthcare System in a Large-scale Disaster

Urban infrastructures are invariably constituted by social and technical components whose capacity to withstand crisis is determined by the resilience of their sociotechnical structures.This study aims to apply the principles of sociotechnical resilience in modeling and simulating disaster response in urban areas.Drawing on a case study of Jakarta,Indonesia,our study focuses on the role of hospitals as part of healthcare infrastructure in response to a large-scale disaster.Each hospital is modeled as a coordinated location with a certain amount of resources,primarily in terms of medical staff.We perform sensitivity analysis through Monte Carlo simulations to observe the impacts of various response strategies,disaster severity,and communication duration on system resilience.The results show that centralized systems are generally more suitable for dealing with low disaster severity,while the decentralized strategy performs better during a disaster with worse impacts.Additionally,the time taken for communication and coordination can significantly affect the performance of centralized systems.By simulating various scenarios,parameters,and recovery protocols,the model we developed can help policymakers,city planners,and other stakeholders design proper response strategies suitable to their structural conditions and available resources during a large-scale disaster in urban cities.

Strategy for Effective Evacuation of Pedestrians Using GIS and GPS Measurements

During a residential settlement evacuation, a large number of individuals do not have access to any private means of transport in order to be evacuated;these people are assembled at Evacuation Assembly Points (E.A.P.s), so as to be picked up, gathered and evacuated by the competent authorities. The present study aims to evaluate whether some pedestrian assembly points are adequate for these people’s fastest assembly, taking into account the demographic characteristics of the studied population and the incline of the studied area’s ground. In order for said fastest assembly and evacuation to be achieved Geographical Information Systems (G.I.S.) and GPS measurements have been employed. The suggested method has led to the creation of the households’ classification maps based upon their inhabitants’ response time in order to improve the pre-existent Intervention Teams’ contingency plans. First, in order to identify the demographic characteristics of the studied population, we have employed the field survey method;second, we have determined the fastest and ergo optimal evacuation routes using the Dijkstra algorithm. What is more, the results hereof prove that it is feasible that the time it takes to gather the pedestrians be optimized by way of choosing the best evacuation point, whilst a method of large crowds’ evacuation in groups has been developed. The latter could constitute a useful tool for Civil Protection Agents and responders.

The 2023 Earthquake in Türkiye and Implications for China's Response to Catastrophe

On 6 February 2023,two 7.8 magnitude earthquakes consecutively hit south-central Türkiye,causing great concern from all governments,the United Nations,academia,and all sectors of society.Analyses indicate that there is also a high possibility of strong earthquakes with a magnitude of 7.8 or above occurring in the western region of China in the coming years.China is a country that is highly susceptible to catastrophic disasters such as earthquakes,floods,and other natural calamities,which can cause significant damages to both human life and property,as well as widespread impacts on the society.Currently,China's capacity for disaster prevention and control is still limited.In order to effectively reduce the impact of catastrophic disasters,ensure the safety of people's lives and property to the greatest extent possible,maintain social stability in high-risk areas,and ensure high-quality and sustainable regional development,it is urgent to improve the seismic resistance level of houses and critical infrastructure in high earthquake risk zones and increase the earthquake-resistant design level of houses in high-risk fault areas with frequent seismic activities;significantly enhance the ability to defend against extreme weather and ocean disasters in economically developed areas along the southeastern coast,as well as the level of fortification in response to extreme meteorological and hydrological disasters of coastal towns/cities and key infrastructure;vigorously enhance the emergency response capacity and disaster risk prevention level in western and ethnic minority regions;comprehensively improve the defense level of residential areas and major infrastructure in high geological hazard risk zones with flash floods,landslides,and mudslides;systematically promote national disaster prevention and mitigation education;and greatly enhance the societal disaster risk reduction ability,including catastrophic insurance.

A Small “Think Tank” Integrating Foresight,Innovation,and Practicability: A Review on Practice and Reflections on Local Governments' Response to Major Natural Disasters

Practice and Reflections on Local Governments’Response to Major Natural Disasters Authors:He Zhen et al.Year:2014Publisher:People’s Publishing House ISBN:9787010137049(478 pages,in Chinese)China is a countr y with frequent occur rence of major natural disasters.Especially since the 21st century,natural disasters。

CHINA'S EMERGENCY RESPONSE SYSTEM FOR NATURAL DISASTERS

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Disaster Risk Governance as Assemblage: The Chilean Framework of the 1985 San Antonio Earthquake

The purpose of this article is to analyze disaster risk governance through assemblage theory, identifying how-during the altered political context of a military regime with a centralized disaster risk management as in the case of Chile in 1985-new actors emerge during the disaster response phase as a de/reterritorialization effect that is influenced by their agencies and relationships, disfiguring the edges of the assemblage. Based on this conceptualization, it is possible to investigate the interactions between the different actors, their power relations, and their reconfigurations in the governance exercise. For this purpose, we reviewed the response phase of the 1985 San Antonio earthquake that affected the central zone of Chile, where strategic functions, institutions, and forms of power are concentrated.To describe and visualize the actors during the response phase in the disaster risk governance framework, a map of actors was developed that identifies the existing relationships and their different weights. The central scale proved to be dominant and occupied a political space that was transfigured by its overrepresentation-enforced by allies such as the banking system and business associations-enhancing a neoliberal agenda. The leaps in scale from the central scale to the local scale cancel agency of the last, destabilizing its capacity to deal with the effects of the earthquake and isolating it from the decision-making processes. Consequently,delays in providing aid demonstrate that authoritarian governments do not provide better management in the disaster response phase.

Challenges Associated with Creeping Disasters in Disaster Risk Science and Practice:Considering Disaster Onset Dynamics

In this article,we set out to reconcile a general conceptualization of disaster temporalities by drawing on the epitome example of a creeping disaster,namely famine.Our argument is driven by the recognition that slowly manifesting disaster impacts pose distinct challenges for decision makers and researchers while there is a tendency for the disaster literature to overlook the role of disaster onset dynamics.More specifically and as a starting point,we identify four key themes that merit particular attention when dealing with creeping disasters:(1)our understanding of disaster as a phenomenon;(2)measurement and operationalization;(3)early warning and response;and(4)disaster management and termination.By integrating conceptual discussions of disaster with famine scholarship—a phenomenon often excluded from mainstream disaster research—this article provides fresh perspectives on disaster science as well as a number of implications for how we think about disaster risk reduction.

A Proposed Methodological Approach for Considering Community Resilience in Technology Development and Disaster Management Pilot Testing

Nowadays,resilience has become an indispensable term in several aspects and areas of research and life.Reaching consensus on what actually constitutes"resilience,""community,"and"community resilience"is still a task that guarantees a vivid exchange of opinions,sometimes escalating into debates,both in the scientific community and among practitioners.Figuring out how to practically apply resilience principles goes even a step further.This study attempts to circumvent the need for a universal agreement on the definition of"community resilience,"which may still be immature,if not impossible,at this time.We accomplish this by proposing a practical methodological approach with concrete methods on how to agree and implement commonly accepted community resilience principles in the context of technology development and pilot testing for disaster management.The proposed approach was developed,tested,and validated in the context of the Horizon 2020 EU-funded project Search and Rescue.Major aspects of the approach,along with considerations for further improvement and adaptation in different contexts,are addressed in the article.

Quick Responses of Canadian Social Scientists to COVID-19:A Case Study of the 2020 Federal COVID-19-Specific Grant Recipients

COVID-19 prompted an abundance of independent and collaborative quick response disaster research(QRDR)initiatives globally.The 2020 federal COVID-19-driven granting opportunities initiated the first official QRDR effort in Canadian history,engaging social scientists to rapidly address the pandemic-related societal influences.This study aims to portray the landscape of this nascent social science QRDR workforce through the first round of federal COVID-19-specific grant recipients.A case study approach was employed to analyze 337 social science projects with 1119 associated researchers,examining the demographic structure of these COVID-19-driven social science researchers and their research projects'characteristics.Accordingly,the findings are presented through the following two streams:(1)From a researcher perspective,this case study describes researcher typology,geographic location,primary discipline,and educational background,highlighting the diverse characteristics of social sciences researchers,and uneven research development across Canada.(2)From a research project perspective,this case study identifies and synthesizes research project subjects,themes,collaborations,and Canadian distinctions,emphasizing the need for galvanizing cooperation and focusing on uniquely Canadian contexts.The case study illustrates challenges associated with data curation that pose barriers to developing a nuanced understanding of the Canadian social science community COVID-19 research landscape.Consequently,the case study develops three recommendations to improve QRDR development in Canada:promoting information transparency,dissemination,and updates;improving hazards and disaster research workforce evaluation;and enhancing multi-stakeholder cooperation.

From Planning to Execution:Delving into the Crucial Role and Challenges of HEPPUs in Hospital Emergency Management

In 2018,the Emergency,Disasters and Ambulatory Transportation General Department at the Ministry of Health in Saudi Arabia established hospital emergency planning and preparation units(HEPPUs)to improve hospitals’ability to respond to disasters.This study aimed to gain an in-depth understanding of the functioning of HEPPUs within hospitals in the western region of Saudi Arabia.Qualitative research methodology and semistructured interviews with emergency managers were employed.Four key themes emerged from the data:establishment and evolution,roles and responsibilities,communication and coordination,and challenges and limitations.The findings emphasize the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration,effective communication,and responses to challenges in enhancing healthcare resilience and disaster management.This study contributes insights and offers practical recommendations for improving the preparedness and performance of HEPPUs within Saudi Arabian hospitals.