Special Issue on the Worst Disaster Damage Scenarios Resulting National Crisis and Reduction

2016 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 815-815
Author(s):  
Yoshiaki Kawata ◽  

The 2011 Great East Japan earthquake has shown all too clearly that disaster management and mitigation measures seen from the viewpoint of protecting society are not sufficient for addressing a national crisis such as the projected Nankai Trough earthquake or Tokyo inland earthquake whose damage is expected to exceed the present estimated damage. Our study explores the weakness against disasters in how modern Japanese society uses “reverse thinking” in which investigates studying how large-scale disasters may adversely affect society and increase damage effectively. This process profiles the worst disaster scenarios that could conceivably lead to a national crisis. Classifying these worst scenarios, we suggest policies to the problems that are common to many scenarios, and we present action plans for individual problems. First, we conduct workshops for identifying damage magnification factors and evaluating their importance under the categories of human damage, property damage, and damage to social functions, unifying the awareness of research organization. Second, we have researchers on 1) mortality, 2) tsunami inundation, 3) liquefaction, 4) capital function, 5) evacuation, 6) required assistance, 7) lifelines, 8) high buildings, 9) information networks, 10) government systems, and 11) economic systems analyze damage magnification conditions due to hazard, vulnerability and measure aspects. Third, we sort potential final consequences and separate them based on commonality, and propose new policies and concrete action plans for preventing the occurrence of worst-case scenarios. This research is expected to give new paradigms in disaster management science and new ways of policy making and action planning that will minimize the undesirable consequences of catastrophic earthquake and tsunami and yield new knowledge on disaster processes and damage magnification scenarios. Most importantly, we conclude that it is necessary to have a new Japanese governmental organization, such as a Ministry of Disaster Resilience or a Disaster Resilience Management Agency, handle these national crises.

Noise Mapping ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Felix Schlatter ◽  
A. Piquerez ◽  
M. Habermacher ◽  
M. S. Ragettli ◽  
M. Röösli ◽  
...  

Abstract Large scale noise exposure modelling is used in epidemiological research projects as well as for noise mapping and strategic action planning. Such calculations should always be accompanied by an assessment of uncertainty, on the one hand to check for systematic deviations and on the other hand to investigate the sources of uncertainty to address them in future studies. Within the SiRENE (Short and Long Term Effects of Transportation Noise Exposure) project, a large scale nationwide assessment of Switzerland’s road, railway, and aircraft noise exposure was conducted for the year 2011. In the present follow-up study, we equipped 180 sleeping and/or living room windows with sound level meters for one week. The resulting dataset was used to validate noise exposure modelling within SiRENE. For the noise metric LDEN the comparison revealed a difference of 1.6 ± 5 dB(A) when taking all measurements into account. After removing measurement sites with noise mitigation measures not considered in the modelling, the difference to the calculation was reduced to 0.5 ± 4 dB(A). As major sources of uncertainty, the position accuracy and topicality of infrastructure and building geometries, the traffic modelling as well as the acoustic source and propagation models were identified.


2014 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 176-187 ◽  
Author(s):  
Reo Kimura ◽  
◽  
Haruo Hayashi ◽  
Shingo Suzuki ◽  
Kosuke Kobayashi ◽  
...  

The concept we propose for a disaster management literacy hub (DMLH) involves systemizing and generalizing disaster management literacy (DML) and discussing how to design such a DMLH where the general public and disaster responders share materials on DML. In the early 21stcentury, measures against large-scale earthquakes should essentially include both hardware disaster mitigation measures like the construction of appropriate structures and software measures like disaster preparedness among people and organizations such as the general public, disaster responders and related organizations. We define knowledge about disaster response management and competency as DML. Our analysis of documents on the incident command system (ICS), an emergency response system under the United States Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), found 56 positions of disaster responders in ICS defined by 35 actions required for four types of disaster response competency. The above analysis led us to propose that DML consist of three elements: knowledge for learning about disaster management and mitigation, skills required for effective disaster response, and basic competency and attitudes for coping with disasters. For conceptual DMLH design based on the Instructional Design (ID), we propose three types of learning:1 The general public and disaster responders learn audiovisually using training videos and materials and review tests on learn from videos.2 People who want to provide education and training at schools or in regions or municipalities with school teacher guidance/teaching plans learn how to do so.3 People learn DML by posting or searching for (collecting and arranging) materials.We discuss how to publish such learning programs, taking as a specific example a life reconstruction support system (to put disaster victims’ lives back in order) based on victims’ master database.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chyun-Fung Shi ◽  
Matthew C So ◽  
Sophie Stelmach ◽  
Arielle Earn ◽  
David J D Earn ◽  
...  

BACKGROUND The COVID-19 pandemic is the first pandemic where social media platforms relayed information on a large scale, enabling an “infodemic” of conflicting information which undermined the global response to the pandemic. Understanding how the information circulated and evolved on social media platforms is essential for planning future public health campaigns. OBJECTIVE This study investigated what types of themes about COVID-19 were most viewed on YouTube during the first 8 months of the pandemic, and how COVID-19 themes progressed over this period. METHODS We analyzed top-viewed YouTube COVID-19 related videos in English from from December 1, 2019 to August 16, 2020 with an open inductive content analysis. We coded 536 videos associated with 1.1 billion views across the study period. East Asian countries were the first to report the virus, while most of the top-viewed videos in English were from the US. Videos from straight news outlets dominated the top-viewed videos throughout the outbreak, and public health authorities contributed the fewest. Although straight news was the dominant COVID-19 video source with various types of themes, its viewership per video was similar to that for entertainment news and YouTubers after March. RESULTS We found, first, that collective public attention to the COVID-19 pandemic on YouTube peaked around March 2020, before the outbreak peaked, and flattened afterwards despite a spike in worldwide cases. Second, more videos focused on prevention early on, but videos with political themes increased through time. Third, regarding prevention and control measures, masking received much less attention than lockdown and social distancing in the study period. CONCLUSIONS Our study suggests that a transition of focus from science to politics on social media intensified the COVID-19 infodemic and may have weakened mitigation measures during the first waves of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is recommended that authorities should consider co-operating with reputable social media influencers to promote health campaigns and improve health literacy. In addition, given high levels of globalization of social platforms and polarization of users, tailoring communication towards different digital communities is likely to be essential.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mario Santana-Cibrian ◽  
Manuel Adrian Acuna-Zegarra ◽  
Jorge X. Velasco-Hernandez

On 23 and 30 March 2020 the Mexican Federal government implemented social distancing measures to mitigate the COVID-19 epidemic. We use a mathematical model to explore atypical transmission events within the confinement period, triggered by the timing and strength of short time perturbations of social distancing. We show that social distancing measures were successful in achieving a significant reduction of the effective contact rate in the early weeks of the intervention. However, "flattening the curve" had an undesirable effect, since the epidemic peak was delayed too far, almost to the government preset day for lifting restrictions (01 June 2020). If the peak indeed occurs in late May or early June, then the events of children's day and mother's day may either generate a later peak (worst case scenario), a long plateau with relatively constant but high incidence (middle case scenario) or the same peak date as in the original baseline epidemic curve, but with a post-peak interval of slower decay.


Panggung ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Andi Farid Hidayanto ◽  
Anna - Rulia

ABSTRACT Indonesia is a disaster-prone areas. To meet the logistical  needs of the victim  and the officer needed a common kitchen. Common kitchen that is generally in the form of tents, buildings used as shelters, or modified car. Common kitchen there is an emergency nature,  improvise, and how far from the disaster site. These problems need to design a common kitchen for natural disaster management,  which can meet the needs, the officer and the victim. In designing  methods Pahl and Beitz with steps Planning and explanation  of the task,  design concept,  design forms, and design details. Collecting  data using methods Individual  Questionnaire  and Focus Group Dis- cussion the results obtained attributes  required in the design. Results of the research is a com- mon kitchen design for a natural disaster  are portable, easily assembled and disassembled, can be set  up in various  locations  condition,  easy to operate, able to accommodate facilities  and needs. Common  kitchen  design  produced in the form  of large-scale  three-dimensional   model, a blueprint  for the technical  specifications,  and the protoype. Keywords: natural disasters;  design; soup kitchen;  portable.   ABSTRAK Indonesia merupakan daerah rawan bencana. Memenuhi kebutuhan logistik korban dan petugas diperlukan dapur umum. Dapur umum yang ada umumnya berupa tenda peleton, bangunan yang dijadikan posko, atau mobil yang dimodifikasi. Dapur umum yang ada sifatnya darurat, seadanya dan lokasinya jauh dari lokasi bencana. Dari masalah tersebut perlu desain dapur umum untuk penanggulangan bencana alam, yang bisa memenuhi kebutuhan, baik petugas maupun korban. Dalam mendesain menggunakan metode Pahl dan Beitz dengan langkah-langkah Perencanaan dan penjelasan tugas, Perancangan konsep, Perancangan bentuk, dan Perancangan detail. Pengumpulan data menggunakan metode Individual Questionnaire dan Focus Group Discussion yang hasilnya didapatkan atribut yang diperlukan dalam desain. Hasil dari penelitian berupa desain dapur umum untuk penanggulangan bencana alam yang portable, mudah dirakit dan dibongkar, dan dapat didirikan di lokasi yang beraneka kondisi, mudah dioperasikan, mampu menampung fasilitas dan kebutuhan. Desain dapur umum yang dihasilkan dalam bentuk model tiga dimensi berskala, blue print spesifikasi teknis, dan protoype. Kata kunci: bencana alam, desain, dapur umum, portable.


Author(s):  
H. Mohammadi ◽  
M. R. Delavar ◽  
M. A. Sharifi ◽  
M. D. Pirooz

Disaster risk is a function of hazard and vulnerability. Risk is defined as the expected losses, including lives, personal injuries, property damages, and economic disruptions, due to a particular hazard for a given area and time period. Risk assessment is one of the key elements of a natural disaster management strategy as it allows for better disaster mitigation and preparation. It provides input for informed decision making, and increases risk awareness among decision makers and other stakeholders. Virtual globes such as Google Earth can be used as a visualization tool. Proper spatiotemporal graphical representations of the concerned risk significantly reduces the amount of effort to visualize the impact of the risk and improves the efficiency of the decision-making process to mitigate the impact of the risk. The spatiotemporal visualization of tsunami waves for disaster management process is an attractive topic in geosciences to assist investigation of areas at tsunami risk. In this paper, a method for coupling virtual globes with tsunami wave arrival time models is presented. In this process we have shown 2D+Time of tsunami waves for propagation and inundation of tsunami waves, both coastal line deformation, and the flooded areas. In addition, the worst case scenario of tsunami on Chabahar port derived from tsunami modelling is also presented using KML on google earth.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jaclyn Marjorie Smith ◽  
Melvin Lathara ◽  
Hollis Wright ◽  
Brian Hill ◽  
Nalini Ganapati ◽  
...  

Abstract Background The affordability of next-generation genomic sequencing and the improvement of medical data management have contributed largely to the evolution of biological analysis from both a clinical and research perspective. Precision medicine is a response to these advancements that places individuals into better-defined subsets based on shared clinical and genetic features. The identification of personalized diagnosis and treatment options is dependent on the ability to draw insights from large-scale, multi-modal analysis of biomedical datasets. Driven by a real use case, we premise that platforms that support precision medicine analysis should maintain data in their optimal data stores, should support distributed storage and query mechanisms, and should scale as more samples are added to the system. Results We extended a genomics-based columnar data store, GenomicsDB, for ease of use within a distributed analytics platform for clinical and genomic data integration, known as the ODA framework. The framework supports interaction from an i2b2 plugin as well as a notebook environment. We show that the ODA framework exhibits worst-case linear scaling for array size (storage), import time (data construction), and query time for an increasing number of samples. We go on to show worst-case linear time for both import of clinical data and aggregate query execution time within a distributed environment. Conclusions This work highlights the integration of a distributed genomic database with a distributed compute environment to support scalable and efficient precision medicine queries from a HIPAA-compliant, cohort system in a real-world setting. The ODA framework is currently deployed in production to support precision medicine exploration and analysis from clinicians and researchers at UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine.


2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rd. Ahmad Buchari ◽  
Ivan Darmawan ◽  
Kurnia Muhamad Ramdhan

Disaster may occur anytime and anywhere, and is generally unpredictable. Therefore, the most important to do is disaster management to minimize any harmful impacts of disaster. To be more effective and efficient, it needs to involve all related parties. In regions, the relationship between village institutions is of high importance in disaster mitigation. This is because it is village administration (government) that is in direct relationship with community, and that the latter is one directly impacted by disasters in regions. Thus, in the context of disaster mitigation, the relationship between village institutions should be strengthened. Accordingly, the problem studied in the present research was, how is the strengthening of institutional relationships of villages in Garut Regency?. The research method used was a qualitative method. The data collection techniques used were interview and observation. Interview was conducted with village officials and Destana volunteers. And observation was performed in the field on the activities conducted relating to disaster mitigation measures in the four villages which were the research objects, namely, Pasawahan, Rancabango, Mekarjaya, and Karyamekar.The research result revealed that the institutions in the four villages have been good enough but still need to be strengthened in the context of disaster management. The four villages were vulnerable to disasters and have had Destana instrument as a guard of disaster management at village level. In view of the research result, it is suggested that village officials improve their disaster management by, among others, conducting socialization on disaster risks, ways of lessening disaster occurrences, and ways of minimizing losses in case a disaster really occurs. 


2015 ◽  
Vol 138 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jesse Austin-Breneman ◽  
Bo Yang Yu ◽  
Maria C. Yang

During the early stage design of large-scale engineering systems, design teams are challenged to balance a complex set of considerations. The established structured approaches for optimizing complex system designs offer strategies for achieving optimal solutions, but in practice suboptimal system-level results are often reached due to factors such as satisficing, ill-defined problems, or other project constraints. Twelve subsystem and system-level practitioners at a large aerospace organization were interviewed to understand the ways in which they integrate subsystems in their own work. Responses showed subsystem team members often presented conservative, worst-case scenarios to other subsystems when negotiating a tradeoff as a way of hedging against their own future needs. This practice of biased information passing, referred to informally by the practitioners as adding “margins,” is modeled in this paper with a series of optimization simulations. Three “bias” conditions were tested: no bias, a constant bias, and a bias which decreases with time. Results from the simulations show that biased information passing negatively affects both the number of iterations needed and the Pareto optimality of system-level solutions. Results are also compared to the interview responses and highlight several themes with respect to complex system design practice.


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