The earthquake which struck Eastern Japan in 2011 caused many casualties. The ratio of the mode of evacuation in areas damaged by the earthquake varied depending on geographical conditions, but cars were the primary mode in many areas. Although the Japanese government has provided guidelines to assist evacuation during a natural disaster, the disaster in 2011 demonstrated that the behavior of refugees did not adhere to these guidelines. This study analyzes refugees’ behavior during evacuations using a dataset gathered through surveys of refugees in 2011. By analyzing their evacuation speed and distance based on their geographical conditions, the necessary distance and available distance for their evacuation are calculated in this study, following which an optimized distance for evacuation is derived. Analyzing various modes of evacuation, such as walking, bicycling, and car travel, this study identifies thresholds for an efficient mode of evacuation based on evacuation distance. In conclusion, this study finds that a walking-based evacuation plan is necessary in most areas, whereas vehicles are required in areas where it is impossible to evacuate by walking.

The 2018 Sulawesi Earthquake and Tsunami was triggered by an earthquake with a magnitude of Mw 7.4. The event severely damaged coastal areas along the coast of Palu. Thus, mitigation plans are urgently needed. We assessed the effectiveness of an elevated road for tsunami protection along the coast of Palu. Delft3D and Delft Dashboard were used to simulate hypothetical earthquake-generated tsunamis. There are four fault failure scenarios based on three tectonic faults: the North Sulawesi Megathrust, North Makassar Strait, and Central Makassar Strait. The model simulates the tsunami propagation from the source to the coast. The highest tsunami is generated by a combination of the North and Central Makassar Straits. The effectiveness of an elevated road was assessed for four scenarios. Simulation was conducted with various heights of an elevated road along the coast of Palu, and Palu Barat and Ulujadi districts. These districts were chosen since they are densely populated and were severely damaged or destroyed by the 2018 Sulawesi Earthquake and Tsunami. The optimum tsunami impact reduction is obtained when the height of the seawall is no less than 6 m, which can reduce up to 81.7% of total inundation area without any protection.

With the accumulation of meteorological big data, data-driven models for short-term precipitation forecasting have shown increasing promise. We focus on Koopman operator analysis, which is a data-driven scheme to discover governing laws in observed data. We propose a method to apply this scheme to phenomena accompanying advection currents such as precipitation. The proposed method decomposes time evolutions of the phenomena between advection currents under a velocity field and changes in physical quantities under Lagrangian coordinates. The advection currents are estimated by kinematic analysis, and the changes in physical quantities are estimated by Koopman operator analysis. The proposed method is applied to actual precipitation distribution data, and the results show that the development and decay of precipitation are properly captured relative to conventional methods and that stable predictions over long periods are possible.

Objective: Disasters result in impacts to the health and wellbeing of members of affected communities, as well as damage to healthcare infrastructure. These impacts are not experienced equally, and often disproportionately affect those facing higher health, social and economic risks even before a disaster strikes. Recovery planning provides an opportunity for pre-emptive consideration of how to address pre-existing health vulnerabilities and disparities, as well as insufficient and/or inequitable access to healthcare, with the resources and momentum that often come following a disaster. After the 2004 and 2005 hurricane seasons, Florida began requiring coastal jurisdictions to plan for recovery. This study sought to identify if and how Florida jurisdictions have integrated health-sector restoration and revitalization strategies into local disaster recovery planning. Design: Plans were collected and coded using content analysis methods. Setting: Florida, USA. Participants: 16 county-level disaster recovery and post-disaster redevelopment plans. Results: While nearly three-quarters of plans described actions to address both short-term healthcare and behavioral health needs, the majority of recovery plans lacked long-term health-sector recovery activities and approaches to collect and analyze data to guide health-related recovery efforts. Moreover, plans did not explicitly call for evaluating health-sector recovery strategies. Conclusions: Additional resources are necessary to ensure local jurisdictions integrate short- and long-term health-sector strategies into disaster recovery planning.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is an emerging disease that has continued from 2019 to the present. It has affected every country both major and minor pictures. Therefore, effective management reflecting the lessons learned is necessary and urgent for the management. Disaster management consists of three key periods including the mitigation and preparedness phase, response phase, and recovery and rehabilitation phase through clear-fast-safe and build-back-better concepts. Innovation by new application is one of the important tools in such issue. Previous research was found to paying attention only to recording the number of infected cases, resources, and basic self-care. Severe epidemic situations make a service place an inadequate healthcare provider. Therefore, disaster management that encourage infected people to manage themselves is essential. The research team developed tele health self-management (THSM) as a medium for communication of management and self-care guidelines during stay at home isolation and awaiting hospitalization. A proposed guideline is expected to supporting the caring of patients with COVID-19 and providing effective self-management services, reduce the loss rate, and improve the quality of life during infection.

The Hanford Site in Washington State is the most contaminated area in the United States and is one of the biggest decontamination efforts in the world. During the Cold War, the area was shrouded by secrecy, including denials of any dangers to the environment, workers, and local communities downwind of the site. Efforts to regenerate neighboring areas are ongoing, including establishing the area as a national park and national monument, investing in local communities, plans to re-establish a town, encouraging viticulture and other agricultural activities, and encouraging the return of spawning salmon to the Columbia River. Rising costs and delays have hampered efforts in the clean-up process. Through an online survey, this study examines the local people’s attitudes toward these various efforts at urban and agricultural regeneration, their attitude toward information from the authorities, and budgeting for decontamination. It was found that there is widespread support for the establishment of park status for the site and that organic certification of produce has had a positive impact on purchasing intentions. However, there remains a degree of skepticism about the information about the decontamination process, and support for budgeting plans falls largely along partisan lines.

Locally known as dzuds, extreme winter weather events that are believed to arise from the interaction of hydrometeorological and climate drivers and socioeconomic forces have become increasingly frequent in Mongolia in the past few decades. As they cut off access to forage, these extreme events are associated with mass livestock deaths. Since the socioeconomic changes in the 1990s, and due to climate change, Mongolia has weathered major dzuds in 1999–2000, 2000–2001, 2001–2002, and 2009–2010. They wiped out about 4 million (11.6%), 5 million (18.5%), 3 million (12.3%), and 10 million (22%) heads of livestock, respectively. As a result, the country has been facing the challenge of examining these complex phenomena, finding ways to reduce their risk, and building resilience against them. This study adopts a systems approach to review key research and trace the occurrence of dzuds in Mongolia, understand why measures to reduce their risk have failed, and what can be done to fix this. Specifically, we focus on two dzud events that occurred 10 years apart in 1999–2000 and 2009–2010 and examine the effectiveness of social responses and countermeasures taken to tackle them. We find that a lack of accountability mechanisms and failure to treat dzud as a systemic issue have hindered efforts to reduce risk and minimize mortality. Our findings highlight the need for inclusive, integrated, and accountable handling of dzuds.

The work performed by the urban search and rescue (USAR) teams is, from every standpoint, difficult to exactly define, since their main mission, which is to save lives, is joined by a series of tasks typical of disaster risk management, which makes them one of the most complex professions and therefore, with the strictest training requirements. Within these requirements, the fact is that USAR teams must be trained to serve a wide population diversity, which also involves the skills to manage critical situations where an inclusive approach is vital. To face this challenge, it is necessary to develop inclusive strategies according to the reality of these teams. In this article, the authors perform a deep analysis to the existing literature and by means of an exhaustive evaluation get to propose an inclusive model for the USAR teams. This model allows to define not only the reach of the inclusion term in these teams, but also helps to establish strategies to reformulate the training plans and programs of recruiting and retention of new members.

Infection control is a task of public health centers during normal periods. However, the Japanese Disaster Countermeasures Basic Act requires municipalities to plan and prepare for disasters, including provisions for community health. This study was conducted to assess the cooperation among public health nurses associated with municipalities and public health nurses at public health centers on preparations for infection control at evacuation shelters. After choosing 548 of 1644 municipalities randomly, excluding municipalities that have public health centers, we sent questionnaires to the general directors of public health nurses associated with the municipalities and received responses from 199 municipalities. The questionnaire items assessed 1) cooperation with public health centers during normal periods and 2) disaster manual preparations. We classified municipalities as cooperative based on their responses to the first category of questions, and as prepared based on their responses to the second category. Cooperation with public health centers for infection control at evacuation shelters markedly increased the probability of planning manuals for infection control being prepared at evacuation shelters. The results suggest the importance of public health centers’ aggressive involvement in municipality preparations for infection control at evacuation shelters after a disaster.