Journal of Emergency Management最新文献

The environment for communicating about emergencies and disasters has changed as a result of the development of mobile technologies and social media applications. The public expects emergency management agencies to monitor, respond to, and report disasters via mobile applications due to this shift. This study, using the retrospective approach, analyzes the posts by the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) on social media in Nigeria. Activities reported via the agency's verified social media handles (Facebook®) between 2015 and 2021 serve as the data source. Findings revealed that social media is a useful tool in disaster management, as disaster-related activities and events across the management cycle were posted by NEMA's national and zonal offices. Most posts (45.0 percent) focused on response activities, while the recovery phase (2.0 percent) had the least posts. There was a significant variation in the reporting across the disaster management cycle (F_(4,30) = 9.746). Attention should be placed on shifting NEMA from post-disaster activities to a predisaster-focused agency. Therefore, the agency should develop a social media policy and train its information officers to use the medium to engage actively with the public, especially regarding information on predisaster management activities.

Tornadoes are a considerable threat across the United States, occurring in many regions of the country on a frequent basis throughout the year. Finding a safe place to go during a tornado can be a challenge for many individuals, and, in some situations, there is no safe place available. Increasing the number of tornado shelters and establishing them in regions where they are not currently present can greatly improve the safety of local residents and visitors, especially for those who are unable to afford retrofitting a shelter into their own home or business. Research is lacking regarding the use of such public shelters. To better understand tornado sheltering behavior, an online survey was conducted with about 1,450 people. The survey examined current tornado sheltering behavior in locations with and without public shelters available, as well as hypothetical behavior if the respondent's location acquired a public shelter. A majority of respondents in the Deep South and Great Plains reported living in a county or community with a public shelter. While a majority of respondents have never used a public tornado shelter, the majority of those surveyed mentioned that they would utilize such shelters, at least during extreme threats. Actual use is also higher among mobile home residents. Consistent wayfinding and policies (such as pet accommodation) should also be implemented to ensure their use and promotion, and mobile applications should identify their locations.

This article explores the intricate relationship between conflict and emergency response. It emphasizes the need for understanding the nexus between these two challenges and the pivotal role of conflict analysis in effective humanitarian efforts. This article highlights real-world examples and the importance of conflict-sensitive approaches while addressing the challenges and ethical dilemmas in conflict-affected emergency response. It concludes with policy recommendations aimed at improving coordination and strengthening conflict analysis capacities to provide more effective and safer assistance in complex crisis situations.

Background: To determine the impacts of statewide coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)-related public health and social measures (PHSMs) and attempted pandemic mitigation measures on years of potential life lost (YPLL).

Methods: The "openness score" of each state during the COVID-19 pandemic was obtained using two open-source sites, the Multistate openness score and the Wallethub openness score. These scores combined various PHSMs, such as restrictions on gatherings and closing various types of businesses. Using data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Wonder database, the differences in prepandemic (2017-2019) and pandemic excess mortality were calculated in terms of YPLL and then compared to the openness scores using univariate regression modeling.

Results: States that instituted more restrictive PHSMs as measured by openness scores failed to experience reductions in YPLL. On the contrary, there were trends toward statistical significance associating greater YPLL with the institution of more stringent PHSMs (p = 0.109 and p = 0.080 for Multistate and Wallethub, respectively).

Discussion: This study suggests restrictive PHSMs were ineffective for improving mortality in this pandemic and trended toward increasing mortality in the younger population, presumably from other, non-COVID-19 causes.

Care providers, including both professional and family caregivers, were negatively impacted by the pandemic. In partnership with the Minnesota (MN) Pediatric Care Coordination Community of Practice, the MN Department of Health Regional Behavioral Health Coordinator team provided a 7-week training of trainers in Skills for Psychological Recovery (SPR) to care providers of adults and children with special healthcare, mental health needs, and disabilities. The goal of SPR training was to protect the mental health of disaster survivors, enhance their abilities to address needs and concerns, teach skills to promote recovery, and prevent maladaptive behaviors while identifying and supporting adaptive behaviors. Weekly sessions presented skills to gather information and prioritize assistance, build problem-solving capacity, promote positive activity, manage reactions, promote helpful thinking, and rebuild healthy social connections. Data were collected during registration on the community challenges they are dealing with due to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), how COVID-19 has impacted them personally and/or professionally, and what they hoped to gain from this training. Data were also collected during the training regarding the quality of the training and the skills that they were learning through weekly feedback forms. Post-training data were collected on how they plan to use the SPR. This case study article will discuss collected data and outcomes and provide information on how to conduct the SPR training for replication. The article will also discuss limitations and future research possibilities.

This study delves into how people responded to Winter Storm Frankie in the United States based on X (formerly known as Twitter®) data according to a multitude of regions, periods, sociodemographic characteristics, census regions, and geographical scales. This study finds that people actively respond to natural disasters on X during the winter storm week. Specifically, the highest number of keywords during the winter storm week is 1.6 times greater than the second-highest number of keywords during the prewinter storm week. Second, the spatial distribution of tweets exhibits significant fluctuations across different periods. For instance, in the prewinter storm week, more tweets are posted in the West region, while in the winter storm week, the Northeast region experiences a higher volume of uploads. Third, regional variables exert a substantial influence on the number of tweets. For instance, Ohio and Montana demonstrate higher elasticity than Pennsylvania. Fourth, many sociodemographic variables, such as gender, age, education, and income, are associated with individual responses. For example, a 1 percent increase in males corresponds to a 0.01 percent increase in tweets.

Background: Inadequate preparedness of hospitals is associated with negative outcomes in the treatment procedure. During the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, healthcare systems faced many problems due to the widespread prevalence of the disease. This study was designed and conducted with the aim of investigating and comparing the preparedness levels of hospitals against mass-casualty disasters and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Method: This research was a cross-sectional, descriptive-analytical study conducted in January 2022 in five educational hospitals affiliated with Qom University of Medical Sciences, Qom, Iran, admitting COVID-19 patients. The National Hospital Preparedness Checklist and the Hospital Preparedness Checklist for the COVID-19 pandemic were used to collect the required data.

Results: The total preparedness level against mass-casualty disasters was estimated to be 79.81 percent. The lowest and highest average preparedness scores were related to the dimensions of "Logistic and management of supplies" (74 percent) and "command and control" (96.66 percent), respectively. In addition, the overall preparedness level against COVID-19 was estimated to be 87.20 percent. The lowest and highest average percentage of preparedness scores were related to the fields of "supply management" (71.81 percent) and "laboratory services" (97.14 percent), respectively.

Conclusion: The duration of exposure to emergency situations and managerial perspectives are among the factors affecting the preparedness of -medical systems against disasters. It is assumed that some kind of adaptation exists in healthcare systems, which leads to an improvement in their preparedness level. In order to deal with crises, it is suggested to set up specialized hospitals (such as trauma centers), train crisis managers, and use them in the management of medical centers.

Resilience is a complex concept. In the emergency management community, it is commonly used as a synonym for reduced risk. However, research demonstrates that reducing risk is not required for resilience. Research also finds that risk perception, widely viewed as the driver of increased resilience, is a weak predictor of risk reduction action. This article explores the concept of disaster risk tolerance (DRT). DRT is proposed as a better lens for understanding decisions made around risk reduction and as providing a better understanding of the role of resilience. The article also looks at the role of key factors, such as social identity and efficacy, in DRT. It makes recommendations for better risk communication based on these understandings.

Federal appropriation for disaster prevention through recovery occurs across a complex landscape of funding mechanisms. Emergency supplemental appropriations are one such mechanism and increasingly a way that Congress funds disasters. These bills also often include nondisaster-related spending. To better identify congressional tendencies in the use of emergency appropriations for disasters, including the frequency and dollar value of such spending, we analyzed publicly available data on emergency appropriations over the first two decades of the 21st century. Using legislative appropriations data from the Congressional Budget Office for all supplemental appropriations enacted for fiscal years 2000 through 2020, we calculated that nondefense spending for disasters via supplemental appropriation represented USD 1.024 trillion in budget authority across 40 bills over this period. Natural disaster emergencies accounted for 58 percent of the federal government's emergency supplemental spending, with the rest generally related to Global War on Terror and other military activities. Among the spending prompted by presidential request, the difference between how much funding the president had requested for that emergency (if any) and a congressional appropriation of emergency funding reveals no apparent trend over the time period studied, although confirmatory analysis is obscured by a dearth of data points. As the risk of disasters and, particularly, the rate and size of billion-dollar disasters increases, characterizing the congressional approach to the funding of disasters may allow improved understanding of whether this approach is optimized to meet the needs of disasters in the 21st century and whether response spending should be mitigated through proactive and routine appropriations toward resilience targets.

The objective of this article is to understand how emergency managers view the status of their emergency management programs and identify suggestions on how to improve this important profession in the future. This article first explores the hazards, vulnerabilities, and associated disasters confronting select jurisdictions in Federal Emergency Management Agency Region VIII. It then explains recent experiences of responding to the coronavirus disease 2019, the 2020 protests/riots, the Magna earthquake, and the Marshall Fire. The article also mentions the relative priority given to preparedness and mitigation and recovery activities, and it discusses common challenges and weaknesses emergency managers face. The article then concludes with a discussion of current activities as well as concerns and recommendations for the future.