Suchergebnisse

The communication of risk and return-entry information is vital following a disaster. Although several studies examine challenges households experience when gathering information after an event, very little has been done to understand the communication challenges local emergency managers face during this time period. This study examines the risk communication challenges experienced by the local emergency management organizations in New Jersey after Superstorm Sandy (2012). Semi-structured telephone interviews were conducted with 25 local emergency management officials from the state of New Jersey. Qualitative data analysis using a grounded theory approach yielded four primary themes related to challenges: information challenges, technological challenges, organizational constraints, and social challenges. This article examines these four themes from the perspective of the local emergency manager and provides insights into the unique challenges these organizations faced in the aftermath of this disaster.

PurposeReturn-entry is understudied in the disaster science literature. This paper provides an overview of the return-entry process, identifies key factors informing the selection of return strategy, proposes a simple classification of return strategies and offers ideas for advancing research in this area.Design/methodology/approachThis paper explores previous research and recent return-entry processes in order to advance understanding of strategies emergency managers employ and decisions they make when managing the return movement of evacuees home after disasters.FindingsThe paper offers new insights into the management of the return movement, proposes primary factors considered when developing return strategies and offers a framework for the selection of strategies utilized by emergency managers.Originality/valueGiven that return-entry is a burgeoning area of inquiry in disaster science, this paper advances knowledge and understanding of return-entry movements after disasters and outlines key research needs.

As the nature of managing hazards and disasters grows increasingly complex, educating the next generation of emergency management practitioners and scholars requires innovative strategies. This article describes the utilization of a collaborative teaching approach when offering a study abroad course examining hazards, emergency management, and crisis communication in Central and South America. Co-taught cross-disciplinary courses provide opportunities for students to gain exposure to the different perspectives inherent in the study and management of hazards and disasters. This, coupled with the study abroad experience, offers students a unique viewpoint on how hazards, risks, and communication are managed and perceived in other countries. This paper highlights the recent research about benefits of co-teaching and study abroad courses, provides a description of our study abroad programs, and offers tips and suggestions for developing similar courses at other higher education institutions.

Developing effective evacuation and return‐entry plans requires understanding the spatial and temporal dimensions of risk perception experienced by evacuees throughout a disaster event. Using data gathered from the 2008 Cedar Rapids, Iowa Flood, this article explores how risk perception and location influence evacuee behavior during the evacuation and return‐entry process. Three themes are discussed: (1) the spatial and temporal characteristics of risk perception throughout the evacuation and return‐entry process, (2) the relationship between risk perception and household compliance with return‐entry orders, and (3) the role social influences have on the timing of the return by households. The results indicate that geographic location and spatial variation of risk influenced household risk perception and compliance with return‐entry plans. In addition, sociodemographic characteristics influenced the timing and characteristics of the return groups. The findings of this study advance knowledge of evacuee behavior throughout a disaster and can inform strategies used by emergency managers throughout the evacuation and return‐entry process.

Return-entry is the movement of an evacuated population back to an area following the issuance of an all-clear message. This research examines the geographic, communication, and demographic factors that affect return-entry compliance rates using Hurricane Rita 2005 as a case study. Surveys were mailed to 1,200 households in a twelve county area comprising the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) return-entry plan. The results show that compliance with the Hurricane Rita return-entry plan was low, as 46.4% of respondents returned home on or after their scheduled return date, while only 23.2% returned on their exact scheduled return date. In addition, communication of the return-entry plan was relatively poor as 54.0% of evacuees reported receiving the all-clear message and 19.5% of respondents reported being aware of the TxDOT staggered return-entry plan. In regard to factors that affect the return process, a relationship was found between distance evacuated and return-entry date, in that the farther a household evacuates, the more likely it will return at a later date. A relationship was also found between scheduled return-entry date and compliance, as people scheduled to return to the zone that sustained damage (Day 3) had a higher rate of compliance than those evacuees who returned to the undamaged zone (Day 2). Finally, female respondents were more likely to comply with the return-entry orders than males respondents, and individuals of lower education levels were more likely to comply with return-entry orders than individuals of higher education levels.

Film as a pedagogical technique has been increasingly utilized by instructors in the classroom setting. As previous research highlights the benefits of this method, the question remains as to how this strategy can be effectively applied in the study of hazards, disasters, and emergency management. This paper describes an undergraduate course that uses cinematic portrayals of disaster to present and highlight a number of significant themes from the disaster science literature. We have found the examination of disaster films to be a valuable strategy for teaching topics which can range from disaster myths or erroneous science or, by contrast, relatively accurate portrayals of human behavior in disaster. This article surveys some of the existing literature on film in teaching; highlights how we have used films in courses; and offers suggestions on how some noteworthy films can be used to demonstrate and rein force challenging theories from the literature.

Recovering from a disaster while simultaneously living in a barely habitable home poses significant challenges for residents. Although the process of recovering in-situ is common following hurricanes, it remains understudied in the disaster science literature. This study explores this experience through the examination of two primary questions. First, given its inherent challenges, why do residents live in their significantly damaged dwellings during recovery? Second, what is the nature of this experience, physically, emotionally, and perceptually? This article explores the experiences of ten Hurricane Sandy (2012) survivors who undertook housing recovery while living in barely habitable dwellings. Data were gathered from focus groups conducted with Superstorm Sandy Survivors from New Jersey five years after the hurricane. An inductive qualitative content analysis was used to understand housing recovery processes from the perspectives of residents recovering in situ. Findings examine the physical, emotional, and perceptual nature of this experience, highlighting reasons why households recover in-situ, the hazards and vulnerabilities associated with that experience, and the elusive nature of emotional recovery. This study contributes to the growing body of literature surrounding recovery experiences, and it introduces valuable insights into the challenges that survivors face while recovering in-situ.

Disasters are especially threatening to small communities, which often have limited resources, personnel, and infrastructure necessary for the recovery process. Still, some small communities have demonstrated effective recovery from disasters. We wondered whether Turner's notion of communitas might serve as a useful theoretical framework for understanding effective community recovery from disaster. We interviewed 32 residents and five community leaders of a small Texas town that appeared to successfully recover from Hurricane Ike. Thematic analysis revealed the community did engage in practices that mirrored the dimensions of communitas, suggesting it is a useful framework for understanding (successful) disaster recovery. We describe implications of the study's key findings, followed by theoretical and practical implications, limitations, and directions for future research.

Determining the most effective public warnings to issue during a hazardous environmental event is a complex problem. Three primary questions need to be answered: Who should take protective action? What is the best action? and When should this action be initiated? Warning triggers provide a proactive means for emergency managers to simultaneously answer these questions by recommending that a target group take a specified protective action if a preset environmental trigger condition occurs (e.g., warn a community to evacuate if a wildfire crosses a proximal ridgeline). Triggers are used to warn the public across a wide variety of environmental hazards, and an improved understanding of their nature and role promises to: (1) advance protective action theory by unifying the natural, built, and social themes in hazards research into one framework, (2) reveal important information about emergency managers' risk perception, situational awareness, and threat assessment regarding threat behavior and public response, and (3) advance spatiotemporal models for representing the geography and timing of disaster warning and response (i.e., a coupled natural‐built‐social system). We provide an overview and research agenda designed to advance our understanding and modeling of warning triggers.

AbstractMaintaining the performance of infrastructure‐dependent systems in the face of surprises and unknowable risks is a grand challenge. Addressing this issue requires a better understanding of enabling conditions orprinciplesthat promote system resilience in a universal way. In this study, a set of such principles is interpreted as a group of interrelated conditions or organizational qualities that, taken together, engender system resilience. The field of resilience engineering identifies basic system or organizational qualities (e.g., abilities for learning) that are associated with enhanced general resilience and has packaged them into a set of principles that should be fostered. However, supporting conditions that give rise to such first‐order system qualities remain elusive in the field. An integrative understanding of how such conditions co‐occur and fit together to bring about resilience, therefore, has been less clear. This article contributes to addressing this gap by identifying a potentially more comprehensive set of principles for building general resilience in infrastructure‐dependent systems. In approaching this aim, we organize scattered notions from across the literature. To reflect the partly self‐organizing nature of infrastructure‐dependent systems, we compare and synthesize two lines of research on resilience: resilience engineering and social‐ecological system resilience. Although some of the principles discussed within the two fields overlap, there are some nuanced differences. By comparing and synthesizing the knowledge developed in them, we recommend an updated set of resilience‐enhancing principles for infrastructure‐dependent systems. In addition to proposing an expanded list of principles, we illustrate how these principles can co‐occur and their interdependencies.