Project description:Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the world has experienced numerous hydrometeorological disasters along with it. The pandemic has made disaster relief work more challenging for humanitarian organizations and governments. This study aims to provide an overview of the topics/issues of concern in the countries while responding to hydrometeorological extreme events (e.g., floods and cyclones) during the pandemic. Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA), a computational topic modeling technique, is employed to reduce the numerous (i.e., 1771) humanitarian reports/news to key terms and meaningful topics for 24 countries. Several insights are derived from the LDA results. It is identified that countries have suffered multiple crises (such as locust attacks, epidemics and conflicts) during the pandemic. Maintaining social distancing while disaster evacuation and circumventing the lockdown for relief work have been difficult. Children are an important topic for most countries; however, other vulnerable groups such as women and the disabled also need to be focused upon. Hygiene is not a highly weighted topic, which is of concern during a pandemic that mandates good sanitation to control it effectively. However, health is of great importance for almost all countries. The novelty of the paper lies in its interdisciplinary approach (usage of a computational technique in disaster management studies) and the timely examination of disaster management experiences during the ongoing pandemic. The insights presented in the study may be helpful for researchers and policy-makers to initiate further bottom-up work to address the challenges in responding to hydrometeorological disasters during a pandemic.
Project description:The reconstruction of healthcare systems in developing countries after natural disasters is poorly understood. Using data collected before and after the 2010 Haiti earthquake, we detail the response of aid agencies and their interaction with local healthcare providers in Leogane, the city closest to the epicenter. We find that the period after the earthquake was associated with an increase in the total number of healthcare facilities, inpatient beds, and surgical facilities and that international aid has been a driving force behind this recovery. Aid has funded 12 of 13 new healthcare facilities that have opened since the earthquake as well as the reconstruction of 7 of 8 healthcare facilities that have been rebuilt. Despite increases in free, aid-financed healthcare, private Haitian healthcare facilities have remained at a constant number. The planned phase-out of several aid-financed facilities, however, will leave Leogane with fewer inpatient beds and healthcare services compared with the pre-earthquake period.
Project description:Disasters are increasing around the world. Children are greatly impacted by both natural disasters (forces of nature) and man-made (intentional, accidental) disasters. Their unique anatomical, physiological, behavioral, developmental, and psychological vulnerabilities must be considered when planning and preparing for disasters. The nurse or health care provider (HCP) must be able to rapidly identify acutely ill children during a disaster. Whether it is during a natural or man-made event, the nurse or HCP must intervene effectively to improve survival and outcomes. It is extremely vital to understand the medical management of these children during disasters, especially the use of appropriate medical countermeasures such as medications, antidotes, supplies, and equipment.
Project description:The relationship between natural disasters and communicable diseases is frequently misconstrued. The risk for outbreaks is often presumed to be very high in the chaos that follows natural disasters, a fear likely derived from a perceived association between dead bodies and epidemics. However, the risk factors for outbreaks after disasters are associated primarily with population displacement. The availability of safe water and sanitation facilities, the degree of crowding, the underlying health status of the population, and the availability of healthcare services all interact within the context of the local disease ecology to influence the risk for communicable diseases and death in the affected population. We outline the risk factors for outbreaks after a disaster, review the communicable diseases likely to be important, and establish priorities to address communicable diseases in disaster settings.
Project description:Climate-related disasters affect different dimensions of children's health and well-being both directly and indirectly. Reducing children's vulnerability and exposure to climate-related disasters is crucial to protect them against risks. Children as climate-change agents and future leaders at local, national and international level can obviously contribute to reduce vulnerabilities in families and communities and transfer knowledge to them. Moreover, children can advocate for climate change mitigation. In the long term, participation of children in the climate change mitigation programmes may lead to fewer disasters and, consequently, less risk to their health. As government policies have failed to fully address and respond to the drivers of climate-related disasters, disasters preparedness and education for children should be considered an essential activity to protect children from disaster's risks. Main factors in shaping children's behaviour and response to disaster are increasing the risk perception and knowledge of the children. When a child perceived likelihood, susceptibility and severity of a disaster (such as earthquake), then they would be able and willing to learn how to prepare for that. So far, disaster education programmes for children have mostly relied on offline school-based training. Different innovative approaches can be applied to continue education within online and digital formats including virtual reality, digital games and online platforms. However, an advocacy support by influential entities such as companies engaged in entertainment industry is required to raise the awareness of public and particularly the children about disaster preparedness.
Project description:Do adversarial environmental conditions create social cohesion? We provide new answers to this question by exploiting spatial and temporal variation in exposure to earthquakes across Chile. Using a variety of methods and controlling for a number of socio-economic variables, we find that exposure to earthquakes has a positive effect on several indicators of social cohesion. Social cohesion increases after a big earthquake and slowly erodes in periods where environmental conditions are less adverse. Our results contribute to the current debate on whether and how environmental conditions shape formal and informal institutions.
Project description:The consequences of environmental change for human migration have gained increasing attention in the context of climate change and recent large-scale natural disasters, but as yet relatively few large-scale and quantitative studies have addressed this issue. We investigate the consequences of climate-related natural disasters for long-term population mobility in rural Bangladesh, a region particularly vulnerable to environmental change, using longitudinal survey data from 1,700 households spanning a 15-y period. Multivariate event history models are used to estimate the effects of flooding and crop failures on local population mobility and long-distance migration while controlling for a large set of potential confounders at various scales. The results indicate that flooding has modest effects on mobility that are most visible at moderate intensities and for women and the poor. However, crop failures unrelated to flooding have strong effects on mobility in which households that are not directly affected but live in severely affected areas are the most likely to move. These results point toward an alternate paradigm of disaster-induced mobility that recognizes the significant barriers to migration for vulnerable households as well their substantial local adaptive capacity.
Project description:The aim of the experiment was to gain a higher resolution for specific regions of interest to complement the Hi-C results. Capture-C experiments were performed on four-inducible degrons for Scc1, Ringb, Ring1b-Scc1 and CTCF, and Tir1 control, always in triplicates (three biological replicates per condition).