Global population profile of tropical cyclone exposure from 2002 to 2019.

Tropical cyclones have far-reaching impacts on livelihoods and population health that often persist years after the event1-4. Characterizing the demographic and socioeconomic profile and the vulnerabilities of exposed populations is essential to assess health and other risks associated with future tropical cyclone events5. Estimates of exposure to tropical cyclones are often regional rather than global6 and do not consider population vulnerabilities7. Here we combine spatially resolved annual demographic estimates with tropical cyclone wind fields estimates to construct a global profile of the populations exposed to tropical cyclones between 2002 and 2019. We find that approximately 560 million people are exposed yearly and that the number of people exposed has increased across all cyclone intensities over the study period. The age distribution of those exposed has shifted away from children (less than 5 years old) and towards older people (more than 60 years old) in recent years compared with the early 2000s. Populations exposed to tropical cyclones are more socioeconomically deprived than those unexposed within the same country, and this relationship is more pronounced for people exposed to higher-intensity storms. By characterizing the patterns and vulnerabilities of exposed populations, our results can help identify mitigation strategies and assess the global burden and future risks of tropical cyclones.

Think global, act local: using a translocal approach to understand community-based organisations' responses to planetary health crises during COVID-19.

Little is known on how community-based responses to planetary health crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, can integrate concerns about livelihoods, equity, health, wellbeing, and the environment. We used a translocal learning approach to co-develop insights on community-based responses to complex health and environmental and economic crises with leaders from five organisations working with communities at the front line of intersecting planetary health challenges in Finland, India, Kenya, Peru, and the USA. Translocal learning supports collective knowledge production across different localities in ways that value local perspectives but transcend national boundaries. There were three main findings from the translocal learning process. First, thanks to their proximity to the communities they served, community-based organisations (CBOs) can quickly identify the ways in which COVID-19 might worsen existing social and health inequities. Second, localised CBO actions are key to supporting communities with unique challenges in the face of systemic planetary health crises. Third, CBOs can develop rights-based, ecologically-minded actions responding to local priorities and mobilising available resources. Our findings show how solutions to planetary health might come from small-scale community initiatives that are well connected within and across contexts. Locally-focused globally-aware actions should be harnessed through greater recognition, funding, and networking opportunities. Globally, planetary health initiatives should be supported by applying the principles of subsidiarity and translocalism.

International humanitarian narratives of disasters, crises, and Indigeneity.

Narratives are a means of making sense of disasters and crises. The humanitarian sector communicates stories widely, encompassing representations of peoples and events. Such communications have been critiqued for misrepresenting and/or silencing the root causes of disasters and crises, depoliticising them. What has not been researched is how such communications represent disasters and crises in Indigenous settings. This is important because processes such as colonisation are often at the origin but are typically masked in communications. A narrative analysis of humanitarian communications is employed here to identify and characterise narratives in humanitarian communications involving Indigenous Peoples. Narratives differ based upon how the humanitarians who produce them think that disasters and crises should be governed. The paper concludes that humanitarian communications reflect more about the relationship between the international humanitarian community and its audience than reality, and underlines that narratives mask global processes that link audiences of humanitarian communications with Indigenous Peoples.

Conceptual Framework for Understanding Incident Management Systems During Public Health Emergencies.

OBJECTIVE: Effective incident management is essential for coordinating efforts of multiple disciplines and stakeholders when responding to emergencies, including public health disasters such as the ongoing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. METHODS: Existing research frameworks tend to focus on formal structures and doctrine (eg, ICS-NIMS); however, organizational processes that underlie incident management have not been systematically assessed and synthesized into a coherent conceptual framework. RESULTS: The lack of a framework has hindered the development of measures of performance that could be used to further develop the evidence base and facilitate process improvement. To address this gap, we present a conceptual framework of incident management drawn from expert feedback and a review of literature on incident management and related fields. The framework features 23 measurement constructs grouped into 5 domains: (1) situational awareness and information sharing, (2) incident action and implementation planning, (3) resource management and mobilization, (4) coordination and collaboration, and (5) feedback and continuous quality improvement. CONCLUSIONS: As such, the article provides a first step toward the development of robust measures for assessing the performance and effectiveness of incident management systems.

Hybrid governance and disaster management in Freetown, Sierra Leone, Monrovia, Liberia, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

This paper introduces a hybrid governance-referring to situations where state and non-state actors collectively provide key services-perspective to disaster management. It contends that hybridity is often the norm rather than the exception in disaster management, particularly in developing countries where the state is frequently weak and may be unable or unwilling to supply essential services. In these instances, risks are addressed by state and non-state entities, ranging from citizens and non-governmental organisations to customary authorities. Given their important role in risk reduction, the disruption of hybrid processes by attempting to bring them within the remit of the state may create rather than diminish risk. To make this argument, the paper first outlines the key tenants of hybridity and their applicability to disasters before illustrating hybridity through three case studies of hybrid risk management in three cities in Africa: Freetown, Sierra Leone; Monrovia, Liberia; and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

When disaster management agencies create disaster risk: a case study of the US's Federal Emergency Management Agency.

PURPOSE: Disaster management agencies are mandated to reduce risk for the populations that they serve. Yet, inequities in how they function may result in their activities creating disaster risk, particularly for already vulnerable and marginalized populations. In this article, how disaster management agencies create disaster risk for vulnerable and marginalized groups is examined, seeking to show the ways existing policies affect communities, and provide recommendations on policy and future research. DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH: The authors undertook a systematic review of the US disaster management agency, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), examining its programs through a lens of equity to understand how they shape disaster risk. FINDINGS: Despite a growing commitment to equity within FEMA, procedural, distributive, and contextual inequities result in interventions that perpetuate and amplify disaster risk for vulnerable and marginalized populations. Some of these inequities could be remediated by shifting toward a more bottom-up approach to disaster management, such as community-based disaster risk reduction approaches. PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS: Disaster management agencies and other organizations can use the results of this study to better understand how to devise interventions in ways that limit risk creation for vulnerable populations, including through community-based approaches. ORIGINALITY/VALUE: This study is the first to examine disaster risk creation from an organizational perspective, and the first to focus explicitly on how disaster management agencies can shape risk creation. This helps understand the linkages between disaster risk creation, equity and organizations.

Delivering the Promise of Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction in Fragile and Conflict-Affected Contexts (FCAC): A Case Study of the NGO GOAL's Response to the Syria Conflict.

The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (SFDRR) has helped to reduce global disaster risk, but there has been a lack of progress in disaster risk reduction (DRR) for people living in fragile and conflict affected contexts (FCAC). Given the mounting evidence that DRR cannot be implemented through conventional approaches in FCAC, serious efforts must be made to understand how to meet SFDRR's goals. This paper offers a case study of international non-governmental organization GOAL's programming that responds to the protracted crisis in Syria, with critical discussion on SFDRR and how to adapt humanitarian relief and disaster resilience.

The family crisis migration stress framework: A framework to understand the mental health effects of crisis migration on children and families caused by disasters.

Crisis migration refers to displacement of large numbers of individuals and families from their home countries due to wars, dictatorial governments, and other critical hazards (e.g., hurricanes). Although crisis migration can adversely influence direct and indirect effects on the mental health of adults and their children collectively as families, there is a deficiency in theory that addresses family level processes in this crisis migration context. We propose the Family Crisis Migration Stress Framework, which consolidates what is known about the multiple factors affecting mental health outcomes of crisis migrants into one cohesive model. In our article, we synthesize relevant theories and models of disaster, migration, and family resilience in order to create a framework in which to organize the complex processes that occur within families as a result of migration and that affect the mental health of children. We include examples from various national settings to illustrate the tenets of our framework. Future policy and intervention for crisis migrant should focus on the family as a unit, instead of parents and children as individual entities.

Practitioner Approaches to Measuring Community Resilience: The Analysis of the Resilience of Communities to Disasters Toolkit.

To be useful for operational programs, measures of resilience must not just be valid, but be easy to use and useful. Unfortunately, while resilience measurement techniques have progressed tremendously over the past decade, most progress has been on improving validity rather than utility and ease of use. In this article we present a new tool for measuring community resilience that incorporates issues of utility and ease of use, the Analysis of Resilience of Communities to Disasters (ARC-D) toolkit. The toolkit was developed over the course of ten years by the international humanitarian and development organization GOAL to enable aid organizations to measure community resilience in a way that supports resilience building interventions. It offers an approach to measurement that is cognizant of the resilience policy landscape, including the Sendai Framework, approaches to data collection and measurement uses relevant to aid agencies. We first present the core tenants of community resilience measurement before describing the toolkit, which consists of 30 measures, a guidebook, and an online platform. To illustrate its use, we a case study of a resilience building program in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. By developing one of the first resilience toolkits focused beyond validity and providing a description of how such an assessment works, this article has implications for resilience researchers and practitioners.

Incorporating Issues of Elderly Loneliness into the Coronavirus Disease-2019 Public Health Response.

As the systems that people depend on are increasingly strained by the coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) outbreak, public health impacts are manifesting in different ways beyond morbidity and mortality for elderly populations. Loneliness is already a chief public health concern that is being made worse by COVID-19. Agencies should recognize the prevalence of loneliness among elderly populations and the impacts that their interventions have on loneliness. This letter describes several ways that loneliness can be addressed to build resilience for elderly populations as part of the public health response to COVID-19.

Maintaining critical infrastructure resilience to natural hazards during the COVID-19 pandemic: hurricane preparations by US energy companies.

The COVID-19 pandemic has the potential to compromise the ability of critical infrastructure utilities to respond to or mitigate natural hazards like wildfires and hurricanes. This article describes the ways that an energy organization, the regional transmission operator PJM, is preparing for hurricanes during the COVID-19 pandemic. PJM is using a combination of technological and organizational processes to prepare for hurricanes during the pandemic. Activities include the development of a third control room to increase redundancy and maintaining social distance at control center, investment in more resilient communications technology to maintain connectivity, and taking a holistic approach to identifying issues related to supply chain and fuel security. With this mix of organizational and technological processes, we argue that critical infrastructure resilience should be understood as a sociotechnical construct and identify several recommendations for improving resilience. The article has implications for policymakers working to maintain infrastructure resilience to natural hazards during the COVID-19 pandemic.