Impact of type of reconstructed residence on social participation and mental health of population displaced by disasters.

After disasters, people are often forced to reconstruct or move to new residences. This study aimed to reveal the association between the types of reconstructed residences and psychosocial or psychiatric conditions among the population. A total of 1071 adult residents in a coastal town, whose houses were destroyed by the tsunami caused by the Great East Japan Earthquake, enrolled in the study five years after the disaster. The type of reconstructed post-disaster residences (reconstructed on the same site/disaster-recovery public condominium/mass-translocation to higher ground/privately moving to remote areas) and the current psychosocial indicators were investigated. The results revealed that individuals living in public condominiums showed significantly worse scores on the Lubben Social Network Scale-6 (p < 0.0001) and the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (p < 0.0001), and slightly worse scores on the Kessler Psychological Distress Scale (p = 0.035) and the Impact of Event Scale-Revised (p = 0.028). Lower psychosocial indicator scores in the public condominium group were more remarkable in younger adults aged < 65 years. Insomnia evaluated using the Athens Insomnia Scale was not different among the four residential types. In summary, residents moving into disaster-recovery public condominiums are likely to have less social interaction, be more depressed, and may need additional interventions.

Unraveling the complexity of human behavior and urbanization on community vulnerability to floods.

Floods are among the costliest natural hazards and their consequences are expected to increase further in the future due to urbanization in flood-prone areas. It is essential that policymakers understand the factors governing the dynamics of urbanization to adopt proper disaster risk reduction techniques. Peoples' relocation preferences and their perception of flood risk (collectively called human behavior) are among the most important factors that influence urbanization in flood-prone areas. Current studies focusing on flood risk assessment do not consider the effect of human behavior on urbanization and how it may change the nature of the risk. Moreover, flood mitigation policies are implemented without considering the role of human behavior and how the community will cope with measures such as buyout, land acquisition, and relocation that are often adopted to minimize development in flood-prone regions. Therefore, such policies may either be resisted by the community or result in severe socioeconomic consequences. In this study, we present a new Agent-Based Model (ABM) to investigate the complex interaction between human behavior and urbanization and its role in creating future communities vulnerable to flood events. We identify critical factors in the decisions of households to locate or relocate and adopt policies compatible with human behavior. The results show that when people are informed about the flood risk and proper incentives are provided, the demand for housing within 500-year floodplain may be reduced as much as 15% by 2040 for the case study considered. On the contrary, if people are not informed of the risk, 29% of the housing choices will reside in floodplains. The analyses also demonstrate that neighborhood quality-influenced by accessibility to highways, education facilities, the city center, water bodies, and green spaces, respectively-is the most influential factor in peoples' decisions on where to locate. These results provide new insights that may be used to assist city planners and stakeholders in examining tradeoffs between costs and benefits of future land development in achieving sustainable and resilient cities.

A National Framework to Improve Mortality, Morbidity, and Disparities Data for COVID-19 and Other Large-Scale Disasters.

Timely and accurate data on COVID-19 cases and COVID-19‒related deaths are essential for making decisions with significant health, economic, and policy implications. A new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine proposes a uniform national framework for data collection to more accurately quantify disaster-related deaths, injuries, and illnesses. This article describes how following the report's recommendations could help improve the quality and timeliness of public health surveillance data during pandemics, with special attention to addressing gaps in the data necessary to understand pandemic-related health disparities.

Association Between Hurricane Sandy and Emergency Department Visits in New York City by Age and Cause.

The magnitude, timing, and etiology of morbidity associated with tropical cyclones remains incompletely quantified. We examined the relative change in cause-specific emergency department (ED) visits among residents of New York City during and after Hurricane Sandy, a tropical cyclone that affected the northeastern United States in October 2012. We used quasi-Poisson constrained distributed lag models to compare the number of ED visits on and after Hurricane Sandy with all other days, 2005-2014, adjusting for temporal trends. Among residents aged ≥65 years, Hurricane Sandy was associated with a higher rate of ED visits due to injuries and poisoning (relative risk (RR) = 1.19, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.10, 1.28), respiratory disease (RR = 1.35, 95% CI: 1.21, 1.49), cardiovascular disease (RR = 1.10, 95% CI: 1.02, 1.19), renal disease (RR = 1.44, 95% CI: 1.22, 1.72), and skin and soft tissue infections (RR = 1.20, 95% CI: 1.03, 1.39) in the first week following the storm. Among adults aged 18-64 years, Hurricane Sandy was associated with a higher rate of ED visits for renal disease (RR = 2.15, 95% CI: 1.79, 2.59). Among those aged 0-17 years, the storm was associated with lower rates of ED visits for up to 3 weeks. These results suggest that tropical cyclones might result in increased health-care utilization due to a wide range of causes, particularly among older adults.

Causal Inference in Studying the Long-Term Health Effects of Disasters: Challenges and Potential Solutions.

Two frequently encountered but underrecognized challenges for causal inference in studying the long-term health effects of disasters among survivors include 1) time-varying effects of disasters on a time-to-event outcome and 2) selection bias due to selective attrition. In this paper, we review approaches for overcoming these challenges and demonstrate application of the approaches to a real-world longitudinal data set of older adults who were directly affected by the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami (n = 4,857). To illustrate the problem of time-varying effects of disasters, we examined the association between degree of damage due to the tsunami and all-cause mortality. We compared results from Cox regression analysis assuming proportional hazards with those derived using adjusted parametric survival curves allowing for time-varying hazard ratios. To illustrate the problem of selection bias, we examined the association between proximity to the coast (a proxy for housing damage from the tsunami) and depressive symptoms. We corrected for selection bias due to attrition in the 2 postdisaster follow-up surveys (conducted in 2013 and 2016) using multivariable adjustment, inverse probability of censoring weighting, and survivor average causal effect estimation. Our results demonstrate that analytical approaches which ignore time-varying effects on mortality and selection bias due to selective attrition may underestimate the long-term health effects of disasters.

Development of a Weighted Well-Being Assessment Mobile App for Trauma Affected Communities: A Usability Study.

A well-being mobile app was built and tested by performing a usability study in a trauma affected community (TAC). Seven usability tasks were given to social workers during Phase 1. Phase 2 of the usability study was a re-test of the same tasks with the same social workers after refinements were applied. The results showed that most users preferred darker foreground colors, lighter background colors, larger fonts, and larger sized UI components. Statistically significant improvements were found after changes were implemented to the app and included time for page navigation (Z = -2.366, p = 0.018), logout (Z = -1.997, p = 0.046), and item selection in a page (Z = -2.371, p = 0.018). UI positioning and size changes proved to be a significant determinant of user satisfaction based on the positive feedback received from the computer systems usability questionnaire (CSUQ). (User1: p = .000, User 2 withdrew; User3: p = .010, User4: p = .000, User5: p = .001, User6: p = .006, User7: p = .025). HIM professionals assisted in the design, development, and administration of the usability study. This is another area in which HIM professionals are needed when assessing health and wellness in communities affected by trauma.

Large-scale experiment to assess the collision impact force from a tsunami wave on a drifting castaway.

Although most fatalities in tsunami-related disasters are conjectured to be a result of drowning, injury risk owing to collision with other floating debris or fixed buildings has not been studied sufficiently. In this study, the impact force corresponding to the collision of a concrete block and drifting test body in a tsunami wave was experimentally investigated, and the injury risk was evaluated in terms of different biomechanical indexes; specifically, maximum acceleration, head injury criterion, and impact force. The injury risk indicated by the considered indexes was reasonably low. It was noted that if a healthy adult collided with a concrete wall under a velocity of 2.5 m s-1 and wave height of 0.59 m, the adult would likely not be critically injured. However, a similar collision impact poses considerable risk to infants and children, as well as the more sensitive regions of the adult body. Moreover, in the case of large tsunamis, such as that in the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, a drifting person may be at considerable risk for injuries. The collision impact occurring on the tip of a surge flow is notably significantly larger than that on a bore flow. This is because a surge flow, which arrives at the concrete block earlier than a bore flow, forms a certain water layer along the concrete wall and that layer acts as a cushion for any body drifting on the bore flow, indicating the importance of such a buffering effect. These findings can provide practical guidance regarding the formulation of effective tsunami-protection measures.

Exploring the Relationship between Rising Temperatures and the Number of Climate-Related Natural Disasters in China.

Warming has strongly influenced the quantity and variability of natural disasters around the globe. This study aims to characterize the varying patterns between rising temperatures and climate-related natural disasters in China from 1951 to 2010. We examined the overall trend in the patterns of an 11-year cycle, and climate-related natural disaster responses to periods of rising and dropping temperature. We used Morlet wavelet analysis to determine the length of a temperature cycle period, and the arc elasticity coefficient to assess the number of climate-related natural disasters in response to the changing temperature. We found that: (1) the overall relationship between temperature and the number of climate-related natural disasters was positive; (2) however, on the cycle level, the pattern of climate-related natural disasters was found to be independent of temperature variation; (3) on the rise-drop level, temperature increases were associated with declines in the number of climate-related natural disasters. Moreover, as temperature decreased, the number of climate-related natural disasters increased substantially, such that temperature had a more considerable influence on the quantity of climate-related natural disasters during the temperature-drop period. Findings in this study can help enhance the dissemination of warning and mitigation efforts to combat natural disasters in the changing climate.

The social impact of natural hazards: a multi-level analysis of disasters and forms of trust in mainland China.

This study aimed to assess the multi-level effects of natural hazards on trust in Chinese society. Drawing on the Chinese General Social Survey conducted in 2012 and provincial disaster damage records, it examined the association between individuals' past experiences of disasters and province-level damage (measured by the number of affected people, deaths, and economic loss) and various forms of trust: in-group; out-group; generalised; and political. The findings indicate that Chinese individuals with experience of disasters have higher levels of out-group trust but lower levels of political trust. Similarly, at the province level, damage owing to disasters over the past three years (2009-11) positively impacted on residents' out-group trust while negatively affecting their political trust. However, when provincial damage was aggregated for disasters over the past five years (2007-11), which included the devastating Sichuan earthquake on 12 May 2008, only total deaths had a positive effect on generalised trust.

The impact of disasters on emergency department resources: review against the Sendai framework for disaster risk reduction 2015-2030.

BACKGROUND: Emergency departments (EDs) are often first to feel the intra-hospital effects of disasters. Compromised care standards during disasters eventuate from increased demands on health resources; the facilities, supplies, equipment and manpower imperative for a functioning healthcare facility. Emergency departments must understand the effect of disasters on their health resources. This paper examines the impact on resources within the ED as a result of a disaster and provides a review against the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction's Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030 priorities. METHOD: An integrative literature review design was utilised. Articles were extracted from databases and search engines. The Preferred Reporting Items of Systematic reviews and Meta-Analysis Guidelines for systematic literature reviews were used. RESULTS: Seven papers met inclusion criteria. Disaster consumable stocking was used to mitigate disaster risk and improve resilience. Logistical challenges were exacerbated by poor building design. Ineffective human resource management, communications failure, insufficient ED space, diminished equipment and supplies and unreliable emergency power sources were described. CONCLUSIONS: Disaster planning and preparedness strategies can address health resource deficits, increasing ED resilience. Further retrospective case studies are required to greater understand the effects of disasters on ED health resources.

Mental health in biological disasters: From SARS to COVID-19.

BACKGROUND: The outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), like severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), provokes fear, anxiety and depression in the public, which further affects mental health issues. Taiwan has used their experience of the SARS epidemic for the management of foreseeable problems in COVID-19 endemic. AIM/OBJECTIVE: This review summarizes issues concerning mental health problems related to infectious diseases from current literatures. RESULTS: In suspected cases under quarantine, confirmed cases in isolation and their families, health care professionals, and the general population and related effective strategies to reduce these mental health issues, such as helping to identify stressors and normalizing their impact at all levels of response as well as public information and communication messages by electronic devices. The importance of community resilience was also addressed. Psychological first aid, psychological debriefing, mental health intervention and psychoeducation were also discussed. Issues concerning cultures and religions are also emphasized in the management plans. CONCLUSION: Biological disaster like SARS and COVID-19 not only has strong impact on mental health in those being infected and their family, friends, and coworkers, but also affect wellbeing in general public. There are evidenced that clear and timely psychoeducation, psychological first aid and psychological debriefing could amileorate negative impact of disaster, thus might also be helpful amid COVID-19 pandemic.

Seismic preparedness of families with children: Measures and dynamics.

Earthquakes are unpredictable events, thus seismic preparedness of households should be fostered, considering the specific needs of each family. Children, for example, are particularly vulnerable to disasters and to the effects of their consequences, but can also act as promoters of preparedness within families. Being part of a wider research, this qualitative study intends to better understand seismic preparedness within families with children in S. Miguel, the largest and most populated island of the volcanic archipelago of the Azores. Two semi-structured interviews were conducted. The first interview was conducted with 125 family representatives, addressing their current preparedness measures. From these representatives, 105 families that had non-existent or insufficient preparedness were selected for a second interview. In the time between the two interviews, the families were instructed to develop seismic preparedness measures. The process of development of these measures was also assessed. Data were analysed using content analysis and frequency analysis. Results point to low levels of preparedness, both at the time of the initial interview and developed subsequently, and families adopted few preparedness measures specifically targeting their children's needs. The results highlight, therefore, that household seismic preparedness should be promoted, with clear indications regarding preparedness specifically for families with children.