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Behind humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HADR) efforts are governance networks of actors working together to facilitate, coordinate, and deliver joint aid and response initiatives. Militaries are key stakeholders in these networks because of their unique capabilities, particularly in Southeast Asia. This paper explores the role of military governance networks in shaping HADR affairs. It presents a framework for examining military-to-military relational structures in humanitarian and disaster contexts using network theory and social network analysis. It also assesses the nature of military ties and their influence on two capability areas essential to humanitarian activities in the region: (i) the distribution of military assets and equipment used in HADR; and (ii) the coordination of HADR exercises and training. This paper seeks to provide insights into how governance network features and properties affect the capacity of ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) militaries to use available resources efficiently and to achieve shared objectives in regional disaster response.توجد وراء جهود المساعدة الإنسانية والإغاثة في حالات الكوارث شبكات محكومة من الجهات الفاعلة التي تعمل معًا لتسهيل وتنسيق وتقديم المساعدات والاستجابة المشتركة. الجيوش هي أصحاب المصلحة الرئيسيين في هذه الشبكات بسبب قدراتها الفريدة ، لا سيما في جنوب شرق آسيا. يستكشف هذا المقال دور شبكات الحكم العسكري في تشكيل شؤون المنطقة الحدودية. يقدم إطارًا لاستكشاف الهياكل العلائقية العسكرية في السياقات الإنسانية والكوارث باستخدام نظرية الشبكة وتحليل الشبكة الاجتماعية. كما يدرس طبيعة العلاقات العسكرية وتأثيرها على مجالين من مجالات القدرة الأساسية للأنشطة الإنسانية في المنطقة: (1) توزيع الأصول والمعدات العسكرية المستخدمة في المساعدات الإنسانية والإغاثة في حالات الكوارث و (2) تنسيق تدريبات المساعدات الإنسانية والإغاثة في حالات الكوارث. تسعى هذه المقالة إلى تقديم رؤى حول كيفية تأثير ميزات شبكة الحكم وخصائصها على قدرة جيوش من رابطة أمم جنوب شرق آسيا على استخدام الموارد المتاحة بكفاءة وتحقيق الأهداف المشتركة في الاستجابة الإقليمية للكوارث. الكلمات الدالة: رابطة أمم جنوب شرق آسيا، العسكرية ، المساعدات الإنسانية ، الإغاثة في حالات الكوارث ، الحكم ، شبكة ، جنوب شرق آسيا.人道主义援助和救灾工作的背后是行动者的治理网络，他们共同努力促进、协调和提供联合援助和响应。军队因其所具有的独特能力，是这些网络中的关键利益相关者，尤其在东南亚地区。本文探讨了军事治理网络在塑造人道主义援助和救灾工作事务中的作用。本文提出了一个框架，用于使用网络理论和社会网络分析来探索人道主义和灾难背景下的军事关系结构。本文还研究了军事关系的性质及其对该地区人道主义活动必不可少的两个能力领域的影响：(i) 人道主义援助和救灾工作中使用的军事物资和设备的分配，以及 (ii) 人道主义援助和救灾工作演习和培训的协调。本文旨在就治理网络特征和属性如何影响东盟军队有效利用可用资源和实现区域灾害响应中的共同目标的能力方面提供见解。 关键词：东盟，军队，人道援助，灾难援助，治理，网络，东南亚.

There are similar but inexactly the same problems addressed by my Capstone project and research paper. The Capstone project seeks to aid the communities of Coilolo and Tipa Tipa in rural Bolivia by providing a footbridge for when the river to the markets, schools, and town is impassable due to flooding. The Capstone team has worked with Engineers in Action (EIA) throughout the semester to develop a customized design, construction documents, and construction schedule for the footbridge. The research paper pursued the viability of 3D-printed concrete homes as a means of disaster relief in the United States. The common ground amongst the two is the desire to design infrastructure to aid communities after natural disasters strike. It is crucial to consider the human and social dimensions of this technology because the technology is meant to serve society, communities, and their people in a time of need. If the human and social dimensions are not considered, the technology will not be effective in addressing its users, rendering the development of the technology to have been in vain. For the case of 3D-printed houses, the future inhabitants, the designers, the builders, and the organized responsible for funds must be considered. The research question is analyzed using Bruno Latour’s (1992) Actor-Network Theory. The principal definitions of action, delegation, prescription, and discrimination are characterized in the realms of 3D-printed homes and the actors involved. There is a “web of relations” amongst the technology and its actors. The research was conducted at the hands of a collection of methods. The first method was historical analysis of current United States disaster relief efforts through FEMA administered housing assistance. Second was a case study that focused on cost, time, and efficiency comparison between the mechanisms deployed following Hurricane Harvey and 3D-printed concrete homes as temporary housing. Last was a case study on Habitat for Humanity’s successful completion of a 3D-printed concrete home as an indicator for the viability and success of 3D concrete printing for disaster relief. Through my research, I have found that 3D-printed houses are a viable mechanism for disaster relief in the United States. These results are due to cost, time, efficiency, and sustainability factors, which point towards 3D-printed concrete homes as more successful in each category when compared to traditional methods while also pulling from past disaster and the lessons learned. Both the Capstone project and research paper aim to provide necessary infrastructure during or following natural disasters, the first through a footbridge and the latter through 3D-printed concrete homes.

English title = Reorganisation of Responsibilities in Disaster Management: Earthquake, Social Dramas, Social Policies Türkiye’nin güneydoğusunda 6 Şubat 2023’te, Kahramanmaraş’ın Pazarcık ve Elbistan ilçelerinde meydana gelen iki büyük depremin etkileri ile yaşanan can ve mal kaybı ülkenin afet yönetimi çalışmalarının ve bu konudaki sosyal politikalarının geliştirilmesi gerektiğine işaret etmektedir. Deprem sonrası sosyal politikalara sosyal dramaturji yaklaşımı ile baskın söylemler ve karşıt söylemler üzerinden baktığımız bu makalede, afet yönetimi konusunda çıkarımlar sunmaktayız. Araştırmanın amacı, sosyal politikalara yön veren yanlış ve yersiz söylemleri ortaya koymak ve delil temelli, etik ve kapsayıcı afet yönetimine yönelik sosyal politikaların oluşumuna yardım edecek bir analiz sunmaktır. On February 6th, 2023, two major earthquakes occurred in the Pazarcık and Elbistan districts of Kahramanmaraş in southeastern Turkey. The loss of life and property due to the effects of the February 6th earthquakes demonstrates Turkey’s need for inclusive disaster management and social policies. This study examines post-earthquake disaster management and social policies through narrative analysis. Using a social dramaturgy approach, we evaluate dominant- and counter-narratives to offer recommendations for inclusive, fair, and sustainable disaster management and social policies. We aim to identify misguided narratives that influence social policies and provide evidence-based, ethical, and inclusive analysis to help design disaster management and social policies.

Purpose The sudden arrival of Covid-19 severely disrupted the supply chain of personal protective equipment (PPE) in Australia. This paper aims to examine the development of a geographical cluster, which, through the application of additive manufacturing (AM), responded to the PPE supply crisis. Design/methodology/approach This longitudinal case study focuses on an AM cluster, which was developed to supply PPE in a responsive and flexible manner from 2019/2020. The study gathered data over three stages of cluster evolution: pre, during and post-peak Covid-19. Findings The type and nature of exchanges between organizations involved in the cluster established important insights into success factors for cluster creation and development. Using an established complexity framework, this study identifies the characteristics of establishing a cluster. The importance of cluster alignment created initially by a common PPE supply goal led to an emerging commercial and relational imperative to address the longer-term configuration after the disruption. Practical implications Clusters can be a viable option for a technology-driven sector when there is a “buzz” that drives and rapidly diffuses knowledge to support cluster formation. This research identifies the structural, socio-political and emergent dimensions, which need to be considered by stakeholders when aiming at improving competitiveness using clusters. Originality/value Covid-19 has rapidly and unexpectedly disrupted the supply chain for many industries. Responding to challenges, businesses will investigate different pathways to improve the overall resilience including on-/near-shoring. The results provide insights into how clusters are formed, grow and develop and the differentiating factors that result in successful impacts of clusters on local economies.

Purpose Malaysian disaster relief volunteers have a long and proud history of participating in relief missions within and outside the country. Despite of a plethora of researches into the various areas of disaster relief, there has been a little scholarly activity looking into the experiences of the medical volunteers worldwide and even less research on the experiences of the relief volunteers in Malaysia. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to identify the effect of disaster relief works on volunteers in Malaysia. Methods This is a non-experimental cross-sectional design study, which was conducted using survey questionnaire to examine the incidence of burnout, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms and the quality of life (QOL) among the disaster relief volunteers. And the study also examined the socio-demographic variables of the participants. In addition, the association between the sociodemographic variable and the preferred coping strategies was also investigated through self-reporting checklist. Results The findings of this study revealed that 90.9% volunteers (n = 312) experienced some levels of recurring stress throughout their lives, which led to burnout. Also, 96.8% (n = 332) of the participants were categorized as having at least some symptoms of PTSD. However, self-reporting QOL measurements indicated that the participants are, in general, satisfied with their lives. Significant associations between the incidence of burnout, incidence of PTSD and QOL were identified. Both positive coping measures and behavioral or avoidant coping measures were also identified. Furthermore, a number of socio-demographic factors were also seen to interact significantly with burnout, PTSD and QOL. Conclusion This study provides some insights into the psychological challenges of disaster relief volunteers in Malaysia, and this impact can last a long time after the volunteers return to their hometowns. Several recommendations including practice development, policy and research were discussed in the study.

A majority of the workforce in the humanitarian aid consists of volunteers who partly suffer from health problems related to their voluntary service. To date, only a fraction of the current research focuses on this population. The aim of this qualitative explorative study was to identify burdening and protective organisational factors for health and well-being among humanitarian aid volunteers in a Greek refugee camp. To this end, interviews with 22 volunteers were held on site and afterwards analysed by using qualitative content analysis. We focused on international volunteers working in Greece that worked in the provision of food, material goods, emotional support and recreational opportunities. We identified burdening factors, as well as protective factors, in the areas of work procedures, team interactions, organisational support and living arrangements. Gender-specific disadvantages contribute to burdening factors, while joyful experiences are only addressed as protective factors. Additionally, gender-specific aspects in the experience of team interactions and support systems were identified. According to our findings, several possibilities for organisations to protect health and well-being of their volunteers exist. Organisations could adapt organisational structures to the needs of their volunteers and consider gender-specific factors.

This paper introduces the heterogeneous multicrew scheduling and routing problem (MCSRP) in road restoration. The MCSRP consists of identifying the schedule and route of heterogeneous crews that must perform the restoration of damaged nodes used in the paths to connect a source node to demand nodes in a network affected by extreme events. The objective is to minimize the accessibility time defined as the time that the demand nodes remain unconnected from the source node. The main contributions of the paper include three novel mathematical formulations that differ in the way of modeling the scheduling decisions and the synchronization of the crews, and the development of valid inequalities based on some particular properties of the problem. Additionally, we prove that the MCSRP is NP-hard. Extensive numerical experiments with randomly generated instances and a case study based on floods and landslides disasters in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, are performed to assess the efficiency and applicability of our approach. In particular, we show that the valid inequalities significantly improve the solvability of the mathematical models. In terms of managerial implications, our results suggest that the incorporation of multiple crews helps to reduce the worst-case accessibility times across the demand nodes, thus providing more equitable solutions.

Recently, global natural disasters have occurred frequently and caused serious damage. As an important urban space resource and public service facility, the reasonable planning and layout optimization of shelters is very important to reduce the disaster loss and improve the sustainable development of cities. Based on the review of location theory and models for shelter site selection, this study constructs a bi-level multi-objective location-allocation model, an accessibility, economy, and efficiency (AEE) model, based on sequential decision logic to maximize the economic sustainability and social utility. The model comprehensively considers factors such as the level of decision-making, the utilization efficiency, and capacity constraints of shelters. The gravity model is introduced to simulate the decision-making behavior of evacuees. A calculation example and its solution prove the high practicability and operability of the AEE model in an actual shelter site selection and construction investment, which can achieve the global optimization of evacuation time and the maximization of the use efficiency of the shelters under the financial constraints. It provides a scientific and effective decision-making method for the multi-objective location optimization problem of shelters.

This paper compares the allocation of private humanitarian aid to that of official humanitarian aid awarded to 140 recipient countries over the 2000–2016 period. We construct a new database that offers information on the country in which the headquarters of private donors are located to test whether private aid tends to follow the humanitarian aid allocation pattern of the respective official donor. Our empirical results confirm that private humanitarian aid tends to “follow the flag”. This finding is robust against the inclusion of various fixed effects, estimating instrumental variables models and disaggregating private humanitarian aid into corporate aid and NGO aid. Donor country-specific estimations reveal that private humanitarian aid from China, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States tend to “follow the flag”.

Quality management has been widely discussed in the literature, and recent special issues on humanitarian supply chains and relief operations have emphasized the increasing importance of quality management in this key emerging area. In this paper, we provide an extensive literature review in the field of quality management in humanitarian operations and disaster relief management. Our comprehensive review, comprising 61 articles published from 2009 to 2018, leads to the identification of enablers (e.g., transparency, policy framework), challenges (e.g., financial services, identity protection), and theory development approaches, as well as numerous research gaps that must be addressed.

There is a growing interest in large unmanned cargo aircraft (UCA) with payload capacity and range significantly larger than drones for last-mile parcel delivery. Several fields of application for such types of UCA were suggested. In this chapter, the usability of such a large UCA is discussed for three use cases, namely spare parts logistics, supply of people in hard-to-reach areas, and disaster relief. Performance parameters of the UCA are based on the large cargo drone concept developed by the DLR (German Aerospace Center) within the project Automated Low Altitude Air Delivery – ALAADy. We describe specific characteristics of each use case and how the use of an UCA could result in improved transport solutions. UCA can be a suitable transport solution when spare parts with high criticality and high value and with low and irregular demand have to be supplied. Furthermore, UCA can improve the transport of essential goods in hard-to-reach areas. For usage in disaster relief operations the UCA needs additional capabilities like to detect people in need and to supply them by airdrops.

Natural disasters bring huge loss of life and property to human beings. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) own the advantages of high mobility, high flexibility, and rapid deployment, and are important equipment during post-disaster rescue. However, UAVs usually have restricted battery and computing power. They are not fit for performing compute-intensive tasks during rescue. Since there are widespread parking resources in a city, multiple parked vehicles working together to compute the applications from UAVs in a post-disaster rescue is investigated to ensure the quality of experience (QoE) of the UAVs. To execute uploaded task effectively, surviving parked vehicles within the monitoring range of an UAV are arranged into a cluster as much as possible. Then, the task execution cost is analyzed. Furthermore, a deep reinforcement learning (DRL)-based offloading policy is constructed, which interacts with the environment in an intelligent way to achieve optimization goals. The simulation experiments show that the proposed offloading scheme has a higher task completion rate and a lower task execution cost than other baselines schemes.

Modeling equity in the allocation of scarce resources is a fast-growing concern in the humanitarian logistics field. The Gini coefficient is one of the most widely recognized measures of inequity and it was originally characterized by means of the Lorenz curve, which is a mathematical function that links the cumulative share of income to rank-ordered groups in a population. So far, humanitarian logistics models that have approached equity using the Gini coefficient do not actually optimize its original formulation, but they use alternative definitions that do not necessarily replicate that original Gini measure. In this paper, we derive the original Gini coefficient via the Lorenz curve to optimize the effectiveness-equity trade-off in a humanitarian location-allocation problem. We also propose new valid inequalities based on a bounding Lorenz curve to tighten the linear relaxation of our model and develop a clustering-based construction of the Lorenz curve that requires fewer additional constraints and variables than the original one. The computational study, based on the floods and landslides in Rio de Janeiro state, Brazil, reveals that while alternative Gini definitions have interesting properties, they can generate vastly different decisions compared to the original Gini coefficient. In addition, viewed from the perspective of the original Gini coefficient, these decisions can be significantly less equitable.

The Great Appalachian Flood of 1977 was a historic flood that killed over 100 people, damaged nearly 1,500 homes, and displaced almost 30,000 Appalachian residents. The flood lasted from April 2nd to April 5th, 1977 affecting southwestern Virginia, eastern Kentucky, southern West Virginia, and eastern Tennessee. This project focuses on the disaster relief efforts by the incarcerated population of Wise County Correctional Facility, commonly known as Unit 18, in Wise, Virginia. This project utilized locally produced primary sources known as the Mountain Community Television interviews. These interviews were archived online through the Appalshop Archives in Whitesburg, Kentucky. The Mountain Community Television interviews used for this project were recorded three to four weeks following the early April flood in Wise by media activists and volunteers. The reporters interviewed incarcerated men from Unit 18, the administrative staff and correctional officers at Unit 18, local business owners, and residential community members of Wise. This article examines how the community of Wise, Virginia reacted to the disaster relief efforts in the community. The disaster relief work performed by Unit 18 inmates in the aftermath of the 1977 flood exemplifies a growing reliance on prison laborers in central Appalachia specifically, and rural America more generally. The majority of residential community members in Wise expressed NIMBY (Not in My Backyard) attitudes toward the prison facility and incarcerated population at Unit 18. On the other hand, local business owners who directly benefited from disaster relief work and prison labor changed their opinions about Unit 18 inmates. This project details how the April flood influenced local business owners to move from "Not In My Backyard" to an expanding reliance on incarcerated labor. Most of the Wise community retained NIMBY perceptions about Unit 18 and the incarcerated population after the April flood relief efforts excluding local business owners, a small but important sect of the Wise population. The article concludes by examining Unit 18 inmates' reflections on their labor, wages, and the rehabilitation programs at the Wise County Correctional Facility in the late 1970s. Master of Arts In 1977, a catastrophic flood impacted the central Appalachian region of the United States. This flood later became known as the "Great Appalachian Flood of 1977." The flood primarily affected small towns and rural communities in southwestern Virginia, eastern Kentucky, eastern Tennessee, and southern West Virginia. Disaster relief efforts in the aftermath of the flood varied across the region causing regional activists to criticize the government's relief efforts. In Wise, Virginia imprisoned men from Wise Correctional Facility Unit 18 volunteered to help the local community in their time of need. This project pays direct attention to Wise, VA community members' changed or solidified opinions about the local prison population at Wise Correctional Unit 18. The writing examines how Unit 18 prisoners viewed their role in the Wise community, their labor and wages, and the different approaches to prisoner rehabilitation. This project uses primary sources from the Appalshop Archives labeled as the Mountain Community Television interviews. In the late 1970s, Mountain Community Television interviewers were a group of local activists and volunteers that circulated broadcasts in southwestern Virginia. The Mountain Community Television interviews were conducted in the following weeks after the Great Appalachian Flood in Wise,Virginia. The interviews describe how local business owners of Wise and Unit 18 correctional administrators worked closely to change the working relationship between the community and the inmates at Unit 18. The vast majority of community members of Wise did not change their opinions about the location of the prison or the population of Unit 18 despite prisoners volunteering to help the community in the aftermath of the flood. On the other hand, the imprisoned population at Unit 18 advocated for more inclusion in the community with an expansion of educational and rehabilitative programs at the correctional facility after. This research is important because it highlights how rural communities and small towns contribute to mass incarceration in the United States. The project can be used to explain how Wise, Virginia directly, and central Appalachia generally, became an important landscape for the U.S. prison regime before the end of the twentieth century.

In a rapidly changing world, what is today an unprecedented extreme may soon become the norm. As a result, extreme‐related disasters are expected to become more frequent and intense. This will have widespread socio‐economic consequences and affect the ability of different societal groups to recover from and adapt to rapidly changing environmental conditions. Therefore, there is the need to decipher the relation between genesis of unprecedented events, accumulation and distribution of risk, and recovery trajectories across different societal groups. Here, we develop an analytical approach to unravel the complexity of future extremes and multiscalar societal responses—from households to national governments and from immediate impacts to longer term recovery. This requires creating new forms of knowledge that integrate analyses of the past—that is, structural causes and political processes of risk accumulation and differentiated recovery trajectories—with plausible scenarios of future environmental extremes grounded in the event‐specific literature. We specifically seek to combine the physical characteristics of the extremes with examinations of how culture, politics, power, and policy visions shape societal responses to unprecedented events, and interpret the events as social‐environmental extremes. This new approach, at the nexus between social and natural sciences, has the concrete advantage of providing an impact‐focused vision of future social‐environmental risks, beyond what is achievable within conventional disciplinary boundaries. In this paper, we focus on extreme flooding events and the societal responses they elicit. However, our approach is flexible and applicable to a wide range of extreme events. We see it as the first building block of a new field of research, allowing for novel and integrated theoretical explanations and forecasting of social‐environmental extremes., Key Points We conceptualize unprecedented extremes as social‐environmental processes shaped by institutional, political, and economic changeAs social‐environmental extremes become more frequent, there is an urgency to unravel their genesis and the possible societal responsesThis approach is the first building block of a new field of research in social‐environmental extreme event forecasts

Indonesia is a region that disaster-affected which often arise, it is because of Indonesia is an equatorial boundary is the line where a slab of earth impact of catastrophes. Against such conditions it is with the frequent disasters continue to occur so it is necessary prepared in disaster response. So far it has provided device regulatory disaster management, namely Law No. 24 of 2007 which provides a framework for disaster management, including pre-disaster, emergency response and post-disaster. Indonesia is a country that is very rich, dazzling beauty of the panorama, so many interesting foreign tourists to come and see the beauty. In addition, Indonesia is a country that often mengalmi natural disasters, ranging from floods, volcanoes to the tsunami, Indonesia is a disaster-prone geographical location. Disasters can be caused by natural factors and due to the irresponsible behavior of the use and management of natural resources (SDA) and the environment. Although the law has outlined a comprehensive disaster management provisions, so far the response is still focused on emergency response issues. Further action such as mitigation, rehabilitation and reconstruction seems not be the main priority of disaster management activities. Another problem that is still experiencing problems is coordination, speed of relief, aid accuracy and evenness of distribution logistics. Institutional: On the mandate of Law 24/2007 also institutional been formed National Disaster Management Agency (BNPB) at the regional level throughout and Indonesia. BNPB also formed a technical executing unit area (UPTD) 12 units. BNPB Institution supported by trained human resources (HR) who are ready to be deployed to the hardest terrain even though this certainly must be supported by adequate and measurable funding in the APBN (state budget) and APBD (regional budget). Institutional Strengthening: Grand designs required in order to strengthen institutional capacity and disaster management standard that is fast, responsive, and professional in accordance with international standards. Key words: Policy, Disaster Relief, On Target

In this paper, a game theory model for disaster relief is constructed that incorporates both financial and logistical aspects of humanitarian organizations involved in the purchasing and delivery of relief items, post-disaster, using freight services. The model allows for the purchasing of the relief items, both locally and nonlocally, includes a budget constraint for each humanitarian organization, along with imposed lower and upper bound demand constraints at each point of demand by a higher level organization. The governing concept is that of Generalized Nash Equilibrium, since not only does the utility function of a given humanitarian organization depend on its own strategies and the strategies of the other humanitarian organizations, but the constraints do as well. The concept of a variational equilibrium is utilized to derive the variational inequality formulation of the governing equilibrium conditions and the model is analyzed qualitatively. Lagrange analysis of the marginal utilities is conducted to gain insights on the impact of the constraints and an alternative variational inequality constructed, with nice features for computations. An algorithm is proposed and explicit formulae provided for the logistical flows and Lagrange multipliers at each iteration. Numerical examples, inspired by Hurricane Harvey hitting Houston, Texas, as occurred in August 2017, illustrate the framework. This work adds to the still nascent literature on game theory and disaster relief and also to the literature on variational inequality models with nonlinear constraints, which is limited.

Emergency blood supply plays an important role in disaster relief. However, large fluctuations in blood demand make precise blood forecasting a challenge. The demand for blood and information about transportation disruption are dynamically revealed over time. A discrete-time Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) mathematical formulation will be developed to cope with the underlying uncertainty through a rolling horizon approach with the purpose to optimally manage the blood supply chain system in disaster relief (i.e., determining the amount of blood collection, location of the blood collection stations, transport and storage needed to meet the demand in the worst-case scenario and minimize the total response time and total operational costs). The model also takes blood characteristics and blood emergency supply constraints into consideration. The performance of the proposed model and solution method is then investigated in a real case study from the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake and the results are discussed in detail.

Large-scale sudden-onset disasters may cause massive injuries and thus place great pressure on the emergency blood supplies of local blood banks. When blood is in short supply, blood products gathered urgently to a local blood center should be appropriately allocated to blood banks in the affected area. Moreover, ABO/Rh(D) compatibilities among blood groups must be considered during emergency situations. To minimize the total unmet demand of blood products considering the optimal ABO/Rh(D)-compatible blood substitution scheme, a mixed integer programming model is developed and solved efficiently by using a greedy heuristic algorithm. Finally, a numerical example derived from the emergency blood supply scenario of the Wenchuan Earthquake is presented to verify the proposed model and algorithm. The results show that considering ABO/Rh(D)-compatible blood substitution can remarkably increase the efficiency of emergency blood allocation while lowering blood shortage, and the preference order of possible ABO/Rh(D)-compatible substitutions has an influence on the allocation solution.

International Transaction Journal of Engineering, Management, & Applied Sciences & Technologies, 12, 10, 12A10B: 1-12

Purpose To meet the rising global needs, the humanitarian community has signed off on making a strategic change toward more localisation, which commonly refers to the empowerment of national and local actors in humanitarian assistance. However, to this date, actual initiatives for localisation are rare. To enhance understanding of the phenomenon, the authors explore localisation of logistics preparedness capacities and obstacles to its implementation. The authors particularly take the perspective of the international humanitarian organisation (IHO) community as they are expected to implement the localisation strategy. Design/methodology/approach A phenomenon-driven, exploratory and qualitative study was conducted. Data collection included in-depth interviews with 28 experienced humanitarian professionals. Findings The findings showed the ambiguity inherent in the localisation strategy with largely different views on four important dimensions. Particularly, the interviewees differ about strengthening external actors or internal national/local offices. The resulting framework visualises the gap between strategy formulation and implementation, which forms major obstacles to the localisation aims. Research limitations/implications Further research is required to support the advancement of localisation of logistics preparedness capacities. Important aspects for future research include triangulation of results, other stakeholder perspectives and the influence of context. Practical implications The authors add to the important debate surrounding localisation by offering remedies to overcoming obstacles to strategy implementation. Further, the authors’ proposed framework offers a language to precisely describe the ways in which IHOs (should) view localisation of logistics preparedness capacities and its operationalisation. Originality/value To the best of authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first academic article on localisation within the humanitarian logistics context.

Over the last several decades, there has been an increase in U.S. naval involvement in supporting humanitarian assistance, disaster relief (HA/DR) operations. Cruiser and destroyer (CRUDES) platforms, two of the most heavily employed platforms in the United States Navy, are frequently tasked outside of their primary mission sets as a result of HA/DR events, both natural and man-made. This has placed enormous pressure upon these units, their crews, and fleet commanders, specifically in how to best prioritize their use for maximum mission accomplishment. Our analysis provides side-by-side comparisons of the cost and capabilities of the LCS and T-EPF platforms to CRUDES assets, and describes their ability to effectively support HA/DR operations. This analysis gives senior leadership and mission planners objective information regarding viable alternatives that could allow CRUDES assets to maintain focus on their primary mission objectives while maintaining the necessary flexibility to support HA/DR operations. Lieutenant Commander, United States Navy Lieutenant, United States Navy Lieutenant Commander, United States Navy Approved for public release. distribution is unlimited

Advanced strategies for emergency logistics scheduling problems in urban transport networks have been a challenging topic for centuries. This study proposed a cluster-first route-second constructive heuristic method based on the continuous approximation (CA) for ‘one-to-many’ vehicle routing to dispatch commidities after an emergency. The objective of the study is to provide a replenish schedule and routing solution from the government/provider’s end in order to minimize the total motion cost, pipeline inventory cost, and holding cost with backorder for the disaster relief operation. The developed method can turn the complicated vehicle routing problem (VRP) into a relatively simple travel salesman problem (TSP) for pre-assigned customer sets. The CA is employed to determine the optimal replenish amount and inventory level for the route serving a given location. The Christofides method is then applied to solve the TSP for the selected cluster. Two clustering methods are investigated in this research: (1) a local-based approach where clustering and routing are determined; and (2) a K-mean clustering method where points are clustered upfront by the CA solution. A case study in Miami-Dade County in Florida to dispatch fuels from the depot to 72 gas stations is presented, demonstrating the proposed approach and comparing two clustering methods. The numerical results illustrate the effectiveness of the algorithms and conclude that the local-based clustering approach may yield a lower total cost with a higher motion cost.

International audience; The flood levees in the vicinity of Krakow city (Poland) are, in some places, over 100 years old. Thereupon, in the flood dike, and its subsoil, can appear unconsolidated zones, which, during the flood stage, can be a simple way of water flow and/or even can be the place where the levee body will be destroyed. This phenomenon took place in Wawrzeńczyce village, near Krakow city, during the flood in 2010. The geophysical research was carried out, in order to develop a methodology of recognition of potential areas where the levee body can be damaged. The geophysical surveys were conducted with the use of electrical and electromagnetic methods, as well as utilizing the seismic method. The general identification of examined media was realized by the electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) method. The ERT surveys were supplemented by capacitively-coupled resistivity (CCR) measurements, in order to analyze the usefulness of the CCR method for the examination of river dikes and reduction of interpretation ambiguity. The ground penetrating radar (GPR) method detected small anomalies in the body dike, due to the very high resolution of this method, which were not detected by the ERT and CCR techniques. During GPR surveys, non-standard measurement techniques were applied. Finally, the high-resolution seismic reflection (HRSR) method provided a clear and high-resolution image of the dike structure up to the water table and assisted with the identification of the hazard non-consolidated zones.

My thesis portfolio revolves around how cities are adapting to increased flooding due to climate change. My technical report suggests a methodology for cities that are looking to learn more about how flooding is distributed locally. Currently, cities largely rely on residents to report local flooding. This removes objectivity and creates a burden on citizens to know exactly who to call when reporting their problem. In addition, any existing flood mapping resources used, like ArcGIS, may not be updated with how flooding occurs during increased rainfall scenarios. The goal of my team was to provide cities with a framework for how to update and reintroduce objectivity to their flood management system. We built a sensor system that uses long-range radio to communicate flood levels with a database. We also came up with a methodology for updating maps in ArcGIS to include details such as broken stormwater pipes and unexpected outflows, among other things. My STS research paper focuses on how cities may or may not be considering housing equality when developing methods to adapt to increased flooding. Seeing as many cities in the United States are facing existential threats due to flooding due to climate change, this topic seemed relevant to study now and for decades to come. While my technical paper looks into how cities might begin to develop resilience strategies in the face of increased flooding, my research paper looks at the societal impacts of those strategies on the most vulnerable populations in society. My topics look at two sides of the flooding problem, but are connected due to their proximity to resilience strategies.

Disasters have been striking human-beings from the beginning of history and theirmanagement is a global concern of the international community. Minimizing the impact andconsequences of these disasters, both natural and human-made, involves many decision and logisticprocesses that should be optimized. A crucial logistic problem is the evacuation of the affectedpopulation, and the focus of this paper is the planning of supported evacuation of vulnerable peopleto safe places when necessary. A lexicographic goal programming model for supported evacuation isproposed, whose main novelties are the classification of potential evacuees according to their healthcondition, so that they can be treated accordingly; the introduction of dynamism regarding the arrivalof potential evacuees to the pickup points, according to their own susceptibility about the disasterand the joint consideration of objectives such us number of evacuated people, operation time andcost, among which no trade-off is possible. The performance of the proposed model is evaluatedthrough a realistic case study regarding the earthquake and tsunami that hit Palu (Indonesia) inSeptember 2018.

Following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on April 20, 2010, information was widely broadcast through social media platforms such as Twitter. This study aimed to gain insights into the content and flow of the tweets that had shaped the conversation related to the oil spill within the first 4 months of the rig explosion and to understand how these online interactions may have contributed to disaster response and resilience. A set of tweets (n = 876,298) was identified and processed to yield 736,324 clean tweets. The study used a mixed-methods approach, including human coding, machine learning and social network analysis to examine the online discourse. Visualizations were used to present the patterns and connections within the dataset into a more readable and interpretable format. Our analysis revealed that popular themes such as environmental and economic concerns, clean-up and volunteering, health impacts and frustration towards BP had contributed to the shaping of the discourse. The Twitter users included seekers and providers of information and resources. Another group of users, local volunteers and digital activists, functioned as boundary spanners by facilitating information flow between the seekers and the providers. Additionally, Twitter had been used for risk communication and the dissemination of factual health information. The online communication and coordination efforts may have contributed to the mitigation of the impacts of the oil spill. Our findings suggest that social media empowered community-based users, affording access to power brokers, reliable information, the formation of online networks and social capital and potentially contributed to their resilience.

International audience; Disasters are becoming more and more common around the world, making technology important to guarantee people’s lives as much as possible.One of the most modern advances of recent years is how AI is used in disaster relief. Researchers propose works based on new technologies (IoT, Cloud Computing, Blockchain, etc.) and AI concepts (Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, etc.). But these concepts are difficult to exploit in low and middle socio-demographic index (SDI) countries, especially as most disasters happen in.In this paper we propose S2S intelligent system, based on voice recognition to life-saving in disaster relief. Generally, a disaster victim is enable to access to his Smartphone and ask help, with this system, saying “help” will be enough to send automatically alerts to the nearest Emergency Operation Services (EOS).S2S is composed of two parts: Intelligent application embedded on citizens and victims Smartphones, and S2S System for the Emergency Operation Services.

Hurricane Harvey was an astonishingly destructive Category Four hurricane that made landfall in South and Coastal Texas. This destructive storm left numerous people dead and thousands displaced. It created record levels of flooding damaging over 200,000 homes, businesses, and facilities. Harvey’s disaster destruction will have lasting impacts on Texas, and beyond, for months to years of repair. A group of students, from a variety of Masters programs, set out with the goal to serve those affected by the hurricanes. Desiree Shannon and Genny Fultz had the opportunity to lead this team of nine Krannert Masters students to Houston to help with the restoration after Hurricane Harvey. Their team partnered with the Krannert Professional Development Center, Shell, Send Relief/North American Missions Board, and Bayou City Relief. On site, the team immediately clicked, with everyone assuming a role that best suited their strengths. Although the work was physically challenging and many of students had never performed housing construction tasks before, they remained energized. After several hours of preparation and hard work, they served 264 hours of direct community service in five days. They saved tens of thousands of dollars in repair costs for homeowners by providing free flood damage treatment and labor. During their spare time, the group bonded with Purdue Alumni and Shell employees while trying new foods. Downtime provided them with much needed cultural and social experiences of a new city with a group of people united behind one vision: to serve. They saw the vulnerable side of Houston that was broken down, damaged, and scarred. The team’s impact touched both the victims directly as well as their friends, family, neighbors, volunteers, and many more. Their service aided the victim’s grieving process and financial burden, making it easier for victims to remain resilient and rebuild after the destruction.

The emergency response efforts in the immediate days and weeks following Hurricane Dorian provide valuable guidance for effective preparation for and response to future extreme events. We assess the experiences and lessons learnt from an emergent volunteer group that provided emergency response in the first fifteen days following the landfall of Hurricane Dorian. Drawing from accounts of first responders that convened at the Odyssey Aviation airport in New Providence, the paper highlights the activities, outcomes, and enabling factors of the ad hoc group that supported a wide range of emergency response efforts. The group developed and managed an evacuation centre that processed over 6,000 evacuees from Abaco and Grand Bahama; collaborated to deliver food, shelter and medical attention for evacuees; and found housing for displaced persons. They organized the marine response to the storm; coordinated international organizations; and facilitated landing first responders and initial medical teams into Abaco. They also provided coordination support for the Government of The Bahamas. We highlight the need to include public-private partnerships in national disaster management systems to significantly strengthen national capacities to address the rising risks of disasters.

The article of record as published may be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10242694.2017.1349365 We study the differential impacts of combat and humanitarian assistance/disaster relief (HA/DR) missions on the mental health of U.S. Marine Corps members. The deployment experiences of any individual Marine are plausibly random conditional on the observable characteristics which are used to assign Marines into units. Leveraging this exogenous variation, we compare the incidence of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and suicide deaths among Marines who deployed to either Operation Enduring Freedom/Operation Iraqi Freedom (OEF/OIF) or HA/DR missions between 2001 and 2011. We find that the hazard of PTSD is close to eight times higher among Marines returning from OEF/OIF compared to those never deployed, and just 1.33 times higher among those returning from HA/DR (and never participated in OEF/OIF). Those returning from OEF/OIF missions are 1.81 times more likely than those never deployed to die by suicide when they were still active duty, and the hazard increases to almost 3 after they have left the military. In contrast, we find no difference in the hazards of suicide death between those that deployed to only HA/DR missions and non-deployed Marines.

MBA Professional Project This project analyzed the existing process used by Department of Defense forces to authorize and claim reimbursement from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) while providing Defense Support to Civil Authorities (DSCA). Research was conducted on existing policies and documented DSCA procedures at each level within the network. This project used a process analytics approach to map a flowchart along with interviews conducted among key stakeholders to obtain insight into each role while requesting improvement recommendations. A quantitative analysis of the primary DSCA database also yielded an understanding of how each stakeholder interfaces the portal, attempting to understand the utility of such a system during one specific DSCA event. The analysis resulted in the conclusion that the area of greatest weakness is found in the level of process knowledge at the operational level. This is believed to have created coordination challenges that prevented proper claim submission. This study recommends the creation of a standardized reference for users at the unit and FEU operational levels defining their role in the process and the proper procedures to be executed. This is believed to offer the largest benefit in the shortest period of time. http://archive.org/details/ananalysisofthed1094562253 Lieutenant Commander, United States Navy Lieutenant Commander, United States Navy Lieutenant Commander, United States Navy

The research studies how austerity frameworks affect the local scale of municipal public services in Puerto Rico. This thesis stems on one side from the passing of Hurricanes Irma and María in 2017 which further revealed the vulnerability of the Puerto Rican archipelago and its people, and present the islands-territory as a particular case study. Puerto Rico’s current status is framed by a persistent lack of economic development, unfolding financial decline and fiscal debt, a newly imposing oversight and management intervention by the United States, and an urgent need of post-disaster reconstruction–the question of public services becomes critical. The thesis formally asks, to what extent austerity impact public services delivery at a municipal level in Puerto Rico? The research argues that austerity strategies have translated to the municipal local level as fiscal discipline complicating the already intricate relation between central and local governments, as well as central and federal governments, exposing public and essential services to high uncertainty. There’s no evidence to protect and support municipal public services at any scale. The thesis argues that the body–and scale of local governance may be in the correct position to explore and foster planning practices that promote collaboration between the local and the central scale. The planning field largely allows for the articulation of public concerns, monitor metrics, mobilize discourses, and bridge a growing spatial inequality. The local scale delivery of public services– I would argue, can help guide the multiple agents–historical and present, to counter the impact of austerity.

This paper outlines our ongoing efforts at buildingan effective disaster relief system utilizing real-time, crowdsourcedresponses to disaster events. This system integrates threecomponents: social media analysis, rescue demand prediction, andrelief distribution optimization. We introduce the conceptualdisaster relief system, database structure, and its integratedcomponents. Finally, a summarization of the current researchchallenges we expect to address in the future is provided.

Background Though the right to health is included in Haiti’s constitution, little progress has been made to expand universal health coverage nationwide, a strategy to ensure access to health services for all, while preventing financial hardship among the poor. Realizing universal health coverage will require a better understanding of inequities in health care utilization and out-of-pocket payments for health. This study measures inequality in health services utilization and the determinants of health seeking behavior in Haiti. It also examines the determinants of catastrophic health expenditures, defined by the Sustainable Development Goal Framework (Indicator 3.8.2) as expenditures that exceed 10% of overall household expenditures. Methodology Three types of analysis were conducted using the 2012 and 2013 Household Surveys (Enquête sur les Conditions de Vie des Ménages Après Séisme (ECVMAS I (2012) and ECVMAS II (2013)) to measure: 1) outpatient services as a measure of inequalities using the 2013 Concentration Index; 2) drivers of health seeking behavior using a logistic regression model for 2013; and 3) determinants of catastrophic health expenditures using Seemingly Unrelated Regressions for both 2012 and 2013. Results The rate of catastrophic health expenditures increased nationwide from 9.43% in 2012 to 11.54% in 2013. This increase was most notable among the poorest wealth quintile (from 11.62% in 2012 to 18.20% in 2013), yet declined among the richest wealth quintile (from 9.49% to 4.46% during the same period). The increase in the rate of catastrophic health expenditures among the poorest coincides with a sharp decrease in external donor funding for the health sector. Regression analysis indicated that the rich wealth quintiles were less likely than poor wealth quintiles to incur catastrophic health expenditures. Interestingly, households were less likely to incur catastrophic health expenditures when they accessed care from Community Health Workers than when they received care from other types of providers, including public and private health care facilities. This study also shows that Community Health Worker-provided services have a negative concentration index (− 0.22) and are therefore most utilized by poor quintiles. In contrast, both public and private outpatient services had positive concentration indexes (0.05 and 0.12 respectively) and are most utilized by the rich wealth quintiles. Seeking care from traditional healers was found to be pro-poor in Haiti (concentration index of − 0.18) yet was also associated with higher catastrophic health expenditures albeit the coefficient was not significant. Conclusion The expansion of universal health coverage in Haiti is evolving in a ‘pro-rich’ manner. Realizing Haiti’s right to health will require a course-correction supported by national policies that protect the poor wealth quintiles from catastrophic health expenditures. Such policies may include Community Health Worker service delivery expansion in underserved areas. Evidence-based interventions may also be required to lower outpatient user fees, subsidize drug costs and promote efficiencies in pro-poor disaster relief programming.

When the largest earthquake ever recorded in Japan’s modern history struck on the afternoon of March 11, 2011 (3.11), the resulting tsunami and nuclear disaster contributed to the crisis quickly spinning out of control. While the central government’s reaction was lambasted by the media and the public, the positive reception of the Japanese Self-Defense Force’s (SDF) response efforts represented a possible shift in the place and perception of the organization. This research seeks to find what lasting effect, if any, 3.11 had on public opinion toward the SDF. It also investigates whether any such potential shift has an observable impact on Japan’s recent moves toward apparent normalization. It analyzes the events and trends during and following 3.11 as well as those surrounding comparable disasters in Japan’s past. Several modern case studies from disasters in Chile, Indonesia, and China are also analyzed to see if 3.11 can serve as a useful marker for determining shifts in civil-military relations in Japan and perhaps beyond. Findings reveal that 3.11 caused enduring positive trends in the SDF’s popularity even several years after the crisis as well as a recruitment surge in the years following. While overall changes in hard numbers and statistics were ultimately noteworthy yet modest, 3.11 and several of the case studies most importantly revealed an underlying and perhaps unmeasurable tectonic improvement in the relationship between the public and the SDF. http://archive.org/details/andpublicopinion1094560418 Lieutenant, United States Navy Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.

The primary goal of this research is to identify and evaluate gaps to understand the need for defining and developing readiness metrics for the United States Marine Corps (USMC) in information/knowledge management (I/KM) and needs assessments (NA). The primary research question is: How can the USMC better complete NA and I/KM activities in support of humanitarian operations? Research methods included education from formal training courses, a review of relevant literature, analysis of four historical case studies from 2010 to 2015, and personal interviews with prominent members in the field. This research examines USMC-unique capabilities to explain how the USMC can best fulfill its role, within the frameworks established by humanitarian organizations, in the most efficient and effective manner. We offer specific refinements to guide Marines in future planning of NA and I/KM efforts. In applying these refinements, Marine planners must tailor traditional practices with a shift in perspective from militant to humanitarian, wherein the USMC will serve as a supporting effort within a much larger international response. No two humanitarian responses can be the same; nevertheless, the well-grounded findings of this research related to NA and I/KM offer a basis of understanding for USMC planners to apply in any foreign natural HA/DR setting. http://archive.org/details/evaluationofgaps1094558298 Outstanding Thesis Captain, United States Marine Corps Captain, United States Marine Corps Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.

Due to naval vessels’ unique sea and air capabilities, the United States government often calls on the Navy to provide immediate humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HADR) to affected populations around the world. However, not all ships possess capabilities that can be adapted to the humanitarian mission, and they therefore should not be tasked with humanitarian missions. To respond quickly, it is not uncommon for combatant commanders to task the closest ships without considering if a more HADR-capable ship is available, if slightly farther away. This type of tasking can easily waste valuable U.S. resources (wartime assets, funding, manpower, and readiness) while providing a suboptimal HADR response package of ships to the affected population. In an environment of constrained resources, it is important that these resources are used as efficiently as possible when responding to disasters around the world. This study builds on prior U.S. Navy HADR research and provides decision makers with a utility-based optimization tool that accounts for and discusses the tradeoffs between vessel capability, proximity, and cost when selecting the optimal mix of sea assets for future HADR tasking. http://archive.org/details/autilitybasedppr1094558279 Outstanding Thesis Commander, United States Navy Reserve Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.

In this paper, we present a new Generalized Nash Equilibrium (GNE) model for post-disaster humanitarian relief by introducing novel financial funding functions and altruism functions, and by also capturing competition on the logistics side among humanitarian organizations. The common, that is, the shared, constraints associated with the relief item deliveries at points of need are imposed by an upper level humanitarian organization or regulatory body and consist of lower and upper bounds to ensure the effective delivery of the estimated volumes of supplies to the victims of the disaster. We identify the network structure of the problem, with logistical and financial flows, and propose a variational equilibrium framework, which allows us to then formulate, analyze, and solve the model using the theory of variational inequalities (rather than quasivariational inequality theory). We then utilize Lagrange analysis and investigate qualitatively the humanitarian organizations’ marginal utilities if and when the equilibrium relief item flows are (or are not) at the imposed demand point bounds. We illustrate the game theory model through a case study focused on tornadoes hitting western Massachusetts, a highly unusual event that occurred in 2011. This work significantly extends the original model of Nagurney (Dynamics of Disasters: Key Concepts, Models, Algorithms, and Insights. Springer International Publishing, Switzerland, 2016), which, under the imposed assumptions therein, allowed for an optimization formulation, and adds to the literature of game theory and disaster relief, which is nascent.

Natural and manmade disasters have been increasing in the last decade all over the world affecting millions of people and generating high costs to recover from them. There is a need to implement policies that will foster mitigation and prevention measures and that will address recovery as a long-term process rather than short-term solutions. Chile has overcome several disasters in the last decade and has designed innovative tools to rebuild from the aftermath. The purpose of this research is to evaluate one of these tools, Strategic Reconstruction Master Plans, and what lessons have the different government periods have learned from past disasters in order to apply them for future ones. The research compares and contrasts two case studies in which master plans were the main tool implemented for recovery purposes, these are Pelluhue and Santa Olga, and both are located in the Maule region. The study evaluates the methodology that each project implemented to recover from the disaster period and what lessons are drawn from each case for future policy applications. The paper incorporates three main research methods. First, archival research on post-disaster efforts; second, technical documentation from each case study and local media from each period; and third, in depth interviews to experts and stakeholders involved in each process together with field observations.

Social media data have emerged as a new source for detecting and monitoring disaster events. A number of recent studies have suggested that social media data streams can be used to mine actionable data for emergency response and relief operation. However, no effort has been made to classify social media data into stages of disaster management (mitigation, preparedness, emergency response, and recovery), which has been used as a common reference for disaster researchers and emergency managers for decades to organize information and streamline priorities and activities during the course of a disaster. This paper makes an initial effort in coding social media messages into different themes within different disaster phases during a time-critical crisis by manually examining more than 10,000 tweets generated during a natural disaster and referencing the findings from the relevant literature and official government procedures involving different disaster stages. Moreover, a classifier based on logistic regression is trained and used for automatically mining and classifying the social media messages into various topic categories during various disaster phases. The classification results are necessary and useful for emergency managers to identify the transition between phases of disaster management, the timing of which is usually unknown and varies across disaster events, so that they can take action quickly and efficiently in the impacted communities. Information generated from the classification can also be used by the social science research communities to study various aspects of preparedness, response, impact and recovery.

The world has faced many natural and man-made disasters in the past few years, resulting in millions of people living in temporary camps across the globe. The energy and clean water needs of the relief operators in such emergency situations are primarily satisfied by diesel engine based generators and importing clean water to the site, in certain cases even for several years after the emergency. This approach results in problems such as low security of supply and high costs. Especially targeting the prolonged displacement situations, this paper presents an alternative solution – the Energy and Water Emergency Module. The proposed solution aims towards reducing the dependency on fossil fuel in prolonged emergency situations to a minimum while including local energy sources in the energy supply in a flexible and reliable way. The proposed module is built in a standard 20 ft container, and encompasses hybrid generation from solar, wind and biomass, with the possibility of using fossil sources too thanks to a dual fuel gas engine. The module can work both in grid connected and stand-alone mode. In addition the module includes a water purification unit to meet the water needs of displaced population. A demonstration unit was assembled at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm during the year 2012 as a ‘concept proof’, and is now being tested and optimized for future deployment on the field. Preliminary testing and modelling shows that the proposed solution can reliably support emergency situations, and is already cost competitive with the current water and energy supply solutions for emergency situations.

Public safety and emergency managementrequires tools that detect promptly the occurrence of emergencies and create a correct and detailed picture of the situation. Such tools may help alleviating desolation under harsh conditions related to natural or human-made disasters by fast and semi-automatic identification of the type, extent, place, intensity, and implications of the disaster.The research refers to the use of analytics to identify emergencies and recent disasters, based on social networks and media search, and direct relief proportional to the needs.We establish controlled vocabularies for a regional search (keywords to search in two languages) and propose ways to improve the search algorithms, and concepts and methods to interpret the findings.Several examples are discussed and conclusions are drawn.

During a large-scale disaster first responders face a number of different challenges. Their ability to communicate with one another is among the most critical challenges they face. If the disaster has wiped out the infrastructure that enables communications, it creates a serious issue for first responders. In such situations, infrastructure-less technology could enable first responders to establish a communications network independent of any existing operational or non-operational infrastructure. Wi- Fi Direct can enable such communication, but it is fraught with a few issues that need to be addressed to make it usable for first responders. We have developed an extension to Wi-Fi Direct that would address these issues. The extended Wi-Fi Direct protocol allows for a persistent communications network that involves zero user interaction. With our extensions, the protocol does not require any infrastructure or any human involvement to establish a communications network. Disclaimer The views expressed in this document are those of the authors and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of Defense or the United States Government.

On August 25, Hurricane Harvey made landfall in Texas. The storm devastated the state, destroying homes and business and claiming many lives. Faced with such dire circumstances, many people living in Texas found and continue to find themselves in need of assistance from others. Many have stepped up to provide support. At least two prominent donors faced public criticism for their donation efforts. Popular television cook Rachel Ray donated $1 million specifically to shelters providing disaster relief to animals. Actress Ruby Rose took to Twitter to announce her intention to match donations up to $10,000 for relief to the Montrose LGBT center in Houston.

Biomass is the predominant cooking fuel in Haiti, where it creates burdens on both the environment and the Haitian people. Following the 2010 earthquake in Port-au-Prince, the need for fuel-efficient cookstoves was acute. Although several organizations were quite interested in dissemination of fuel-efficient stoves in the relief effort, there was little knowledge about the performance and usability of the proposed stoves. To help fill the knowledge gap, stove researchers from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory evaluated and compared the performance of several cookstoves intended for dissemination in Haiti. This paper discusses the decisions made throughout the course of that work, from project identification and approach through the dissemination of results. It identifies the challenges faced and how they were addressed, while briefly presenting the data from stove performance evaluated using Water Boiling and Controlled Cooking Tests. It also highlights the importance and benefits of evaluating technologies such as cookstoves prior to dissemination, even in urgent disaster relief situations.

MBA Professional Report In the aftermath of a disaster, relief agencies rush to assist the affected population. However, lack of coordination between these agencies often results in poor resource management, which undermines efficacy and efficiency. This report facilitates inter-agency collaboration, particularly between military and non-military entities, by conducting a case study of one non-government organization involved in disaster relief. With the second-highest revenue among major non-government organizations in the United States, the Salvation Army in America—and, by extension, its international arm, the Salvation Army World Service Office (SAWSO)—is an ideal candidate for evaluation. This report evaluates SAWSO's disaster response capabilities by analyzing its organizational history, operational competencies, and financial resources. The results of this report offer a foundation for military and other humanitarian relief agencies to pursue collaborative efforts and increase the overall efficiency and efficacy of future disaster response operations. This report's findings indicate that SAWSO is a highly efficient organization from a financial standpoint, and that it offers a variety of relief capabilities that vary by region, with the provision of shelter, settlement, and non-food items among its strongest and most consistent competencies. http://archive.org/details/analysisofsalvat1094552964 Outstanding Thesis Captain, United States Marine Corps Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.