Essays On Disaster Management Issues Related To Household Preparedness And Public Attention

<p>This dissertation contains an essay on the effects of earthquake exposure on household preparedness in the short and long term and two essays on the predictors of public attention to earthquakes around the world. In Chapter I, I use a difference-in-differences method to estimate the causal effects of the 2010 and 2011 Canterbury earthquakes on people’s preparedness in the short-term (one month after the second earthquake) and long-term (up to 25 months after the second earthquake). I find that people who experienced the earthquakes increase their preparedness by 0.67 standard deviations in the short term. This impact stays positive but declines to 0.42 standard deviations in the long term. In chapter II, I investigate whether people from Western countries pay more attention to earthquakes in Western countries. I use Google Trends data and examine the proportion of Google searches from the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand for 610 earthquakes across the world over the period of 2006-2016. I find that people in these countries pay on average around 50 percent more attention to earthquakes in Western countries. My results are significant and consistent after controlling for geographical and social characteristics but becomes small and insignificant once I control for GDP per capita of the countries where the earthquake struck. There seems to be a developed country bias rather than a Western country bias. In the final chapter, I measure public attention – using the volume of Google searches – from 18 countries and investigate which factors predict public attention to earthquakes at international level. I focus on 372 earthquakes registered as disasters in The Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT) over the period 2004-2018. I find that people pay more attention to earthquakes in richer countries, in more democratic countries, and in countries with which they have more social and cultural similarities. I also find that social and cultural similarities predict more public attention from Western and Latin American countries and less public attention from Arab and Sub-Saharan African countries. While, the findings of the economic and political status of countries are universal and predict more public attention in all four groups of countries.</p>

Essays On Disaster Management Issues Related To Household Preparedness And Public Attention

<p>This dissertation contains an essay on the effects of earthquake exposure on household preparedness in the short and long term and two essays on the predictors of public attention to earthquakes around the world. In Chapter I, I use a difference-in-differences method to estimate the causal effects of the 2010 and 2011 Canterbury earthquakes on people’s preparedness in the short-term (one month after the second earthquake) and long-term (up to 25 months after the second earthquake). I find that people who experienced the earthquakes increase their preparedness by 0.67 standard deviations in the short term. This impact stays positive but declines to 0.42 standard deviations in the long term. In chapter II, I investigate whether people from Western countries pay more attention to earthquakes in Western countries. I use Google Trends data and examine the proportion of Google searches from the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand for 610 earthquakes across the world over the period of 2006-2016. I find that people in these countries pay on average around 50 percent more attention to earthquakes in Western countries. My results are significant and consistent after controlling for geographical and social characteristics but becomes small and insignificant once I control for GDP per capita of the countries where the earthquake struck. There seems to be a developed country bias rather than a Western country bias. In the final chapter, I measure public attention – using the volume of Google searches – from 18 countries and investigate which factors predict public attention to earthquakes at international level. I focus on 372 earthquakes registered as disasters in The Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT) over the period 2004-2018. I find that people pay more attention to earthquakes in richer countries, in more democratic countries, and in countries with which they have more social and cultural similarities. I also find that social and cultural similarities predict more public attention from Western and Latin American countries and less public attention from Arab and Sub-Saharan African countries. While, the findings of the economic and political status of countries are universal and predict more public attention in all four groups of countries.</p>

Prediction Modeling of Household’s Preparedness of Natural Hazards Mitigation

Natural disasters are showing an increase in the magnitude, frequency, and geographic distribution. Studies have shown that individuals&rsquo; self-sufficiency, which largely depends on household preparedness, is very important for hazard mitigation in at least the first 72 hours following a disaster. However, for factors that influence a household&rsquo;s disaster preparedness, though there are many studies trying to identify from different aspects, we still lack an integrative analysis on how these factors contribute to a household&rsquo;s preparation. This paper aims to build a classification model to predict whether a household has prepared for a potential disaster based on their personal characteristics and the environment they located. We collect data from the Federal Emergency Management Agency&rsquo;s National Household Survey in 2018 and train four classification models - logistic regression, decision trees, support vector machines, and multi-layer perceptron classifier models- to predict the impact of personal characteristics and the environment they located on household prepare for the potential natural disaster. Results show that the multi-layer perceptron classifier model outperforms others with the highest scoring on both recall (0.8531) and f1 measure (0.7386). In addition, feature selection results also show that among other factors, a household&rsquo;s accessibility to disaster-related information is the most critical factor that impacts household disaster preparation. Though there is still room for further parameter optimization, the model gives a clue that we could support disaster management by gathering publicly accessible data.

Prediction modeling of Household’s Preparedness of Natural Hazards Mitigation

Natural disasters are showing an increase in the magnitude, frequency, and geographic distribution. Studies have shown that individuals&rsquo; self-sufficiency, which largely depends on household preparedness, is very important for hazard mitigation in at least the first 72 hours following a disaster. However, for factors that influence a household&rsquo;s disaster preparedness, though there are many studies trying to identify from different aspects, we still lack an integrative analysis on how these factors contribute to a household&rsquo;s preparation. This paper aims to build a classification model to predict whether a household has prepared for a potential disaster based on their personal characteristics and the environment they located. We collect data from the Federal Emergency Management Agency&rsquo;s National Household Survey in 2018 and train four classification models - logistic regression, decision trees, support vector machines, and multi-layer perceptron classifier models- to predict the impact of personal characteristics and the environment they located on household prepare for the potential natural disaster. Results show that the multi-layer perceptron classifier model outperforms others with the highest scoring on both recall (0.8531) and f1 measure (0.8531). In addition, feature selection results also show that among other factors, a household&rsquo;s accessibility to disaster-related information is the most critical factor that impacts household disaster preparation. Though there is still room for further parameter optimization, the model gives a clue that we could support disaster management by gathering publicly accessible data.

Vulnerability Assessment and Household Preparedness Level to Flood in Ogunpa-Oni Sub River Basin

Flood is a natural event that cause varying degree of losses despite initiatives to mitigate its impact. As the drive to retore normalcy in flood riddle areas increases, concerns about the vulnerability of areas in relation to households’ responses to flood has emerged. This study therefore, identified areas vulnerable to flood; elicit households’ sociodemographic attributes and examine their level of preparedness to flood in Ogunpa and Oni River Basin. A GIS-based approach was adopted along with 121 well-structured questionnaires administered to the respondents. A multi-criteria analysis (that considers slope, rainfall, soil type, DEM and NDVI was adopted), descriptive statistic and binary logistic model was used to achieve the objectives. The results from the vulnerability map revealed varying vulnerability status across Ogunpa and Oni River Basin. In addition, the sociodemographic statistics revealed important variables that influences household decision to prepare for flood. It was also known that factors that drive households to prepare for flood vary across households in Ogunpa and Oni River Basin. The study recommends enlightenment campaign on proper refuse disposal, strengthening of environmental regulatory agency, adoption of participatory approach in the buildup of environmental policy and increasing the level of awareness on the need for insurance policy that covers household against disaster such as flood.

Household Preparedness to Reducing Landslide Disaster Risk in Sepakung Village

Landslides are one of the natural disasters that often occur in Indonesia. Throughout 2019, Indonesia experienced 1483 landslides. Indonesian people need to have preparedness in dealing with disasters. Sepakung village is included in a landslide-prone area in Semarang regency, Central Java. This study aims to analyze the preparedness of the people of Sepakung village who live around landslide-prone points. The research method used is quantitative with a descriptive percentage analysis technique. The population of this research is the residents of Sepakung village. The sampling technique used is purposive sampling. Data collection techniques using observation, questionnaires, and documentation. The data processing results show that the experience of dealing with landslides for the residents of Sepakung village is quite good. This is shown from the average descriptive percentage score reaching 65.909091. The attitude of the respondent's vigilance is included in the very good category, with a descriptive score of the percentage getting 85%. All respondents in this study agreed that awareness of landslides needs to be increased during the rainy season. Knowledge of landslides that are owned needs to be increased again, especially for knowledge about the signs of landslides, disaster mitigation, early warning systems, and evacuation routes. Keywords: disaster, disaster risk reduction, preparedness, landslide.

Household Preparedness and Perceptions of Workforce Preparedness During Pandemics: A Health Care Employee Survey at the US Department of Veterans Affairs

Objective: To examine the effects of household preparedness on perceptions of workplace preparedness during a pandemic among all employees at the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) medical facilities. Methods: The VA Preparedness Survey (October–December 2018, Los Angeles, CA) used a stratified simple random, web-based survey. Multivariate statistical analyses examined the effect of household preparedness on perceptions of workforce preparedness during a pandemic: institutional readiness; desire for additional training; and understanding their role and its importance. Results: VA employees totaling 4026 participated. For a pandemic, 55% were confident in their VA medical facility’s ability to respond, 63% would like additional training, 49% understood their role during a response, and 68% reported their role as important. Only 23% reported being “well prepared” at home during major disasters. After controlling for study-relevant factors, household preparedness was positively associated with perceptions of workforce preparedness during a pandemic. Conclusions: Efforts to increase household preparedness for health care employees could bolster workforce preparedness during pandemics. Organizations should consider robust policies and strategies, such as flexible work arrangements, in order to mitigate factors that may serve as barriers to household preparedness.

Household Preparedness for Public Health Emergencies among Urban Communities of Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India - A Community Based Cross-Sectional Study

BACKGROUND Public health emergencies including a disaster are inevitable. Moreover, the vulnerability and health impacts are more profound in urban densely populated dwellings. Household preparedness for public health emergencies need to be focused to minimize the morbidity and mortality associated with such situations. METHODS An urban community, situated in field practice area of a tertiary care teaching institute of Ahmedabad, Gujarat was approached for a cross-sectional study through door to door structured interviews. A pre-designed questionnaire was administered to assess the knowledge as well as preparedness for public health emergencies among the respondents. The adult representative family member from each of the selected households formed the sampling unit. Statistical tests of association and logistic regression analysis were used to find our relationship between household preparedness and some of the independent factors. RESULTS From a total of 405 households, majority of the respondents were male (65.7 %), married (92.1 %), having secondary level education (43.7 %) and belonged to socio-economic class IV (37.8 %). Only 44 % of the respondents had experienced any form of public health emergency in the past and only 14.6 % had an experience of relief work. “Flash floods following heavy rains” and “earthquake” were the commonest disaster experienced by the respondents. None of the surveyed households had first aid kit or a fire-extinguisher. Majority of the respondents (N = 280, 69.1 %) were aware of emergency contact numbers in case of public health emergencies. The overall household level preparedness was only 12.59 %. Perceived susceptibility to public health emergencies and household preparedness had significant statistical associations with education, occupation, type of house and socio-economic class. CONCLUSIONS Education, occupation, and social class play roles in both perception as well as household preparedness for public health emergencies. A very low level of preparedness and their possible factors should be addressed through adequate channels so that the damage due to such emergencies could be minimized. KEYWORDS Disaster, Household Preparedness, Public Health Emergency, Urban Community

Translating Risk Information to Protective Action

Natural hazards have been a part of the landscape since its existence, but they are becoming more devastating as they intersect with growing populations and as climate change increases their frequency and intensity. As these changes occur, the need to understand how to reduce disaster impacts becomes paramount. Despite growing concern and increasing costs of disasters over the past decade, household preparedness, which is at the foundation of disaster readiness, has seen little to no improvement. Using two research experiments, we adopt the Protective Action Decision Model (PADM; Lindell & Perry, 2004; 2012) as a framework to investigate what motivates households to prepare and examine how effective risk communication strategies are at increasing awareness and preparedness. Here we find information seeking behavior to be the strongest influence not only on preparedness, but other PADM factors as well, such as intentions to prepare, feelings (positive and negative) about earthquake threat, knowledge of protective recommendations, and risk perception. Additionally, in our Portland, Oregon case study, we find significant gaps exist in terms of public understanding of earthquake hazards (liquefaction), and what to do during an earthquake. We also find that the majority of residents do not know their risk zone and have difficulty interpreting and using hazard maps. This research expands our understanding of the factors that influence household preparedness and highlights specific areas for improvement. Because hazards are a natural part of living on this planet, it is important that we consider the inherent risks and develop strategies to become more resilient.