This study explores how an interdisciplinary disaster education program embedded in a teacher training course influences prospective primary school teachers’ disaster literacy and preparedness. Implemented over a 12-week period within the “Disasters and Disaster Management” course, the intervention employed active learning strategies such as problem-based learning and experiential tasks. Sixty prospective teachers from two provinces in Türkiye (Trabzon and Muş) participated in the study, which used a mixed methods design combining pre/post-behavioral-affective literacy assessments, semi-structured interviews, and participant-generated documents. Findings revealed a statistically significant increase in behavioral disaster literacy scores among participants in Trabzon, while affective changes were more nuanced. Qualitative data indicated that many participants held misconceptions about disaster-related concepts prior to the intervention and that media exposure contributed to heightened emotional responses, particularly fear of earthquakes. Participants reported increased awareness of risk management and preparedness following the program. This study contributes to disaster education literature by highlighting how interdisciplinary and student-centered pedagogical approaches can improve future educators’ capacity to teach disaster preparedness. It also emphasizes the importance of addressing media-driven fear and misinformation in fostering community resilience through education.
Climate change and environmental degradation increasingly heighten conflict and contribute to the intensity and frequency of disasters globally, leading to a significant rise in humanitarian needs. This scoping review explores what is known about how humanitarian organizations respond to and plan for climate change within their programming and operations, as captured in grey and academic literature. Following Arksey and O'Malley's five-step scoping review methodology, two reviewers searched six databases—EMBASE, SCOPUS, Medline, PAIS, Web of Science, and OVID Global Health, using “humanitarian” and “climate change” as keywords. Using the same keywords, grey literature screening involved an incognito Google search and searches on ReliefWeb and Humanitarian Library databases. Targeted searches were also conducted on ten organizational and sectoral websites. The search yielded 37 academic documents and 55 grey literature sources, totaling 92 documents included in the review. We analyzed the documents using a combined deductive and inductive approach. First, we extracted data from the documents based on six analytical questions. Then, we synthesized this data and inductively labeled it to identify emerging themes. The results outline six main themes: the emergence of climate change as a focus within the humanitarian agenda, climate compatible approaches in the sector, climate change in relation to the short-term life-saving orientation of humanitarian aid, sectoral commitments to climate change, resilience-building and local collaboration. Climate change is fundamentally transforming the landscape of humanitarian needs and response. As presented in this review, humanitarian organizations need to continue examining how to overcome challenges and further integrate concerns for climate change in humanitarian operations and response.
The annual Hajj mass gathering, drawing around three million pilgrims, necessitates intricate coordination among various organizations to provide essential services, including emergency medical services (EMS). This qualitative study investigates the factors that influenced EMS during the 2019 Hajj through the use of 26 semi-structured interviews with EMS responders, followed by seven key informant interviews. Through an open coding process, a total of 49 codes were identified, with the 20 most frequent codes providing valuable insights into the intricacies of EMS operations. Key challenges that have been identified encompass traffic control point management, language barriers, insufficient patient medical history, and a surge in non-emergency cases. The nature of emergency response hinged on these factors influenced by the level of coordination and the meticulousness of the organizing and planning. There is a need for improved coordination among the participating agencies in the Hajj mass gathering. It is imperative for the participating agencies to enhance their intra-agency and inter-agency coordination and engage in pre-planning for conflict resolution in order to optimize the interoperability of security and medical services. This intra-agency and inter-agency effort for effective coordination should be the cornerstone of future improvements in the planning of EMS provision.
This article contributes to an emergent area of crisis and disaster scholarship that emphasizes the need to support researchers in coping with the emotional challenges of research. In this article, we use the term emotionally challenging research to describe the moments when researchers are confronted with particular situations or subject matter that causes discomfort, pain, anger, frustration, hopelessness, or other difficult emotions or embodied impacts. Throughout, we provide several illustrations of how such challenges may arise in the process of studying crises or disasters. We argue that the lack of discussion about emotions in disaster research, including attention to the potential for burnout, compassion fatigue, or vicarious trauma, creates undue burdens for researchers and can interfere with the research process. In contrast, inviting explicit discussion and engagement with the emotional and embodied challenges of research can support researchers’ well-being, enhance the ethical dimensions of research, and deepen understanding of the social consequences and dynamics of disasters. We conclude with actionable steps that can be taken to better support graduate students, early career researchers, and others new to the field at the individual, group, and institutional levels. This article ultimately advocates for a more compassionate and ethically responsible approach to academic inquiry into crises and disasters.
The 2017 US Atlantic hurricane season was the severest in recent US history, with Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria causing unprecedented damage and disruption to services, particularly to nonprofit community-based organizations including homeless service providers (homeless service organizations (HSOs)). This exploratory qualitative study examines the critical needs and issues experienced by HSOs funded by the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) during these hurricanes in Florida, Puerto Rico, and Texas, describes their collaborations with VA staff, and identifies lessons learned. Through interviews with VA staff, the study identified three key themes: (1) Grant and Per Diem Program grantees’ disaster plans, (2) communications, and (3) improvements to disaster planning since the 2017 hurricanes. Existing VA protocols requiring disaster plans and consistent communications worked well in ensuring that the VA remained consistently aware of organization plans and Veteran resident safety and accountability. However, the 2017 hurricane season also exposed vulnerabilities in organization disaster plans and communication procedures, especially in communicating plan changes with the VA and failing to plan for alternate means of communication. These challenges can be attributed to the unanticipated severity of the multiple storms, which produced longer-term structural damage to facilities and disruption of critical inputs and communications infrastructure. Continuity of operations planning and more rigorous review of disaster plans are mechanisms whereby the VA, and other HSO funders, can help ensure that these organizations have adequate disaster readiness to respond to future hurricanes.
The purpose of this article is to use prior public policy and administration research on policy learning in relation to crises to assess the Swedish government's learning in response to COVID-19. To make sense of the learning processes at play, the pandemic is framed as a creeping crisis. The analysis is temporally organized according to conceptualizations of inter- and intracrisis learning and post crisis reform, and further focused by known challenges to crisis learning from previous research. The study underscores the importance of shedding light on challenges to crisis learning in order to be better prepared when future crises occur. More specifically, the analysis shows how internal disagreements on the objectives of the response strategy and polarisation on how to handle the crisis restrained the Swedish government's ability to learn from crisis experiences ( intercrisis learning ). Although instances of policy learning during the crisis ( intracrisis learning ) are observed, prerequisites for reform are limited due to interorganisational collaboration difficulties, politicisation of the crisis management initiative as a whole, and emerging challenges crowding out the agenda.
This paper employs a qualitative case study research strategy to investigate local-level major incident management in the United Kingdom during the COVID-19 pandemic. On 25 June 2020, thousands of people took advantage of a short respite from COVID-19 lockdown measures and flocked to Bournemouth's beaches in Southeast England. The crowd surge heightened unruly and anti-social behaviour leading to unprecedented social disorder in the city's town and beaches. Since the local authorities could not contain the crowd, a major incident was declared to seek assistance in managing the crowd. Aiming to assess the effectiveness of the major incident management, this research generated empirical data from local authorities and emergency responders who attended to the incident. Anchored by a conceptual framework that links the research enquiries to the methodology, this research is underpinned by a triangulation approach to data collection and analysis. The key findings underscore the critical role of major incident declaration in mobilising emergency responders; uncertainty on the type of major incident that was declared albeit justified by overcrowding at the beach; challenges in preparation for the incident response and multi-agency collaboration; and issues with situational awareness, coordination, and early warning for response. This study exposes the vulnerability of local authorities in dealing with uncertain, residual, or unanticipated risks. Informed by the findings, this paper proffers recommendations on ways to enhance local response to major incidents in the United Kingdom. It enriches the core knowledge base in incident response and adds value to the literature on crowd-related risks, especially during situations of uncertainty.
With increasing development in floodplains and growing flooding losses, governments are looking for ways to permanently reduce flood exposure. Buyouts, property acquisition programs that relocate households out of hazardous locations, are an increasingly popular measure proposed in the wake of disasters to reduce future losses and jumpstart household recovery. Research to date, however, has shown that buyouts are much more than just relocating a structure: these are complex interventions that often take longer than expected to implement and have lasting consequences for participating households and communities. Here, we propose that buyouts, as a policy tool, have been miscast as a mitigation measure typically applied during disaster recovery. We propose a reconceptualization of buyouts as a tool for managed retreat: defining buyouts solely as a mitigation measure, not as a tool for enabling recovery, and acknowledging the sacrifice that relocating requires. This shift would lay the groundwork for more inclusive, effective, and equitable relocation of at-risk households and communities.
Our paper delves into households’ disaster preparedness in Hawai‘i. The primary purpose of our case study is to inform State authorities and emergency management agencies about the extent of disaster preparedness and households’ compliance with the Hawai‘i Emergency Management Agency's (HIEMA) recommendation to stockpile 14 days of essential supplies. Through an extensive review of the literature and within the context of adaptive systems theory and social cognition theory, we examined the influence of several socio-cognitive factors on the extent of actual preparedness and households’ compliance. We employed proportional opt-in panels and conducted phone interviews, yielding a sample of 1,006 households across the state. Our study involved four analytical stages: the first two assessed the current status of households’ compliance across the State and predicted the likelihood of households’ adherence to HIEMA's recommendation to stockpile essential supplies. The third and fourth stages were designed to empirically explore the association between perceived and actual preparedness and to identify socio-cognitive factors that significantly predict the extent of household preparedness for food, water, and medical supplies. Our findings indicated an overwhelmingly low rate of household compliance with the State's recommended stockpiling in Hawai‘i. We detected several significant socio-cognitive factors that predict the extent of households’ stockpiling of essential supplies and the likelihood of household compliance. Finally, our findings reaffirmed the existence of a moderate relationship between perceptions and preparedness actions. Overall, informed by an extensive conceptual and analytical framework, we suggest that targeted communication campaigns emphasizing region-specific emergency preparedness recommendations, educational and training programs, and community-based practices, as well as introducing financial incentives for vulnerable households, would subsequently increase households’ overall compliance rate in Hawai‘i.
Many organizations across the United States were severely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, including institutions of higher education. Campus leaders were required to rapidly make decisions about closing campuses, increasing financial constraints, shifts in research, and changing class modalities. Past research shows that one preferred method for making decisions during an organizational crisis is using teams of decision-makers, although there has been little research focused on the composition of these teams. Other approaches advocate for including various stakeholders in the decision-making structure; however, it is not known how often stakeholders, including faculty, below-director-level staff, and students, are included. This study asks two questions: (1) What stakeholders were included on crisis decision-making teams at organizations of higher education during the COVID-19 pandemic and (2) what institutional factors influenced stakeholder participation in crisis decision-making teams at organizations of higher education during the COVID-19 pandemic? These questions are answered through a content analysis and survey of 150 US higher education institutions and institutional data from the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. The results show about half of decision-making teams included stakeholders, with faculty being the most likely to be included and students the least likely. There were no statistically significant associations between institutional characteristics and stakeholder inclusion. Larger decision-making teams were more likely to include stakeholders than smaller teams. Additional research is needed to explore how the inclusion of stakeholders impacts institutional decision-making and overall crisis management success.
Organizations in disaster-prone areas generally have formalized plans that will help them recover after environmental disasters. However, these formal mechanisms are usually adapted “on the fly” because disasters don't unfold according to plans. This paper examines how a cross-sector network of community organizations used both formal structures (planned/bureaucratic relationships within and among organizations) and informal structures (emergent/social networks) that interacted to support organized response work in response to both anticipated and chaotic events during and following Hurricane Harvey. Results showed that formal reporting relationships that included preestablished network relationships predicted organizing structures on the days when volatility was highest, while emergent networks were crucial in guiding recovery actions during periods of crisis. The findings extend phase models of crisis with a more granular and longitudinal analysis of these organizing processes, advancing organizational theory that often frames bureaucratic structures and social networks as dichotomous rather than as symbiotic.
Introduction: Various measures have been implemented worldwide to contain the COVID-19 pandemic. In contrast to epidemiological data, psychosocial parameters such as coping strategies in the population were rarely considered in assessments of the course of the pandemic, a point that experts criticized. Based on the transactional model of stress and coping as well as the psychometric paradigm of risk perception, this paper addresses the relevance of psychosocial data for COVID-19 situation reports by highlighting the role of risk perception and coping within the German population. Method: We collected quantitative data on risk perception and coping strategies in four surveys conducted at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021 in Germany. We present descriptive as well as bivariate results to examine our research questions statistically. Results: Data contribute to psychosocial aspects of the general situation report such as variations of risk perception during the pandemic (e.g., declining risk perception) and by sociodemographic (e.g., age) as well as location. Furthermore, Germans characterize the COVID-19 pandemic as a crisis with catastrophic potential, but as easily reducible through behavior. Besides, coping strategies are more problem-focused and most respondents listen to experts’ advice and try to behave appropriately. Conclusion: These data are helpful and necessary to provide a complete and substantial situation report in crises and disasters and support crisis managers and public authorities to adequately address the public regarding their concerns.
The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the shortcomings of traditional business continuity principles. As much of the novel response to COVID-19 involved a curtailment or cessation of in-person commercial activity, businesses and communities were at unprecedented financial risk. Traditional methods of ensuring business continuity were likely insufficient; thus, an improved understanding of business continuity through disaster is needed for both business and community well-being. Canonically, academic studies examining business survival post-disaster have emphasized vulnerability characteristics and focused on factors outside the businesses’ locus of control. Recently, studies have found that business survival is related to features of self-efficacy that are not easily developed through succinct templates: creativity, flexibility, and improvisation. By critically examining ninety-three publicly available business continuity guides in a content analysis approach, we point to the need for further research on business preparedness as the building of self-efficacy and the effectiveness of converting these scientific findings into useful formats for business operators.
Disaster town watching comprises a participatory technique by a community to observe, identify, understand, and build resilience to natural or human-induced hazards. Participants walk through their communities, taking notes and imagery for subsequent participatory risk mapping exercises. The goal is to develop a more nuanced and contextualized understanding of the community's state of disaster risk management. This article explores the integration of drones in the acquisition of imagery for disaster town watching. It followed standard practices for conducting disaster town watching research in a community in the Philippines. However, in addition to standard walking teams, one team learned to pilot drone missions, take aerial images, and then interpret them. The imagery they produced elicited more spatially significant relationships between and across features and locations in the community. The types of local knowledge identified differed significantly from that taken from images produced with cellular phones or Google Earth. This study revealed that drone imagery can provide new insights into local knowledge on hazards, vulnerability, and resources and the enhancement of social, economic, and environmental resilience it engenders. Participants build greater confidence in their ability to determine self-help solutions and mutual help countermeasures for enhancing disaster preparedness and community resilience against disaster.
