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The ongoing novel coronavirus (COVID‐19) epidemic has evolved into a full range of challenges that the world is facing. Health and economic threats caused governments to take preventive measures against the spread of the disease. This study aims to provide a correlation analysis of the response measures adopted by countries and epidemic trends since the COVID‐19 outbreak. This analysis picks 13 countries for quantitative assessment. We select a trusted model to fit the epidemic trend curves in segments and catch the characteristics based on which we explore the key factors of COVID‐19 spread. This review generates a score table of government response measures according to the Likert scale. We use the Delphi method to obtain expert judgments about the government response in the Likert scale. Furthermore, we find a significant negative correlation between the epidemic trend characteristics and the government response measure scores given by experts through correlation analysis. More stringent government response measures correlate with fewer infections and fewer waves in the infection curves. Stringent government response measures curb the spread of COVID‐19, limit the number of total infectious cases, and reduce the time to peak of total cases. The clusters of the results categorize the countries into two specific groups. This study will improve our understanding of the prevention of COVID‐19 spread and government response.

Background Emerging literature has documented heat-related impacts on child health, yet few studies have evaluated the effects of heat among children of different age groups and comparing emergency department (ED) and hospitalisation risks. Objectives To examine the differing associations between high ambient temperatures and risk of ED visits and hospitalisations among children by age group in New York City (NYC). Methods We used New York Statewide Planning and Research Cooperative System (SPARCS) data on children aged 0-18 years admitted to NYC EDs (n = 2 252 550) and hospitals (n = 228 006) during the warm months (May-September) between 2005 and 2011. Using a time-stratified, case-crossover design, we estimated the risk of ED visits and hospitalisations associated with daily maximum temperature (Tmax) for children of all ages and by age group. Results The average Tmax over the study period was 80.3°F (range 50°, 104°F). Tmax conferred the greatest risk of ED visits for children aged 0-4, with a 6-day cumulative excess risk of 2.4% (95% confidence interval [CI] 1.7, 3.0) per 13°F (ie interquartile range) increase in temperature. Children and adolescents 5-12 years (0.8%, 95% CI 0.1, 1.6) and 13-18 years (1.4%, 95% CI 0.6, 2.3) are also sensitive to heat. For hospitalisations, only adolescents 13-18 years had increased heat-related risk, with a cumulative excess risk of 7.9% (95% CI 2.0, 14.2) per 13°F increase in Tmax over 85°F. Conclusions This urban study in NYC reinforces that young children are particularly vulnerable to effects of heat, but also demonstrates the sensitivity of older children and adolescents as well. These findings underscore the importance of focussing on children and adolescents in targeting heat illness prevention and emergency response activities, especially as global temperatures continue to rise.

Police are often called to address concerns about people experiencing homelessness, with arrests often resulting from low-level, nonviolent crimes, and violations of minor nuisance ordinances. In Portland, Oregon, advocates lobbied for a new model of emergency response for 911 calls involving unhoused community members and people experiencing behavioral health crises. To ensure the program reflected the needs and perspectives of people experiencing homelessness, teams of researchers, community volunteers, and people with lived experience interviewed 184 people in camps, shelters, and parks. Teams asked unhoused people how the program should be designed, including who the first responders should be, how they should approach individuals in crisis, what resources they should provide, and how they should be trained. This article describes the methods, findings, and recommendations from our collaborative survey process aimed at ensuring that the voices of people experiencing homelessness informed the development of the Portland Street Response pilot program.

Emergency response (ER) planners have developed plans either under "all-hazards" approach, focusing on a full spectrum of emergencies or under a specific scenario—in which planning underlines aligned actions to respond to a particular situation. Either of them represents the so-called Work-As-Imagined (WAI) operation. However, the growing complexity, the scope of emerging situation and the level of uncertainty, create unpredicted challenges for ER operation, which represent another variety of work named Work-As-Done (WAD). These challenges require different degrees of adaptation to avoid the cascading impacts of an event into an accident, or even a disaster. Drawing upon the traditional Functional Resonance Analysis (FRAM), we provide a novel FRAM representation, which reflects adaptive capacities on functional inter-relationships, and their evolution over time in different scenarios. Rather than using time as an aspect of the FRAM hexagon in its traditional sense, we propose an explicit time-dependent analysis. We outline how to make the chimera of time response feasible in ER operations and how to represent respective sources of success. Based on our FRAM approach, we conduct an incident analysis referred to an event that happened in Gjøa in 2017, in Norway at the North Sea, to understand adaptation in the four different ER phases, that is mobilizing, alert/warning, combat and normalization.

Objective The COVID‐19 epidemic has caused a significant global social and economic impact since December 2019. The objective of this study was to demonstrate the emergency response of a Chinese blood centre on maintaining both the safety and the sufficiency of blood supply during large, emerging, infectious epidemics. Materials and Methods Early on in the outbreak of COVID‐19, the Chengdu Blood Center developed strategies and implemented a series of measures, including enhanced recruitment efforts, addition of new donation deferral criteria and notification after donation, optimisation of donor experience, development and implementation of a new coronavirus nucleic acid detection technology platform for blood screening and screening all donations for SARS‐CoV‐2 RNA to maximumly protect the safety of blood supply during a time of unclear risk. Results Starting on February 20, the immediate satisfaction rate of blood product orders in Chengdu city's clinical settings reached 100%, and there was no case of blood transfusion infection. Conclusion The recent experience during the outbreak of SARS‐CoV‐2 reminded us that improvement in the areas of national and international collaborative programmes for dealing with blood availability and safety concerns during early stages of a disaster and regional and national mechanisms for timely communication with the general public on behalf of blood services should help to better prepare us for future disasters.

Legged robots are exceedingly versatile and have the potential to navigate complex, confined spaces due to their many degrees of freedom. As a result of the computational complexity, there exist no online planners for perceptive whole-body locomotion of robots in tight spaces. In this paper, we present a new method for perceptive planning for multilegged robots, which generates body poses, footholds, and swing trajectories for collision avoidance. Measurements from an onboard depth camera are used to create a three-dimensional map of the terrain around the robot. We randomly sample body poses then smooth the resulting trajectory while satisfying several constraints, such as robot kinematics and collision avoidance. Footholds and swing trajectories are computed based on the terrain, and the robot body pose is optimized to ensure stable locomotion while not colliding with the environment. Our method is designed to run online on a real robot and generate trajectories several meters long. We first tested our algorithm in several simulations with varied confined spaces using the quadrupedal robot ANYmal. We also simulated experiments with the hexapod robot Weaver to demonstrate applicability to different legged robot configurations. Then, we demonstrated our whole-body planner in several online experiments both indoors and in realistic scenarios at an emergency rescue training facility. ANYmal, which has a nominal standing height of 80 cm and a width of 59 cm, navigated through several representative disaster areas with openings as small as 60 cm. Three-meter trajectories were replanned with 500 ms update times.

Lebanon invested in the prevention of maternal mortality after the civil war, which left a deficient vital registration system leading to unreliable estimates of maternal mortality ratio (MMR). Starting in 2004, the Ministry of Public Health integrated reproductive health into primary health care and established a national notification system of maternal and neonatal deaths. From 1990 to 2013, Lebanon achieved an annual change in MMR of -7.5%, which was the highest rate of reduction in the region and met the requirements of Millennium Development Goal 5. For the period 2010-2018, data collected through the national notification system indicate an MMR of 14.9, which is below the officially reported MMR of 23. Since the influx of Syrian refugees, Lebanon has experienced a rise in the number of live births with a slightly increasing trend in MMR, especially in regions with the highest concentration of refugees. Causes of maternal mortality in Lebanon align with the three-delays model, pointing to deficiencies in the quality of maternity care. More efforts are needed toward strengthening the national notification system to include cases that occur outside hospitals, identifying near-miss cases, reinforcing the emergency response system, and engaging with all stakeholders to improve quality of care.

An emergency response organization is resilient when it learns from and is well equipped to handle (potential) risks and hazards. In this paper, we will address the organizational resilience fit for Dutch emergency response organizations (safety regions) in relation to various types of crisis. The approach presented in this paper is based on a quantitative organizational resilience model. We validated the model by means of a survey conducted among the employees of Dutch safety regions. In this survey, we queried how the employees perceive the different attributes related to a set of crisis types. We used the results to calculate the quantitative representation of organizational resilience. We found that the presence of a Quality Management system or a Safety Management system does not significantly influence the organizational resilience of the organization. However, a statistically significant difference for organizational resilience was found in the type of staff assignment: volunteer, professional, or volunteer and professional. The volunteers rated the organizational resilience lower. We recommend to increase a safety region’s organizational resilience by enhancing communication and organizational engagement of volunteers, stop pursuing a Quality/Safety Management program and perform further research on (international) emergency response organizations.

Bone marrow damage is an important consequence of exposure to acute high-dose whole-body radiation. As such, haematologists can play an important role in managing this complication. However, these accident and incident scenarios are complex and often involve injuries to other organs and tissues from heat, projectiles and chemicals. In the case of a large-scale event there will likely be severe infrastructure disruptions and injury or death to medical personnel. Accurate estimates of dose and uniformity of exposure are needed to intelligently direct appropriate interventions, which range from antibiotics, antifungals and anti-virus drugs, molecularly-cloned haematopoietic growth factors and, in rare instances, haematopoietic cell transplants. These therapies are ones that haematologists often use in the context of anti-cancer therapy, especially therapy of haematological cancers like leukaemia. However, most haematologists have little knowledge of radiation biology and should consider updating this aspect of their expertise in continuing medical education. As in other areas of medicine, prevention is better than cure and haematologists should be active in decreasing risks of a nuclear war.

Robotic inspection often relies on building custom platforms for each new deployment; this is a luxury that urban search and rescue (USAR) robots do not have when time is of critical importance. A significant factor for robots deployed in disaster areas is the varying size of voids and access ways in their path. These situations require platforms that can quickly reconfigure on location. With these challenges in mind, we present the NeWheel system: An in‐field reconfigurable robotic platform that allows mobility changes before, and during, deployment. The NeWheel platform also has the advantage of being small enough to be person‐deployable and to travel as checked luggage on a commercial flight. This field report presents the results and learnings from three field trips on Peel Island located off the coast of Brisbane, Australia. These field trips featured the deployment of the NeWheel system in multiple configurations to inspect and map inside historic dilapidated buildings. It demonstrates the potential of the NeWheel in buildings cluttered with debris and with unstable flooring whether they are historically important or in USAR contexts.

Most emerging or re-emerging infections are vector-borne or zoonotic and can be disseminated worldwide by infected humans or animals. They are a major public health problem and cause a great impact on economy. Zoonotic outbreaks began to be characterized in the 90s, after the creation of Europol and the FBI. Such investigations are carried by forensic pathologists and other specialists to determine whether an outbreak is natural or deliberate. This review will discuss ten zoonotic outbreaks nonrelated to wars focusing on forensic management. In conclusion, some points should be highlighted in the management of a zoonotic outbreak: (i) its diagnosis and detection by forensic pathologists and the coordination of efforts between other specialists are key factors; (ii) communication guidelines and an efficient healthcare system are crucial for any emergency response; (iii) biosafety of all specialists involved must be guaranteed.

Remote sensing analysis is routinely used to map flood inundation during flooding events or retrospectively for planning and research activities. Quantification of the depth of floodwater is important for emergency response, relief operations, damage assessment etc. The Floodwater Depth Estimation Tool (FwDET) calculates water depth based on topographic analysis using standard GIS tools within a Python script. FwDET’s low input requirements (DEM and inundation polygon) and high computational efficiency lend it as a useful tool for emergency response and large-scale applications. Operational use of FwDET is described herein as part of emergency response activation of the Global Flood Partnership (GFP) during the 2017 USA Hurricane Season and May 2018 flooding in Sri Lanka. Use of FwDET during Hurricanes Harvey (Texas and Louisiana), Irma (Florida) and Maria (Puerto Rico) demonstrated its utility by producing large-scale water depth products at near-real-time at relatively high spatial resolution. Despite FwDET’s success, limitations of the tool stemmed from bureaucratic disallowance of non-governmental remote sensing products by U.S. federal emergency response agencies, misclassified remotely sensed floodwaters and challenges obtaining global high resolution DEMs specifically for the aforementioned Sri Lankian flooding. While global-scale DEM products at 30m resolution are freely available, these datasets are of integer precision and thus have limited vertical resolution. This limitation is significant primarily in flat (e.g. coastal) locations and flooded domains comprised of relatively small patches of water.

How to improve coordination between formal and unaffiliated or spontaneous volunteers after emergencies is currently an international question with a high profile. Drawing on international disaster management literature and experiences and recent crisis events in Canada, our analysis examines four Canadian case studies to show that the inclusion of citizens in EM is becoming indispensable, as simultaneously as the frequency and intensity of natural disasters are seen to be growing due to climate change, and citizens are increasingly presenting their labour and resources as assets to be drawn on in emergency and postemergency situations. In this context, Canadian municipalities are starting to better manage the unpredictability of spontaneous citizen volunteering in emergencies by building anticipatory structures of networked governance for integrating diverse, pre‐existing, and in some cases, pre‐identified groups of citizens as volunteers in emergency management functions. Additionally, as the role of voluntary service organizations is becoming elevated in emergency response and recovery in Canada, these organizations can prospectively play the role of brokers to help emergency management agencies access and manage community‐based networks of voluntary resources.

A ship that is not under control (NUC) is a typical incident that poses serious problems when in confined waters close to shore. The emergency response to NUC ships is to select the best risk control options, which is a challenge in restricted conditions (e.g., time limitation, resource constraint, and information asymmetry), particularly in inland waterway transportation. To enable a quick and effective response, this article develops a three-stage decision-making framework for NUC ship handling. The core of this method is (1) to propose feasible options for each involved entity (e.g., maritime safety administration, NUC ship, and ships passing by) under resource constraint in the first stage, (2) to select the most feasible options by comparing the similarity of the new case and existing cases in the second stage, and (3) to make decisions considering the cooperation between the involved organizations by using a developed Bayesian network in the third stage. Consequently, this work provides a useful tool to achieve well-organized management of NUC ships.

Aim Radiation‐related injury in the general population due to accidents or incidents is a rare but significant event that merits serious study and planning in the health‐care system. Therefore, we developed different levels of training courses targeting medical emergency response and treatment for radiation‐related injury in patients, for different health‐care professionals and medical students. Methods The curriculum, teaching instructions, and objectives were based on the working group consensus of first responders of radiation‐related injury. The working group included different specialists from hospitals, medical schools, and government radiation emergency response agencies. Results Several different course levels, including lectures, group discussions, case and scenario discussions, hands‐on practice, tabletop drills, and drills were included. The curriculums have shown that developing different levels of courses for medical students and health‐care professionals was feasible. Conclusion Through the cooperation of different specialties and different interactive courses, the training programs were able to meet the initial education goals for medical emergency and radiation‐related injury for medical students and health‐care professionals., Different levels of education and training programs for radiation related injury patients with the cooperation from local healthcare facilities, fire department, regional response center, national authorities is feasible. Medical students, healthcare professionals, medical physicists and first responders were able to acquire the knowledge and have practice experiences on the management of radiation related injury.

Author(s): Ramos, AM; Wilson, AM; DeFlorio, MJ; Warner, MD; Barnes, E; Garreaud, R; Gorodetskaya, IV; Lavers, DA; Moore, B; Payne, A; Smallcomb, C; Sodemann, H; Wehner, M; Ralph, FM | Abstract: Atmospheric rivers (ARs) play a vital role in shaping the hydroclimate of many regions globally, and can substantially impact water resource management, emergency response planning, and other socioeconomic entities. The second International Atmospheric Rivers Conference took place at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego, during 25–28 June, 2018, in La Jolla, California, USA. It was sponsored by the Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes (CW3E). A total of 120 people attended the Conference with 94 abstracts submitted and 30 participating students. In addition to the conference, the Student Forecasting Workshop was organised in the same week. During this workshop, students were exposed to AR forecasting tools, and learned examples of how these tools could be used to make decisions for various applications. The main goals of this conference were to bring together experts from across the fields of hydrology, atmospheric, oceanic, and polar sciences, as well as water management, civil engineering, and ecology to advance the state of AR science and to explore the future directions for the field. The conference was organised into traditional oral and poster presentations, along with panel discussions and Breakout Groups. This format allowed enhanced interaction between participants, driving progress within the scientific community and the enhanced communication of societal needs by various stakeholders. Several emerging topics of research were highlighted, including subseasonal-to-seasonal (S2S) prediction of ARs and an overview of the AR Reconnaissance campaign. In addition to providing a forum to disseminate and debate new results from scientific talks and posters, the conference was equally effective and useful in linking scientists to users and decision-makers that require improved knowledge on ARs to manage resources and prepare for hazards. The third International Atmospheric Rivers Conference will be held in Chile in 2020, and hosted by the University of Chile, Santiago.

Online crowdfunding has emerged as a powerful tool to raise funds for emergency response. Crowdfunding campaigns can use two transparency tools to attract donors: updates and certification. Updates are additional messages that the organizer issues after launching the campaign and are a form of operational transparency when they communicate the campaign’s work to donors. Alternatively, certification is a form of conventional transparency that ensures the campaign truly benefits a charitable purpose. Using an econometric analysis, we investigate the effects of transparency on donations. We study the direction of causality and mechanisms behind work‐related updates by conducting an experiment. Results from the econometric analysis using over 100,000 campaigns benefiting victims of emergencies reveal that both updates and certification have positive effects on donations. Each additional work‐related word in an update (operational transparency) increases donations on average by $65 per month, while certification (conventional transparency) raises funds on average by $22 per month. Results from the experiment confirm the direction of causality; posting work‐related updates in crowdfunding campaigns increases donations. Two mechanisms explain this effect: donors’ enhanced perceptions of effort and perceptions of trust.