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Representative bureaucracy and COVID‐19 among local emergency response professionals Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy Pub Date : 2024-02-23 Sean Hildebrand, Matthew Malone
This article considers the opinions of local emergency management professionals with regard to the response of the US federal government to the COVID‐19 pandemic. The responses to a survey from May/June 2020 demonstrate that these feelings, ranging from highly successful to extremely poor, are reflective of the culture at large in the nation. The study will examine whether the feelings expressed by
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Reconceptualizing Virtual Operations Support Teams (VOSTs) as an experiential learning tool for emergency management education Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy Pub Date : 2024-02-23 Amber Silver, Carey Morgan, Derek Morrison
Virtual Operations Support Teams (VOSTs) have proliferated across the United States and abroad as a means of addressing the informational needs of emergency management agencies. These groups of trusted agents act as “force multipliers” by monitoring social media to extract actionable information, including on‐the‐ground impacts, public sentiment, misinformation and gossip, and calls for assistance
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Promoting public health equity through strategic information campaigns on social media during the COVID‐19 pandemic: An analysis of pandemic health information campaigns on Twitter in Houston, Texas Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy Pub Date : 2024-02-19 Courtney Page‐Tan, Sara Hope
Throughout the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) pandemic, reports have indicated vulnerable communities have suffered disproportionately from chronic illness, higher death rates, and unequal access to healthcare. This calls into question the equity of the nationwide vaccination program launched in the United States in 2021, a program with the potential to mitigate the disproportionate burden of
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Crisis communication during COVID‐19: Insights from Pennsylvania and Florida local governments Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy Pub Date : 2024-02-19 Vaswati Chatterjee, Theodore Arapis
This study examines the determinants of local governments’ (LGs') adoption of crisis communication strategies during the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic. Recognizing the pivotal role of crisis communication in public health emergencies and the central role of LGs as frontline responders, this research offers valuable insight into pandemic response and management. Employing ordinary least squares
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Municipal risk communication challenges in the Nordic context: Organizing risk ownership Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy Pub Date : 2024-01-21 Hogne L. Sataøen, Ruth Østgaard Skotnes, Kåre Hansen, Mats Eriksson
At a time when disasters, pandemics, pollution, and other crises gain prominence, local governments bear a crucial responsibility for effective risk communication. Yet, there remains a gap in our understanding of how municipalities approach risk communication before a crisis occurs. This qualitative study, involving seven focus groups and 29 semistructured interviews across two Nordic countries, raises
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A critical review of the significance of elitism and pluralism to disaster risk management Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy Pub Date : 2024-01-17 Paul Chipangura, Dewald Van Niekerk
Disasters and disaster risks are social phenomena that take place in a political space shaped by different political ideologies. Despite this connection, the field of disaster risk management has been developed without a deliberate incorporation of political theories. Using a narrative literature review methodology, this paper sought to elucidate the significance of political theory in shaping both
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Discussing trust and resilience: The need for a healthy dose of distrust Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy Pub Date : 2024-01-09 Benjamin Scharte
How are trust and reslience related? There is a lack of conceptual discussions. This paper analyzes trust and resilience with respect to the system of critical infrastructures and engineers working on critical infrastructure resilience. The results are three findings based on the assumption that resilience and trust are mechanisms to cope with complexity and uncertainty inherent to modern societies
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Mitigating vulnerabilities with social media: A cross-national study of European disaster managers' practices Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy Pub Date : 2024-01-02 Sten Torpan, Sten Hansson, Kati Orru, Pirjo Jukarainen, Friedrich Gabel, Lucia Savadori, Sunniva F. Meyer, Abriel Schieffelers, Gabriella Lovasz, Mark Rhinard
In this article, we provide an overview of the ways in which disaster managers in eight European countries use social media to mitigate people's vulnerability to hazards. Our document analysis and 95 expert interviews in Germany, Italy, Belgium, Sweden, Hungary, Finland, Norway, and Estonia revealed six distinct institutional social media practices that may reduce disaster vulnerability: sharing educational
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To rebuild or not to rebuild in coastal flood zones: The effects of framing and partisan cues on public support Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy Pub Date : 2024-01-02 Risa Palm, Toby Bolsen, Justin T. Kingsland
Coastal storms are likely to increase in frequency and become even more damaging. An unresolved policy issue is whether current residents should receive federal subsidies through such programs as the Federal Flood Insurance Program or the FEMA disaster relief program that encourage thembe encouraged to rebuild in the same locations that have suffered damage through federal subsidies such as subsidized
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Home buyout without relocation: An examination of dissonant hazard mitigation perceptions among Gulf Coast residents Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy Pub Date : 2023-12-05 Abbey E. Hotard, Ashley D. Ross
Relocation has become a major thrust of hazard mitigation policy. Home buyout programs are currently the primary policy tool to facilitate permanent voluntary relocation of households out of flood-prone areas. This study seeks to evaluate public perceptions of relocation and home buyouts to better understand: Are home buyouts perceived by the public as a means to relocate away from risk? If not—who
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A Balanced Scorecard approach to the Homeland Security Evaluation and Exercise Program Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy Pub Date : 2023-12-05 Ismail Soujaa, Julius A. Nukpezah, Tamara Dimitrijevska-Markoski
The Homeland Security Exercise and Evaluation Program (HSEEP) is the standard program for exercise design and development, management, evaluation, and improvement planning, but it has several challenges for its operation. This study focuses on HSEEP evaluative capacity and provides practical recommendations for program improvement using the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) approach. Although HSEEP has a myriad
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Assist or accuse? Identifying trends in crisis communication through a bibliometric literature review Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy Pub Date : 2023-11-20 Sanneke Kuipers, Sara Perlstein, Jeroen Wolbers, Wouter Jong
Communication has always been key to crisis management research, but even more so in recent years, from multiple disciplinary angles. In this bibliometric study and review of the literature, we aim to identify different clusters of crisis communication research in the literature and whether and how much these crisis communication research clusters overlap. With different fields taking an interest in
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The February 2021 Winter Storm and its impact on Texas infrastructure: Lessons for communities, emergency managers, and first responders Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy Pub Date : 2023-09-15 Melvina Chand, David McEntire
This article explores why Texas infrastructure failed during the February 2021 winter storm and discusses the rippling effects it had on governments, emergency managers, first responders, and the public. A qualitative approach was used for this study and was based primarily on interviews that were conducted with 29 individuals to understand the nature of the disaster and discover subsequent actions
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Leadership in collaborative emergency management for compound hurricane-pandemic threats: Insights from practitioners' experiences Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy Pub Date : 2023-09-11 Norah Alshayhan, Saige Hill, Marina Saitgalina, Juita-Elena (Wie) Yusuf
Emergency management is a key government function for mitigating risks and reducing the impacts of disasters. Emergency management leaders play a critical role in preparing for and responding to disasters whose impacts are exacerbated by a pandemic. Using the example of the compound threat of hurricanes and the COVID-19 pandemic, this qualitative research uses insights from emergency management professionals
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Two's a company, three's a cloud: Explaining the effect of natural disasters on health-based violations in drinking water Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy Pub Date : 2023-09-10 Xi Chen, Jonathan M. Fisk, Martin K. Mayer, Madeleine W. McNamara, John C. Morris
Identifying violations is at the heart of environmental compliance, especially detecting contaminants that endanger human health and safety. A review of state drinking water compliance programs demonstrates that the rate and frequency of identifying health-based violations varies significantly across the states. Previous scholarship has attributed much of this variation to anthropogenic causes. Less
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Can one “prove” that a harmful event was preventable? Conceptualizing and addressing epistemological puzzles in postincident reviews and investigations Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy Pub Date : 2023-09-10 Christoph O. Meyer
A growing part of the literature on crises, disasters, and policy failures focuses on the design, conduct, and impact of postincident reviews or inquiries, particularly whether the right lessons are identified and subsequently learned. However, such accounts underappreciate the specific challenge posed by epistemic puzzles, under what conditions their difficulty may vary, and which strategies could
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Military unmanned aerial vehicle operations through the lens of a high-reliability system: Challenges and opportunities Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy Pub Date : 2023-09-08 Riana Steen, Nils Håheim-Saers, Gina Aukland
This study examines the impact of regulations and standard procedures on safety outcomes in unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) operations, specifically focussing on Norwegian military UAV systems, from a high-reliability organization (HRO) perspective. By analyzing data from existing regulations, accident reports, and interviews with military drone pilots using thematic analysis, we identify key recurring
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A renewed awareness: Reinvigorating preparedness research for crisis and disaster management Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy Pub Date : 2023-08-30 Jeroen Wolbers, Sanneke Kuipers
In the summer of 2023, a vast array of disasters and devastating fires reaped havoc around the globe. Extreme weather dominated headlines for weeks. A deadly blaze ripped through the island of Maui, Hawaii, engulfing entire landscapes and catching communities off guard. The death toll has risen to 114, and more than 1000 people remain missing at the time of writing. Hawaii was not the only tragedy
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Crisis management and ethical expertise: The role of ethics advice during the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy Pub Date : 2023-07-31 Theresa Sommer, Holger Strassheim, Lars Wenzel
The COVID-19 crisis posed challenges for policy-makers, experts, and citizens alike. Current research often focuses on the interlinkage between scientific expertise and political decision-making, but ethical expertise remains largely overlooked. This paper argues that multiple logics of science-policy interaction and ethics advice exist, especially in times of crisis. It contributes to the debate on
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Emergency Management Performance Grant (EMPG) funding allocations and relevance for US disaster policy Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy Pub Date : 2023-05-12 Logan Gerber-Chavez, Samantha Montano, Amanda Savitt, Tanya B. Corbin, Davia C. Downey
The Emergency Management Performance Grant (EMPG) program has long been a cornerstone of state and local emergency management preparedness efforts. Through the EMPG program, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) administers grants to state and local emergency management agencies to accomplish a wide range of tasks such as the development of response and recovery plans, the creation of emergency
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Network governance as an alternative policy response to managing infectious disease outbreaks: Lessons from Uganda's response to the COVID-19 crisis Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy Pub Date : 2023-05-07 Solomon Mwije
Network governance is commended as one of the appropriate approaches to manage infectious disease crises, but knowledge of its implementation is still limited especially in nondemocratic contexts. This study adopted a qualitative case study design using secondary evidence to review how Uganda used network governance to manage COVID-19 crisis. Uganda used the Whole of Government and Whole of Society
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Imagining the next pandemic: Finnish preparedness for chronic transboundary crises before and during COVID-19 Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy Pub Date : 2023-05-07 Helmi Räisänen, Jussi T. Eronen, Janne I. Hukkinen
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, infectious disease experts had postulated that the next pandemic is only a matter of time, and Finland, among other nations, had prepared for it. Yet the COVID-19 pandemic crossed the customary political, functional, and temporal boundaries of crisis management to a surprising degree. This study analyses pandemic preparedness among Finnish infectious disease experts at
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Conceptualizing State Voluntary Organizations Active in disaster (SVOAD) effectiveness Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy Pub Date : 2023-03-28 Jessica Jensen
Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster (VOADs) exist at the national, state, regional, and local levels as a platform for sharing information and supporting coordination among nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that support disaster response and recovery efforts in the United States. These entities are described as important in disaster response and recovery policy and plans and in disaster scholarship
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Who gets public goods? Effects of ethnic diversity and exclusion on urban and rural populations' access to water and sanitation Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy Pub Date : 2023-03-03 Amira Jadoon, Hina Khalid, Ashley Fox
Why do some countries provide better access to life-saving public goods than others? An enduring explanation from the political economy literature points to ethnic heterogeneity in impeding public goods provision. However, previous studies have not examined how the “diversity deficit” directly affects access to improved water and sanitation, a leading cause of continued under-5 mortality globally,
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Emergency management and the final frontier: Preparing local communities for falling space debris Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy Pub Date : 2023-03-01 Hans M. Louis-Charles, Amidu Kalokoh, Jose Torres, Thomas Jamieson
Global dependence on satellite technologies, along with expanding space exploration, and commercial space travel have made rocket launches routine modern-day events. As a result, there is an increasing probability of civilian casualty from rocket launch anomalies, or from falling space debris already in orbit. This study provides an empirical analysis of local emergency management publicly available
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What drives feelings of responsibility for disaster preparedness? A case of power failures in Finland and New Zealand Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy Pub Date : 2023-01-25 Maija Nikkanen, Sanna Malinen, Heikki Laurikainen
The division of responsibilities for disaster preparedness between individuals and society is rapidly evolving: national-level preparedness has made way for networked disaster risk governance, and citizens are also expected to play their part. Preparedness is shaped by various individual and socioeconomic factors, including previous disaster experience and perceptions of risk. However, little is known
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Press, pulse, and perceptions: How does media attention signal perceptions about environmental crises? Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy Pub Date : 2023-01-23 Tomás Olivier, Emily V. Bell, Martín I. García Asorey, Alejandra Rodas-Gaiter
At what point do environmental phenomena become crises, and how do these impact the quantity and quality of media attention? As climate patterns change, societies face crises that are slow-moving in nature (such as sea level rise and drought) or fast-changing (such as hurricanes or flash floods). A third type of event is those that are slow-occurring while at the same time being punctuated by extreme
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What is good drinking water? 41 Years of risk perception on water quality in the vicinity of the Nuclear Research Centre Karlsruhe, 1956–1997 Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy Pub Date : 2023-01-18 Alicia Gutting
This article traces the historical evolution of risk perception around the Nuclear Research Centre Karlsruhe, Germany, from 1956 to 1997. It does so by targeting the evolution of water-related risks. Federal hopes in the postwar era that the Nuclear Research Centre would bring progress and prosperity clashed with local values and local perception of nuclear engineering as dangerous to health and the
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Pandemic publishing: A bibliometric review of COVID-19 research in the crisis and disaster literature Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy Pub Date : 2022-12-13 Sanneke Kuipers, Annemarie van der Wilt, Jeroen Wolbers
Iconic events have traditionally instigated progression in the fields of crisis and disaster science. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the pressing question is how this global health emergency impacted the research agendas of our field. We reviewed contributions in ten important crisis and disaster journals in the two and a half years following the COVID-19 outbreak from 1 January 2020 to 30 June
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What have we learned about health effects more than 40 years after the Three Mile Island nuclear accident? A scoping and process review Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy Pub Date : 2022-11-05 Robin T. Wilson, Brandon L. LaBarge, Lauren E. Stahl, David Goldenberg, Yuliya Lyamzina, Evelyn O. Talbott
The worst commercial nuclear accident and the first large-scale voluntary evacuation due to a nuclear event in United States history took place at Three Mile Island (TMI) in 1979. Within a short time, there was a well-recognized impact of the TMI accident by public health officials and academicians upon mental health of nearby residents—particularly pregnant women. Despite long-term and detailed follow-up
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Relevance of social capital in preserving subjective well-being in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy Pub Date : 2022-10-11 Juan Pablo Sarmiento Prieto, Carmen‑Paz Castro‑Correa, Alejandro Arrieta, Meenakshi Jerath, Svenska Arensburg
This paper analyzes the changes in subjective well-being (SWB) in 11 Latin American cities at the end of the acceleration phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, the variables that influenced these changes, and the role of the public support policies and the social capital on SWB recovery. This study, the second of a two-phase research project, is a survey-based comparative analysis. The 5604 survey responses
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Legislators do not harness voter support for disaster preparedness Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy Pub Date : 2022-10-11 Sarah E. Anderson, Rob DeLeo, Kristin Taylor
Natural disasters are worsening, but elected officials have not adequately invested in programs that would improve disaster preparedness. Federal spending and election outcomes have been taken to suggest policymakers' failure to support long-term preparedness results from a lack of interest in disaster preparedness among voters and a pervasive preference among voters for more spending on disaster relief
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Fire risk communication in the urban informal sector: Evidence from traditional marketplaces in Accra, Ghana Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy Pub Date : 2022-09-15 Matthew Abunyewah, Seth A. Okyere, Louis K. Frimpong, Stephen K. Diko, Michael O. Erdiaw-Kwasie, Victor Boateng
Urban marketplace fires in Ghana are chronic, devasting in economic losses and disproportionately impacting informal sector workers. Yet, the scholarly works on urban disasters have focused on hydrometeorological and other man-made disasters to the neglect of marketplace fires, particularly the challenges in risk communication between emergency management agencies and urban marketplace workers. In
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How considering memory as an analogy to preparedness reveals its weaknesses Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy Pub Date : 2022-09-07 Ossi Heino, Vesa Huotari
Threats that fully escape our attention pose a potential, but also a true and invisible, danger to us. They should stand out as the main concern for practitioners who are responsible for the state and level of preparedness. However, to address them, we should first grasp them as pure possibilities. Figuring them out requires tools. This article introduces analogies as a potential tool for this task
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An exercise in disaster: Does policy learning occur after a tabletop crisis scenario? Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy Pub Date : 2022-07-14 Kristin Taylor, Stephanie Zarb, Nathan Jeschke, Joanne Sobeck, Richard Smith, Matthew Seeger, Shawn P. McElmurry
It is well-established that experience with a disaster can heighten risk perception, initiate policy learning, and ultimately enhance preparedness and mitigation. This experience can make stakeholders more amenable to mitigating risk, but disasters are sporadic, dangerous, and costly. At the same time, the importance of differences in epistemic communities that manage public agencies and departments
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Shelter from the storm: How perceived extreme event experience and government trust shape public support for climate change mitigation policy in the United States Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy Pub Date : 2022-04-06 Leanne Giordono, Chad Zanocco, Holly Peterson, Hilary Boudet
As emergency managers and other government and nongovernmental organizations in the United States cope with a variety of catastrophic events, including unprecedented natural disasters and a global pandemic, the role of government trust in responding to and addressing the threat from such events has gained attention among policy and public administration scholars. How changes in government trust following
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Swedish exceptionalism and the Sars-CoV2 pandemic crisis: Representations of crisis and national identity in the public sphere Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy Pub Date : 2022-03-09 Sandra Simonsen
In abstaining from law-enforced virus containment measures, the Swedish response to the severe respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 pandemic crisis stood out as radically different compared to other European nations. The present study aims to provide an understanding of the deviant Swedish crisis strategy and to do so from a cultural perspective by illustrating how the crisis and national self-identification
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Risk, hazards and crisis: Covid-19 and beyond Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy Pub Date : 2022-03-07 Sanneke Kuipers, Jeroen Wolbers
At the time when this issue of Risk, Hazards and Crisis in Public Policy gets published (March 2022), we can look back at over 2 years of COVID-19 pandemic. The crisis had both many phases and faces, in ever so many countries around the globe. In RHCPP, we have seen discussions on its creeping nature (Boin et al., 2020), its disproportionate impact on vulnerable minorities (Gadson, 2020), the widely
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Building constituencies for flood risk management: Critical insights from a flood defences dispute in Ireland Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy Pub Date : 2022-03-06 James M. Jeffers
Stakeholder consultation and participation are often viewed as an essential component of hazards governance and disaster risk reduction. However, an extensive literature in the fields of hazards management, disaster risk reduction, planning, and environmental governance has highlighted numerous challenges that have constrained attempts to increase participation in decision-making. Some scholars have
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Enabling conditions for integrating government institutions for disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation in the SADC region and beyond Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy Pub Date : 2022-03-06 Livhuwani D. Nemakonde, Dewald Van Niekerk
Climate change, through extreme weather events, is increasing the risk and impacts of disasters. An increase in extreme weather events underscores the importance of bringing coherence in efforts to reduce the risk of disasters and to adapt to the impacts of the changing climate. The linkages between disaster risk reduction (DRR) and climate change adaptation (CCA) and the need to integrate the two
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Public awareness and perceptions of drought: A case study of two cities of Alabama Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy Pub Date : 2022-03-06 Wanyun Shao, Jonghun Kam, Evan Cass
Drought poses serious risks to society. There is, however, a lack of timely public awareness and sufficient public risk perceptions of this hazard due to its gradual onset. Timely and adequate public response is conducive to effective mitigation. It is imperative to understand how the public responds to drought. Using data from multiple sources, situated in two cities (Mobile and Huntsville) of Alabama
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The economic impact of school closures during the 2015 flood in Richland County, South Carolina Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy Pub Date : 2022-01-13 Melanie Gall, Tamara L. Sheldon, Larianne Collins
Research on the societal costs of disaster-related US school closures has focused, and due to COVID-19 will likely continue to focus, on pandemics, with very limited research on closures from natural hazards. This is surprising given that school closures occur frequently to protect children, teachers, and staff pre-event as well as post-disaster to convert facilities into emergency shelters, etc. This
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A systematic review of 20 years of crisis and disaster research: Trends and progress Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy Pub Date : 2021-11-24 Jeroen Wolbers, Sanneke Kuipers, Arjen Boin
The field of crisis and disaster studies has proliferated over the past two decades. Attention is bound to grow further as the world negotiates the prolonged challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic. In this review, we provide an overview of the main foci, methods, and research designs employed in the crisis and disaster research fields in the period of 2001–2020. The review documents that the focus and
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Protecting the Texas electric grid: A cybersecurity strategy for the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) and the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT) Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy Pub Date : 2021-11-09 Les Stanaland, Ross Baldick, Alvaro Cardenas, Jennifer Holmes
The electrical system serves as the fundamental base of a country's economic activity, and is a likely target for cyberattacks. As the modern economy continues its evolution towards greater digitization and interconnectedness, policymakers must outline and enforce regulations protecting those critical assets, without which the economy would suffer. The Texas Interconnection, due to being independently
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Dismantling power asymmetries in disaster and emergency management research: Another argument for the application of critical theory Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy Pub Date : 2021-11-06 Kirk Leach, Jason D. Rivera
Recently there has been a renewed call for research that seeks to understand the experiences of historically marginalized groups as a means of addressing inequities in governmental treatment and service provision. Although this call has been issued across all of the social sciences, its manifestation in the realm of disaster and emergency management has been limited based on the discipline's lack of
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Policy mandates and organizational compliance: A spatial analysis of the factors affecting the adoption and implementation of emergency power plans by nursing homes Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy Pub Date : 2021-09-23 Alka Sapat, Diana Mitsova, Arjola Balilaj, Ann-Margaret Esnard
We examine the adoption and implementation of emergency preparedness power plans by nursing homes in response to a state legislative mandate following hurricane Irma, which struck Florida in September 2017. Due to that storm, power failures at a nursing home in South Florida led to the death of 14 nursing home residents. To analyze the policy changes following this disaster that required nursing homes
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A critical appraisal of individual social capital in crisis response Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy Pub Date : 2021-09-19 Claudia Morsut, Christian Kuran, Bjørn Ivar Kruke, Tor-Olav Nævestad, Kati Orru, Sten Hansson
While there is still a vast body of scholarly research in crisis and disaster management that considers social capital an asset for lessening negative impacts from crises, this paper investigates an underexplored aspect of social capital—its microlevel positive and negative instances in the crisis response—a quite neglected phase of the crisis management cycle when it comes to studying the role of
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The impact of social distancing on community case count in the United States: Testing the efficacy of protection motivation theory during early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy Pub Date : 2021-09-13 Minkyu Yeom, Fran Stewart, Alice Stewart
Centuries of practice and an array of public health literature support social distancing (SD), or self-quarantine, as a valuable nonpharmaceutical intervention. To convince individuals to engage in behaviors that limit infection, public health professionals communicate risk and hazard based on application of protection motivation theory (PMT). The COVID-19 pandemic presents an opportunity to explore
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Containing COVID-19 risk in the UAE: Mass quarantine, mental health, and implications for crisis management Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy Pub Date : 2021-09-13 Justin Thomas, James P. Terry
The COVID-19 pandemic is the first global “NASECH disaster,” owing to its natural hazard (NH) origin and unprecedented subsequent repercussions for global society (S), economy (EC), and health (H). Emergency health control measures required the implementation of compulsory mass quarantine (CMQ) or so-called periods of “lockdown.” Yet, CMQ is an instrument with iatrogenic consequences, associated with
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Drawing lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic: Seven obstacles to learning from public inquiries in the wake of the crisis Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy Pub Date : 2021-09-13 Kerstin Eriksson, Reidar Staupe-Delgado, Jørgen Holst
On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared the emerging COVID-19 threat a pandemic following the global spread of the virus. A year later, a number of governments are being handed the concluding reports of national public inquiries tasked with investigating responses, mishaps, and identifying lessons for the future. The present article aims to identify a set of learning obstacles that
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A comparative analysis of social vulnerability and proximity to coal-fired power plants and windmill farms Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy Pub Date : 2021-09-13 Julia Crowley
This research examines if there are differences in the social vulnerability of U.S. residents living within a five-mile radius of a coal-fired power plant compared to residents living within a five-mile radius of a windmill farm (N = 5776) for facilities in operation as of April 2020. Two logistic regression models were created with demographic data for 2020 and 2010 to account for the decline of the
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Wildfire governance in a changing world: Insights for policy learning and policy transfer Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy Pub Date : 2021-09-01 William Nikolakis, Emma Roberts
Societies must learn to live with, and adapt to wildfire risk. Here we examine wildfire governance and policy in British Columbia (BC), Canada over the last two decades, to examine how policy lessons are drawn from wildfire events. We focus on independent reviews and their recommendations provided, lessons learned from abroad, and whether policy and governance has changed (or not). Jurisdictional and
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Property rights attitudes are a source of public opposition to flood mitigation policies in the United States Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy Pub Date : 2021-08-27 Logan Strother, Laura Hatcher
Floods are the costliest disasters in American history—and today, floods are getting both worse and more common. As flooding becomes ever more salient one might expect that public support for flood prevention and mitigation policies would grow, yet we see significant opposition to a wide range of flood policies. We find, across four samples and a range of study designs and measurement strategies, that
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Do collective bargaining rights save lives? A rare event analysis of firefighter fatalities in the United States Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy Pub Date : 2021-06-22 Dominic D. Wells
Risk analysis research often focuses on regulation, assessment, and management rather than risk governance. This study contributes to the risk governance literature by analyzing the relationship between collective bargaining rights for firefighters and firefighter fatalities in the United States. Using state-level data from 2009 through 2018, this analysis shows that states with duty-to-bargain rights
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Managing National Food Security in the Global North: Is collaborative governance a possible route forward? Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy Pub Date : 2021-06-09 Oscar L. Larsson, Sara Sjöqvist
Many countries in the “Global North” that have enjoyed relative food security for a number of decades now face challenges that may lead to disturbances in food supplies. Global markets and global flows are not as self-evident as they were a few years ago and new modes of governance for managing national food security during crisis are required. Recent events such as the COVID-19 pandemic have further
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Dancing with death. A historical perspective on coping with Covid-19 Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy Pub Date : 2021-05-18 Beatrice de Graaf, Lotte Jensen, Rina Knoeff, Catrien Santing
In this paper, we address the question on how societies coped with pandemic crises, how they tried to control or adapt to the disease, or even managed to overcome the death trap in history. On the basis of historical research, we describe how societies in the western world accommodated to or exited hardship and restrictive measures over the course of the last four centuries. In particular, we are interested
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Cascading hazards and hazard mitigation plans: Preventing cascading events in the United States Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy Pub Date : 2021-05-18 Joanne Chen, Michael Greenberg
The concentration of people and commerce in densely packed megacities has created interconnections between engineered and human-service systems that are susceptible to a single potentially hazardous event triggering others. We identify the interdependencies between engineered and human-service systems as well as the progression of hazardous cascading effects in the US context. The three purposes of
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Heuristics and protective behavior for floods Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy Pub Date : 2021-05-05 Marvin Starominski-Uehara
Findings from the literature of flood risk management have suggested that heuristics increase exposure to flood risks. This article models some of these conventional heuristics. The main finding emerging from survey data is that not every heuristic significantly correlates with the decision of households to not take protective actions. Flood experience, as it has been corroborated in the literature
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Partisanship, policy options, and risk: Perceived influence of political partisanship on health emergency preparedness Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy Pub Date : 2021-05-05 Nathan Myers
The 21st century has seen the emergence of two novel coronaviruses, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and COVID-19 (coronavirus infectious disease of 2019). In the wake of the 9/11 attacks in 2001, Republicans and Democrats were united in their concerns regarding SARS and the potential threat of biological weapons. That united front was not to be seen during the 2016 debate over supplemental
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To appeal and amend: Changes to recently updated Flood Insurance Rate Maps Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy Pub Date : 2021-05-05 Devin Lea, Sarah Pralle
Flood Insurance Rate Maps (FIRMs) are produced for the National Flood Insurance Program to depict and manage flood hazard in the United States. While past research has portrayed FIRMs as static maps, property residents and community representatives can propose changes to flood zones on FIRMs. These changes add and remove buildings from flood zones on FIRMs, which raises an important question: are there