Disaster response

Emergency response aims to provide immediate help to keep people alive, improve their health and support their morale.

[1]: 16 The Business Dictionary provide a more comprehensive definition for "disaster response";[2] Aggregate of decisions and measures to (1) contain or mitigate the effects of a disastrous event to prevent any further loss of life and/or property, (2) restore order in its immediate aftermath, and (3) re-establish normality through reconstruction and re-rehabilitation shortly thereafter.

At the community level, it could be a flood, a fire, a collapse of buildings in an earthquake, the destruction of livelihoods, an epidemic or displacement through conflict.

Studies undertaken by Son, Aziz and Peña-Mora (2007) shows that "initial work demand gradually spreads and increases based on a wide range of variables including scale of disaster, vulnerability of affected area which in turn is affected by population density, site-specific conditions (e.g. exposure to hazardous conditions) and effects of cascading disasters resulting from inter-dependence between elements of critical infrastructure".

Finally, in the case of major incidents, line 3 provides strategic guidance, group resource management, and government and media relations.

In addition to providing funding to humanitarian aid, the European Commission's Directorate-General for European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (DG-ECHO) is in charge of the EU Civil Protection Mechanism [9] to coordinate the response to disasters in Europe and beyond and contributes to at least 75% of the transport and/or operational costs of deployments.

The Mechanism was set up to enable coordinated assistance from the participating states to victims of natural and man-made disasters in Europe and elsewhere.

In Canada, GlobalMedic was established in 1998 as a non-sectarian humanitarian-aid NGO to provide disaster relief services to large scale catastrophes around the world.

[12] It has a roster of over 1,000 volunteers from across Canada that includes professional rescuers, police officers, firefighters and paramedics who donate their time to respond to international disasters.

Such include the rapid construction of stable bridges based on mobile lightweight and/or locally sourced materials or components, which militaries have been involved in.

[30] Depending on the type of disaster, its scope and recovery duration conventional waste may need to be managed in similar ways and both may be associated with the transportation network restoration.

[35][36][37] Volunteers, as well as other people involved in a disaster response such as locals and civil organizations like the Technische Hilfswerk, can be coordinated and coordinate with the help of websites and similar ICTs such as for preventing traffic jams,[38] "disaster tourists" and other obstruction of the transportation network, for allocating different forms of help to locations in need, reporting missing persons and increasing efficiency.

[39] Smart Emergency Response System (SERS)[40] prototype was built in the SmartAmerica Challenge 2013–2014,[41] a United States government initiative.

The SmartAmerica initiative challenges the participants to build cyber-physical systems as a glimpse of the future to save lives, create jobs, foster businesses, and improve the economy.

SERS allows to submit help requests to a MATLAB-based mission center connecting first responders, apps, search-and-rescue dogs, a 6-feet-tall humanoid, robots, drones, and autonomous aircraft and ground vehicles.

The command and control center optimizes the available resources to serve every incoming requests and generates an action plan for the mission.

In addition, the autonomous rotorcrafts, planes, and ground vehicles are simulated with Simulink and visualized in a 3D environment (Google Earth) to unlock the ability to observe the operations on a mass scale.

Digital technologies are increasingly being used in humanitarian action, they have shown to improve the health and recovery of populations affected by both natural and man-made disasters.

Nowadays, millions of people use mobile phones as a means of daily communication and data transference, out of which 64% live in developing countries.

[43] One of the most important characteristics of disasters are the harms caused to infrastructures, accessibility issues, and an exponential need of medical and emergency services.

In such conditions, the abundance of mobile technology in developing countries provide the opportunity to be harnessed for helping victims and vulnerable people.

[48] In addition, they provide field hospital administrators with real-time census information essential for planning, resource allocation, inter-facility patient transfers, and inter-agency collaboration.

Efforts led by the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative and Operational Medicine Institute during the Haiti earthquake resulted in the creation of a web-based mHealth system that created a patient log of 617 unique entries used by on-the-ground medical providers and field hospital administrators.

She says that this is often attributed to local or national character, but appears to be universal, and is typically followed by consultations with nearby people when the signals finally get enough attention.

For example, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) emphasizes that: response efforts will focus on the immediate provision of quality life-saving humanitarian supplies, including ready-to-eat rations and food baskets, basic relief items for the most vulnerable households, including light hygiene and dignity kits, and a series of initial – and largely mobile - emergency protection interventions.

A study undertaken by Le Masson et al. in 2016, found that following Hurricane Katrina in 2005, "the ratio of women's to men's earnings in New Orleans declined from 81.6% prior to the disaster to 61.8% in 2006".

Care labor (also referred to as social reproduction) encompasses, "tasks of providing for dependants, for children, the sick, the elderly and all the rest of us".

Lafrenière, Sweetman and Thylin emphasize that "women operate as unpaid carers keeping societies and economies functioning ...

[59] In times of disaster, the lack of access to sufficient financial resources can "force [women] to turn to risky behaviour such as prostitution or transactional sex as a means of survival.

Crises also tend to increase the burdens of care and household responsibilities for women, making their ability to economically support themselves and their dependents more difficult".