Losses resulting from natural hazards—including floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes, and wildfires—cost billions of dollars each year. RAND research has shown how long-term loss-reduction strategies and disaster preparedness could improve the resilience of communities and infrastructure in the face of natural disasters, resulting in less property damage and reduced rebuilding costs.
This study demonstrates how robust decision making can help Ho Chi Minh City develop integrated flood risk management strategies.
This article explores the differences between transnational and domestic terrorism, further differentiating by private versus government targets, to estimate the effect of exogenous catastrophic shocks on a country's level of domestic and transnational terrorism.
Federal support for health security research is heavily weighted toward preparing for bioterrorism and other biological threats, providing significantly less funding for challenges such as monster storms or attacks with conventional bombs.
Recent advances in GPS data processing have demonstrated that ground-based GPS receivers are capable of detecting ionospheric TEC perturbations caused by surface-generated Rayleigh, acoustic and gravity waves.
Trust contributes to community resilience by the critical influence it has on the community's responses to public health recommendations before, during, and after disasters.
Despite extensive messaging about the importance of citizen preparedness and countless household surveys purporting to track the preparedness activities of individuals and households, the role individual Americans are being asked to play is largely based on conventional wisdom.
There is growing concern that climate change will lead to more frequent natural disasters that may adversely affect short- and long-term health outcomes in developing countries.
A novel and important issue in contemporary security policy is the impact of natural disasters on terrorism. Natural disasters can strain a society and its government, creating vulnerabilities which terrorist groups might exploit.
Expert panel discussion of the emergency response in Haiti concluded that rigorous, objective after-action reports are needed both to improve ongoing operations in Haiti and to enhance future responses to large-scale population emergencies.
New Orleans school children participated in an assessment and field trial of two interventions 15 months after Hurricane Katrina.
This study uses data from the monthly Current Population Survey to examine the short- and longer-term effects of Hurricane Katrina on the labor market outcomes of prime-age individuals in the most affected states--Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, and Mississippi--and for evacuees in any state.
A resilient transportation system is one that minimizes both the initial effect of the disruption and the time required to return the system to normal operations.
Project Fleur-de-lis[TM] (PFDL) was established to provide a tiered approach to triage and treat children experiencing trauma symptoms after Hurricane Katrina.
The Rapid Evaluation and Action for Community Health in Louisiana (REACH-LA) Phase I project used community-based participatory methods to engage community members in the design, conduct, and interpretation of the results. This brief report describes the findings from the Community Discussion Groups, which affords the most direct insight into grassroots community perspectives on healthcare needs in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.
This study estimated the prevalence of psychopathology at a three-month follow-up among persons seeking emergency relief services after a wildfire.
The authors studied the experience of Hurricane Katrina evacuees to better understand factors influencing evacuation decisions in impoverished, mainly minority communities that were most severely affected by the disaster.
Distrust of authorities, among numerous other factors, seems likely to have played a role in New Orleans residents' reactions to evacuation warnings and public health authorities' advice.
A study of risk perceptions in Santiago, Chile.
Illustrates universal vulnerability through the stories of a native New Orleans physician helping his community after Katrina and a writer turned advocate for her mentally retarded brother.
Investigates the variability in ecological risk perceptions by surveying members of four stakeholder groups commonly involved in environmental policy debates.