Evolution of relict floodplain forest in river stretches of Western and Central Europe as affected by river infrastructure networks

We studied the impact of infrastructure networks on relict floodplain forest along three stretches of the Upper Rhine (Kembs-Efringen-Kirchen, Strasbourg-Kehl and Beinheim-Iffezheim) and the Inn-Danube (Mulheim-Obernberg, Passau-Ingling and Engelhartszell-Jochenstein), each on the border between two countries. We analysed land use patterns within a 500 m wide buffer area along the main channel using photo-interpretation and compared the situations between the 1950s, 1980’s and 2010’s. Temporal changes were assessed with transition matrices and selected spatial metrics, including fragmentation indices. Over this period, forest area remained similar at three sites, increased slightly at two sites and decreased at one site. However, on average, 12.5% of floodplain forest had changed location (range: 7.3% (Engelhartszell-Jochenstein)– 26.5% (Kembs-Efringen-Kirchen)). The natural development of unmanaged areas and agricultural abandonment after World War II has led to the emergence of young riparian forests along rivers. In the Upper Rhine region, the results showed asymmetry in these two factors, with unmanaged natural areas most important on the French side and agricultural abandonment on the German side. Along the Inn-Danube, agricultural abandonment has led to an increase or stagnation of floodplain forest areas. In most cases, development of transport infrastructure between the 1950s and 2010s has caused fragmentation of the forest area, reducing the relict forest to a patchy green corridor with reduced functionality and interfacing. To go further and improve the management of these relict forests, we have to investigate the interdependency between practices related to infrastructure operation and the role that biodiversity plays for stakeholders.

Hospital preparedness for mass gathering events and mass casualty incidents in Matera, Italy, European Capital of Culture 2019

INTRODUCTION

Mass Casualty Incidents (MCI) may occur during Mass Gathering Events (MGE). A failure to prepare and train the health care system for potential MCI, can cause chaos and delays in the response, leading to an increased morbidity and mortality. Education and training of staff are crucial for preparedness. In Italy, hospital Emergency Plans for Massive Influx of Injured (in Italian designated with the acronym PEMAF) are mandatory since the '90's. However, when available, they are usually poorly known by the staff, rarely reviewed and validated. In 2014, Matera, a city in Southern Italy, was designated as the European Capital of Culture for 2019. As a result, we took this opportunity to revise the "Madonna delle Grazie" PEMAF and to start a program for increasing the awareness of the plan among the medical staff and provide specific training for MCI management.

MATERIAL & METHODS

The PEMAF was reviewed through simulations that involved the entire staff. A partnership with the International Association for Medical Response to Major Incidents & Disasters (MRMI) led to the support of experts and to the organization of residential courses based on the MAss Casualty SIMulation tool (MACSIM®). In total, six residential educational events of MACSIM-PEMAF were organized. Individual capacity was tested before and after the education through self-administered semi-quantitative questionnaires.

RESULTS

All the available resources were mapped and the functional areas identified. Alert, coordination and command sequences were defined. The communication network was improved. Documentation and registration systems were developed. Standard operational procedures (action cards) were created for the key positions. The knowledge and capacity to function in active roles during a MCI was improved among the participants in the educational program.

CONCLUSIONS

MGE are great opportunities for the development of the hosting community but also represent an increased risk of MCI. Preparedness is mandatory for health care systems. The educational format MACSIM-PEMAF seems to be adequate to review and improve the existing plans and transfer specific skills to attendants.

Surge Capacity and Mass Casualty Incidents Preparedness of Emergency Departments in a Metropolitan City: a Regional Survey Study

BACKGROUND

Emergency departments (EDs) generally receive many casualties in disaster or mass casualty incidents (MCI). Some studies have conceptually suggested the surge capacity that ED should have; however, only few studies have investigated measurable numbers in one community. This study investigated the surge capacity of the specific number of accommodatable patients and overall preparedness at EDs in a metropolitan city.

METHODS

This cross-sectional study officially surveyed surge capacity and disaster preparedness for all regional and local emergency medical centers (EMC) in Seoul with the Seoul Metropolitan Government's public health division. This study developed survey items on space, staff, stuff, and systems, which are essential elements of surge capacity. The number of patients acceptable for each ED was investigated by triage level in ordinary and crisis situations. Multivariate linear regression analysis was performed on hospital resource variables related to surge capacity.

RESULTS

In the second half of 2018, a survey was conducted targeting 31 EMC directors in Seoul. It was found that all regional and local EMCs in Seoul can accommodate 848 emergency patients and 537 non-emergency patients in crisis conditions. In ordinary situations, one EMC could accommodate an average of 1.3 patients with Korean Triage and Acuity Scale (KTAS) level 1, 3.1 patients with KTAS level 2, and 5.7 patients with KTAS level 3. In situations of crisis, this number increased to 3.4, 7.8, and 16.2, respectively. There are significant differences in surge capacity between ordinary and crisis conditions. The difference in surge capacity between regional and local EMC was not significant. In both ordinary and crisis conditions, only the total number of hospital beds were significantly associated with surge capacity.

CONCLUSION

If the hospital's emergency transport system is ideally accomplished, patients arising from average MCI can be accommodated in Seoul. However, in a huge disaster, it may be challenging to handle the current surge capacity. More detailed follow-up studies are needed to prepare a surge capacity protocol in the community.

Reflective Listening Visualization: Enhancing Interdisciplinary Disaster Research through the Use of Visualization Techniques

Reflective Listening Visualization is an interdisciplinary research method and iterative process that includes the participation and involvement of multiple team members of different disciplines when (1) conducting in-depth interviews, (2) performing thematic analysis of the interview data, (3) using the emergent themes as basis to design visual representations of the themes, (4) presenting the visuals back to the interviewee for feedback, and (5) using the feedback to confirm the visual, refine the existing visual, or to create a new visual. Fundamentally, the Reflective Listening Visualization technique is an enhanced communication tool that aims to increase the community member's voice and to verify the understanding of their experiences, ideas, and concerns while also enhancing the interdisciplinary learning potential of the research team. In this article, we describe the Reflective Listening Visualization process and discuss how the Reflective Listening Visualization process allows for (1) improved communication between interdisciplinary team members, (2) understanding of residents' wants and needs for their community, (3) increasing rapport with residents, (4) building trust between residents and between residents and researchers, (5) accurate representation of residents ideas, and (6) community members to become motivated about the possibilities of the future of their community.

Cultivating Metacognition in Each of Us: Thinking About "Thinking" in Interdisciplinary Disaster Research

Although there is an emerging literature on interdisciplinary disaster research (IDR), one of the overlooked aspects relates to our thinking itself: how to actively think about our thinking-metacognition-while embarking on our interdisciplinary journeys. This article argues that metacognition has an instrumental value both for IDR projects and for individual researchers involved in IDR. For IDR projects, metacognition can help: (1)overcome disciplinary barriers in IDR by revealing cognitive abilities and inabilities for each team member through identifying what is hindering or enabling individuals and the group to transcend disciplinary boundaries toward true integration across the disciplines; (2)deal with "wicked" problems that characterize disaster contexts in a more effective and creative manner; (3)oversee team functioning; and (4)monitor and evaluate progress toward meeting project goals and objectives. For individual researchers, metacognition can help them grow intellectually, and understand the fallacies and limitations in their thinking. It can also encourage them to live an authentic and unified life as an individual. The article concludes with guidance on how individual researchers, principal investigators of IDR projects, and institutions such as universities and funding agencies can cultivate metacognition. To our knowledge, this is the first article that introduces metacognition as a tool for enhancing our thinking on IDR.

The Frontiers of Uncertainty Estimation in Interdisciplinary Disaster Research and Practice

Conceptualizing, assessing, and managing disaster risks involve collecting and synthesizing pluralistic information-from natural, built, and human systems-to characterize disaster impacts and guide policy on effective resilience investments. Disaster research and practice, therefore, are highly complex and inherently interdisciplinary endeavors. Characterizing the uncertainties involved in interdisciplinary disaster research is imperative, since misrepresenting uncertainty can lead to myopic decisions and suboptimal societal outcomes. Efficacious disaster mitigation should, therefore, explicitly address the uncertainties associated with all stages of hazard modeling, preparation, and response. However, uncertainty assessment and communication in the context of interdisciplinary disaster research remain understudied. In this "Perspective" article, we argue that in harnessing interdisciplinary methods and diverse data types in disaster research, careful deliberations on assessing Type III and Type IV errors are imperative. Additionally, we discuss the pathologies in frequentist approaches, calling for an increasing role for Bayesian methods in uncertainty estimations. Moreover, we discuss the potential tradeoffs associated with information and uncertainty, calling for deliberate consideration of the role of diversity of information prior to setting the scope in interdisciplinary modeling. Future research guided by further reflections on the ideas raised in this article could help push the frontiers of uncertainty estimation in interdisciplinary hazard research and practice.

Building an Interdisciplinary Team for Disaster Response Research: A Data-Driven Approach

Building an interdisciplinary team is critical to disaster response research as it often deals with acute onset events, short decision horizons, constrained resources, and uncertainties related to rapidly unfolding response environments.  This article examines three teaming mechanisms for interdisciplinary disaster response research, including ad hoc and/or grant proposal driven teams, research center or institute based teams, and teams oriented by matching expertise toward long-term collaborations. Using hurricanes as the response context, it further examines several types of critical data that require interdisciplinary collaboration on collection, integration, and analysis. Last, suggesting a data-driven approach to engaging multiple disciplines, the article advocates building interdisciplinary teams for disaster response research with a long-term goal and an integrated research protocol.

An Approach for Guiding the Development and Assessing the Interdisciplinarity of New Methodologies for Community Disaster Resilience

There are critical and preventable inequalities in disaster impacts and postdisaster recovery. To formulate solutions for minimizing or preventing these unequal impacts, there is a great need for interdisciplinary methodologies that use social factors to set project scopes and drive engineering analyses and designs. At present time, however, limited guidance exists on how to develop and execute interdisciplinary methodologies, especially related to the study of community disaster resilience. This article offers an approach for developing and assessing interdisciplinary research methodologies. The framework incorporates insights from social science into structural engineering for integrated research focused on community disaster resilience. The two examples offered in the article assess the interdisciplinarity of two loss estimation methodologies. The goal of this perspectives article is to facilitate future interdisciplinary community disaster resilience research given its potential for transformative outcomes in terms of encouraging decision making that is driven by the needs of those who are often overlooked in disaster mitigation and recovery policies.

The influence of new information that contradicts common knowledge about earthquake preparedness in Israel: A mixed methods experiment study

Background

A major earthquake in Israel is inevitable. Individual risk perceptions and preparedness can mitigate harm and save lives. The gap between the public’s concerns and those of experts is reflected in their differential perceptions regarding the components that influence the occurrence of an earthquake in Israel. Whereas the public believes that geographic location is the critical variable, the experts note additional variables that need to be considered. Common knowledge regarding the risks of earthquake occurrence in Israel is based on a distinction between high and low-risk areas, such that the closer a residential area is to the Great Rift Valley, the higher the risk that an earthquake will occur.

Objectives

To examine the variables affecting public preparedness in Israel (effective communication agent (communicator), high and low earthquake risk areas) and the degree to which experts’ knowledge contradicts respondents’ common knowledge.

Methods

The study used a mixed-methods approach combining qualitative and quantitative research. The first stage included in-depth interviews with earthquake experts (n = 19). The second stage consisted of an experiment conducted among a representative sample of the public (n = 834).

Results

Most people believe that geographical location constitutes the main risk factor for earthquakes in Israel. Yet experts claim that additional variables affect earthquake intensity and damage: building strength, earthquake magnitude, distance from earthquake epicenter, soil type, and interaction between these four. The study found that knowledge of expert information affects public willingness to prepare. The direction of this influence depends on participants’ risk perceptions regarding residential area and on degree of consistency with common knowledge. In low-risk areas, added knowledge increased willingness to prepare whereas in high-risk areas this knowledge decreased willingness.

Conclusion

To turn expert information into common knowledge and to increase earthquake preparedness, the authorities must educate the public to generate a new public preparedness norm.

Preparedness for self-isolation or quarantine and lockdown in South Africa: results from a rapid online survey

BACKGROUND

The World Health Organization (WHO) declared the COVID-19 pandemic a public health emergency of international concern. South Africa, like many other countries, initiated a multifaceted national response to the pandemic. Self-isolation and quarantine are essential components of the public health response in the country. This paper examined perceptions and preparedness for self-isolation or quarantine during the initial phase of the pandemic in South Africa.

METHODS

The analysis used data obtained from an online quantitative survey conducted in all nine provinces using a data-free platform. Descriptive statistics and multivariable logistic regression models were used to analyse the data.

RESULTS

Of 55,823 respondents, 40.1% reported that they may end up in self-isolation or quarantine, 32.6% did not think that they would and 27.4% were unsure. Preparedness for self-isolation or quarantine was 59.0% for self, 53.8% for child and 59.9% for elderly. The odds of perceived possibility for self-isolation or quarantine were significantly higher among Coloureds, Whites, and Indians/Asians than Black Africans, and among those with moderate or high self-perceived risk of contracting COVID-19 than those with low risk perception. The odds were significantly lower among older age groups than those aged 18-29 years, and those unemployed than fully employed. The odds of preparedness for self-isolation or quarantine were significantly less likely among females than males. Preparedness for self, child and elderly isolation or quarantine was significantly more likely among other population groups than Black Africans and among older age groups than those aged 18-29 years. Preparedness for self, child and elderly isolation or quarantine was significantly less likely among those self-employed than fully employed and those residing in informal dwellings than formal dwellings. In addition, preparedness for self-isolation or quarantine was significantly less likely among those with moderate and high self-perceived risk of contracting COVID-19 than low risk perception.

CONCLUSION

The findings highlight the challenge of implementing self-isolation or quarantine in a country with different and unique social contexts. There is a need for public awareness regarding the importance of self-isolation or quarantine as well as counter measures against contextual factors inhibiting this intervention, especially in impoverished communities.

Wind disasters adaptation in cities in a changing climate: A systematic review

Wind-related disasters will bring more devastating consequences to cities in the future with a changing climate, but relevant studies have so far provided insufficient information to guide adaptation actions. This study aims to provide an in-depth elaboration of the contents discussed in open access literature regarding wind disaster adaptation in cities. We used the Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) to refine topics and main contents based on 232 publications (1900 to 2019) extracted from Web of Science and Scopus. We conducted a full-text analysis to filter out focal cities along with their adaptation measures. The results show that wind disaster adaptation research in cities has formed a systematic framework in four aspects: 1) vulnerability and resilience of cities, 2) damage evaluation, 3) response and recovery, and 4) health impacts of wind disaster. Climate change is the background for many articles discussing vulnerability and adaptation in coastal areas. It is also embedded in damage evaluation since it has the potential to exacerbate disaster consequences. The literature is strongly inclined towards more developed cities such as New York City and New Orleans, among which New York City associated with Hurricane Sandy ranks first (38/232). Studies on New York City cover all the aspects, including the health impacts of wind disasters which are significantly less studied now. Distinct differences do exist in the number of measures regarding the adaptation categories and their subcategories. We also find that hard adaptation measures (i.e., structural and physical measures) are far more popular than soft adaptation measures (i.e., social and institutional measures). Our findings suggest that policymakers should pay more attention to cities that have experienced major wind disasters other than New York. They should embrace the up-to-date climate change study to defend short-term disasters and take precautions against long-term changes. They should also develop hard-soft hybrid adaptation measures, with special attention on the soft side, and enhance the health impact study of wind-related disasters.

US Hospital Capacity Managers' Experiences and Concerns Regarding Preparedness for Seasonal Influenza and Influenza-like Illness

IMPORTANCE

The 2017-2018 influenza season in the US was marked by a high severity of illness, wide geographic spread, and prolonged duration compared with recent previous seasons, resulting in increased strain throughout acute care hospital systems.

OBJECTIVE

To characterize self-reported experiences and views of hospital capacity managers regarding the 2017-2018 influenza season in the US.

DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS

In this qualitative study, semistructured telephone interviews were conducted between April 2018 and January 2019 with a random sample of capacity management administrators responsible for throughput and hospital capacity at short-term, acute care hospitals throughout the US.

MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES

Each participant's self-reported experiences and views regarding high patient volumes during the 2017-2018 influenza season, lessons learned, and the extent of hospitals' preparedness planning for future pandemic events. Interviews were recorded and transcribed and then analyzed using thematic content analysis. Outcomes included themes and subthemes.

RESULTS

A total of 53 key hospital capacity personnel at 53 hospitals throughout the US were interviewed; 39 (73.6%) were women, 48 (90.6%) had a nursing background, and 29 (54.7%) had been in the occupational role for more than 4 years. Participants' experiences were categorized into several domains: (1) perception of strain, (2) effects of influenza and influenza-like illness on staff and patient care, (3) immediate staffing and capacity responses to influenza and influenza-like illness, and (4) future staffing and capacity preparedness for influenza and influenza-like illness. Participants reported experiencing perceived strain associated with concerns about preparedness for seasonal influenza and influenza-like illness as well as concerns about staffing, patient care, and capacity, but future pandemic planning within hospitals was not reported as being a high priority.

CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE

The findings of this qualitative study suggest that during the 2017-2018 influenza season, there were systemic vulnerabilities as well as a lack of hospital preparedness planning for future pandemics at US hospitals. These issues should be addressed given the current coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic.

Healthcare and education networks interaction as an indicator of social services stability following natural disasters

Healthcare and education systems have been identified by various national and international organizations as the main pillars of communities' stability. Understanding the correlation between these main social services institutions is critical to determining the tipping point of communities following natural disasters. Despite being defined as social services stability indicators, to date, no studies have been conducted to determine the level of interdependence between schools and hospitals and their collective influence on their recoveries following extreme events. In this study, we devise an agent-based model to investigate the complex interaction between healthcare and education networks and their overall recovery, while considering other physical, social, and economic factors. We employ comprehensive models to simulate the functional processes within each facility and to optimize their recovery trajectories after earthquake occurrence. The results highlight significant interdependencies between hospitals and schools, including direct and indirect relationships, suggesting the need for collective coupling of their recovery to achieve full functionality of either of the two systems following natural disasters. Recognizing this high level of interdependence, we then establish a social services stability index, which can be used by policymakers and community leaders to quantify the impact of healthcare and education services on community resilience and social services stability.

Aesthetic Office Disaster Preparedness and Response Plan

The coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) has served as a call-to-arms in preparing practices for the next disaster whether it is another infectious disease or a flood, hurricane, earthquake, a sustained power outage, or something else. A group of predominantly core aesthetic physicians discussed the various aspects of their office procedures that warrant consideration in a proactive approach to the next pandemic/disaster-related event. This guide does not set a standard of practice but contains recommendations that may avoid some of the "lessons learned" with the COVID-19 pandemic. In this paper, the board-certified core aesthetic physicians classified these recommendations into four generalized areas: Practice Management; Supplies and Inventory; Office Staffing Considerations and Protocols; and Patient Management Strategies. Proactive strategies are provided in each of these categories that, if implemented, may alleviate the processes involved with an efficient office closure and reopening process including, in the case of COVID-19, methods to reduce the risk of transmission to doctors, staff, and patients. These strategies also include being prepared for emergency-related notifications of employees and patients; the acquisition of necessary equipment and supplies such as personal protective equipment; and the maintenance and accessibility of essential data and contact information for patients, vendors, financial advisors, and other pertinent entities.J Drugs Dermatol. 2021;20(1):10-16. doi:10.36849/JDD.5803.

Development of a Mobile Hospital for Disaster Relief

Mobile supplemental hospitals were an important asset to community response in preparing for the recent pandemic. MED-1 is a Mobile Emergency Department that has adapted and evolved to the changing needs of communities in times of disaster and nondisaster. An overview of the asset (MED-1), the operations, and use is provided to demonstrate how mobile supplemental hospitals can effectively meet a range of healthcare needs. Innovative utilization of MED-1 has secured its future as an effective resource averaging 100 days of deployment per year.

Quarantine Facility for Patients with COVID-19 with Mild Symptoms in Korea: Experience from Eighteen Residential Treatment Centers

With the rapid spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), a particularly sharp increase in the number of confirmed cases in Daegu and Gyeongbuk regions at the end of February, Korea faced an unprecedented shortage of medical resources, including hospital beds. To cope with this shortage, the government introduced a severity scoring system for patients with COVID-19 and designed a new type of quarantine facility for treating and isolating patients with mild symptoms out of the hospital, namely, the Residential Treatment Center (RTC). A patient with mild symptoms was immediately isolated in the RTC and continuously monitored to detect changes in symptoms. If the symptoms aggravate, the patient was transferred to a hospital. RTCs were designed by creating a quarantine environment in existing lodging facilities capable of accommodating > 100 individuals. The facilities were entirely divided into a clean zone (working area) and contaminated zone (patient zone), separating the space, air, and movement routes, and the staff wore level D personal protective equipment (PPE) in the contaminated zone. The staffs consisted of medical personnel, police officers, soldiers, and operation personnel, and worked in two or three shifts per day. Their duty was mainly to monitor the health conditions of quarantined patients, provide accommodations, and regularly collect specimens to determine if they can be released. For the past two months, RTCs secured approximately 4,000 isolation rooms and treated approximately 3,000 patients with mild symptoms and operated stably without additional spread of the disease in and out of the centers. Based on these experience, we would like to suggest the utilization of RTCs as strategic quarantine facilities in pandemic situations.

Factors associated with the intention to participate in activities during a nuclear disaster situation among firefighters

Willingness to participate in activities during a nuclear disaster situation among firefighters is low. Thus, we aimed to identify the factors affecting the intention to participate in nuclear disaster activities. A questionnaire survey was conducted among firefighter training students (n = 186) and firefighters (n = 410), and a multivariate logistic regression analysis was performed to identify factors affecting the intention to participate in nuclear disaster activities. The percentage of students and firefighters who were willing to participate in nuclear disaster activities was 70.4% (n = 131) and 56.3% (n = 231) (P < 0.01), respectively. The factors affecting the students' intention to participant were "wish to learn more information about radiation" and "firefighters should actively work in a nuclear disaster." Meanwhile, the factors affecting the firefighters' intention to work were "have self-confidence during nuclear disaster activities," "participate if there is an incentive," "unable to get a family member to understand the need to participate in a nuclear disaster activity," and marital status. A student's decision might be strongly connected to social norms about participating in nuclear disaster activities. The willingness to participate in nuclear disaster activities among firefighters might be improved by facilitating activities that can build their self-confidence, providing sufficient incentives, and helping their families understand their work. Therefore, not only direct education for responders but also educational activities for the general public and their families are essential.

Considerations in developing medical countermeasures against chemical ocular toxicity

The Chemical Countermeasures Research Program (CCRP) was established in 2006 by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID/NIH) on behalf of the National Institutes of Health Office of the Director (NIH OD). It is a trans-NIH initiative to expedite the discovery and early development of medical countermeasures (MCMs) that can reduce mortality and serious morbidity during and after large consequence public health emergency involving the deliberate or accidental large-scale release of highly toxic chemicals (HTCs).

Can emojis mean "Earthquake"?

With the increase in digital communications systems and social media, there is a need for simple graphics-based ways to signal the occurrence of major disasters. We describe the development and initial usability testing of a sign to indicate that an earthquake has occurred. We involved 264 Italian adults, who completed an online survey to evaluate the evocativeness, simplicity, and universality of 16 emojis depicting earthquakes. Through a Self-Organising Map analysis we identified four similar response profiles to the evocativeness scale, differing in their mean strength. A non-metric Multidimensional Scaling suggested that evocativeness was higher for the emojis featuring a damaged building. Linear Mixed Models indicated that emojis with fabricated vs. natural structures were judged as more evocative, simpler, and more universal when characterized by danger from falling objects. In some cases, adding behavioral elements increased evocativeness. Practical implications for informing the development of a new emoji for earthquakes are discussed.

Disaster Ergonomics: Human Factors in COVID-19 Pandemic Emergency Management

OBJECTIVE

We aimed to identify opportunities for application of human factors knowledge base to mitigate disaster management (DM) challenges associated with the unique characteristics of the COVID-19 pandemic.

BACKGROUND

The role of DM is to minimize and prevent further spread of the contagion over an extended period of time. This requires addressing large-scale logistics, coordination, and specialized training needs. However, DM-related challenges during the pandemic response and recovery are significantly different than with other kinds of disasters.

METHOD

An expert review was conducted to document issues relevant to human factors and ergonomics (HFE) in DM.

RESULTS

The response to the COVID-19 crisis has presented complex and unique challenges to DM and public health practitioners. Compared to other disasters and previous pandemics, the COVID-19 outbreak has had an unprecedented scale, magnitude, and propagation rate. The high technical complexity of response and DM coupled with lack of mental model and expertise to respond to such a unique disaster has seriously challenged the response work systems. Recent research has investigated the role of HFE in modeling DM systems' characteristics to improve resilience, accelerating emergency management expertise, developing agile training methods to facilitate dynamically changing response, improving communication and coordination among system elements, mitigating occupational hazards including guidelines for the design of personal protective equipment, and improving procedures to enhance efficiency and effectiveness of response efforts.

CONCLUSION

This short review highlights the potential for the field's contribution to proactive and resilient DM for the ongoing and future pandemics.