Disaster management digitally transformed: Exploring the impact and key determinants from the UK national disaster management experience

A review of the contributions of forensic archaeology and anthropology to the process of disaster victim identification

Forensic archaeology and anthropology have developed significantly over past decades and now provide considerable assistance to the investigation process of disaster victim recovery and identification. In what are often chaotic death and crime scenes, the formal process of utilizing archaeological methods can bring control, order, and ensure systematic search. Procedures assist in defining scene extent, locating victims and evidence, rule out areas for consideration, and provide standardized recording and quality assurance through dedicated use of standardized forms (pro formas). Combined archaeological and anthropological search methods maximize opportunities to recovery the missing through identifying remains, mapping distributions, and providing accounting of victims at the scene. Anthropological assistance in examinations contributes to individual assessment, resolving commingling and fragmentation issues, and utilizing DNA sampling methods and matching data to reassociate and account for the missing. Utilization of archaeology, anthropology, and DNA matching data provides scope to review crime scene recovery and determine requirements and potential for further survey and retrieval. Adopting the most suitable methods for a particular context can maximize recovery, efficiency, and resource use. Case studies demonstrate the utility of archaeological methods in a range of scenarios. They exemplify the success of multidisciplinary analysis in providing evidence of the sequence of events, the timing of events, the impact of taphonomic processes, the location and accounting of victims, and the demonstration of systematic scene search. The considerations provided in this article, utilizing archaeology and anthropology processes, may assist investigators in planning and implementing responses to mass fatalities.

COVID-19 pandemic and Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR): Reflection on the challenges and opportunities in South Africa

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has changed people's interactions dramatically, be it with the government, the outside world, or one another. It has compelled society to change the standards for decision-making in areas such as health and education, and how people live, work, play, and do business. As a result of the new behavioral patterns imposed by governments around the world, including the South African government, there has been technological advancement through the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR). In South Africa, key economic sectors such as healthcare, education, and finance have served as digital change engines. Without a doubt, technology has been able to halt the spread of the virus. The main objective of this paper is to raise awareness of 4IR and to identify opportunities presented by 4IR for South Africa and the challenges presented by 4IR in resolving COVID-19 issues. It examines the relationship between evolving technological advances brought about by 4IR and COVID-19. Following a review of the relevant literature, the study's findings revealed that prior to the pandemic, several sectors were wary of, and slow to accept, 4IR. Despite the benefits of 4IR, many African countries face difficulties across various sectors. Almost all African countries are unprepared for 4IR, with the exception of South Africa, which is considered partially ready and ranks 22nd on the automation readiness index. African countries that have embraced digital transformation have cited South Africa as a case study due to its adoption of 4IR. Despite the benefits, several barriers to the adoption and use of 4IR technologies have been identified in developing countries, including South Africa, which has the opportunity to adopt consistent 4IR.

Identifying resilience strategies for disruption management in the healthcare supply chain during COVID-19 by digital innovations: A systematic literature review

The worldwide spread of the COVID-19 disease has had a catastrophic effect on healthcare supply chains. The current manuscript systematically analyzes existing studies mitigating strategies for disruption management in the healthcare supply chain during COVID-19. Using a systematic approach, we recognized 35 related papers. Artificial intelligence (AI), block chain, big data analytics, and simulation are the most important technologies employed in supply chain management in healthcare. The findings reveal that the published research has concentrated mainly on generating resilience plans for the management of COVID-19 impacts. Furthermore, the vulnerability of healthcare supply chains and the necessity of establishing better resilience methods are emphasized in most of the research. However, the practical application of these emerging tools for managing disturbance and warranting resilience in the supply chain has been examined only rarely. This article provides directions for additional research, which can guide researchers to develop and conduct impressive studies related to the healthcare supply chain for different disasters.

Resilient City: Characterization, Challenges and Outlooks

The increasingly severe environmental pollution and the Earth’s ecological crisis make the concept of resilient cities (RCs) a hot topic in urban research. We ran a bibliometric analysis to analyze the research progress, areas, hotspots, and strategies pertaining to RCs. The core collection came from the Web of Science (WoS) database as the data source to explore 4462 literature works on RCs. The results revealed that development time series analysis is divided into three stages. Changes in the number of publications are linked to natural disasters, the ecological environment, and science policy. The top five issuing journals accounted for 24.15% of the total sample. Country cooperation mainly is concentrated in countries with good economic development trends, such as the United States, China, and the United Kingdom. There were 63 core authors. The most published research institution was the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The RC research hotspots included the definition of resilience and evolution, the study of resilience as an analytical framework for urban issues, and resilience assessment indicators. This paper shows that RCs should strengthen multi-country cooperation and interdisciplinary integration and should focus on comprehensive research on basic theories, evaluation systems, and action mechanisms to reference future research on RCs further.

Sophisticated technology innovation capability: Entrepreneurial resilience on disaster -resilient MSMEs

The level of productivity should be increased and maintained to sustain the success of micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs). Furthermore, entrepreneurial resilience requires advanced technological innovation capabilities to avoid continual external disasters. Therefore, this research explores the connection between entrepreneurial resilience, disaster-resilient MSMEs, and new ideas on complex technical innovations to modulate entrepreneurship. Partial Least Squares are used to process 177 MSMEs respondents in Central Java, Indonesia and the findings successfully bridged the gap between entrepreneurial resilience and disaster-resistant MSMEs. The is mediated by sophisticated technology innovation capability. Furthermore, corporate owners and managers are concerned with the ongoing adaptation and creation of complicated technologies concerning sophisticated innovation capabilities. These findings indicate that entrepreneurial resilience contributes to sophisticated technological innovation capability. The findings also show that entrepreneurial resilience contributes to disaster-resilient MSMEs and demonstrate the importance of understanding how entrepreneurs survive during conditions of uncertainty. This theoretical conclusion gives rise to a new competitive resource advantage theory perspective in which sophisticated technology's inventive capacities might be strengthened when entrepreneurial resilience is stronger. The entrepreneurial resilience can improve when corporate organizations or MSMEs players have advanced technical resource capabilities.

Industry 4.0, Disaster Risk Management and Infrastructure Resilience: A Systematic Review and Bibliometric Analysis

The fourth industrial era, known as ‘Industry 4.0’ (I4.0), aided and abetted by the digital revolution, has attracted increasing attention among scholars and practitioners in the last decade. The adoption of I4.0 principles in Disaster Risk Management (DRM) research and associated industry practices is particularly notable, although its origins, impacts and potential are not well understood. In response to this knowledge gap, this paper conducts a systematic literature review and bibliometric analysis of the application and contribution of I4.0 in DRM. The systematic literature review identified 144 relevant articles and then employed descriptive and content analysis of a focused set of 70 articles published between 2011 and 2021. The results of this review trace the growing trend for adoption of I4.0 tools and techniques in disaster management, and in parallel their influence in resilient infrastructure and digital construction fields. The results are used to identify six dominant clusters of research activity: big data analytics, Internet of Things, prefabrication and modularization, robotics and cyber-physical systems. The research in each cluster is then mapped to the priorities of the Sendai framework for DRR, highlighting the ways it can support this international agenda. Finally, this paper identifies gaps within the literature and discusses possible future research directions for the combination of I4.0 and DRM.