Compound hazards: An examination of how hurricane protective actions could increase transmission risk of COVID-19

Quantifying wildland fire resources deployed during the compound threat of COVID-19

Fire agencies across the United States must make complex resource allocation decisions to manage wildfires using a national network of shared firefighting resources. Firefighters play a critical role in suppressing fires and protecting vulnerable communities. However, they are exposed to health and safety risks associated with fire, smoke inhalation, and infectious disease transmission. The COVID-19 pandemic further complicated these risks, prompting fire agencies to propose resource management adaptations to minimize COVID-19 exposure and transmission. It is unclear if and how the pandemic may have operationally influenced wildland firefighting personnel resource use given compounding wildfire and COVID-19 risks. Therefore, we developed generalized linear mixed models that were fit using multiple integrated datasets to detect changes in personnel resource use for years prior to and during the COVID-19 pandemic, while controlling for historical fire and landscape conditions, societal risks, and management objectives. Analyses of observed and predicted firefighting resource use revealed reductions in the mean personnel resources used per wildfire per day during the pandemic for models developed across the western U.S. and for various western U.S. fire regions. Notably, the Northern California and the Great Basin Coordination Centers showed statistically significant reductions in ground personnel use during the COVID-19 pandemic. Learning from wildland fire management strategies and resource use trends that occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic, fire agencies can better anticipate resource constraints that may arise during the compounding threats of severe wildland fire activity and infectious disease outbreaks to proactively prepare and adapt suppression management strategies.

Should everyone in need be treated equally? A European survey of expert judgment on social vulnerability to floods and pandemics to validate multi-hazard vulnerability factors

Several European countries were affected by severe floods in 2021. At the same time, despite the deployment of vaccines, Europe was the COVID-19 pandemic's epicenter several times during 2021. One research aim of this study is to identify socio-demographic groups vulnerable to floods and whether the groups vulnerable to floods and pandemics overlap or are disjoint. We ran a survey in four languages (English, French, German, and Spanish) and collected the judgment of 366 experts in disaster risk management and first-responders to find out how those people caring for "people in need" (be it operational or administratively) think about which persons are more at risk than others. Another research aim is to validate multi-hazard vulnerability factors by comparing judgment on groups vulnerable to the COVID-19 pandemic and to floods. The main findings are that experts think that socially vulnerable groups should be rescued or treated first. Treating everyone equally is less favored by comparison. Infrastructure losses, followed by economic losses, reveal better than deaths or psychological issues whether vulnerability played a role in a disaster. Regarding vulnerability characteristics, older, homeless people, and immigrants rank highest, and most factors can be used to explain both flood and COVID-19 vulnerability, while some differ; for example, mobility impairment is less important for COVID-19. There are major discrepancies between what respondents think should be done to prioritize help to certain groups and what they have experienced is being done on the field.

The challenges of dynamic vulnerability and how to assess it

Recent disasters have demonstrated the challenges faced by society as a result of the increasing complexity of disaster risk. In this perspective article, we discuss the complex interactions between hazards and vulnerability and suggest methodological approaches to assess and include dynamics of vulnerability in our risk assessments, learning from the compound and multi-hazard, socio-hydrology, and socio-ecological research communities. We argue for a changed perspective, starting with the circumstances that determine dynamic vulnerability. We identify three types of dynamics of vulnerability: (1) the underlying dynamics of vulnerability, (2) changes in vulnerability during long-lasting disasters, and (3) changes in vulnerability during compounding disasters and societal shocks. We conclude that there is great potential to capture the dynamics of vulnerability using qualitative and model-based methods, both for reproducing historic and projecting future dynamics of vulnerability. We provide examples using narratives, agent-based models, and system dynamics.

Supply chain disruption during the COVID-19 pandemic: Recognizing potential disruption management strategies

The COVID-19 pandemic has made a significant impact on various supply chains (SCs). All around the world, the COVID-19 pandemic affects different dimensions of SCs, including but not limited to finance, lead time, demand changes, and production performance. There is an urgent need to respond to this grand challenge. The catastrophic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic prompted scholars to develop innovative SC disruption management strategies and disseminate them via numerous scientific articles. However, there is still a lack of systematic literature survey studies that aim to identify promising SC disruption management strategies through the bibliometric, network, and thematic analyses. In order to address this drawback, this study presents a set of up-to-date bibliometric, network, and thematic analyses to identify the influential contributors, main research streams, and disruption management strategies related to the SC performance under the COVID-19 settings. The conducted analyses reveal that resilience and sustainability are the primary SC topics. Furthermore, the major research themes are found to be food, health-related SCs, and technology-aided tools (e.g., artificial intelligence (AI), internet of things (IoT), and blockchains). Various disruption management strategies focusing on resilience and sustainability themes are extracted from the most influential studies that were identified as a part of this work. In addition, we draw some managerial insights to ensure a resilient and sustainable supply of critical products in the event of a pandemic, such as personal protective equipment (PPE) and vaccines.

A Perspective towards Multi-Hazard Resilient Systems: Natural Hazards and Pandemics

The concept of resilience has been used extensively across the sciences in engineering and the humanities. It is applied to ecology, medicine, economics, and psychology. The novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has posed an extraordinary challenge to the resilience of healthcare systems, communities, and nations and has profoundly altered our previous day-to-day operations. This paper presents a discussion of the definitions and characteristics of resilient systems. Scenarios are utilized to qualitatively explore key relationships, responses, and paths for recovery across different system types. The purpose is to develop an integrated approach that can accommodate simultaneous threats to system resilience, in particular, impacts from a natural hazard in conjunction with COVID-19. This manuscript is the first to advocate for more in-depth and quantitative research utilizing transdisciplinary approaches that can accommodate considerations across our built environment and healthcare system infrastructures in pursuit of designing systems that are resilient to both natural hazards and pandemic impacts.