Information Seeking Behavior and
Viewpoints of Emergency Preparedness and management professionals concerned
with Health and Medicine
Final Report
Prepared for the National Library of Medicine
By
Murray Turoff, turoff@njit.edu http://is.njit.edu/turoff
Starr Roxanne Hiltz, hiltz@njit.edu http://is.njit.edu/turoff
March 6, 2008
Abstract
This is a study for the National Library of Medicine on information requirements for health-related issues in emergency preparedness, management, and response. Results are presented of a designed inquiry based upon returns of 34 professionals working in Emergency Management, Health Care, Academia, Libraries, and International organizations. The emphasis is on determining what sources are now used and what needs are unmet.
Table of Contents
|
2 |
|
|
7 |
|
|
8 |
|
|
10 |
|
|
16 |
|
|
19 |
|
|
21 |
|
|
q5 Current outstanding
examples or missing materials on the Web |
24 |
|
q6 Roles of
Libraries, Librarians, and Information Specialists |
25 |
|
26 |
|
|
27 |
|
|
29 |
|
|
31 |
|
|
31 |
|
|
5. Examples of
Information Overload Mitigation Activities (Summary) |
32 |
|
34 |
|
|
37-167 |
|
|
37 |
|
|
53 |
|
|
57 |
|
|
113 |
Executive Summary
Introduction
A study for the National Library of Medicine (NLM) was conducted to assess the information requirements for health-related issues in emergency preparedness and response. The overall goal of the study was to identify the views of potential users about the most significant knowledge, information, and services they are seeking, some of which might be incorporated into the development of the Disaster Information Management Research Center (DIMRC) planned by the National Library of Medicine or into other related efforts.
The emphasis of the study was on determining the current information seeking behavior, existing preferred sources of information, and unmet information needs of professionals involved with the medical and public health aspects of emergency planning, preparedness, and response. The report summarizes responses to questions around the following topics: current sources, desired sources, organizing the information, examples of important materials and missing materials on the Web, librarian roles, information needs in extreme events, methods for dealing with information overload and organizing information, international issues, and level of experience with NLM resources. Detailed appendices include examples of grass roots efforts to mitigate information overload, a copy of the self report guide, a complete compilation of responses organized by type of respondent, and a list of international websites compiled by one of the respondents.
The study results address a full range of information needs,
including the formal published literature, comprehensive databases for the
management of specific types of disasters, practice-based documents that are
typical of the gray literature, aids to developing and maintaining practitioner
documents, and improved methods of organizing information of all types. Roles for librarians as well as disaster
community experts were identified for enhancing access to important information
at the time it is needed.
Methodology
Data collection took place during the period September to December 2007. Beginning with an initial list of expert informants identified by NLM and the study investigators, a “snowball” sampling technique was used, in which each expert was asked to suggest other appropriate participants in the study. Approximately 100 professionals involved in emergency preparedness and management were invited to participate. From this pool, there were 34 respondents representing emergency practitioners (7), health-related professionals (10), academics (7), librarians (3), and international professionals (7). All but three respondents provided their name, affiliation, and brief background information and are named as contributors in the report.
Although the initial design was for semi-structured
interviews administered in person or by phone, the investigators found that the
"on the spot" interview process did not obtain the detailed
information about specifics of information seeking behavior that were
desired. The participants needed
time to refer to their materials and reflect on their processes. The approach was therefore modified to
solicit written self-reports in response to the set of questions, which yielded
richer and more relevant information from this process than from the personal
interviews. The methodology is thus most like the first round of a
Findings and Observations
Currently used sources:
Respondents reported use of a diverse range of sources that they consider highly useful and important information for health-related emergency preparedness or response, with the diversity due partly to the varied specializations in particular types of emergencies. Current sources included primarily websites and journals, but other types of print resources were also identified. With the journal literature, there is a tremendous scattering of the literature over many different sources. Hundreds of web sites were mentioned, with little overlap. The most frequently mentioned was the CDC's http://emergency.cdc.gov/ site, with eleven mentions. The next most frequently cited was the Department of Homeland Security general site or its Lessons Learned Information Sharing (LLIS) site, followed by Relief Web. The FEMA and Radiation Event Medical Management (REMM) sites were next, with three mentions each.
What's missing?
Users were also asked about desired resources that are currently lacking or are difficult to use. The practitioners were especially dissatisfied with their ability to get the current information they need, when they need it, and with the ability to know which resources are authoritative. In addition, practitioners, medical professionals, and academic researchers alike expressed the need for more practical, easy to understand information – "useful, real data on real-life emergency situations." Examples included the need for more logistics and management information and for implementation information such as Standard Operating Guidelines and equipment lists. There were also requests for more websites similar to REMM, an “Event Type Information Portal” for radiation events, extended to other types of threats, for best practices summaries to inform about the best way to handle an event, for disaster related assessment instruments, protocols and intervention plans, and for disaster drill data. Other suggestions included more disaster planning and recovery information in the Go Local component of NLM’s MedlinePlus service, an all-hazard core Emergency Operations Plan (EOP) template for public health, and a coherent journal pulling together selected articles that focus on emergency preparedness and response.
Other needed resources deal with the "gray" literature that is not formally published and can exist in either print or web-based form, or both. Many respondents believe this type of literature often contains the most up-to-date and most relevant content. Examples include forms, procedures reports or assessments, operations plans, databases of personnel and other resources, and “best practices” and case reports.
With respect to what is lacking in Web resources, again the responses were diverse, but there was a general feeling that there should be less guidance-related information and more information related to hands on assistance. There were several mentions of the need to use “new media” typical of Web 2.0 and use of cell phones to reach isolated, deep field populations. Needed materials included online training materials and courses; specific compilations of local best practices; actual plans for organizations such as hospitals and community service organizations, schools, and local agencies; and access to information on local response efforts, such as a list of shelters and first responders (with a role for GoLocal mentioned).
In actual emergency situations, participants provided examples of information that was needed but was difficult to obtain. One example dealt with displaced persons standing around the emergency room and not knowing where to go, illustrating the need for up to date information and action advice for a specific emergency and locale. The development of online templates that could be used in any specific disaster to facilitate compilation of such information was suggested. Another example addressed people wading through inches of ash with no information about toxicity and use of safety equipment such as respirators. In another case, physicians caring for people outside their areas of specialty not only needed access to medical and prescription records, but also to quality information health care information, including from previously unauthorized sites.
In extreme emergencies and crisis situations, the need for focused background information in advance of disasters was mentioned in terms of minimizing mortality and morbidity. This information includes baseline health indices, disease prevalence and vaccination coverage, ethnographic data on populations at risk, information on in-country NGOs and UN agencies, the country's disaster plan, logistics information, and in-country capacity for food, drugs, and supplies. Due to the unpredictability of emergency situations, respondents also reported that systems need to be flexible to the needs of rapid specialized information delivery, and the physical communications infrastructure for delivery of this fast breaking information must be considered.
Organization of information:
Regarding the issue of organization of information and methods used to find useful material, respondents emphasized the need to be able to obtain information that is relevant among an abundance of diverse and scattered resources. There is a general feeling that there is better information out there that they have not accessed, information that would enable them to do better plans, improve training, and maker better decisions. A range of tactics to find useful, relevant material were reported, including restriction of inputs to limited sources with good filters; using material that has been vetted by trusted sources; relying on individual contacts; developing classification structures; and seeking specific types of information such as after action reports, reports of best practices, and specific plans. Trust in sources and lack of cooperation or collaboration between different organizations or levels of government were reported as underlying problems. Many different sources are attempting to become the one source that everyone should go to for disaster information, and some respondents felt that this was not a worthy goal given the diversity of topics and problems that are involved.
Regarding ways to better organize resources to reduce the time needed to find useful new material, suggestions included having information specialists retrieve and synthesize relevant information, establishing integrative portals to quality sites for each type of disaster, expanded indexing, and classification systems with expert input, and community-based approaches to organizing material, including use of social tagging to create taxonomies.
Respondents were also asked about what they would like to see represented in an index or ontology of disaster preparedness and response. Ideas about various approaches to organization were offered, but the emphasis was less on the specific content, and more on the need for input from experts (including experienced emergency management practitioners) and for dynamic systems that can evolve to meet changing knowledge and needs.
Library roles:
When asked about current or potential roles of libraries, librarians, and information specialists, there was considerable support for the idea that librarians must become an integral part of the nation's emergency preparedness and response team. Among the suggestions for librarian roles were:
- creating and maintaining taxonomies with expert input;
- serving as a clearinghouse of knowledge concerning the different aspects of disasters;
- equipping libraries to access real-time emergency telemedicine networks;
- working with specialists to identify high-quality information;
- developing easy-to-use methods of delivering specific content;
- producing annotated bibliographies and syntheses;
- participating in call centers taking questions from the public;
- developing FAQs for local emergency preparedness and response and making them easy to locate;
- assisting in text and data mining,
- aggregating and compiling information to support public health decision-making;
- and sharing expertise with those in developing countries through an international network of librarians and archivists.
International issues:
Study participants were also asked about international considerations relevant for NLM. Cultural and language diversity were cited in the context of not relying solely on high tech solutions and the need for culturally appropriate information. Creating an international network that allowed librarians and archivists in developed countries to share expertise with those in developing countries was also suggested. The need for a central point of decision support information was cited, much of which is currently obtained in an ad hoc fashion from various international organizations when a disaster strikes. Examples of ways in which such a resource could facilitate international disaster relief included more targeted intervention; effective stockpiling; geographical pre-positioning; better strategic decision making by senior managers, and improved targeting of rapid health assessments.
Regarding contributions that other countries could make to NLM, respondents reported an abundance of information such as local contingency plans, lessons learned, case studies, and best practices, but noted it is difficult to access, as many of these documents are either not in digital form or are held locally. By providing an example of open document collection, it was observed that NLM could work with other institutions in these countries to encourage and help them to share more widely, thus building recognition for their contributions. Additional specific suggestions included analysis of UN data on medical and public health impacts of disasters, and providing expertise on how to respond when high tech solutions involving use of internet and advanced medical technology fail due to emergency conditions.
Experience with NLM Resources:
Respondents were also asked about their prior experience with MEDLINE/PubMed or
other NLM systems (e.g. WISER, REMM, TOXNET) to find information related to
emergency preparedness or management.
Many had praise for NLM's current services, yet others had limited
experience, especially among the emergency practitioners. One reason suggested for their more
limited use was the lack of information for immediate practical use in
emergency response. The
contributions and importance of NLM were acknowledged by one respondent in this
way: “It would be wonderful if the NLM
were to be asked to join DHS as a full partner in preparing
Cooperation, Coordination, Integration:
In addition to the structured questions, respondents were given the opportunity to provide additional information or comments not addressed by the study instrument. Responses primarily dealt with major process issues that, at least indirectly, lead to problems in the information functions that are necessary to carry out various phases of emergency preparedness and management. These include lack of communication and information exchange between the medical and the community service operations; unclear roles and responsibilities of the federal, state, and local agencies with respect to degree of aid and recovery of the public; the need for improved cooperation and coordination among the various agencies; and more explicit treatment of ethical issues. Though the focus of this needs assessment was in the areas of emergency medical response and public health, the investigators also emphasize that the health and medical areas integrate with a great many other aspects of a disaster, making it difficult to consider issues in isolation from other concerns like infrastructure, living necessities, transportation, and logistics. At least half of the 34 respondents were involved in other areas of emergency preparedness and management.
1. Introduction
The overall goal of this study is to aid in determining the views of potential users about the most significant knowledge, information, and services they are seeking, some of which might be incorporated into the development of the Disaster Information Management Research Center (DIMRC) planned by the National Library of Medicine or into other related efforts. DIMRC should provide aid to practitioners, emergency responders, professionals, managers, and researchers concerned with any of the medical/ public health aspects of Emergency Management and Preparedness.
We were asked to: "assist NLM in determining the current information seeking behavior, existing preferred sources of information, and unmet information needs of people (researchers, practitioners, volunteers, non-profit organizations, local communities, and local, state, and federal government agencies) involved with emergency planning, preparedness and response to disasters with potential or actual medical and public health consequences."
After describing the methodology, the respondents are all briefly described, so that the reader may understand the qualifications of the emergency response professionals who provided the information. Then responses to each of the questions we asked are summarized. Appendix C includes the full set of responses by each of the 34 respondents. This is a long appendix; however we encourage the reader to skim this and to read carefully any of the answers to particular questions that most concern them. Our summaries in the body of this report cannot convey the richness of the ideas and viewpoints and the diversity of interests and concerns in this area of emergency preparedness and management. For anyone seeking to set specific requirements or objectives the actual responses are necessary reading. For those seeking added sources of useful information there is a tremendous list of websites scattered throughout the comments. In addition one of the appendices (D) is a list of well described international websites.
A number of the respondents contributed information on actual activities they are involved with to help handle the information overload problem in this field. A number of these represent grassroots volunteer efforts to aid their fellow professionals in finding useful information. We have specifically included some of these as examples (Appendix A) to illustrate what is taking place. We summarize these (Section 5) after we provide an overview of the individual responses.
One of our respondents (Marv Birnbaum, Professor at the
- Even when considering just journals, there is a tremendous scattering of the literature over many different sources.
- The health and medical areas integrate with a great many other areas of concern in an emergency, so that it is hard to treat many of the areas in isolation from other concerns like infrastructure, living necessities, transportation, and logistics.
2. Methodology
Subjects- Our goal was to obtain information from a small number of expert informants in the various categories of emergency response personnel who might be the consumers and/or the providers of information for DIMRC. The categories that emerged through discussion with NLM and some initial participants in the study are:
a. Emergency Response Managers (with some experience dealing with actual emergencies with public health components).
b. Medical professionals (generally doctors) with some experience with large scale emergency medicine.
c. Academics and librarians working in the area of health-related issues in emergency response and the information systems to support this response.
d. International professionals in any of the above categories (or Americans focused on international activities).
An initial list of identified experts to be invited was developed by NLM supplying some names, mainly of medical professionals and librarians, and by our using our contacts through ISCRAM (Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management) and research in the field (mainly for categories a and d above). Invitations were sent by email, often followed up by telephone. In addition, this can be considered a “snowball” sampling technique, because each expert contacted was asked to suggest other appropriate participants in the study, and in many cases, sent an invitation to participate to their colleagues, at our request. This type of "snowball" sampling works very well in obtaining the cooperation of busy experts and increasing the response effort and rate.
A total of approximately 100 experts were contacted over the period of September through December of 2007. As of this report, we have 34 complete responses. A description of the participants follows. Most of them agreed to inclusion of their name and brief information about their relevant experiences in this report, while a few wish to remain completely anonymous.
Procedure- This study developed and used a new methodology which we tentatively name a “Networking Inquiry.” Initially, we developed an interview guide for semi-structured interviews, with the expectation that it would be administered face to face or by telephone. However, when we administered the first three interviews face to face, we discovered problems with this procedure. First of all, it took almost a full day to travel to the location of the experts, and administer the interview, which took approximately 1 to 1.25 hours. Secondly, transcription of these long interviews was a problem, taking about a day. But most importantly, the interview process did not obtain the detailed information about specifics of their information seeking behavior that we needed. The participants needed to be able to look through their bookmarks online and look up reference materials and think about exactly what sources they were using now, which is not possible with an “on the spot” verbal answer required. And, the personal interview, while it developed rapport, tended to lead to stories of experiences during emergencies that were interesting and informative, but not really the topic of the inquiry.
Thus, we modified the interview guide slightly and turned it into a self report. The self report form for this guided inquiry is attached as Appendix B. Respondents were instructed, “If there is a question that does not apply to you or for which you cannot provide information, just leave it blank." On the other hand, they were requested to give detailed lists, including URLS for web sites, for the resources which they are finding most useful for emergency response management. Questions were dealt with through many email messages and phone calls. When a response was promised but not received within approximately a month, reminders were sent by email.
We obtained much richer and more relevant information from this process than from the personal interviews, and the respondents actually took less time, most completing in under an hour. The information supplied was already in the form of Word or HTML documents and required no transcribing. We call this a “networking inquiry” for two reasons. First, it used computer networks to gather the responses. Second, the sampling method took advantage of the professional social networks of the initially identified experts to obtain additional participants.
The logical next step in this process would be to take the
numerous needs and requirements developed in this document to a larger group of
respondents for evaluation with respect to relative value to the practitioner
community. This would result in a
full scale
Norman Dalkey's early Delphi experiments at RAND showed that three to five experts in a very specific area usually were sufficient to cover the range of qualitative insights about a given issue or topic within their specialty. More experts in the same effort usually led to duplication of insights rather than generating new insights. Our major categories of participants in this qualitative inquiry did satisfy those requirements:
1. Emergency Practitioners and Coordinators (7)
2. Health Related Professionals (10)
3. Researchers/Academics, Librarians (10)
3.1 Librarians (3)
3.2 Academics or Researchers (7)
4. International Professionals (7)
Total 34
The remainder of the body of this report summarizes the responses to the questions asked, in the order in which they were asked. Appendix C gives the complete set of responses to each question, broken down by category of respondent (Emergency response managers, medical personnel, librarians, academic researchers, and international practitioners.)
3. The participants
List of respondents
For the purposes of this summary we have divided the respondents into four categories.
1. Emergency Practitioners and Coordinators
Those actively working in the field and involved in dealing directly with emergencies.
2. Health Related Professionals
Those working as professionals in the health and medical fields who have had some responsibilities and experiences in any phase of emergency preparedness and management.
3. Researchers/Academics, Librarians
Who are or have been working on topics related to emergency planning, management or response with medical or health concerns, but clearly the other two categories are not their primary function. They may also have done some work in either or both of the first two categories. We have noted two sub-categories: Librarians and Academics
4. International professionals
This includes both citizens of foreign countries and Americans who are involved in international emergency management activities, who may fit in any of the above 3 categories.
For each question we have grouped the answers to a given question into one of the categories. This may provide some insight into some of the responses but there are cases of overlap between points made among the four groups.
In the following list when names are given, the respondent gave permission for identification as a participant/ contributor to this study. In some cases anonymity has been preserved due to a request from the contributor.
1. Emergency Practitioners and Coordinators
Gregory T Banner, Regional Emergency Coordinator, Region I
(New England),
Involvement with 911, Katrina, Anthrax, Station Nightclub Fire, Micoplasma Pneumonia outbreak, and others.
John Cizbe, Emergency Planner, Alexandria Health Department; Previously Vice President, Disaster Services, American Red Cross.
Ken Curtin- Currently with FEMA as Voluntary Agency Liaison. There are two parts of the job. One of them is, to try to promote the formation of VOAD, Voluntary Organizations Active in Disasters. Mr. Curtin started working for the Red Cross 35 years ago at disaster sites, for 17 years total. Five or 6 years for FEMA. The other 12 years he worked in international refugee and disaster human services— Catholic Relief Fund, Christian Children’s Fund, etc.
Geoffrey Hoare, Regional Preparedness Planning Coordinator, Domestic Security Task Force Region 3,
Henry Straub- Project Manager for emergency management
services at New Jersey Business Force Organization, which is a planning and
preparedness organization for
Erik R. Janus worked from 1999-2003 as an Environmental Scientist or the US Army Center for Health Promotion & Preventive Medicine. He assisted with technical aspects of long-term recovery phase response to the 2001 attack on the Pentagon. From 2003-2006 he was a Toxicologist with the Michigan Department of Community Health, where he assisted in preparation of agency response plans, including risk communication materials for chemical events.
David Dlugolenski is Senior Manager, Disaster Mitigation, The Port Authority
of NY & NJ, Office of Emergency Management,
Hal Newman is the founder and managing partner of TEMS Inc.,
the managing editor of Big Medicine, and the executive director of the
2. Health Related Professionals
Lewis Goldfrank, MD, Chairperson of the Department of Emergency Medicine at NYU. Numerous R&D efforts, as well as Committees and participation in numerous NYC disaster responses.
Andrew Milsten, MD, Chair of
the ACEP (American College
of Emergency Physicians
Ann E. Norwood, Senior Policy Analyst, HHS/ASPR, Associate Chairman, Department of Psychiatry, USUHS. Experience with Desert Storm, Hurricane Andrew, 911, and Katrina.
David Gruber- Working from present back, he is Senior Assistant Commissioner of Health
Infrastructure Preparedness and Emergency Response at the New Jersey Department
of health and Senior Services.
Prior to that he was Assistant Commissioner for the same role and prior
to that Executive Director. Just
prior to that he was with Dallas county Department of Health and Human Services
in
Eric K. Noji, M.D., Counsel, Office of the Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs, the Pentagon. 25 years in emergency health preparedness and management field, mostly at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization.
Norman Coleman, Senior Medical Advisor, Office of Preparedness and Emergency Operations, Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response, HHS. Three years, participation in at least 6 national emergencies and exercises.
Anonymous, Senior Medical Advisor, National Institutes of Health.
James M. Rush, President, MEDLOG Inc.
Prior Experience includes:
- Served the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) as a healthcare medical logistics subject matter expert for the FEMA course, “Fundamentals of Healthcare Emergency Management, December, 2005
- Project
Officer,
- Project
Officer,
Peter G.
Goldschmidt, President, World Development Group, Inc.
Dr. Goldschmidt is an expert in public health systems
and policies. He is both an MD and
PhD in Public Health. He has been
responsible for a significant number of major policy studies in Healthcare.
3. Librarians and Academics or Researchers
3.1 Librarians
Anonymous: Librarian who assisted in Katrina and serves as an electronic resources librarian in a major metropolitan area.
Deborah Halsted, Associate Director, Public Services and
Operations for the
Kristine Alpi, Associate Library Director,
3.2 Academics or
Researchers
Ann Fruhling, PhD, Assistant Professor
Project Director and Designer for STATPack, Nebraska R&D
effort in use in
John R. Harrald, Professor and Director, Institute for
Crisis Disaster and Risk Management,
Irene Jillson, Ph.D., Assistant Professor,
Julie Dugdale, Ph.D. 2006 – present, researcher with MAGMA-LIG
(Multi-agent systems team - The Grenoble Computer Science Laboratory) and
Lecturer in Artificial Intelligence at Grenoble 2 University, France. 2003 –
2006 Visiting Researcher at IIMH-LIG (Human computer Interface Team, LIG,
Firoz Verjee, Senior Research
Associate at the Institute for Crisis, Disaster & Risk Management,
Valerie I Seefried, MPH, Research Associate & Doctoral Candidate at GWU Institute for Crisis, Disaster & Risk Management (ICDRM); 2004-present; previously Program Coordinator for Homeland Security & Resilience Program – Royal United Services Institute, London UK.
Marv Birnbaum is
a Professor at the
4. Internationally Oriented Contributors
Anonymous, many years of practical experience in the management and design of Humanitarian Information Systems
Hans Zimmermann - Director, Policy and Development, The
International Emergency Management Society (TIEMS);
- International
Coordinator for Emergency Communications, International Amateur Radio
- Chair,
International Chapter, Cellular Emergency Alert Systems Association.
Previously served
as:
- Senior
Humanitarian Affairs Officer, United Nations Office for the Coordination of
Humanitarian Affairs (UN/OCHA);
- Chair, UN Working
Group on Emergency Communications (WGET).
Tanja Pekez-Pavlisko MD,
Mario Kopljar, MD, MSc, General surgeon, with duties in surgical emergency operations, member of Croatian chapter of ITLS (International Trauma Life Support, itrauma.org)
Albert Simard, Project Manager, Modeling Framework, developing a modeling framework for the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. Previous:
- Director,
Knowledge Strategies – Natural Resources
- Director,
Knowledge Management –
Concurrent with above
- Chair, Executive Committee – Global Disaster Information Network
Geert Gijs, Process Manager Incident & Crisis management, Emergency Planning and Disaster Relief Operations, Federal Public Service Health –Belgian Government. Also, Chief Coordinator B-FAST- Federal Public Service Foreign Affairs. International Emergency Management and Disaster Relief, 1999 till present, with emergencies including:
2000 – Earthquake:
2001 – Earthquake:
2003 – Earthquake:
2004/2005 – Tsunami:
HQ Coordinator B-FAST – DVI – Field Hospital – IHP Support
2005 – Earthquake:
2006 – Floods
2006 – Floods
2007 – Floods West Africa –
Dr. Jayanth G Paraki, Independent Research Scientist in
Knowledge Management with Telemedicine as one of the key focus areas. Began a global campaign to mobilize
support for Telemedicine in Disaster Management in 2001 with a paper at the 6th
International Conference on Medical Applications of Telemedicine at
4. Summary of Responses by Question
Question 2: Current Sources of Information
The question asked was:
2. What sources do
you currently consider as highly useful and important for emergency
preparedness or response missions with medical or public health implications
(e.g. including journals, organizations, websites, books, reports, plans,
training materials, services, etc).?
The diversity of sources listed is very great, with some respondents sending us lists or links to hundreds of sources. The only sources that are mentioned by a substantial number of respondents are web sites. Figure 1 profiles the leading three websites, mentioned by at least four of the respondents. The CDC website is by far the most frequently mentioned (11 times, explicitly). This is followed by five mentions of LLIS or a generic “Dept. of Homeland Security” websites. The third most frequently mentioned, especially by international professionals, is Relief Web. Interestingly, FEMA does not make the top three; it is “tied” with REMM, with three mentions (Radiation Event Medical Management- http://www.remm.nlm.gov/ ).
One reason why there is such a diversity is that emergency professionals tend to “specialize” in one type of emergency; so, for instance, those involved with nuclear and radiological incidents will want to go to REMM, while those involved with infectious diseases will choose other websites and sources,. Thus, the types of journals and other non-web sites mentioned are especially diverse. We encourage the reader to at least skim the richness and diversity of the answers to this question in Appendix B. The fact that the most frequent website is only mentioned 11 times out of the 35 respondents is further testimony to this.
Figure 1 gives more details on the "Top 3” web sites mentioned.
Figure 1
Description of the Three Leading/ Most Frequently Mentioned Websites
Related to (Health/ Medical) Emergency Preparedness and Response
1. CDC http://emergency.cdc.gov/
This is part of the CDC site devoted to all kinds of emergency medicine
information, as shown below in the main page.
Agents,
Diseases, & Other Threats
Natural Disasters & Severe
Weather
A notable feature is that it has
separate pages for the general public and for the medical professional, e.g.:
when one of the emergency types is chosen, the information is then broken down
as below.
Bioterrorism
Specific Bioterrorism Agents
Info for the General Public
·
Overview
Info for Professionals
·
Training
·
Lab Info
Related Resources
·
State & Local
Health Departments
2. Lessons Learned
Information Sharing System (www.llis.gov)
LLIS.gov is a national on-line network of lessons
learned and best practices designed to help emergency response providers and
homeland security officials prevent, prepare for, respond to, and recover from
all hazards, including terrorism.
The central component of LLIS.gov is a collection of hundreds of
peer-validated lessons learned and best practices.
It also serves as a central repository of relevant government homeland security documents and events. The system is frequently updated with new reports and publications intended for homeland security personnel.
3.
ReliefWeb www.reliefweb.int
This is the global hub for time-critical humanitarian information on Complex Emergencies and Natural Disasters. It is indexed by country/ location of current emergencies.
Question 3: Desired Sources
The first part of this question asked was about general needs:
3.a. For emergency preparedness or response
missions with medical or public health implications: What useful resources, services, or
types of information are now missing or difficult to access or use, that you
would like to see more readily accessible to all concerned? (Either for a
specific type of medical disaster such as a pandemic flu, and/or for general
health aspects of emergencies;
i.e., disease outbreaks after hurricanes or earthquakes).
The practitioners were especially dissatisfied with their ability to get the current information they need, when they need it. As one emergency management professional put it: “I think the problem is not resources, it is finding the right ones and then knowing which resources are authoritative. A web search on any given topic will likely turn up multiple resources.” Another emergency manager described specifics related to this as “Easily accessible lists of potential contractors sorted by actual (rather than professed), proven areas of expertise; coherent journal pulling together selected articles that focus on emergency preparedness and response from a wealth of sources (e.g., public health-related journals) in which those articles may be buried.”
A third noted that an unmet need is “Information about what other organizations are doing. What supplies, equipment, medications and personnel are “in the pipeline” on route to a disaster scene. Unfortunately, we are still depending on traditional (read: antiquated) means of communication.” A fourth wants more “Disaster ‘After Action Reports’, especially where lessons were NOT learned and the same deficiencies were present over time.” This need for the “nitty gritty” details are also expressed by a fifth practitioner: “What FEMA planning course calls “implementing information” Standard Operating Guidelines (SOGs), equipment lists, job action sheets, MOUs (Memorandum of Understanding). There is a lot of clinical information, much of which is redundant, and not enough logistics and management info (by comparison).”
The phrase “easily accessible” includes the need for medically related information in a form comprehensible by the layperson. A practitioner dealing with radiation and nuclear related emergencies noted, “Rad/nuc info is difficult to aggregate and find. Needs to be made intellectually accessible to those without radiation expertise. Using multimedia helps as this area is very technical.”
The themes raised by medical professionals are quite similar in that they focus on “practical,” easy to understand and use information and resources. For instance, one notes:
"I think that websites such as REMM that are vetted by experts and provide rapid access to what you need to know in order to manage a certain event are terrific. It would be ideal if there were similar one-stop-shopping sites for other threats. They would need a point person or two to communicate with experts to update the latest information and delete outdated recommendations."
A second medical professional wants “best practices with summaries if I wanted to know what the best way to handle an event is.” Another medical professional wants:
A database with Disaster related instruments:
Pre Disaster HVA (Hazard Vulnerability Assessments) instruments.
Psychosocial Assessment tools
Post Disaster Response Assessment instruments.
A database with National/State/City protocols and intervention plans
A data repository with National/State/City disaster drill data
A centralized data repository with raw data published or research in progress.
A variation on this theme of need for practical information is contributed by a librarian, who says, “I would like to see more disaster planning and recovery information in Go Local. NLM could input national resources and local projects could input regional data.” An academic researcher states, “An all-hazard core Emergency Operations Plan (EOP) template for public health is missing.” Another researcher states, “The main problem for me is finding useful, real data on real-life emergency situations.”
In other words, the kinds of resources needed but not available now deal not with published literature, but with information, particularly about procedures and tools to support these procedures, that must be contributed, gathered, and vetted by peers who are actually on the “front lines” of emergencies, rather than by medical researchers. An international participant refers to this as “how to access the “grey” (unpublished) literature. It often contains the most up-to date and most relevant content.” If one uses “literature” to include the forms and procedures reports, the operations plans, the databases of personnel and other resources, and the “best practices” and case reports mentioned above, “grey literature” summarizes what is missing now.
Specific examples were then requested as follows:
3.b. Can you give one or two specific
examples of emergency situations or preparedness phases in which information
was needed but was difficult to obtain?
Two practitioners referred to missing information after 9-11. One described people who had been evacuated from their apartments hanging around hospital emergency rooms, because they did not know where else to go, and the personnel at the emergency rooms had no suggestions for them: “The need that I know of for health services professionals to understand the needs of the patient for broader help, for human services… what if they are being discharged and they have no home to go to?" He also stated that more generally, “every disaster large and small needs a complete and accurate guide as to where you, in this disaster, can get help and information you need,” specific to that disaster and that location. Online templates and related information could be provided to help to put together that information for any specific disaster. The second referred to wading through inches of ash two days later and thinking it was probably toxic, that people should have respirators on, but nobody had issued bulletins about this.
A librarian who worked with Katrina victims noted,
“Following evacuation of
In other words, what is missing in specific situations is up to date information and action advice about that specific emergency and locale. One practitioner states, “In the early phases of an event when one is totally dependent on media reports, the situation is so fluid that any information is either wrong, or out-of-date by the time you get it. Need to improve rapid assessment of needs (data for decision making, actionable threat awareness).” An expert in biological terrorism echoes this sentiment: “A confirmed biological event at any major transportation facility requires access to real time information in order to assess the public health risk and start the recovery process.”
Question 4: Organizing Information, Knowledge or Wisdom
4.a. What sort of methods or methodologies
(e.g. specific search engines, trusted sites, organizations, other peer
recommendations, email lists, filters, indexes, etc) do you use now to find
useful material and/or to avoid information overload?
Clearly information overload is a problem faced by just about everyone in this field. As one international contributor puts it, “Just as it is important to be able to obtain information; [it] must be relevant. This emphasizes the need for …"peer-reviewed materials that do not necessarily have to be present in a journal form (peer-reviewed web sites may do fine e.g.)"
This results in an extreme range of tactics for coping:
- Restrict inputs to only a few sources.
- Stick to only material which has been vetted by others that are trusted in the area of emergency preparedness and management.
- Seek push type sources with good filters on what is sent out.
- Seek contact with individuals based upon their experience and background in the area
- Rely on grass roots (free) type sources, people in the same area acting as individual "gatekeepers" or as a "team." Providing Web based information or as active participants in useful message list servers.
- Seeking process model structures as a way to get organized and well classified information (single index items inadequate)
- Attempts to develop morphological structures to classify data by the underlying fundamental dimensions.
- Seeking up to date information that is clearly defined in that manner
- Seeking specifics such as after action reports, reports of best practices, specific plans
We have drawn a number of examples in Appendix A of this report that include some grassroots examples. While there have been some of these efforts in existence since 9/11 it seems to have mushroomed since Katrina and some of the major international disasters.
While many are coping with the problem and have established a workable approach for their situation, it is clear they are suffering the stress produced by the "opportunity costs" they are encountering. There is a general feeling that there is better information out there but they are not aware of where the specific things they need or should need are or what they are and how they can find them when their responsibilities and duties leave them little extra time. Can one do better plans, improve training, and choose better actions or decisions based upon some information or wisdom that is somewhere but which they have not accessed?
Trust in sources and things like the lack of cooperation or collaboration between different organizations or levels of government is also an underlying problem. When organizations do not feel, for whatever reason, they can expose their mistakes and seek to eliminate them through integrated efforts then there is no way the improvements can be made to create an HRO (High Reliability Organization) among all the diverse groups that must be involved in the integrated planning, training, responsiveness, or recovery processes of an emergency or disaster situation.
A lot of different sources are attempting to become the one source that everyone should go to for disaster information, and this is not a worthy goal given the diversity of topics and problems that are involved. What it is doing is making it more difficult for many people to solve their information overload problem and/or raising opportunity costs to them personally and emotionally.
4.b. Are there ways or methods you would like
to see material in this area organized, indexed, clustered, processed, and/or
filtered that would make it easier for you or others to recognize that
something new might be of use to you or others in this area? Or, what would you like to see done to
cut down the time to find useful new material?
These two quotes summarize it well for the practitioner:
"Unfortunately I have found that it takes somebody knowledgeable (me) to go through all the various resources and pull out what is useful. I also am a generalist in terms of interest in all things medical/public health, with a strong interest in everything else available in the homeland security field. Many, many, many organizations are trying to be the “be all and end all” of an information source and none are really succeeding at this point.
Using the SNS (Strategic National Stockpile of medical resources) list serve as an example, there are so many submissions that it is tempting to read none. Somehow they need to be categorized, and it needs to be possible to unsubscribe to portions of a list serve or to filter in what you would like to receive."
It is clear they feel the need for experts that are devoted to the information classification problem that goes beyond the abilities of a general reference librarian. It would seem to say that librarians need to develop systems where the expert-users can make recommendations on the quality and content of the items be covered if in fact one is going into the gray literature. Clearly a lot of what actual practitioners want is the gray literature. Even the professional vetted journal literature differs considerably in the relevance to a particular situation and this is important to many of those in positions of management or practitioner experts. Clearly there is no time to hunt down needed materials in the actual disaster phase.
"Basically, a "documentalist" who will retrieve only the relevant information on behalf of the users. Will also need an expert such as an epidemiologist to consolidate data from a variety of sources, formats etc... and most importantly to synthesize information."
There seems to be a feeling that in some ways too much guidance on what to do and not enough focused help is being generated on how to do it.
"Yes. Universities, Institutes and the Federal Government need to provide consulting services (often referred to as technical assistance) to Grant Awardees and other governmental and Private Sector Healthcare entities. We need less guidance and much more hands on assistance."
There are repeated assertions elsewhere that the official documents often have no common internal framework relevant to the emergency community and this makes it difficult in dealing even with the official material. Considering the wide range of agencies and contractors involved this has a ring of truth to it. However, in some areas, like dealing with emergencies like pandemics, we have not had much experience with it might be too soon to try to impose such standards.
Setting up a separate integrative portal for each type of disaster was suggested and might be a worthy goal if it truly allowed cooperation and collaboration among different vetted professionals and organizations in compiling and judging the quality of the material. Note that users seem to want a much more hands on collaboration for contributing and evaluating material.
"I would like to see more community-based approaches to material, particularly using social tagging to create a more grounded taxonomy – the one we currently have is heavily predefined by the Cluster system. An aggregator of academic publications that might be useful in disaster response, from a range of journals in different topic areas, would be very useful in helping the humanitarian community to access this expertise – at the moment; it’s just too difficult and costly for us to stay up on current research."
"You may wish to consider Google’s approach and/or folksonomies or tagging. There’s a couple of really fascinating videos on YouTube that talk about Web 2.0 and organizing information. One on the Information Revolution and the other on Web 2.0; both are by Michael Wesch. If you haven’t seen them, you should. Unfortunately, our IT security people have deemed both YouTube and Facebook to have no valid business purposes, so I can’t simply send you the URL."
From the examples we have collected via our participants it is clear the users are anxious to help one another as a community of practice and in the emergency field this trend is going to continue unless they are brought in as an active part of the formal systems that seek to support them. Once again, a lot of the examples in Section 5 and Appendix A are free and based upon efforts of unpaid volunteers.
Question 5: Current outstanding examples or missing materials on the Web
5.a. Are there any other specific medical,
health care, public health disaster plans or training materials or web based
resources that you consider outstanding examples of such material?
There is a “grab bag” of suggestions in this section, but many simply repeat sources already mentioned in question 3, such as CDC and REMM. However, there are several mentions of the need to use “new media” typical of Web 2.0, e.g.:
“Internet 2.0, Wiki, Blog, Forums, Social Networking, shared work spaces like Groove, use of cell phones to reach isolated, deep field populations (everyone on planet earth has a cell phone). Voxiva has taken the lead in the area of "Phones for Health" initiative with the Global GSM Alliance.” Two experts mention how good Wikipedia is.
Online training materials and courses are mentioned, as well as Wikipedia, as being very useful for volunteers (fire departments and other community service organizations) and for local communities that do not have the funds (or access) for more costly sources of material.
Question 5.b. asks:
What material not currently available on the Web would you like to see
there?
The diversity of responses is similar to that for the first part of question 5. Some specifics that seem notable include:
Vital baseline health data (e.g., potential health risks in countries) and other focused background information in advance of disasters (e.g., large scale population movements, forced migration) to minimize mortality and morbidity from preventable causes such as measles and diarrhea diseases. This will require the identification of potential risk areas around the world for disasters, vulnerable populations, mass population movements, and to target these countries for contingency planning and advance health information gathering.
Easy to find medical management for Chemical terrorism.
Specific compilations of local "best practices," actual plans for organizations such as hospitals and community service organizations, schools, local agencies so that practitioners can compare and evolve improvements in these areas relevant to their localities.
More online training for health related problems in disasters, aimed at potential first responders and others likely to be on site.
A librarian would like “Local response efforts (list of shelters, first responders, etc.) in the event of a major or even minor disaster. This is where I see a major role for Go Local.”
Question 6: Roles of Libraries, Librarians, and Information Specialists
Question: What are
the current or potential roles and/or services for Libraries, Librarians,
and/or Information Specialists in any phase of the Emergency Preparedness and
Response process? Are there other
particular services a local or specialized library should or could provide?
Among the suggestions are:
- Creating and maintaining a taxonomy for my field would be a welcome contribution from the Library Sciences, so that as the body of knowledge and literature grows, it is usefully archived.
- A major activity would be to serve as a local, State, regional, national and international clearinghouse of knowledge concerning all of these different aspects of disasters.
- Foster the transfer of knowledge among the different stakeholders, and policy makers in order to improve society's resilience to disasters and other emergencies.
- Libraries
must be equipped with real-time Emergency Telemedicine Networks.
- A crucial need its just to keep track of plans and supporting documentation
- Continuing to work with specialists to identify high-quality information and developing easy-to-use methods of delivering specific content.
- Produce
something like the
- Participation in call centers taking questions from public – helping shape responses into understandable FAQs and making sure people can find them.
- They could be requested to assist in mining, aggregating and compiling information so that existing information can be easily analyzed by public health decision-makers and provide context for their decisions.
- It would be very useful to create an international network that allowed librarians and archivists in developed countries (where most of the resources are located) to share expertise with those in developing countries.
Question 7: Extreme Events
Question: If you had to
consider an “extreme” but possible event (e.g. a pandemic, another Katrina, or
a large earthquake) would this add additional information requirements relevant
to any of the other questions on this survey?
One emergency practitioner gave a very complete set of special requirements for such crisis situations, including:
Particularly, "human generated" events (Chemical, blast, technological, transportation, radiological, nuclear emergencies etc) would require very specialized information requirements… including baseline health indices, diseases, in-country capacity such as the following:
a. Health data such as:
-epidemic risks
-incidence and prevalence of communicable diseases and vaccination coverage
-nutritional status
-country health profiles and other public health information such as status of local health facilities and the availability of other material resources
b. Basic ethnographic data on populations at risk of adverse health consequences from disasters. This could include some medical anthropology data so that health programs and interventions could be made more culturally acceptable.
c. Database of in-country NGOs, UN agencies, and their resources (this may include many development organizations, but many of these may also have emergency relief capabilities). Ideally, this would include list of key individuals and points of contact information but such information may change too often to be readily kept up to date.
d. Description of the country's disaster plan, if any. Specifically, this would include what ministries, etc. are responsible for preparing for and responding to emergencies.
e. Organization of health professional training in the country of origin.
f. Logistics: warehouse capacity, availability/price of gas/diesel, air/road access, telecommunications (e.g., availability of landline phones, mobile phone cells, electricity), etc.
g. Local and regional laboratory capabilities for identification of causative organisms and antibiotic sensitivity testing, drug resistance (e.g., to chloroquine) and nearest reference labs for cholera, shigella, etc. If not available in-country, should note guidelines for transport.
h. In-country production capacity for and availability of drugs, jerry cans, cooking kits, etc.
i. In-country availability of food stocks
This type of information simply is not available now. Much of it is not “medical” per se but all of it relates to public health issues after a massive disaster.
There are systems design implications of the fact that many large scale events, especially those that may be caused by terrorists, are not only unpredictable, but often “unimaginable” ahead of time. Thus, as another emergency practitioner notes, “I think it is important to recognize that the future is uncertain and hard to predict and that systems need to build that are flexible to the needs of rapid specialized information delivery.” In addition, the physical communications infrastructure for delivery of this fast breaking information must be thought about: “What level of web traffic can the best, trusted sites handle? If they can’t handle the load, where do they redirect? If we lose Internet, how to disseminate information? If schools are closed, librarians with families are not available to fulfill their roles, unless library planning incorporates school planning. Is there hazard pay for staying in an area deemed at risk?”
Question 8: Your critical topic areas
In terms of creating
an index (general ontology) out of a sample document database that can then be
used to automatically classify new information as it occurs, what would you
want included in such a database and what specific topic areas would you want
to see in the resulting index or ontology?
This is a question that may be very difficult to answer based upon cognitive differences. Those who are able to deal with abstraction usually have a better chance of conceptualizing a more complete specification of terms as opposed to those who deal better with data specifics and are very oriented to specifics. Both types of problem solving processes are represented.
We had a wide range of responses from one single term to thirty eight terms in a two level hierarchy. A significant variety of types of emergencies are represented. There is recognition that the dimension of terrorism introduces the possibility of risks that create medical problems that are the common ones that medical and health care professionals may be familiar with in a given locality. Hence the need, as expressed, elsewhere for very selective retrieval capabilities. The need for great precision in finding material is quite clear in an emergency situation. Here is an example of one of the more detailed lists suggested as one respondent’s areas of concern:
- General Concepts
- Basic physics of disasters
- Triage
- Pediatric considerations
- Infectious diseases
- Pharmaceuticals
- Critical Incident Stress
- Complex Humanitarian Emergencies
- Disaster Response Planning and Coordination
- Disaster planning
- Public health in disasters
- Urban Search and Rescue
- Federal
Disaster agencies and response (CDC, DMAT,
- State and local disaster agencies and response
- Communication and information technology Tools
- Managing disasters in austere environments (including Wilderness EMS)
- International level response, planning & coordination
- Incident Command System
- Disaster Drills
- Natural Disasters
- General information
- Infectious disease epidemics / pandemics
- General info
- Planning / response / coordination
- Local / state / federal level
- Industrial, Technologic and Transportation Disasters
- Radiation accidents
- Hazmat-related disasters
- Mass gatherings
- Maritime disasters
- Air crash disasters
- Fires and mass burn care
- Internal hospital-related disasters
- Conflict-Related Disasters
- Conventional terrorist bombings
- Nuclear detonations
- Intentional chemical disasters
- Biologic weapon agents – including vaccination information
- Tactical
- Mass Shooting
- Education, Training, and Research
- Education and training
- Research
- Personal accounts from deployments
- Disaster Medicine Resources / References
Over time changes have occurred and every large scale disaster introduces new problems we did not think about before, with Katrina and 911 being prime examples. The emergency of the pandemic as a new risk requires not only new terms to represent new problems to be addressed but also the necessity of integration of other dimensions of concern over extended periods of time. All the supporting infrastructure and logistic maintenance of normal consumable resources cannot be separated from the medical situation. This is evident for a short time scale of weeks in Katrina but in a true pandemic this might be years, both for the disaster phase and the recovery phase of an emergency.
This need for dynamic changes in the indexing of information is evident in the following quote from the contributions:
" Whatever ontology is created by librarians is unlikely to be used by contemporary practitioners. Authors won’t use it because they are forced to fit their work into categories that never quite fit. Searchers won’t use it because the term that they are using isn’t the same one that the author used. One only has to observe that of all the ontologies created by librarians to date, why are none of them used by any of the popular Web search engines???"
The above change in terms due to a better understanding over the long term is further complicated by the change in the required information over the phases of emergency preparedness and management.
"Perhaps classified in terms of information useful before, during, and after a disaster. That which is useful for education, clinical care, research, recovery, reconstruction etc."
Whatever the process there has to be allowance for change and knowledge structures that can evolve to meet changing needs. In terms of current technologies this means some combination of automation and direct involvement of the expert users themselves to be the source of new classification requirements.
Question 9: International Considerations
Question: The
national Library of Medicine has an important role in aiding other countries in
the accumulation and dissemination of medical information and knowledge.
9.a. What specific contributions in the above
disaster information areas might be important for NLM to provide internationally?
One international contributor notes, “NLM has to project itself as an International Repository for Disaster Management and allow the United Nations to foster a program of affiliation with all Member States.”
Cultural and language diversity were noted by several contributors, e.g., “I think there would need to be special efforts to include information that is useful to developing countries that doesn’t rely on high tech solutions that we have in developed countries. A lot of care would also be needed to make it culturally appropriate. Last, but in many ways first, it would need to entail a dialogue with stakeholders to see what – if anything – they would like from such a resource.”
Another suggested, “I think it would be very useful to create an international network that allowed librarians and archivists in developed countries (where most of the resources are located) to share expertise with those in developing countries.”
And one practitioner gives a very detailed set of requirements, noting that “Normally, when a disaster strikes, we frantically call various international organizations such as WHO, UNICEF, IFRC, ICRC, OFDA, NGOs, and contacts in various other organizations to obtain decision support information… One stop shopping approach (would) both enable and save time.
If NLM can more or less provide such a service, international disaster relief may become more effective because we would be able to achieve the following:
(a) - more targeted intervention instead of the present stereotypical cookbook approach
(b) - effective stockpiling
(c) - geographical pre-positioning
(d) - improved targeting of rapid health assessments
(e) - briefing or orientation packages for staff deployed to the field
(f) - knowledge of key players, roles and coverage for improved operational coordination
(g) - better strategic decision making by senior managers
(h) - provide an entry point for relevant expertise at NIH, CDC, HHS, FEMA and other organizations where necessary
By facilitating more efficient targeting of response, NLM will contribute to more efficient use of shrinking funds for international humanitarian assistance.”
9.b. What contributions from other countries
could be made to NLM in the disaster information area? This could include important information
sources in other countries not traditionally used in the
As one contributor states,
There is a lot of material in other countries – local contingency plans, lessons learned, case studies, etc – but it is difficult to access as many of these documents are either not in digital form or are held locally. By providing an example of open document collection, NLM could work with other institutions in these countries to encourage and help them to share more widely, thus building recognition for their contributions. “Best practices and “lessons learned” documents from the international community for emergency events would be a big boon to the entire global emergency management community.”
Specific suggestions include:
Analysis of data collected by UN (WHO, OCHA) on medical
impacts of disasters, public health issues etc. World Bank and UN have studied this more
than the
One of the great things developing countries could teach us is how to respond if all our high tech solutions (internet, advanced medical technology) fail such as if there were large blackouts or in events like a large earthquake, etc.
Best practices and “lessons learned” documents from the international community for emergency events would be a big boon to the entire global emergency management community.
Question 12: NLM experience (if not mentioned in prior answers)
Question: Have you
ever used MEDLINE/PubMed or any other NLM system (e.g. WISER, REMM, TOXNET) to
find information related to Emergency Preparedness or Management? If so characterize your experience and
reaction.
Many of the contributors had great praise for NLM current services, e.g.:
“All of them. They’re terrific. The gold standard.”
On the other hand, especially among emergency rather than medical practitioners, one sees comments such as “I know most of them exist but have not used them more than just looking once or twice.”
This is probably because the current databases are not really oriented towards “gray literature” of practical use in emergency response, e.g., “I use MEDLINE very often but predominantly to find scientific or clinical articles to supplement my work. There is very little information related to public health management or public health emergency management. My experience has been similar with PubMed. “
The responses to the “other” question at the end are so scattered that finding major themes is not possible. However, we close with a quote from question 14 on “Anything we left out?”
“It would be wonderful if the NLM were to be asked to join
DHS as a full Partner in preparing
It is clear there is a general feeling of information overload among those in this field and the possibilities of improved library oriented professional help would be welcome.
Question 13: Anything we left out
Please add any other
information or comments that you think we should have asked for or any
questions that should be added to the response guide.
This turned out to mostly attract major issues which at least indirectly do lead to problems in the information process necessary to carry out various phases of emergency preparedness and management. These in summary form are:
Lack of communication and information exchange between the medical and the community service operations in emergencies and in particular after the immediate response is over.
Not clear from the legislation and policies what the goals and responsibilities are of the federal, state, and local agencies with respect to degree of aid and recovery of the public.
Defining roles: beneficiaries, information suppliers, information users, target audience, stakeholders, investors, etc.
Improved cooperation and coordination among various federal agencies.
Better working definitions of various concepts such as scope of an emergency, coherent conceptual models, degree of quality improvement, measures of the threat.
More explicit treatment of ethical issues, beginning with the planning process.
5. Examples of Information Overload Mitigation and other relevant activities
In the process of obtaining this material we encountered from the respondents and from our activities in searching for respondents many examples of either the documentation of the plethora of sources, that creates overload, or efforts to create aids for the reduction of information overload among practitioners.
Many of these can be considered as "grass roots" efforts in that a single individual or a small team of individuals concerned with some area of emergency management and response banned together to supply an information service. Many of those involved are practitioners in the field and the problems they had over the years in sorting out relevant information from the volume of information being generated led them to track and document their success as well as making it available to other practitioners.
In some cases these are carried out by individuals who are consultants, organizations, and/or consulting firms. But we only consider situations that were free to practitioners and largely publicly available on the Web (with one exception).
The examples, which are described, are included in appendix A to this report. They are:
- A collection of data on the
distribution of relevant information in journals
- Relevant websites collected,
categorized and shared by one individual practitioner with the rest of the
community.
- An example of a quality and useful
document in the gray literature not indexed or available on the Web.
- An international Mental Health Website
from
- Interstate Chemical Terrorism
Workgroup and the InfoMatrix which structures hazardous material
information relevant for practitioners.
- Communities of Practice: Big Medicine, ISCRAM, All-Hands,
and related Individual efforts
- An individual respondent's answers to
this NLM inquiry available on the Web
- Worldwide online courses for medical
professionals handling trauma: ITLS
6. Conclusions and Observations: UNMET NEEDS
There are numerous observations made throughout the document both in the summaries and in the detailed compilations of the viewpoints of the respondents, who are emergency response practitioners and experts, broadly defined. Here we first restate and summarize what seem to be the most important unmet needs related to medically-related emergency preparedness and response, affecting the ultimate choice of options for NLM's efforts in this area. Then we also provide a list of some summarized observations from the data.
TOP UNMET NEEDS AND DESIRES
- Resources for coping with information overload, broadly defined, due to the plethora of types and sources of information. As one of our international experts put it, “Just as it is important to be able to obtain information; [it] must be relevant. This emphasizes the need for… peer-reviewed materials that do not necessarily have to be present in a journal form (e.g., peer-reviewed web sites may do fine).”
One aspect of the problem is the need and desire to be able to have organized, peer-reviewed access to some of the “gray literature,” such as lessons learned, best practices, examples of plans and procedures for emergency response for different types of situations. A recommender system for expert communities (communities of practice) is one possible approach to this problem.
Experts in specific areas expressed the need to be able to nominate and evaluate specific gray literature documents and view the collective results of this for their given peer group. In addition, they want to be able to link this material to tags appropriate for their specialty group. One can expect software to do this to evolve in the growing effort to provide tools for communities of practice and a growing effort internationally to provide open source software for international humanitarian efforts.
Another aspect is the frequently expressed need for more complete indexing of terms for health-related emergency response information resources. Useful indexes would cover all kinds of health-related emergencies and also be tied to region-specific information. They would be usable by emergency planners and responders as well as by physicians.
- An expansion in comprehensive “one stop” information resources for additional types of health-related emergency threats, specifically, expanding the REMM approach to other specialized areas. (The Radiation Event Medical Management site covers the diagnosis and treatment of radiation injuries during mass casualty radiological or nuclear events). There are many other classes of emergency events for which both non-specialist physicians and first responders might need a similar well organized compendium, e.g., biological events, chemical events, mass injuries from large scale natural disasters (e.g., hurricanes, earthquakes, floods) or infrastructure failures.
- Online availability of templates and guidelines for concisely gathering and providing all of the information that will be needed in a locale or community when it is struck by disaster.
- Expansion in the roles of local libraries and of reference librarians, through “Go Local” type efforts, that provide local information (e.g., organizations, resources, maps of infrastructure) as well as expertise to help local emergency planners and responders to find the most relevant information currently (online and in print) that applies to a situation they are facing. (This would include plans for keeping libraries open in emergencies, if they are to serve as information resources then.)
- Collections of practitioner documents in specific areas such as plans, best practices, training materials, and requirements and design studies for support systems of all sorts. Many localities do not have adequate resources to pay for these and national level documents do not deal adequately with local situations. Having a compilation to compare and evolve current plans, training, and other preparedness activities would be quite valuable.
We also offer the following observations to keep in mind in thinking about services that could be provided by DIMRC, each arising from several mentions, but not meant to be rank ordered:
- Currently literature in this area is very scattered, especially the gray literature.
- Many types of gray literature are considered critical to practitioners and some of them are not collected and organized in any systematic library science approach.
- Static indexes are not going satisfy the users at the practitioner level and even the academic level because the current the field is evolving and changing.
- Users have turned to social networks to help alleviate information overload and are attracted to services that support the underlying social networks.
- Users want to have control over their abilities to filter and organize their material.
- Users also want more professional help aiding their information seeking processes.
- There are too many sources competing for being” the source" and this lack of organizational cooperation is a major challenge to overcome.
- A professional library could be the logical mediator between organizations.
- Grassroots based services worldwide are undergoing rapid development.
- Collaboration capabilities (e.g., social recommender systems) are expected by practitioners and they have begun to gravitate to systems that provide them.
- A form of recommender system on gray literature documents recommended by users could be explored as an appropriate method to allow user involvement.
- An approach to users contributing and evaluating "best practices" is another obvious recommender type of approach if the system can integrate local factors for the individual user.
- Practitioners have adopted a wide variety of coping mechanisms for dealing with information overload, and while sufficient to do their job in many cases, it is not always satisfying to those who feel there might be better solutions.
- Structuring and visualization approaches to provide quick access to complex information should receive considerable attention to service the practitioner community.
- AI approaches can also be very useful if the users have control over setting what are sometimes very unique needs and requirements or training the AI in a feedback process.
- Collaborative tagging was mentioned a number of times by the respondents and seems to be one example of the desire to have involvement in the process of tailoring the systems serving them.
It should be noted that many of the above concerns and concepts apply to emergency preparedness and management areas in general and not only to the topics of medical and public health considerations. It should also be obvious that in some aspects of the problem the emergency medical and public health areas cannot be separate from other areas of concern such as utilities, infrastructure, transportation, logistics, and coordination among many different agencies and organizations.
Appendix A
Examples of Information Overload Mitigation Activities
1. Example of relevant data on paper distribution in journals
One of our respondents, Marv Birnbaum, Professor at the University of Wisconsin, provided us with
a set of slides he produced for a presentation at WHO (World Health
Orientation, Feb. 07) which we have incorporated with his permission. They use a collection of journal
articles dealing with some recent disaster events.
The
results represent supporting evidence for two important points that support
empirically many of the views of the respondents to this study.
- Even when the literature is focused on only journals there is a tremendous scattering of the literature on a single event over many different sources, topics, and journals.
- The health and medical areas interact with a great many other areas of concern in an emergency so that it is hard to treat many of the areas in isolation from one another.
The second point arises from the diversity of topics of the journals involved and the final slide which reflects the relationship of health to:
Health
- A "state of Being"
- An ideal value
- Survival, welfare and dignity
Health Determinants
- Population, environment, economy, education, security, food, water, habitat, health services, support systems and lifelines,
Health Sector
- The part of economy, institutions and society that deals with the demand for health (i.e. services, norms, production and distribution of drugs, etc)
Health Services
- The resources and processes dedicated to activities that are intended to improve health (i.e. service delivery, norms and standards setting)
Medical care
- The resources and processes dedicated to the delivery of preventive and curative medical services (i.e. service delivery)
While in the immediate response to a disaster medical care
is the highest priority, we often forget why many common disasters in the
Y axis Percent of Sources (journals)
Y axis: number identified
Y axis: Percent of journals
2. Relevant websites collected by one individual.
One of the practitioners who responded, Gregory Banner of DHHS, has been collecting useful websites for many years and his list of sites is on the Web and has been conveyed to other emergency managers through a number of shared message lists.
http://www.ynhhs.org/emergency/us_dhhs_web_sites.pdf
WMD,
Emergency Management and Medical Web Sites
1.
The following is intended to provide a comprehensive list of internet sites of
use for emergency planning and in particular Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)
and medical emergency planning. To
be useful as a working document, the listing is divided into the following
categories
Organizations
Federal Agencies
(Includes non-US national-level offices)
International
(International Agencies)
Local Emergency
Management/BT/Health/WMD web sites
Private, Non-Profit,
Academic Organizations, Professional Societies
•
Disease Monitoring Systems
•
Web Link Compendiums, Glossaries, Search Engines and other Resource
Listings
•
References
Agricultural, Animal,
Food, Water Issues
Business/Facility/School/Installation
Information
Community/Local
Planning
Decontamination
Diseases/Conditions/Agents/Treatment/Surveillance
Systems
Dispensing Functions,
Strategic National Stockpile, Pharmaceutical
and Other systems.
Equipment and Personal
Protective Equipment,
Federal Plans and
Guidance, Laws, Regulations, Public Health Planning
and Guidance
First responder
guides/procedures
Hospital & Health
Facilities
Incident Command System
and
Individual/Family/Public
Guides & Info, Volunteers
Information
Management/Public Affairs/Alert Systems
Laboratories
Legal and Law
Enforcement Issues, Intelligence Documents
Logistics
Mental Health Issues
Mortuary Affairs
Special Populations
Transportation
Miscellaneous
•
Training/Seminars/Classes/Conferences
2.
There is an incredible amount of information available through the
internet. As an introduction to
understanding the complexity of all of the federal offices involved in WMD, go
to the organizational chart at http://cns.miis.edu/research/cbw/domestic.htm#wmdchart
3.
To keep this list at a manageable level, some information is specifically
omitted. There is a separate
document which lists on line periodicals and list servers. This list is available from the author
below, upon request.
4.
PLEASE NOTE - This list is constantly being updated. To contact the author for the latest
version, or to provide additional information, send an email to: gregory.banner@hhs.gov
Note that this collection of websites is 73 pages long and represents around 1300 separate links within the above categories. Every reader should look at the link in item 2 above giving the chart of all the federal offices involved if they are not familiar with that situation. It does illustrate part of the problem very well in terms the integration across different organizations.
The above is considered a useful reference list by many practitioners and one should note that it lacks any abstract giving a description of each site that would probably enhance its value. However, the sites are clustered and categorized by terms relevant to practitioners.
3. A quality document in the gray literature
In messages with an expected participant we were sent the following report:
Public
Health Preparedness Decision Support System
Geoffrey
Hoare, PhD and Jeffrey A. Nield, MA
Alachua
County Health Department,
Public
Health Preparedness Decision Support System: Pilot Project Report
PHP-DSS_Report_v90.doc,
Version 9.0, Printed:
EXECUTIVE
SUMMARY
Timely
access to current health and medical data is a critical element of disaster
preparedness and response. A clear
understanding of resource availability across all types of health and medical
facilities and response assets, improves situational awareness and, hence,
decision making. A decision support
system, or DSS, is a database with specialized communications, analysis and
reporting functions to more effectively manage complex information. Several health and medical capacity DSSs
are employed in Florida, yet no one system captures the breadth of information
needed by the Health and Medical Emergency Support Function (ESF - 8), at the
county, region or State levels.
This
report describes a research project that piloted an integrated health and
medical Decision Support System for
This is a document of 105 pages and which would never appear in a journal with the same level of detail that would be necessary to aid other localities to undertake their own efforts without repeating a great deal of the investigative effort that has already been accomplished by the authors. This is an excellent example of what appears to be a quality report that would be useful to others but only if they can easily find out it exists and where to get it. While documents produced at the federal level are easier to find those produced locally are much harder to detect. There are many instances where materials generated by a locality are more relevant to plans and the design of processes for other localities than what comes from the top down. This particular document is not on the Web nor could we find it referenced on the Web via Google.
A copy of the document has been forwarded to NLM for examination as a document in support of this report. It is an excellent attempt to integrate all the medical information and data in a given locality for use in any phase of emergency preparedness and represents a very detailed requirements study. This is only the first in what is supposed to be a series of efforts leading to a working system.
The author has submitted a practitioner’s paper to the ISCRAM08 meeting (http://iscram.org) and those free proceedings on the Web after May of this year should allow those interested to request the full report via the author or the organization that sponsored it.
The need to get useful gray literature involving plans, requirements, best practices, training materials, etc is expressed by many of the participants seeking better access to gray literature materials such as this particular document.
4. An international Mental
Health Website from Sweden
This website, in seven languages, is a very comprehensive collection of mental health information for the public. It is developed and maintained by both psychologists and psychiatrists. It includes online consultation with professionals, discussion forums organized around a particular problem area, and extensive regular updates from all around the world, all vetted by Swedish professionals.
http://web4health.info
The above site is for public access to expert vetted information on all forms of mental health problems.
Since 2004 they have started to add subjects of trauma having to with those who have lived through a disaster. In the extensive QUICK Title Index (which indexes all words in each title) are the following entries:
Child Molestation Trauma
Psychological Help for Trauma
Victims of Disasters, for example Tsunami Victims
Symptoms of Post Traumatic
Stress Disorders (PTSD), Effects of Violence
How To Treat
Anorexia Nervosa
Preventing and Treating
Gambling Addiction
While there is only one entry for disaster victims at this point, it might be more productive to add more entries to this Swedish system than to develop a new web site about trauma.
One might also consider the need for a similar system that handled public first aid information for the type of injuries or difficulties that are more common in disasters of various types than are present in the typical first aid manual.
The following message is from one of the principals involved in the development, design, and evolution of this system.
Jacob Palme
<jpalme@dsv.su.se>
To: turoff@njit.edu
If you have any
experts who want to develop informational texts for the public about disaster
victim issues, we can publish their texts on our web site. That way, they can probably get more
people to read what they write, since we are a large web site with lots of
visitors (650,000 visitors, two million pages downloads per month).
All our texts are
written by, or approved by, medical experts in the area of psychiatry and
psychology.
Jacob Palma
<jpalme@dsv.su.se> (
for more info see URL:
http://www.dsv.su.se/jpalme/
Note that in the responses there are a number of other international medical websites and organizations that are considered valuable sources of information. Considering cooperation and collaboration with some of these entities might be a very productive approach.
5. Interstate Chemical Terrorism Workgroup and the InfoMatrix
This organization has integrated all the web based sites that have significant information about hazardous and toxic material problems into one information structure based upon an excel matrix (ICTWInfoMatrix). This is a volunteer group who works very hard to update and improve the content on a regular basis. The first column is the name of the organization providing the information and the second is a link to the information. The third column is a very brief paragraph about the site.
The other columns are the following:
Toxicology
Exposure Guidelines & Standards
Chem / Phys Properties Environmental Fate / Transport
Emergency Response
PPE
Decon
Acute hazards
signs, symptoms
First aid / Emergency Treatment
Med Trtmt Guides - Health Profs
Public FAQs
Other languages
Planning & Preparedness
The only information in these columns is an X indicating the site represented by the row has useful relevant information under that column so that the user knows that link is useful.
The row entries are divided into clusters by the following classification systems
I. Emergency Response
I.A Critical Phone Numbers
I.B First Responder Databases
I.C Decontamination
I.D Emergency Exposure Guidelines
I.E. Field Detection (also See Laboratory, II.D
I.F Personal Protective Equipment
II. Technical Support
II.A Chemical Fact sheets
II.B. Chemistry & Toxicology
II.C. Clinical/Medical
II.D. Hazard & Vulnerability Assessment
II.E Laboratory (also see Field Detection, 1.E)
II.F Public & Community Resources
II.G. Veterinary, Pets
Currently there are 105 different sites documented in this single matrix structure. Apparently this has become a common tool for professionals in this area and it was developed by the users themselves.
This type of approach represents the creation of an appropriate information structure as a multidimensional morphology appropriate to the topic area. It allows practitioners in an emergency to locate very quickly exactly what they need.
Erik Janus is responsible for the creation of the first version of the matrix and he and some of the others involved have submitted a practitioner’s paper to ISCRAM08 (http://iscram.org). Sharon Lee is the ICTW facilitator and the contact for further information.
Statement by:
California Department of
Public Health
Environmental Health
Investigations Branch
Many of us working in
state and local agencies have been urged to develop information on the role of
public health in the event of chemical terrorism, and once the role is defined,
to develop relevant materials. In
an effort to define our role and to share knowledge, materials and resources,
representatives from state, local, and federal agencies have formed this
workgroup.
The ICTW, formed in
2002, currently includes members from nearly all states and
6. Communities of Practice and Individuals: Big Medicine, ISCRAM, All-Hands, and Individual efforts
There is a rapidly increasing formation on the Web of Communities of Practice, which are loosely defined as professionals or knowledgeable people concerned with the same topic who gather, discuss, and disseminate information among themselves and often to larger audiences if they choose to be open to the public.
They are characterized by not only creating websites for dissemination but also by employing some form of collaborative software that allows meaningful complex discussion to take place. We have chosen a few examples from what appear to be very popular and respected examples in the emergency practitioner community. While only the first one is focused on medical and health topics the others all have these topics as part of their concerns.
Big
Medicine
This network gathers and disseminates information for emergency practitioners in the health and medical field. It is operated by a team of volunteers comprised of both practitioners and consultants. The director of the effort is Hal Newman, one of our respondents who also contributed a quality list of documented international websites that is in the appendix to this report. The site may be found at:
http://www.bigmedicine.ca/index.htm
The above is a news publishing site and it also has a collaborative site:
http://bigmedicine.collectivex.com/main/summary
Which has discussion forums and other features to allow the members to network and exchange information.
This effort might best be characterized as a "community of practice" for practitioners in emergency preparedness and management concerned with the medical and health aspects.
ISCRAM
(Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management)
In that regard Big Medicine is somewhat similar to ISCRAM (Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management, http://iscram.org ). It was formed in 2004 for professionals interested in the problems of developing better information systems in this area. Both online communities were formed from grassroots efforts.
ISCRAM started as a workshop in 2004 in
This is not a new phenomenon in that every professional group taking on a new professional area starts out as what used to be called an "invisible college" that did not follow established paradigms and tended to not have a well established publications system. The way literature and information is scattered in this field is further evidence of the situation with respect to emergency preparedness and management.
All
Hands Information Portal
This news collection and distribution site allows practitioners to contribute, utilizes volunteers, and is supported by a consultant firm made up of practitioners. It has an editor that reviews contributions before they are entered and insures they get properly categorized into the topic areas. The website is
In the words of current facilitator:
Steve Davis
<steve@all-hands.net>
to turoff@njit.edu,
date
subject RE: inquiry on NLM
I agree that
information overload is an issue.
The All Hands Community -www.All-Hands.net was designed to help but the
proliferation is too much and our search tools too primitive. My list does not send attachments but
feel free to post to the site or do an e-mail to the group on this.
Also, All Hands has a
blog and forum feature if you are interested in using either of those.
Thanks,
Steve Davis
7. An individual respondent answers on the Web
It does not have to be a community but actually as we have seen single individuals in the community can set up a website to help others in the community. That was illustrated by the long term effort on the extensive list of websites in Banner's prior example. Here is one created as part of this study which is now public.
One of our respondents developed a web site for his answers to this inquiry. His statements have been incorporated into the compilation of all the responses contained in the appendix. However, the site prepared by Dr. Eric Noji contains a number of valuable links to illustrate the points he wished to make; therefore we are including a link here to the site and recommend it as a useful list of other sites.
http://veritas-invictus.org/NLM_Survey.aspx
The respondent provided permission to make this public.
There are a large number of individuals who have established websites and in particularly blogs or Wiki pages concerned with topics in these areas. Trying to identify them all would be beyond the effort here. However some of them do have a significant following as they exhibit more specificity into various subtopics, expressing a highly specialized interest that attracts a small but committed group. The small group working on the hazardous substances, InfoMatrix, is clearly one such community.
8. World wide online courses for handling trauma: ITLS
This
The following is copied from the website:
About ITLS (http://itrauma.org
)
International Trauma
Life Support (ITLS) is a global organization dedicated to preventing death and
disability from trauma through education and emergency trauma care.
ITLS was founded in
the early 1980's as Basic Trauma Life Support. From its early roots as a local and
regional trauma education course for
Organization: ITLS
training programs are aimed at prehospital (or out-of-hospital) providers. Since its founding in 1982, over 330,000
EMS professionals have learned proven techniques endorsed by the
International Trauma
Standard: ITLS is accepted internationally as the standard training course for
prehospital trauma care, and is not only taught as a continuing education
course, but is also used as a textbook in many Paramedic, EMT, and first
responder training programs.
ITLS courses give the
student the knowledge and hands-on skills to take better care of trauma
patients. ITLS stresses rapid
assessment, appropriate intervention, and identification of immediate life
threats. The ITLS framework for
rapid, appropriate and effective trauma care is a global standard that works in
any situation.
ITLS courses combine
classroom learning and hands-on skills stations. They also challenge the student with
scenario assessment stations where learning is put to work in simulated trauma
situations. ITLS courses are
designed, managed and delivered by course directors, coordinators and
instructors experienced in EMS, prehospital care and the ITLS approach.
Each ITLS course
includes a comprehensive manual sent to the student in advance. The manual enhances learning experience
with in-depth content, photos, and illustrations. ITLS manuals are written by trauma care
experts and edited by the ITLS Editorial Board. After the course, the student can refer
to the manual as a valuable recap of what has been learned.
Appendix B
The Self Report Guide
STUDY FOR THE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF MEDICINE ON INFORMATION REQUIREMENTS
FOR EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS AND RESPONSE
The overall goal of this study for the National Library of Medicine is to determine the most significant knowledge, information, and services they can incorporate into their development of a Disaster Information System available on the Web that can provide aid to practitioners about the medical aspects of Emergency Management and Preparedness. It is concerned with all the phases of EM&P: planning, threat analysis, mitigation, training, detection, response, and recovery.
We were asked to:
“assist NLM in determining the current information seeking behavior, existing preferred sources of information, and unmet information needs of people (researchers, practitioners, volunteers, non-profit organizations, local communities, and local, state, and federal government agencies) involved with emergency planning, preparedness and response to disasters with potential or actual medical and public health consequences.”
Given the range of backgrounds we are seeking input from, you should not feel you have to answer every question but should focus on those questions for which you have the most insight. Whenever possible, please provide “real examples” of information and materials or resources now used or needed but missing.
We will not quote any answer, viewpoint, or concept as being that of a specific person. If you approve below we will list you as one of the contributors to the report. However, to include your contribution we need to know the background information below for possible follow up. If you feel there is a particular viewpoint you wish to be associated with you may supply us separately a one page summary statement and we will include it in an appendix of such statements supplied to NLM, provided you have also returned this survey.
(Note: If you are completing this interview/survey guide on a computer in Word (.doc) you may add as much information as you wish below by increasing the space after a given question. If you have only seen a hard copy, message us to receive the text as an attachment to an email)
For a full statement of the related NLM goals see: Charting the Course for the 21st Century: NLM's Long Range Plan 2006-2016, recommendations 1.5, 1.6, 2.1, 2.2, pages 29-37. http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/plan/lrpdocs.html
If you have any questions do not hesitate to contact us. Below is our email and websites
Starr Roxanne Hiltz, roxanne.hiltz@gmail.com http://is.njit.edu/hiltz
Murray Turoff, murray.turoff@gmail.com, http://is.njit.edu/turoff
Beginning of
Survey/Interview
1.a Background
information
Your Name:__________________________
Your email:_________________________
Your telephone:______________________
1.b Please list your current and most recent (last five years) positions and roles related to emergency preparedness, management, and/or response, including any specific emergencies in which you have assisted in some aspect of.
2. Current Sources
What sources do you currently consider as highly useful and important for medically-related emergency response missions including journals, organizations, websites, books, reports, plans, training materials, etc.? (Please give specific information, e.g., journal or newsletter name, URL for a web site, etc. If possible, also add a sentence about how and in what emergency situation this source has been used by you.)
3. Desired Sources
For medically-related emergency response missions: What useful resources, services, or types of information are now missing or difficult to access or use, that you would like to see more readily accessible to practitioners?
Can you give one or two specific examples of emergency situations in which information was needed but was difficult to obtain?
4. Organizing Information, Knowledge or
Wisdom
Are there ways or methods you would like to see material in this area organized, indexed, clustered, processed, and/or filtered that would make it easier for you or others to recognize that something new might well be of use to you or others in this area? Or, what would you like to see done to cut down the time to find useful new material?
5. Current outstanding examples
Are there any other specific medical, health care, public health disaster plans or training materials or web based resources that you consider outstanding examples of such material? Try to give enough information to locate the materials and/or some example websites having such material.
What material not currently available on the Web would you like to see there?
6. Roles of Libraries and Librarians
Is there a role in local areas for a trained librarian to have the time and resources to review and selectively distribute information to local practitioners that have established profiles of interest? Are there other particular services a local library should provide?
What other roles, talents, and/or software support would you see for librarians and for local libraries (e.g. knowledge of filling out disaster aid request forms, medical need forms, etc)
7. Extreme Events
If you had to consider an “extreme” but possible event such as a pandemic, would this add additional information requirements relevant to any of the other questions on this survey?
8. Your critical topic areas
In terms of creating an index (general ontology) out of a sample document database that can then be used to automatically classify new information as it occurs, what would you want included in such a database and what specific topic areas would you want to see in the resulting index or ontology?
9. International Considerations
The national Library of Medicine has an important role in aiding other countries in the accumulation and dissemination of medical information and knowledge.
- What specific contributions in the above disaster information areas might be important for NLM to provide internationally?
- What
contributions from other countries could be made to NLM in the disaster
information area? This could
include important sources in other countries not traditionally
disseminated in the
10. Others to include
Who else would you recommend should be asked to participate in this study and why in a sentence or two? (Please include name and email). Can your name be used in making contact with these individuals: Yes _____ No ______
11. Possible Workshop
If there were to be a future workshop (possibly in May 2008) including specific invitees to refine the results of this study and recommendations, would you be interested in participating:
Yes _____ No ______
Who else would you suggest be invited? Give email, address, and/or website and a sentence or two about them.
12. NLM experience (if not mentioned in
prior answers)
Have you ever used MEDLINE or any other NLM system to find information related to Emergency Preparedness or Management? If so characterize your experience and reaction.
13. Anything we left out
Please add any other information or comments that you think we should have asked for or any question you think should be added to this survey.
Choices
I am willing to be listed as a contributor to the report on the results of this survey:
YES ____NO ______
I do plan to follow up with a one page statement of a view point I wish to be identified with:
YES_____NO______
Please try to return this survey in four weeks or less (if you need more time please let us know). Also notify us if you cannot do any part of this survey. If you know someone you feel should do this survey you may send them a copy, but please email us that you have done so. You will receive the public report of this effort in 2008.
THANK YOU SO MUCH, on behalf of the National Library of Medicine!!
Please return via email with a word or text file attachment to:
murray.turoff@gmail.com) and roxanne.hiltz@gmail.com,
(Distinguished Professors, Emeriti, Department of Information Systems, New
Jersey Institute of Technology,
APPENDIX C
COMPLETE SET OF RESPONSES, ORGANIZED BY QUESTION and TYPE OF RESPONDENT
(As of
STUDY FOR THE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF MEDICINE ON INFORMATION REQUIREMENTS
FOR EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS AND RESPONSE
NOTE: a blank line separates individual responses
2. Current Sources
What sources do you
currently consider as highly useful and important for emergency preparedness or
response missions with medical or public health implications (e.g. including
journals, organizations, websites, books, reports, plans, training materials,
services, etc).? Please give
specific information, e.g., journal or newsletter name, URL for a web site,
etc. If possible, also add a
sentence about how and in what type of situation this source has been used by
you.
1. Practitioners
Multiple web sites which I have organized myself in my own reference document: http://www.ynhhs.org/emergency/US_DHHS_web_sites.pdf
As general resources I tend to use the Pandemicflu.gov web site a lot, as well as LLIS.
Journal
of Public Health, Bioterrorism and Biosecurity, DHS list serve, HHS list serve,
Center for Disease Control and Prevention website, Natural Hazards Institute (
Humanitarian Practice Network/Overseas Development Institute – for best practices research, however I do not specialize in medical or public health research. All other sources fall outside the medical/public health domain.
HEALTH, pandemic—the granddaddy is CDC. The web sites that I use, mainly website is the department of Homeland Security/lessons learned, information systems. And it’s a website but more of a portal, the CDC website, the ready.gov and the World Health Organization.
Organizations:
CDC, FEMA, OFDA, USGS, NWS, WHO, UNICEF, UNHCR, DoD, universities, think
tanks like CSIS,
Journals:
Disasters
Disasters & Prehospital Medicine
Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness (published by the AMA)
Weekly Morbidity & Mortality Report from the CDC
Websites:
PAHO: http://www.paho.org/english/DD/PED/home.htm
AlertNet: http://www.alertnet.org/
ReliefWeb: http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/dbc.nsf/doc100?OpenForm
CBS: http://www.cbsnews.com/digitaldan/disaster/disasters.shtml
CDC: http://www.bt.cdc.gov/disasters/
FEMA: http://www.fema.gov
Books and Manuals:
Public Health Consequences of Disasters
OFDA FOG Manual
MSF Series on emergencies (e.g., surgical care, epidemiology, mental health, obstetrics, communicable disease control, etc).
Disaster Medicine (by Ciottone et al)
THESE ALL HAVE BEEN USEFUL FOR TRAINING AND
RESEARCH. NOT SO MUCH DURING THE
RESPONSE AND RECOVERY PHASE WHEN THERE IS LITTLE TIME FOR
The best is REMM (www.remm.nlm.gov) for rad/nuc. I use CDC website, AFRRI and Google searches for specific topics. I don’t specifically read journals for this but do PUBMED searches.
I am interested in Rad/Nuc and use meetings, emails, and personal search to find them.
I
review GAO reports, Federal Guidance on Disaster Preparedness and subscribe to
(and write for) the on line publication, “Big Medicine.” Most of my sources are from the rich
experiences I gained from the Armed Services (An Air Force Medical Service
Corps Officer-
AHRQ Bioterrorism Site; various State’s Dept of Health preparedness sections websites, particularly for pan flu plans; DHS’s lessons learned site. Most journal articles I read are sent by others, I don’t have time to scan the journals and/or don’t have subscriptions. CDC site.
InfoMatrix is part of a larger set of tools developed for rapid, credible and accurate information sharing for a variety of audiences during a chemical. It is found at the web page maintained by the Michigan Department of Community Health (MDCH) Chemical Terrorism and Emergencies Unit. (As of January 2008, see http://www.michigan.gov/mdch/0,1607,7-132-2945_5105-98025--,00.html to link to the latest matrix document, available in .pdf format.). Currently, the InfoMatrix is maintained and updated by the ICTW and given a permanent WWW link on the MDCH web page listed above.
Other extremely useful tools I have used extensively as part of ongoing public health investigation include:
- CAMEO (Computer Aided management of Emergency Operations), a suite of programs that includes a GIS application (MARPLOT) and a plume modeling mapping application (ALOHA) – a free resource from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association with significant cross-jurisdiction and knowledge maintained in the Environmental Protection Agency Office of Emergency Management.
- I have used ALOHA to visualize rough plume magnitude and direction, but have used it primarily as a training tool, teaching local public health emergency preparedness partners its utility in a chemical emergency
- WISER (Wireless Emergency Information System for Emergency Responders), a free download from the National Library of Medicine and available for several handheld platforms as well as a pure online version (WebWISER).
- WebWISER and WISER for Windows I used in most of the investigations I have personally participated in since these tools were made available, including a nationally reported “outbreak” of mass psychogenic illness transmitted via “line of sight” in Saline High School (Michigan). For more information, see http://www.michigan.gov/documents/SalineHighSchoolHC060906_163234_7.pdf
Organizations: New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, New York State Department of Health, New Jersey Department of Health and Senior Services, Center for Disease Control, Department of Homeland Security, EPA, NIOSH, Department of Homeland Security Digital Library and the web sites associated with these organizations. Direct coordination and collaboration is absolutely essential for the Port Authority of NY & NJ’s Bio-defense strategy and preparedness. Homeland Security Digital Library
2. Medical and Health Professionals
I have used a host of resources depending on the topic on which I was focused.
I routinely use NLM’s PubMed for lit searches.
I frequently use government websites such as NOAA (
General
readings include the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies (ISTSS)
– newsletters and journal. I frequently consult the VA’s
I
follow Biosecurity and Bioterrorism:
Biodefense Strategy, Practice, and Science to stay abreast of thoughtful
analyses of issues I’m working on..
I search the GAO website and
Other journals that have been helpful include Predisaster Hospital Medicine and major Emergency Medicine journals. I’ve looked at the new JAMA series on disaster medicine.
I receive a weekly newsletter for
the
I am an associate member of the National Public Health Information Coalition which has been a valuable way of learning about what states are doing and how they are messaging. I also used this organization during Hurricane Katrina (unofficially) to quickly find out how much tetanus toxoid was on hand in the state health departments affected. http://www.nphic.org/
In a similar vein, I periodically check the National Association of County and City Officials to learn about state and local issues. http://www.naccho.org/
Organizations:
CDC – Emergency Preparedness and Response Listing: http://www.bt.cdc.gov/
American Red Cross: http://www.redcross.org/services/disaster/
FEMA: http://www.fema.gov/
CINDI: http://cindi.usgs.gov/
NESDIS: http://www.nesdis.noaa.gov/
USGS: http://www.usgs.gov/
DHS: http://www.dhs.gov/index.shtm
NYC OEM: http://www.nyc.gov/html/oem/html/home/home.shtml
Biosafety in Microbiological & Biomedical Laboratories
(BMBL)
Case Definitions for Selected Infectious Diseases
CDC Recommends: The Prevention Guidelines System
Emerging Infectious Diseases
Journal
Geographic Analysis Tool for
Health & Environmental Research (GATHER)
Geographic
Information Systems (GIS) & Public Health
National
Laboratory Training Network (NLTN)
Public
Health Training Network (PHTN)
Association of Public Health
Laboratories (APHL)
Association of State &
Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO)
Center for
Biosecurity, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC)
Center for
Infectious Disease Research & Policy
Center for Nonproliferation
Studies
Centers for Public
Health Preparedness (CPHP)
Defense Threat Reduction Agency
(DTRA)
Department of Homeland Security
(DHS)
Food & Drug Administration (FDA): Bioterrorism
Health Resources & Services
Administration (HRSA)
MedlinePlus: Biodefense and Bioterrorism
National Association of Local
Boards of Health (NALBOH)
National Institute of Allergy & Infectious Diseases
(NIAID): Bioterrorism
National Library of Medicine (NLM): Biological Warfare
United States Postal Service (USPS) guidance regarding
harmful biological or chemical weapons
U.S. Army
Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID)
Journals/DB:
Journal of Disaster Studies Policy and Management
American Society of Professional Emergency Planners
Australian Journal of Emergency Management
Contingency Planning & Management
Disasters
Disaster Prevention and Management
Disaster Recovery Journal
Disaster Resource
The Electronic Journal of Emergency Management
Hazards Literature Database Natural Hazards Research/Appl Info Cntr,
U. CO,
International Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters
Journal of Civil Defense
Journal of Contingency and Crisis Management
Journal of Environmental Management
Natural Hazards Observer
Natural Hazards Review
Australasian Journal of Disaster and Trauma Studies
Banks in Insurance Report
Disaster Prevention and Management: An International Journal
Risk Analysis
Environmental Hazards
Global Environmental Change Part B: Environmental Hazards
Journal of 9/11 Studies
Journal of Hazardous Materials
Journal of Humanitarian Assistance
Natural Hazards
Pre-Hospital and Disaster Medicine
Crisis Disaster and Risk Management
Journal of Organizational and Business Continuity
I think the predominate source would be the CDC website when we’ve have any activities that we’ve had to really had to worry about we’ve gone on there for a least an initial cut on what might happen. DHS websites and in general other websites. The ability to search on a web site makes it easier to get to the information even if you have a book that might have what you’re looking for you don’t have the search capability that electronically you could have.
Prehospital and Disaster Medicine
Annals of Emergency Medicine
Disaster Medicine (2 textbooks – Burnstein & Hogan; Cittone)
CDC website
DHS website
ATSDR website
3. Other Professionals
3.1 Librarians
Basic reference texts such as the PDR, Washington Manuals or other similar pocket medicine handbooks, Merck Manual, an Atlas of Dermatology, Toxicology and Biological warfare manuals, Guidelines on Pandemic Flu, Aurbach’s Emergency Medicine, any reference on setting fractures and/or rudimentary surgical procedures, an all-encompassing diabetes reference, possibly a psych manual.
American Red Cross (www.redcross.org)
Local Red Cross locator, detailed instructions for preparing a disaster kit, foreign language materials
Amigos Library Services (www.amigos.org)
Sample disaster plan template
Centers for Disease Control (www.cdc.gov)
Fact sheets and brochures on specific health issues, statistical data, software and databases, 24-hour emergency telephone number
Citizencorps.gov (www.citizencorps.gov)
Coordination of volunteer activities and public preparedness in the event of a disaster
Community Emergency Response Teams (CERT) (www.citizenscorp.gov/cert)
Empowering citizens to become active in their communities, disaster preparedness and recovery education
Disaster Planning for Health Sciences Libraries (dtw2t.wordpress.com/)
Blog discussion on disaster
planning from the
Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) (www.fema.gov)
Disaster preparedness, response and recovery
National Incident Management System (NIMS) Incident Command System (ICS) (www.nimsonline.com/nims_training/index.htm)
Essential training for anyone who does or will respond to major (or even minor) incidents, training required for FEMA funding
National Oceanic & Atomospheric Administration (NOAA) (www.noaa.gov)
Real-time weather, satellite images, warnings for severe weather,
Ready.gov (www.ready.gov)
Instructions for creating safety kit, safety plans, information on being prepared
Solinet (www.solinet.net)
Disaster prevention and protection checklist
Weather Channel (www.weather.com)
Weather glossary & encyclopedia, current weather conditions, five-day forecasts, severe weather alerts, local weather, travel information
3.2
Academics/Researchers
One of the most valuable sources for me is to attend the annual APHL (Association of Public Health Laboratory) National Conference and also to meet with various directors of public health laboratories. I learn more about the requirements and needs of public health laboratories during a public health emergency and then analyze how information technology can provide solutions.
Books
- Emergency Management, the American Experience 1900-2005, Claire Rubin, Ed
- Jane’ s Guide to Hospital Emergency Management and Response Joseph Barbera
- Managing the Unexpected, Karl Weick
- Individual and Community Responses to Trauma and Disaster Robert Ursano
- International Disaster Management, Damon Coppola
Technical Reports
- Medical and Health Incident Management (MaHIM), J. Barbera and A. Mcintyre, on ICDRM website, www.gwu.edu/~icdrm
Journals/publications
- Natural Hazards Observer
- Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management
- Journal of Prehospital and Disaster Management
Web Sites
- FEMA higher education project (www.fema.gov/institutions/universities)
- Public Entity Risk Institute (www.riskinstitute.org)
- Relief web (www.reliefweb.int)
- Homeland security digital library (www.hsdl.org)
- FEMA national integration center (www.fema.gov/nims)
- Emergency Management Accreditation Program (EMAP) (www.emaponline.org)
Two resources are most applicable for both public and private sector entities:
1) Project Public Health Ready is a collaborative venture between the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Association of County and City Health Officials, Last published in 2006, this program evaluates local health department response plans to determine whether the jurisdiction is prepared to carry out all of its responsibilities in the event of an emergency. Response plan strength on such issues as workforce competency development, surge capacity, epidemiologic investigations, communications, and practice exercises are evaluated.
2) Local Public Health Preparedness and Response Capacity Inventory is a self-assessment designed by the CDC to help local health agencies evaluate their plans to respond to public health emergencies. It emphasizes legal preparedness, personnel development, surge capacity, risk communication, laboratory capacity, and vaccine distribution. (CDC, 2002).
I am a researcher interested in how multiagent systems can be used for modeling and simulating emergency response.
- International Journal of Emergency Management
- ISCRAM Conference Proceedings
- ISCRAM Website http://www.iscram.org/
- In general, any workshop proceedings concerning modeling and simulation for emergency response
- Robocup Rescue website: http://www.rescuesystem.org/robocuprescue/index.html
- AAMAS Conference (in particular how agent technology is used for Disaster Management http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/sdr/atdm/)
Humanitarian Practice Network/Overseas Development Institute – for best practices research, however I do not specialize in medical or public health research. All other sources fall outside the medical/public health domain.
The existing literature providing actionable guidance for public health incident response is limited. The most useful documentation is obtained from other fields and must then be adapted to public health:
- Coast Guard guide to ICS – especially the sections on Incident Action Planning
- Medical and Health Incident Management (MaHIM) System: A Comprehensive Functional System Description for Mass Casualty Medical and Health Incident Management (2002)
- MSCC (Medical Surge Capacity & Capability)
- VHA Emergency Management Curriculum (see ICDRM website)
- Retrospective case studies & after action reports (these are white-washed and limited in their utility but reading between the lines and identifying the key issues can be very useful):
- GAO Reports on the response to West Nile Virus ’99; Anthrax 2001; XDR-TB
- MMWR
- EID (much more clinical & international in its focus)
- CDC/HHS/DHS plans (strategic guidance to preparedness planning; often disconnected from practical response requirements which minimizes the utility of these documents)
- Dark Winter & Topoff reports contain interesting observations and characterizations of public health organizational and decision-making tendencies when engaged in a response.
- For biological agent specific information (incubation period; clinical diagnosis; prophylaxis etc…) JAMA, EID and other journals are useful. CDC.gov
- Promed is an excellent source of information when searching for information on previous outbreaks or incidents.
- Electronic Journal Databases:
- Global Health
- Ovid Medical
- Journals – public health journals that sometimes publish interesting pieces related to emergency management:
- The Journal of Public Health Management & Practice
- Public Health Policy
- The
Journal of Urban Health (NY
Please
see attached slides for data and
references (appendix). Prehospital and
Disaster Medicine (http://pdm.medicine.wisc.edu);
MMWR; Science; Nature; J. Trauma
Stress; Int Rev Psychiatry; South Med J; Annals of Emergency Medicine; Disasters.
The website of the World Association for Disaster and Emergency Medicine
(http://www.wadem.org) and its Newsletter, Insight; Disasters newsletter and
other publications of the Pan-American Health Organization (www.paho.org)
(AMRO); Bull WHO; Special publications Department of WHO
from Health Actions in Crisis, especially reports from Expert Consultations
(most published in PDM)( www.who.int/entity/hac/about/structure/en/index.html);
Ann Surg; J Trauma; N Engl J Med; World Congresses on Disaster and Emergency
Medicine of the WADEM; European Masters in Disaster Medicine (www.dismedmaster.com); Japanese J Disaster
Medicine; Asia-Pacific Conferences on Disaster Medicine;. Also, check out
the extensive bibliography of the
4. International Professionals
ReliefWeb (www.reliefweb.int)
Various ODI Humanitarian Practice Network Publications (http://www.odihpn.org/hpnpubs.asp)
Disasters (http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0361-3666&site=1)
Journal of Humantarian Assistance (http://www.jha.ac/)
In
an acute response phase, real-time information from the site of the event is
most important. Sources include situation reports from International
Organisations involved in first response (UN and others) and national/regional
responders already on-site.
Background
information about general local conditions and specific (e.g. health) aspects
are useful, but in the initial response phase there is no time for in-depth
consultation of such sources.
http://pdm.medicine.wisc.edu/
I am not a public health responder or professional. My focus is on strategic planning, particularly with respect to applying knowledge management principles and practices to science-based departments and emergency management. My sources of information and knowledge are highly diverse, rather than tied to specific journals. I am connected to a handful of national and global knowledge management networks. These often point to useful or interesting articles in various professional and scientific journals. I may pose a specific question to these networks to get me started on a search. This often results in a pointer to a web site with what I’m looking for. I often also go to Wikipedia as a point of departure when exploring new areas that I am unfamiliar with.
I
used to go to national libraries in both
http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/dbc.nsf/doc100?OpenForm
most information, first general and by clicking detailed information per source.
medical info, situations and guidelines
https://www-secure.ifrc.org/dmis/login.asp
deployment information and situation repports
alerts, situation
reports, maps
http://ec.europa.eu/environment/civil/prote/mic.htm
EU info,
technical capacities, support
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/index.html
country information
medical information, backgrounds, guidelines
specific hazard information
maps
diseases, tropical guidelines, vaccination, country specific
questions (
http://www.iph.fgov.be/Index.asp?Lang=NL
specific and environmental related problems
UNDAC handbook, and OCHA information in general.
Diplomatic network - the Belgian Embassy in the affected country
Used,
and found useful, the following: Pubmed, MedScape, International Trauma Life
Support (ITLS) courses. While I can
not specify a particular journal as the best source for guidelines, algorithms
and educational reviews, it may be useful to construct a database or search
engine to encompass most relevant articles from various sources. These can come
from either peer-reviewed journals, or from other public media (TV, newspapers
etc.) Websites run by local
national trauma organizations may provide excellent basis for such solutions.
3. Desired Sources
3.a. For emergency preparedness or response
missions with medical or public health implications: What useful resources, services, or
types of information are now missing or difficult to access or use, that you
would like to see more readily accessible to all concerned? (either for a
specific type of medical disaster such as a pandemic flu, and/or for general
health aspects of emergencies;
i.e., disease outbreaks after hurricanes or earthquakes).
1. Practitioners
I think the problem is not resources, it is finding the right ones and then knowing which resources are authoritative. A web search on any given topic will likely turn up multiple resources.
Easily accessible lists of potential contractors sorted by actual (rather than professed), proven areas of expertise; coherent journal pulling together selected articles that focus on emergency preparedness and response from wealth of sources (e.g., public health-related journals) in which those articles may be buried.
mailing lists posted at: http://www.preventionweb.net/
You
should have a process in place that will say who will build the list, who will
put out the assistance guide… the front line, the clean up volunteers is
easiest to get. Moving back, case
workers, that’s a little harder to find. Who will coordinate the 100s of
volunteers that are willing to go into your basement and take mud out (tell you
what to do and where to go). In NJ
211 will take the request; there
are 3 or 4 organizations inside and out of NJ to come in and clean up your
basement. 211—who is that? It is the Methodists in one county,
somebody else in another county.
I’m
looking for information for people who have health related problems that they
think are 911 related, but they are outside the criteria of the organizations
now… if you have needs outside my area of expertise i don’t know where to send
you. Nobody will talk to me about
how to get help to pay rent because you can’t work.
We
are trying very hard to make it common practice that every disaster large and
small produces a complete and accurate guide as to where you, in this disaster,
can get help and information you need.
For example, how much bleach to I put in to prevent mold? How do i get help or information.. Eg, to call somebody
who will put pressure get money from my own insurance company?... Anyway, a
needs based, disaster victim oriented, comprehensive, up to date, accurate
assistance guide--which does not talk about agencies but is agency
centered. Which is organized by
need, not by agency. This does not
exist today, I hold my breath until somebody puts this together for each
disaster.
Information about what other organizations are doing. What supplies, equipment, medications and personnel are “in the pipeline” on route to a disaster scene. Unfortunately, we are still depending on traditional (read: antiquated) means of communication:
I admit to being bias but the product that NLM has done with HHS, REMM is superb. It has all the information one needs- or darn close- to manage a radiation event.
Rad/nuc info is difficult to aggregate and find. Needs to be made intellectually accessible to those without radiation expertise. Using multimedia helps as this area is very technical. I work with those without expertise. Those with expertise don’t need this. Audience in this area is very diverse.
Disaster, “After Action Reports”, especially where lessons were NOT learned and the same deficiencies were present over time.
What FEMA planning course calls “implementing information” Standard Operating Guidelines (SOGs), equipment lists, job action sheets, MOUs/MOAs. There is a lot of clinical information, much of which is redundant, and not enough logistics and management info (by comparison).
There could be more user friendly models, like spread sheets, to estimate supply and personnel needs.
Data bases of existing health and medical organizations and resources and a database to track resources – hence the PHP DSS project I’ve been working on.
A comprehensive bio-defense strategy includes notification, response, and recovery from any type of biological event including pandemic, terrorism, or naturally occurring diseases. Bio-defense objectives include rapid detection, rapid decision making, rapid treatment, and rapid recovery, and throughout this process, public health’s ability to provide timely and accurate information related to public health risk is absolutely critical to decision makers.
Public Health’s role is to conduct a risk assessment of the situation (epidemiological and clinical, syndromic surveillance, etc.) and provide timely and accurate information to the stakeholders to maintain a common operational picture and more important make good decisions. Real time accessibility to essential elements of critical public health information during a biological event is key for decision makers. Right now there is no process or mechanism in place to share this information.
Interesting question. What I find terribly frustrating is the inability for ‘internationals’ to gain access to the considerable resources of a wide spectrum of US DHS resources sites and listservs.
2. Medical and Health Professionals
I think that websites such as REMM that are vetted by experts and provide rapid access to what you need to know in order to manage a certain event are terrific.
It would be ideal if there were similar one-stop-shopping sites for other threats. They would need a point person or two to communicate with experts to update the latest information and delete outdated recommendations.
A database with Disaster related instruments:
Pre Disaster HVAs instruments.
Psychosocial Assessment tools
Post Disaster Response Assessment instruments.
A database with National/Sate/City protocols and intervention plans
A data repository with National/Sate/City disaster drill data
A centralized data repository with raw data re published or research in progress
I
think practical response advice what i would call on the CDC website technical
response. So, for example, if an
event takes place I don’t necessarily need all the background information at
that point i need the first steps or the checklist to go through of what to go
through. So some sort of single
source immediate action items advise, histories backgrounds etc for fast breaking
activities. And i also think it has to be a source that is recognized as the
accepted source because having ten different book from ten different companies
or authors calls into question as to which one you should go to.
Best
practices, best practices with summaries so if I wanted to know what the best
way to handle an event is, I could easily find the best practices but not have
to read the whole document to do that.
3. Other Professionals
3.1 Librarians
An
electronic point of care database like
- I would like to see more disaster planning and recovery information in Go Local. NLM could input national resources and local projects could input regional data.
- National guidelines for vendors of online medical information which facilitate access to information following a regional or national disaster.
APHA’s Communicable Disease Manual (currently offered on CD, but not online?). This is available for online purchase on STAT!Ref, but most individuals are not aware of that access and it is not easy to print sections. Access to a high quality color printer to actually print out the great stuff online with images is a barrier.
3.2
Academics/Researchers
Information on how various agencies can collaborate and funding opportunities to expand research projects such as the STATPack system.
There are no clear national criteria for a) training and allocation of health and other personnel at the local, regional and national level; and b) allocation of scarce resources among populations affected, and assurances for equity in access to services and resources including basic supplies.
There is minimal education and training of civilians, in particular those who may be most affected by virtue of their lack of resources. Quite simply, most Americans would not know what to do, where to seek help, or what their “rights” are in case of national emergency.
- Integrated sources of after action information. Reports are agency or discipline specific.
- Source of vetted Lessons Learned
- Cross disaster comparison of health and medical impacts
The main problem for me is finding useful, real data on real-life emergency situations. This data is used to construct and to validate computer simulations and is essential in order to ensure their validity.
In addition I am interested in the coordination activities between different organizations during an emergency incident. Unfortunately there is very little information or real data on this aspect.
An all-hazard core Emergency Operations Plan (EOP) template for public health is missing. This is a key document that is currently not available for use in assisting public health agencies at the state and local level when developing their preparedness & response plans. The current focus is on hazard specific scenarios and ‘task lists’. These are not adaptable to a changing situation or at managing the unexpected, making them of limited use. ICS/NIMS based strategic and tactical guidance for public health emergency response is critically needed.
It
is most important to recognize that very little of the literature and
information is poorly structured making access to details very difficult. This
lack of structure is the primary problem with attempts to build the science of
Disaster Health. Most of the literature uses qualitative indicators and are
anecdotal and hence, are difficult to index. Many of the reports are authored
by non-governmental organizations and are not readily accessible for reference.
There are standardized forms for reporting assessments or for identification of
critical points of success or failure in the processes used. There are no
standardized texts and no recorded standards for practice. Terms and their uses
have not been standardized creating great confusion in attempting to organize
the materials
4. International Professionals
Most important: Information on what is required on-site. In my own experience, a “random” delivery of generic sets of materials (such as the standard WHO “emergency health kits” ) is a waste of resources, as much of such material is never actually used.
on line courses, more free on line for preparedness of GP’s for disaster, medical security on mass events (football match, concerts …)
There has been one consistent unresolved issue with my work on various global information systems:
- G7 Information Society – Global Emergency Management Information Network Initiative (GEMINI)
- Global disaster Information Network (GDIN)
- International
Union of
And that has been how to access the “grey” (unpublished) literature. It often contains the most up-to date and most relevant content. However, posting often involves considerable effort for provider organizations and may also contravene organizational mandates, policies, and security. This is often the content that one can access through trusted networks.
Besides the information sources, as mentioned above, a good personal network with various actors (both national and international) is very important,
In crucial decisions, personal contacts are made, towards for example doctors (most of them specialists of different kind) and al the services of the Belgian Gvt and contacts abroad, environmental specialists, IT specialists…
Also the Scientific
To create this network common education and trainings are the most important source.
On operational level, it is most required to have access to al means of communication (telephone, internet) (mobile, satphones)
There is a general lack of publicly available manuals and
online training programs for disaster management. Also needed are publicly
available algorithms for specific disasters. These can be easily accomplished
by introducing national organizations for disaster management, organizing
courses in disaster management and providing databases of materials as
described in previous answer. They could be supplemented with a moderated forum
for exchanging experiences.
3.b. Can you give one or two specific
examples of emergency situations or preparedness phases in which information
was needed but was difficult to obtain?
1. Practitioners
The
need that I know of for health services professionals to understand the needs
of the patient for broader help, for human services… what if they are being
discharged and they have no home to go to?
How does that person get a home?
When a paramedic is treating a person and the family needs disaster
human services, due to the same disaster that caused the injury, then the patient
and that family will do better if the paramedic knows what human services
referral to give.
What
I am frustrated about is that the public health sector does not look outward
and say, for instance, “if i am going to call a quarantine, how will I get the
cooperation of people, when they have to go to work, to pay their rent. I don’t hear any solutions to that
problem from the health sector. They look inward, they don’t look outward.
I
am looking for information for people who have health related problems that they think are 911
related, but they are outside the criteria of the organizations now. If you have needs outside my area of
expertise i don’t know where to send you.
Nobody will talk to me about how to get help to pay rent because you
can’t work.
We
are trying very hard to make it common practice that every disaster large and
small produces a complete and accurate guide as to where you, in this disaster,
can get help and information you need.
For example, how much bleach to i put in to prevent mold? How do i get help or information.. Eg, to call somebody
who will put pressure get money
from my own insurance company?... Anyway:
A needs based, disaster victim oriented, comprehensive, up to date, accurate assistance guide
I
am very concerned that emergency rooms will
have people who will come and say, “where can i sleep tonight,” they will not know. The health sector does not seem to see
that it should have this concern with the human services reality. This might
work against them, you are going to have people sleeping in the emergency room,
and this gets in the way of the job they have to do.
I
go back to 1999 with hurricane Floyd. Hurricane Floyd flooded several
communities Manville, Bound Brook and when it did that it overwhelmed sewerage
treatment plants, swept drums off docking areas for factories so what you had
was this toxic brew and first responders were going into that rescuing people
pulling people out of their houses.
These operations were will advanced when somebody thought; what were
they exposed to? So I would
like to see better medical preparedness on the front end of an event. The world trade center is a good
example. When I was up at ground zero I got up there, couldn’t get out of
I think there is an educational process that has to occur within the medical community, not necessarily among the licensed people like the medical doctors, but also those that are the structure the medical system rests on: the Rn, the lab technician, the radiology technican. People that will be handling the casualties on the front end, not the ones that will be doing the diagnosing and the treating.
1. When I've been deployed to Deep Field regions characterized by Destroyed Infrastructure
2. In the early phases of an event when one is totally dependent on media reports, the situation is so fluid that any information is either wrong, or out-of-date by the time you get it. Need to improve rapid assessment of needs (data for decision making, actionable threat awareness).
Prior to REMM, when one needed information on radiation management one had to go to about 8 sources- AFRRI, CDC, DOE, drug websites (for the specific drug) and others. Plus you never knew if it was up to date information. This was terrible and motivated us to develop a system. For Chem- I would have to go to WISER but then try to look into drug management separately. No time for that!!!
Responses to 15 national planning scenarios
ü TOPOFF-Very late information which appears to be softened and less than a frank discussion of what things went right and what went wrong.
ü Overall there is an overabundance of literature and a dire shortage of action plans and disaster preparedness measurements of cities, states, territories and the Federal Agencies. Typical slogan is “While there is much more to do, we have made significant progress.”
Difficult to keep up contact lists of hospitals and other HC orgs.
A confirmed biological event at any major transportation facility requires access to real time information in order to assess the public health risk and start the recovery process.
2. Medical and Health Professionals
For preparedness purposes, I think it would be a tremendous service if someone could pull together by topic all the various grants, services and research across agencies and departments (plus a POC) so that we could reduce duplication of efforts and instead leverage our investments in preparedness activities. For example, I work in mass fatality management and periodically stumble across someone else (often within my own Department such as AHRQ or HRSA that would be helpful to know about, but is hard to find). Eventually, these could also be broadened to include a side sampling of “best” or “solid” practices developed by state and locals that could be shared and adapted by others.
Post
the July 18th NY/Lexington SteamPipe explosion NYU and
One
comes immediately to mind when we were when the Russian spy was poisoned with
polonium something like that everybody was told that there was the possibility
that others on the airplane could have been exposed. Well there was a person from
If
we had a radiological dispersion device I do not think there is common
consensus on what the reaction should be to that device. And consequently i think that what we do
would be very different than what someone else would do. Because what CDC would say would be
determine what the isotope is, treat this isotope with this treat that isotope
with that they would not say quarantine the area for a certain time, there are
not the general activities that I could say alright from the department of
health, working with DEP, fro a medical perspective I am recommending the
following. We don’t have easy access to those issues.
3. Other Professionals
3.1
Librarians
Emergency Living Shelters after Katrina. Information for volunteer medical personnel was an afterthought.
- Following
evacuation of
- Satellite communication or links to NLM databases and resources following the 2004 tsunami. Needed access from the field, meaning no available electricity and/or phone service.
For the RNC planning, we wanted to read candid versions of internal reports for RNC-like events. Most of the publicly-available materials were not as specific as we might have wanted. Also the indexing for heat emergencies in MeSH was confusing and not cross-referenced.
3.2
Academics/Researchers
- The
2001 Anthrax attack on
- 2005 Hurricane Katrina. Medication needs of evacuees and victims was not estimated, or reported, causing a crisis that could have been averted.
Katrina: significant documentation on this.
I work with a team of cognitive ergonomists who conduct field studies of ‘close to reality’ simulations (e.g. they participate in emergency response simulations organized by fire-fighters and rescue personnel). Often it is difficult to ensure that the information obtained is complete and consistent.
One of the biggest challenges when gathering information and alleviating uncertainty in a public health incident is knowing what information is obtainable within the amount of time available and what is not.
The following should always be obtainable:
- Baseline epi data on the natural and seasonal occurrence
of disease in any given area (i.e. naturally occurring levels of tularemia in
the
- Epi data on the number of cases that occurred during previous years, at different times of the year
- Sensitivity and specificity of sensors and surveillance systems; diagnostic tests etc… When issuing notifications and disseminating information to the medical community it is important to specify the type of diagnostic tests that were conducted to obtain results and the type of surveillance system used to detect a public health anomaly (i.e. when issuing a notification on sensors testing positive for anthrax in a Pentagon mailroom, if public health officials are told what type of tests were done (RT-PCR) then they can obtain details on the testing type and place the information into a better decision-making context).
- Clinical protocols (basic protocols should be available to hospitals and primary care physicians; additional guidance can be provided once more information is obtained or the incident evolves)
What is not available:
Detailed after action reports put out by state and local public health agencies describing the management actions taken to respond to an incident, including the resources used and what actions were especially effective and which ones were not.
Lessons learned tend to be ‘lessons re-experienced’ in public health.
A
major effort is underway to document the health aspects of the earthquake and
tsunami that ravaged southeast Asia in December 2004. Access to the information
has been extraordinarily difficult and much of the information already has
perished.
4. International Professionals
Almost all of them. The problem is getting the right information to the right people in a timely fashion. We need to ensure that information is more widely available in advance of any response, because when the response is in full swing, generally there is not the time to do any research.
This
is the case in almost all initial response operations. It is important to keep in
mind, that during the acute phase of any emergency or disaster response there
is one absolute priority: Use what is available to save lives. A medical practitioner could often benefit
from specialized information, obtainable on the web or through telemedicine
applications, but while he or she collects such information some patients might
die, which could be saved with the knowledge and equipment at hand (and yes,
this might be the practitioners bare hands . . .). This was also the conclusions of a symposium on
telemedicine I attended in
preparedness of GP’s for disaster, medical security on mass gatherings (football match, concerts …)
This survey is going over similar ground to that covered by both GEMINI and GDIN. Just for the heck of it, I’ll attach business cases for GDIN and GFIS (part of the “grey literature” mentioned previously).
· There is the classic infectious disease story used by Denning to “sell” knowledge management to the World Bank
· There is the request for up-to-date satellite maps of current lava flows in a remote region, that only has a fax machine to receive it.
·
There is the recent SARS outbreak in
I found it difficult to communicate amongst experts when the bird flu threat was raised in 2005. See this URL: http://www.ontologystream.com/beads/healthInformatics/home.htm
Just as it is important to be able to obtain information,
these must be relevant. This emphasizes the need for national trauma
organizations, and peer-reviewed materials that do not necessarily have to be
present in a journal form (peer-reviewed web sites may do fine e.g.)
4. Organizing Information, Knowledge or
Wisdom
4.a. What sort of methods or methodologies
(e.g. specific search engines, trusted sites, organizations, other peer
recommendations, email lists, filters, indexes, etc) do you use now to find
useful material and/or to avoid information overload?
1. Practitioners
I subscribe to about a dozen list servers and about a dozen web bulletins/periodicals. From those I copy useful resources to add to my personal document.
DHS and HHS list serves
mailing lists posted at: http://www.preventionweb.net/
One of the dangers I see is establishing sources of good, credible, reliable information. And what I think, again one of the dangers is anyone can get on the web and be an expert. By cherry picking information from different web sites and then blogging this stuff. I tend to stick with just a few web sites. Because I can, I’m pretty sure, I would hope DHS vets what comes into it. And they certainly put all there, particularly the exercises and studies they do they certainly post and I know they go through a fairly rigid screening or process when they are putting up studies in terms of standards. Sum it up there is so much information out there but I’m not sure how much that is subjected to academic rigor.
I am currently unable to avoid information overload. I simply do not have the time to actively search the internet, read let alone quickly scan specific websites, journals, books. Unfortunate, but true. Usually the only electronic sources of information I look at other than email are material that is "pushed to me" -- for example, information feeds (RSS) from Alertnet, ReliefWeb, etc. and Google. Click on following:
So....in the area of timely access to information (let alone "knowledge or wisdom"), little has really changed over the course of my career (many of my colleagues and dear friend would disagree with me). The best information available is still obtained by telephone or meetings (i.e., talking directly with those in the humanitarian community whose judgment I trust.
The sources of data you mention above are useful. But you have to know the primary sources of such information. That’s why I feel it is so important to talk with people “on the ground” in order to confirm such reports (particularly those that come from the media -- which is wrong about 75% of the time).
If I were to have access to the type of resources, services, or types of information that you describe above, I would want to be assured that there was some degree of "Quality Control" and "Attribution". Documents or reports from recognized organizations stating clearly the date and source of every document and facilities to validate the information, allowing users to assign their credibility. Hopefully, there will be peer pressures resulting from the use of this information by respected individuals and organizations in the emergency health relief community. The need to provide accurate, useful information in order to maintain professional reputations and where one can only expect other people to provide timely material if you do so. A critical mass of participation and data is needed before such dynamics can take hold.
I use Google and Pubmed. My filter is changing words in the search.
All of the above (listed in the question)
I find the on-line publication “Big Medicine” is an
excellent source of straightforward unvarnished information. There in fact is a significant overload
of information with insufficient concrete actions. This is especially true of
DHS and
I have a pretty nuanced folder structure that I don’t think many colleagues have. Lookout was a very good search engine for folders on hard drive and network folders and Outlook. MS bought it and it’s now Windows Desktop Search. I depend on it to find info where I can’t remember how I filed it.
For most tried and true information on chemical emergencies, I refer to the InfoMatrix as described above. I have also used “Bookmarks” in many categories within an Internet browser, including publicly accessible lists of bookmarks such as del.i.cious, etc. to back up these choices in case I am in the field and cannot access the bookmarks from my desktop computer.
For delivering new and timely topical information, I use Google Alerts news filters. For example, I currently run daily scans of Internet news and blog sites using two different filters to stay informed about advances in online education in homeland security and emergency management. (In fact, I post the more interesting or informational links on my personal blog at http://janusonline.blogspot.com). As this blog matures, I intend to use it for future students as a way to monitor progress in learning but as a way to deliver topical and/or timely links to information.
The ICTW employs a secure web site as part of the EpiX Epidemic Information Exchange network, maintained by the CDC at http://www.cdc.gov/epix/. Members can access all posted documents and months and months of archived materials, organized via topical folders chronologically, once they apply for and install a digital certificate on their desktop computer.
In essence, I try and rely on specific streams of information that get delivered to me in addition to a network of Internet sites that have been arranged logically somehow in advance.
Department of Homeland Security Digital Library
Big Medicine has established a global network of ‘original source’ information. I’ve always found that true situational awareness is less about trawling for tons of information and more about knowing what you need at a certain moment in time.
2. Medical and Health Professionals
I rely heavily on trusted sites and peer recommendations. Another valuable source of information for me is attending conferences with SMEs – I’m not sure how you’d adapt that to this project, though. In general, I find that networking with SMEs and smart local, state and Feds is the best way to learn about things.
RefWorks is currently utilized to organize publications, and an access DB to address other sources and materials being used in separate projects related to disaster preparedness, and recovery. Also, in collaboration with the NYU School of Medicine Library we are currently planning on developing a data and publication repository to ease access and collaborative involvement of different units, entities and universities.
Other search engines and databases utilized include: OVID, MEDLINE, PsycINFO, EMBASE, Health & Psychosocial Instruments, Global Health, Lexus Nexus and CINHAL engines. Commonly Grey literature is accessed through Google, and Google Scholar.
I’m visual if I could go on web site and see a visual library with the book stacks and all those kinds of things which allow me to, geez this dates me, go to the catalogue pull out the card and click on the card and that takes me to the book and then I open up the index of the book and then I click on the topic that gives me an easy way to get where I’m going. I need something that is so intuitive that I don’t have to learn it the first time I’m on there and it can’t be complicated but it has to the ability to get me down to the complicated data. It’s just so much information and its everybody has something nobody has it all tied together.
What I’ve been trying to develop and if it were somewhere it would be great algorithms that are line and box diagrams where if I enter somewhere with a particular event I can walk myself through it and get to some sort of conclusion or help. And again that’s a matter of being able to do decision making on the fly quickly without having to worry about the intricacies on a complicated site
- Up to date (website)
- emedicine (website)
- CDC
- WHO
3. Other Professionals
3.1 Librarians
PubMed,
- PubMed is my trusted source for medical information, along with MedlinePlus. Go Local has great potential, as well.
- I use the disaster planning blog from UVA for the most recent discussions and information.
This is different for keeping up in general, versus dealing with something in the heat of the moment. In general, I have update searches in PubMed/My NCBI and receive the email updates of some key organizations. In an event, I use pre-existing filters such as what journals I have access to, or limiting web searches to .gov or particular organizations to find information that my audience will find reliable.
3.2
Academics/Researchers
- Google is still the easiest way of locating information
- Web sites listed above
- Informal network of individuals
- Peers in the public health field;
- American Public Health Association;
- Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention. (2002). Local public health preparedness and response capacity inventory.
Retrieved
- National
Association of County and City Health Officials & Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention. (2006). Project
public health ready. Retrieved
- The
- The main problem is a lack of information and data in the area of modeling and simulating, rather than a case of information overload.
- Receipt of emails which give calls for relevant conferences or journals is useful in finding material.
mailing lists posted at: http://www.preventionweb.net/
- Promed
- Google (information overload can only be avoided by browsing links that belong to a reputable media, scientific or academic organization)
- http://www.phpreparedness.info/index.php
is the link to ‘Resource Guide for Public Health Preparedness’, a very
useful database search site for related documents.
- USDA alerts for food borne outbreaks and recalls.
As
noted above, there currently is no standard methods for organizing the information.
The WADEM is in the final stages of recommending a structure for the reporting
of information (Health Disaster Management: Guidelines for Evaluation and
Research in the Utstein Style, Volume 1 has been published and suggests a
Conceptual Framework, Prehospital Disast
Med 2003,17, Supplement 1) and Volumes 2 (Structural Framework) and 3
(Research Framework) are in the final stages of edits and should be available
this spring (2008). The Structural Framework attempts to standardize the
information into longitudinal structure and a transactional framework. Perhaps,
current information should be forced into this structure to make it more
accessible. A consensus conference on terminology will be convened by the WADEM
and WHO-HAC mid-2008. The NLM is welcome to join in these efforts. The Sphere Project (www.sphereproject.org) is a good
example at first and second shots at defining standards and best practices.
4. International Professionals
ReliefWeb is the key website for the entire humanitarian community, since it aggregates a large amount of content from a variety of sources (UN, NGO, Red Cross, government, academic). Its weaknesses are that is only makes available public information that organisations choose to submit, and it is still not structured in a way that makes navigation easy.
The sites that I mentioned above I subscribe to (either physically or by RSS) and then use their publications as a jumping-off point for further research. I subscribe to a couple of mailing lists and run a couple more, but there is very little activity out there – most of what is, takes place in the context of specific sector groups (watsan, health, emergency shelter, etc) and is too specialized to be useful for me. (In particular, I think a number of the UN Cluster groups have been working online in the last two years.)
This must be part of early warning: An organization or institution providing emergency response needs to collect information about a specific threat as early as possible and make it available in consolidated (short !) format to the decision makers (emergency managers) implementing the operational response.
PubMed, Google
Trusted sites, see above and known (inter)national contacts, together with UN colleagues world wide.
I avoid Google for information needs. I believe only in Ontologies for biomedical information and that tool among peers.
Most reliable sources of information is Medline (Pubmed). However, introduction of a international organization for disaster management with official web site and national chapters with their own web sites could provide needed information specific for a given region.
4.b. Are there ways or methods you would like
to see material in this area organized, indexed, clustered, processed, and/or
filtered that would make it easier for you or others to recognize that
something new might be of use to you or others in this area? Or, what would you like to see done to
cut down the time to find useful new material?
1. Practitioners
Unfortunately I have found that it takes somebody knowledgeable (me) to go through all the various resources and pull out what is useful. I also am a generalist in terms of interest in all things medical/public health, with a strong interest in everything else available in the homeland security field. Many, many, many organizations are trying to be the “be all and end all” of an information source and none are really succeeding at this point.
Using the SNS list serve as an example, there are so many submissions that it is tempting to read none. Somehow they need to be categorized, and it needs to be possible to unsubscribe to portions of a list serve or to filter in what you would like to receive.
Yes, but once my area of interest has a richer volume of scholarship…unlike public health/medicine, the field of humanitarian information management is still very sparse and the literature is comparatively very weak!
Different pieces of information exist at different levels of the emergency relief "information pipeline", but not in a form which is easily accessible or immediately made available to emergency personnel. We need some means to consolidate, filter, organize and redistribute such information and other existing sources of data to the right people, at the right time, in the right format, etc.
This will be difficult to achieve on a large-scale. Would require a very knowledgeable individual to do the organizing, indexing, clustering, processing, and/or filtering. Basically, a "documentalist" who will retrieve only the relevant information on behalf of the users. Will also need an expert such as an epidemiologist to consolidate data from a variety of sources, formats etc... and most importantly to synthesise information.
Finally, we need to have some form of "Feedback Monitoring" - A constant reassessment of the methods and effectiveness of those methods to determine if they are achieving its objectives - questionnaire, listservs etc..
Again, I am biased, but REMM is what I wanted- an algorithm based response that is useful as a management tool but has all the detail I need otherwise.
Need web portal for each of the 15 national planning scenarios (link all relevant information by each scenario)
Yes. Universities, Institutes and the Federal Government need to provide consulting services (often referred to as technical assistance) to Grant Awardees and other governmental and Private Sector Healthcare entities. We need less guidance and much more hands on assistance.
I like how sharepoint will notify you if something has been added. See attached sharepoint site design I implemented. Hasn’t been used much yet by planners in my counties, but I believe it will be used as more needed info is available on it.
Continuing use of methods by which individuals can get specific streams of content they desire delivered to them is very important. Combining meta-search engines, news filters, blog filters and RSS or XML feeds into e-mail packages or as text messages delivered to personal devices (like iPods, etc.) is the wave of the future.
I am not sure how the material would be organized to make it easier to use. An idea would be to categorize by functional areas-Bio-terrorism, pandemic, flu, etc.
There are several search engine applications that are of interest to me, i.e., aftervote
2. Medical and Health Professionals
Again, I really like the REMM format. However, with more resources, this could probably be mined even more to include the “just-in-time” features as well as a really well-indexed reference list or something along that line. I also find that password accessed special interest groups such as are found on the Lessons Learned Information Service are a great way to collaborate and learn.
Possibly by year, author, keywords, relevance to the topic, and also MESH terminology where available. A search engine similar to OVID but specifically for disaster related topics could be helpful.
Applicable federal documents as we go through the new National Response Framework, the National Response Plan the TCL’s all those kind of things. They are huge huge documents that nobody in their right mind has the ability to read. And index that says here are all the federal documents but divided in a certain way and again walking you through so that it starts with the strategy and goes down to the universal task lists. Something that makes that easy, an index that makes that easy. So that’s the federal plans. Best practices, best practices with summaries so if I wanted to know what the best way to handle an event is I could easily find the best practices but not have to read the whole document to do that. And then standard references so that if I needed to know what a chemical was I could just easily get to that chemical easier than going somewhere else.
3. Other Professionals
3.1 Librarians
I would like to see a list of texts a typical medical library should have on hand and be ready to deploy in an emergency. I would like to come up with this list and write about it in the medical library literature, but I have lacked time to get this project started.
I think the NLM could have a single page with links to disaster information for medical personnel. It wouldn’t have to include disaster planning information, which is all I ever seem to find when I search. When you are in an emergency, you just want content, not planning guidelines. How to treat, what to do now, etc. There seems to be very little information around that gives concrete directions on what to do and in what order. It all seems to focus on having materials ready. But then what do you do? This knowledge may be ingrained in medical personnel, but it is not in librarians. We are taught to worry about our collections and prevent damage to them. But what are we taught about helping people on site? Nothing. What do we know about the emergency information needs of medical responders? Very little, I’m afraid, which is why I want to ask them.
NLM could either incorporate information into the UVA blog, or create a blog of your own. You have two types of clients needing information, librarians and health professionals, who overlap, but might need two different blogs and/or websites with this type of information.
I would like a way to know if free full-text is available from looking at Google results. This indicator would save us the time of following the link. The IP-based solutions won’t always work for public health workers as during investigations, they are often in other institutions with their own IP-based resources that then become available. More search engines used by preparedness websites should highlight words/phrases in context.
3.2
Academics/Researchers
- A website that synthesizes practical information and categorizes it by type of emergency, level, and intended audience—must also be useful for and intelligible by the general public
- Dissemination of simple, straightforward information through communication channels accessible to all (not just the Internet) and linguistically and culturally appropriate; these can include for example: workplaces, health care providers, churches, schools, grocery stores, libraries, shopping centers
- It would be useful to have more mailing lists, or a central website concerned with modeling and simulating emergency response.
Yes, but once my area of interest has a richer volume of scholarship…unlike public health/medicine, the field of humanitarian information management is still very sparse and the literature is comparatively very weak!
Organize information (case studies; plans/protocols; guidelines) by country; by state; by hazard; by responding public health agency (local, state, federal); by response outcomes.
Emergency Operations Plans for all public health agencies should be made available to the public health sector (bearing in mind that some people perceive this to be a security issue).
Nothing absolutely outstanding. Very little emergency management material has been adapted specifically to public health.
Some state or local procedures and protocols are more effective than others (NYC; FL DOH)
NIMS/ICS online training for public health is still very superficial with little of the necessary management & tactical training.
My
thoughts are described above. Please see PDM, 2005;20(6):355-365; the 1st
part of this article incorporates the framework. The summary of the health
effects of the earthquake and tsunami book is being structured using the
longitudinal and transactional frameworks and will be published summer 2008.
Also, I believe a literature clearing house should be organized.
4. International Professionals
I would like to see more community-based approaches to material, particularly using social tagging to create a more grounded taxonomy – the one we currently have is heavily predefined by the Cluster system. An aggregator of academic publications that might be useful in disaster response, from a range of journals in different topic areas, would be very useful in helping the humanitarian community to access this expertise – at the moment, it’s just too difficult and costly for us to stay up on current research.
Be prepared (see above). Responders need a “briefing kit”, which responders can read through even last minute (e.g. on their flight to a disaster location, followed by continuous updates on development and on background compiled by one dedicated source (e.g. the entity responsible for the specific field of response).
You may wish to consider Google’s approach and/or folksonomies or tagging. There’s a couple of really fascinating videos on YouTube that talk about Web 2.0 and organizing information. One on the Information Revolution and the other on Web 2.0; both are by Michael Wesch. If you haven’t seen them, you should. Unfortunately, our IT security people have deemed both YouTube and Facebook to have no valid business purposes, so I can’t simply send you the URL.
a) Need for validated, trusted info, on demand during emergency, (log in website – e-mail) without extra’s or overload fieldwork.
b) more general site for during non emergency, background, training purpose, information tool, index per disease, region, emergency? But also equipment, basics, specialties, common use, int’l standards (for treatment and equipment) and contact data base for exchange views, experiences,…
Google is an example of a bad choice for searching information on the web. All the distraction caused by the haphazard arrangement of information and the thousands of advertisements is a cause of information overload.
Detailed
and proper use of MESH terms that may be applied to all sources of information,
regardless of the source.
5. Current outstanding examples
5.a. Are there any other specific medical,
health care, public health disaster plans or training materials or web based resources
that you consider outstanding examples of such material? Try to give enough information to locate
the materials and/or some example websites having such material.
1. Practitioners
LLIS and the CDC web site are probably the top on my list. But it depends on what someone is looking for in particular.
Actually, King County Washington has some excellent material
So there is a lot being written on the medical side but you pick up some of these medical articles its so steeped in jargon and professional terminology that its over my head. So I think trying to embrace technology as a panacea and create these websites we still need to keep in mind how people learn. And web sites might be good for you and me because we have advanced degrees. But I go back to experiences, you know most of the fire departments in this state or a large percentage are volunteer. You know obviously in the big cities you have paid fire departments and maybe I’m thinking about Southern Burlington county some of these towns like Mount Holly, Mount Laurel they’ll have some, they’ll have a core of paid augmented by volunteer firemen but when that siren goes off they leave their jobs they might be working on the roads department of they might be working in Home Depot. I think its wishful thinking that you are going to mass educate with the internet I still think we need to go back and have instructional classes where you have the interaction of the people. I know they are doing that in the fire academies, the fire departments still do that when they have drill but I don’t want us to make this sudden rush to judgment that the internet and portals are going to answer our educational needs exclusively. And particularly as the information get very, very technical. We’ll get into things like radiological disbursement devices or go to back bio-terrorism or even agro terrorism. I
Internet 2.0. Wiki, Blog, Forums, Social Networking, shared work spaces like Groove, use of cell phones to reach isolated, deep field populations (everyone on planet earth has a cell phone). Voxiva has taken the lead in the area of "Phones for Health" initiative with the Global GSM Alliance:
Here are two of the best examples. With Voxiva, they are the future (all three CEOs are younger than 40!):
Below
(L) my friend Joel Selanikio of the DataDyne group and Paul Margie of the UN
Foundation discuss the creation of DataDyne and how they work with country
governments and use technology to improve health data systems. Below (Right) Dr. Joel Selanikio
described how his open source software is helping to improve healthcare in
poverty-stricken areas of
REMM- (www.remm.nlm.gov)
See REMM
I know of no outstanding examples of Internet courses which significantly advance disaster preparedness.
I
think the tools I helped develop through the ICTW and state of
2. Medical and Health Professionals
As noted, REMM and CDC crisis communications materials.
3. Other Professionals
3.1 Librarians
What disaster related content is in WHO blue box libraries?
There are a lot of duplicate materials that should be made available in customizable, translated versions to save re-work time and effort.
3.2
Academics/Researchers
Dr. Barbera and Dr. Mcintyre’s Training and competency development material produced for the Veterans Health Administration will be on the VA and ICDRM web sites very soon.
Not
perfect but better than most:
National Association of County and City Health Officials & Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention. (2006). Project
public health ready. Retrieved
The ISCRAM website is a useful resource and starting point. Also proceeding from conferences or workshops dealing with emergency response.
See
above. Currently, there are about 50 training courses being offered worldwide.
The material varies substantially as best-practices and competencies have not
been defined. Several initiatives are underway to define competencies and
best-practices in this truly multidisciplinary field. One of the major
contributions towards this end is the extensive bibliography being developed
for the Tsunami summary noted above. Currently, there are almost 500 references
catalogued.
4. International Professionals
Because courses for disaster medicine are very expensive, more free on line education are needed for some countries.
Non health: Virtual osocc (see above) as validated – trusted info
GDACS (this one gives alerts), but perhaps similar mechanism with practical – local – regional health info, diseases, treatments, protection / vaccination required for the team,
In country health capacities, equipment available, what to bring in, and local methods and standard of treatment
WIKIPEDIA has a better layout and I prefer it nowadays to all other search engines.
5.b. What material not currently available on
the Web would you like to see there?
1. Practitioners
Vital baseline health data (e.g., potential health risks in countries) and other focused background information in advance of disasters (e.g., large scale populations movements, forced migration) to minimize mortality and morbidity from preventable causes such as measles and diarrheal diseases. This will require the identification of potential risk areas around the world for disasters, vulnerable populations, mass population movements, and to target these countries for contingency planning and advance health information gathering. Such information must be closely correlated with data obtained from FEMA, USAID, the UN, WHO, NGOs and other organizations that track potential disaster-affected countries and populations.
Easy to find medical management for Chem terrorism
Certain journals are not subscribed to by NLM or NIH and it’s difficult to get articles.
I have long felt that there is good info the military has produced that is not classified, but not easy to find. See http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/awc-lesn.htm for an amazing set of management related info. More theoretical, framework type of information is harder to organize in easily accessible ways than technical info mentioned above. I continue to be amazed by the usefulness of Wikipedia to quickly survey and understand a new area.
I would like to see a better version of the MiTER tool I described above. A tool that quickly allows someone with little to no background in toxicology, air pollution, and exposure assessment to locate an appropriate exposure standard for air, water, soil, etc. This allows local health department and response agencies to more independently answer the “When is it safe to go back to my house?” question. It is not uncommon to call upon the experience of a state level employee, often hours and/or many miles away from the site of the emergency. Tools like Web WISER put the information needed to make the decisions (as well as tailored ways to deliver the content, dependent on one’s role in the emergency) in the hands of local responders and planners. If agencies like FEMA are going to tell localities that all emergencies start locally and that these affected localities need to expect to be self-reliant for up to 72 hours, then we all need to work harder on getting easy-to-use tools in their hands based on high-quality information sources… thus reducing “information overload” on that level by “controlling the pipeline” (i.e. restricting available information via easy-to-use free tools that use previously vetted and approved information).
2. Medical and Health Professionals
My own pet project is mass fatality management. I’d love to see a website that brings together the different Federal departments that “own a piece” of deaths (e.g., DOJ, Social Security, HHS) as well as professional associations, local medical examiner/coroners, public health officials, and other stakeholders. I think there would need to be a series of meetings first, though, to define the goals of the website, a system for determining what would be located there, etc.
3. Other Professionals
3.1 Librarians
- Local response efforts (list of shelters, first responders, etc.) in the event of a major or even minor disaster. This is where I see a major role for Go Local.
Also a mechanism to get questions answered in one place that then shares the info back to all for future FAQs – questions that we got about risk of smallpox vaccination site exposure to pets and whether pet’s water needed to be boiled in blackout are examples. Our agency’s action plan contained sections that would have been useful to others developing plans, but they could not be shared. . Knowledge of internal reports even if for limited audiences with audit controls. More full-text online journal articles are needed.
3.2
Academics/Researchers
I would like to know what journals are available to publish research on emergency response systems and information system solutions for emergency response systems. I have not spent much time searching for journals, so there may be resource I am not aware of. But it would be helpful.
See response to 3A and 4B
One thing that is important is the views of real rescue personnel on the problems encountered. Often it is easy to find the standard procedures that rescuers should follow, but people don’t really work this way. If you are building a simulator it is essential to know when and why people diverge from the prescribed way of working. Currently, I find this information from interviews with rescuers.
We currently are struggling with standardization and
placing more disorganized materials on the web will be of little value. The
question remains as to how we will organize the materials from hereon out.
4. International Professionals
Personally, I would go to either the US CDC or the Canadian equivalent. Alternatively, I am more likely to enter the subject in a Google search and go to sites that seem to be trustworthy (e.g., John Hopkins, government sites, national institutes)
I have authored a chapter International Institute for Knowledge Management recently. If you use the acronym IIKM in Google it returns Indian Institute for Knowledge Management. The reality is the Institute as of now does not exist. It is in the process of getting established and so the insight is medical information must be entirely dis-associated from all other types of information.
Expert opinions, consensus statements, national and preferably international guidelines
6. Roles of Libraries, Librarians, and
Information Specialists
What are the current
or potential roles and/or services for Libraries, Librarians, and/or
Information Specialists in any phase of the Emergency Preparedness and Response
process? Are there other particular
services a local or specialized library should or could provide?
1. Practitioners
It is difficult because these people are not users of the information – they are not field folks or actual emergency management professionals. That makes it difficult/impossible for them to even understand some of the resources they are looking at.
Yes, creating and maintaining a taxonomy for my field would be a welcome contribution from the Library Sciences, so that as the body of knowledge and literature grows, it is usefully archived.
In a community disaster, every human service agency is a disaster agency. The pastor, the social worker, in a community that has had a disaster, everybody needs to know how to make a good referral. There is an emergency manager in every county. They get all the agencies together in one room after a disaster and that is their coordination. There is no institutionalized mechanism for the coordination of relief and recovery information after a disaster… Actionable and complete.. people have to know what exists so they don’t duplicate it. Coordination, mutual awareness of information that exists. This is certainly an area that libraries can help to support.
I think the core mission of Libraries, Librarians, and Information Specialists in the Emergency Preparedness and Response process should be to foster the transfer of knowledge among the different stakeholders, and policy makers in order to improve society's resilience to disasters and other emergencies. Stakeholders would include planners, implementers, managers and monitors of emergency preparedness and response activities, strategic decision-makers for the allocation of resources, deployment of relief efforts, implementation of preparedness or preventive measures and those deployed to the field. In achieving these goals, libraries can purse a host of activities depending on the phase of a disaster (preparedness, planning, response, recover, reconstruction), type of emergency and the various disciplines involved (for example, public health professionals have different information needs than clinicians, those who provide direct "hands on" care of patients). Of course, a major activity would be to serve as a local, State, regional, national and international clearinghouse of knowledge concerning all of these different aspects of disasters. Information specialists can also collect and share research and experience related to preparedness for, response to, recovery from, and mitigation of disasters, emphasizing the link between hazards mitigation and sustainability to both producers and users of research and knowledge on extreme events. This leads to another major mission of libraries which is to strengthen communication among researchers and the individuals, organizations, and agencies concerned with reducing damages caused by disasters.
Other particular services a local or specialized library could provide include: reference services, databases, education, outreach, interactive web-based instruction and presentations, etc.
Online libraries are key
These folks are and have been doing an exemplary job in their areas. We need How-To information and Hands-On guidance.
Helping individuals better understand how to find and organize information ‘developmental” information is very much needed. Some of the skills that academics take for granted would go a long way to help emergency professionals who don’t have the academic background of physicians or similarly trained personnel.
A crucial need it just to keep track of plans and supporting documentation mentioned above. See attached diagram of FL health and medical disaster plans (only at the state level).
I have found the Specialized Information collections at NLM to be of great use (and were at one point, if not still, listed in the InfoMatrix mentioned earlier). Maintenance and continued development of these collections (perhaps in response to events or trends, like climate change) is of paramount importance to the federal libraries. Continuing to work with specialists to identify high-quality information and developing easy-to-use methods of delivering specific content is also very important.
I’ve often thought it would be incredibly valuable to have librarians built into emergency plans. One of the projects I was involved in involved the use of an InfoRetriever technology that was tied to a specialized reference library system. I wonder if SirsiDynix [or one of the other players] could not create an application that would allow for access to their ‘rooms’ application – with a ‘tribal elder’ librarian in the loop to control for quality and essential wisdom.
2. Medical and Health Professionals
I
learned from the NLM folks that some hospitals have medical librarians round
with them, who can quickly provide an annotated bibliography of the most
important/germane articles. I have
frequently asked our OS NLM librarian for assistance in searching topics I’m
not familiar with. I can see where
there could be a great collaboration of librarians and SMEs to produce
something like the
Currently our NYU School of Medicine Library/Librarians support:
- Research in the disaster preparedness/management/recovery field throughout our projects.
- Data repository development, and publication sorting and classifying.
- Thematic analysis at different levels through the projects.
I would be interested in, and I don’t have an ultimate answer, but I would be interested in having the ability to go to a librarian and say I’m interested in the latest pan flu information that has come from the feds and not have to do everything myself and be able for them to give me that information.
I’m apprehensive about the pushing of information because we get so much pushed at us that it might be overload so if there is a role that the individual had and it was pushing it would have to be very controlled otherwise it will get lost in something. Now whether or not you go to an Amazon.com model and you have here’s the top ones you should look at these days or something like that it would have to be a resource that was not taxing to the user. And again it’s a time, people, amount of information problem and balancing all of those against the information that’s really going out.
3. Other Professionals
3.1 Librarians
Onsite and remote reference service, emergency literature searching, collection and distribution of information materials
- I
think librarians need to be more involved in disaster/business
continuation plans for their larger institutions. I have become very
active in campus-wide planning at the
- Librarians need to take NIMS ICS training to the 300 level at least (the numbering of the classes does not make sense—the order to take ICS classes is 700, 100, 200, 800 and then 300. There are many classes in between, but these are the basic). This training will help librarians respond to a disaster and will also be required for future FEMA funding. Most of these classes are made available for free online. I recently completed ICS 702 in two hours from home.
- Librarians can also get involved in their local Community Emergency Response Teams. I am an active volunteer for the Brazoria County (TX) team, which is the county where I reside. By volunteering, I learn a lot which benefits the library, I make a difference in my community, and I also might actually have something constructive to do in the event, such as Pandemic Influenza, that I am not allowed to work in the library, due to quarantines.
- Medical librarians should apply for Governmental Emergency Telecommunications Service Cards (http://gets.ncs.gov/). It took us five months to be approved, but we finally got our cards in October 2007. We used the NLM initiatives as part of our justification for cards, as well as our experiences following Hurricane Katrina.
Literature searches for planning support. Copies of articles.
In EOC, looking up responses to questions raised.
Participation in call centers taking questions from public – helping shape responses into understandable FAQs and making sure people can find them
3.2
Academics/Researchers
GW Library has built (with our help) a very comprehensive disaster reference search capability
See 3A and 4B. Absolutely librarians and libraries should play a key role; could both distribute information and be a community focal point for educational programs for community members.
Yes, creating and maintaining a taxonomy for my field would be a welcome contribution from the Library Sciences, so that as the body of knowledge and literature grows, it is usefully archived.
They could be requested to assist in mining, aggregating and compiling information so that existing info can be easily analyzed by public health decision-makers and provide context for their decisions.
These
persons could be involved in attempts to organize the principal works that
currently exist in the literature and force some of the material into the
structure. Future reports must be structured.
4. International Professionals
I think it would be very useful to create an international network that allowed librarians and archivists in developed countries (where most of the resources are located) to share expertise with those in developing countries. It would also be useful to lobby for more publications to adopt Creative Commons licenses for works that deal with disaster preparedness and response, since it is hard to justify proprietary approaches to this area – a project such as this could be a powerful voice in that regard.
In terms of what local libraries could provide, I think the simple act of networking this information will help local actors to access information. Certainly there is the issue of protecting and recovering records, which is a critical issue in many disasters, and something which would have a large impact if we can develop best practices for general distribution.
They
should develop, update, and keep available concise material for use by
practitioners on shortest notice, see item 4 above.
To send information about new articles, sites, relevant courses about subject of interest
I don’t see all that much change needed. Only a rethinking of the business model that libraries have used for the past 2,500 years! I have recently given a presentation to the Eastern Canada Chapter of the Special Library Association on this very subject: http://www.slideshare.net/Al.Simard/the-knowledge-economywherefore-libraries/
The above is in PDF; I will attach a PowerPoint copy to a separate e-mail (4 mb). When you view the presentation, you will see why I believe that the initial questions in this survey are not the right questions to ask.
Also see: http://www.slideshare.net/sirexkat/what-is-library-20/
There are a number of other library-related presentations on Slide Share
New search tool for special cases, more exceptions, and background wise, non decisive or conclusive content most of the time, when operational there is a need to decisive, filtered information, no need to scientific comparing , discussions…
- Libraries
must be equipped with real-time Emergency Telemedicine Networks.
- Every
State in the
- If a situation in USA like the California fire occurs the data must be transmitted to every nodal center in America and an ontology must be created forthwith ( The cost of creating and maintaining an ontology is roughly 1/3rd of a database system)
- The ontology is then updated to reach the highest standards of quality and then archived and made available to the world community. Users could be WHO, NGO’s dedicated to Disaster Management.
- Information that is real-time can be relayed to Red Cross , Salvation Army, etc for paramedical support.
7. Extreme Events
If you had to
consider an “extreme” but possible event (e.g. a pandemic, another Katrina, or
a large earthquake) would this add additional information requirements relevant
to any of the other questions on this survey?
1. Practitioners
Emergency info management and flow is another topic and needed area. Once we know the specifics of an event, multiple agencies begin producing new guides and resources. My “Katrina list” was mostly new stuff which came out post-landfall. So we need a base of knowledge and then a system to add the latest info as it is created.
Only reliable update information
Yes indeed, particularly in "human generated" events: Chemical, blast, technological, transportation, radiological, nuclear emergencies etc. that would require very specialized information requirements. Just off the top of my head, additional information requirements relevant to any of the other questions on this survey would include baseline health indices, diseases, in-country capacity such as the following:
a. Health data such as:
-epidemic risks
-incidence and prevalence of communicable diseases and vaccination coverage
-nutritional status
-country health profiles and other public health information such as status of local health facilities and the availability of other material resources
b. Basic ethnographic data on populations at risk of adverse health consequences from disasters. This could include some medical anthropology data so that health programs and interventions could be made more culturally acceptable.
c.Database of in-country NGOs and UN agencies and their resources (this may include many development organizations, but many of these may also have emergency relief capabilities). Ideally, this would include list of key individuals and points of contact information but such information may change too often to be readily kept up to date.
d. Description of the country's disaster plan, if any. Specifically, this would include what ministries, etc. are responsible for preparing for and responding to emergencies.
e. Organization of health professional training in the country of origin (e.g., amount of training A1, A2, and A3 level nurses have in countries at risk of violent conflict such as Sierra Leone, how many years of university education and medical school a clinical officer in an earthquake-prone country such as Venezuela, and the type of post graduate training or mandatory rural service of physicians). Perhaps such background data about health professional education would help in recruiting refugee health workers early during the course of the emergency and assist in establishing training programs for refugee health workers which are compatible with the educational system at home.
f. Logistics: warehouse capacity, availability/price of gas/diesel, air/road access, telecommunications (e.g., availability of landline phones, mobile phone cells, electricity), etc. Again, this may not be feasible for an entire country, but may be possible to gather such information for selected areas such as border regions which are most likely to house refugees.
g. Local and regional laboratory capabilities for identification of causative organisms and antibiotic sensitivity testing, drug resistance (e.g., to chloroquine) and nearest reference labs for cholera, shigella, etc. If not available in-country, should note guidelines for transport.
h. In-country production capacity for and availability of drugs, jerry cans, cooking kits, etc.
i. In-country availability of food stocks
Need to have contact information for emergency resources (beside 911). Many agencies numbers are impossible to find or you get general numbers that are useless.
Yes.
Specific, more current information than may be in a plan, about health care system impacted or response resource available. Hence the PHP Decision Support System project I’ve been working on.
I
would think improbable extreme events would always add specialized information
needs across all time. Look how
low-probability events – like the
2. Medical and Health Professionals
It would highlight the importance of a REMM-site, but in these cases a very truncated presentation of key things to know in response, recovery and mitigation.
3. Other Professionals
3.1 Librarians
Depends on the event.
- I think
both Katrina and the tsunami offer the best examples of how to access
health-related and or disaster-related information in extreme conditions.
I think you should interview health professionals and first responders who
have the actual need. Dr. Scott Lillibridge (Scott.R.Lillibridge@uth.tmc.edu)
spoke at the NN/LM SCR RAC meeting a few years ago about his information
needs when in
What level of web traffic can the best, trusted sites handle? If they can’t handle the load, where do they redirect? If we lose Internet, where how to disseminate information? If schools are closed, librarians with families are not available to fulfill their roles, unless library plan incorporates school planning. Is there hazard pay for staying in an area deemed at risk?
3.2
Academics/Researchers
- Social vulnerability information
- Infrastructure information
- Scale and scope
- Breakdown of local and regional government and social infrastructure
The basic information described previously should be available irrespective of severity of event and should be widely disseminated in advance.
Extreme events could make it very difficult to access information electronically on-site. Information and documentation may need to be gathered elsewhere and sent in.
Only
if it is structured, The so-called lessons learned have not been learned, but
only recognized. Because of the extreme disorganization, the lessons are not
readily accessible and hence have not really been learned. The same errors are
repeated again and again. When and if the information becomes organized, the
lessons actually will be learned and the positives will be used in the
development of best-practices and the negatives analyzed so that their
antithesis hopefully will be incorporated into standards and best practices.
From these will evolve educational and training courses based on standards and
best practices.
4. International Professionals
Not really – most of the events that I have worked on would qualify as extreme in that sense!
No. In all situations it is vital to have
a)
real
time information on what is happening on-site,
b)
real
time information on what is (already or still) available on-site,
c)
background
information (e.g. on specific medical implications due to location, climate,
nature of the event )
Personal opinion – The potential consequences of a Katrina were well known in advance. It was understood by professionals that the existing dike system could not withstand a category 4 hurricane. The political and policy decision was to do nothing.
It all depends on how one defines extreme events. If they are of the “Black Swan” variety (e.g., Taleb), then, they are, by definition unpredictable and more or less unknowable apriori. They have not occurred before. Therefore, there is no literature to be made available. Further, what literature would one search when the possibilities are more or less infinite? This observation defines an end point. The question now becomes how far from then point must our systems be before they are manageable in a practical sense.
Magnitude of devastation and destruction cannot be predicted with mathematical precision and accuracy. Speed of response is dependent on an individuals’ survival quotient and possession of survival and combat skills.
8. Your critical topic areas
In terms of creating
an index (general ontology) out of a sample document database that can then be
used to automatically classify new information as it occurs, what would you
want included in such a database and what specific topic areas would you want
to see in the resulting index or ontology?
1. Practitioners
See my document and the categories which have evolved as being useful to me (Note: included in examples).
- Remote sensing
- Geographic Information Systems
- Global Position Systems
- Geospatial Analysis
- Cartography
- Geovisualization
- Humanitarian Knowledge Management
- Disaster Risk Reduction
Basically, the information above. Perhaps classified in terms of information useful before, during and after a disasters. That which is useful for education, clinical care, research, recovery, reconstruction etc. The bottom-line, any document database must satisfy the following criteria to be useful:
• Proactive provision of health information and data for useful for advance contingency planning
• Easily-accessible, "one-stop" health information source
• Reduction of morbidity and mortality from preventable health problems related to disasters
• Improved targeting in advance planning and stockpiling
• Cost-reduction in contingency planning
Threat agent
Organ system- toxicity
Medical countermeasure
Diagnostic tests
Management
See the SPHERE Project for a great system of information needed to manage disasters and refugee information in developing countries. CDC trying to adapt it to disaster planning materials in several states, FL included.
I like to use the risk assessment classic triplet to try and organize information like this:
1 – What can go wrong? (i.e. define Event X)
2 – What are the consequences if Event X occurs?
3 – What is the likelihood (probability) of Event X occurring?
As such, you can begin to align information that would be needed along this basic categories and define subcategories as needed. For example, “What can go wrong?” would include basic information behind the “science” (or known facts) of a particular event.
“What are the consequences..?” would include measured impacts or expected effects or outcomes, such as health effects of a chemical, outbreak potential following a flood, etc. “What is the likelihood…?” would include any knowledge of epidemiology of an outbreak, the areal extent of wetlands that can reduce the effects of flooding as well as expected effects of containment and/or mitigation techniques.
2. Medical and Health Professionals
Agents Diseases and Other Threats:
- BioTerrorism
- Chemical Emergencies
- Mass Casualties
- Natural Disasters
- Radiation Emergencies
- Recent Outbreaks and Other Incidents
Also see http://emergency.cdc.gov/agent/ the CDC categorization layout was ideal for our project publication/ repository purposes.
- General Concepts
- Basic physics of disasters
- Triage
- Pediatric considerations
- Infectious diseases
- Pharmaceuticals
- Critical Incident Stress
- Complex Humanitarian Emergencies
- Disaster Response Planning and Coordination
- Disaster planning
- Public health in disasters
- Urban Search and Rescue
- Federal
Disaster agencies and response (CDC, DMAT,
- State and local disaster agencies and response
- Communication and information technology Tools
- Managing disasters in austere environments (including Wilderness EMS)
- International level response, planning & coordination
- Incident Command System
- Disaster Drills
- Natural Disasters
- General information
- Infectious disease epidemics / pandemics
- General info
- Planning / response / coordination
- Local / state / federal level
- Industrial, Technologic and Transportation Disasters
- Radiation accidents
- Hazmat-related disasters
- Mass gatherings
- Maritime disasters
- Air crash disasters
- Fires and mass burn care
- Internal hospital-related disasters
- Conflict-Related Disasters
- Conventional terrorist bombings
- Nuclear detonations
- Intentional chemical disasters
- Biologic weapon agents – including vaccination information
- Tactical
- Mass Shooting
- Education, Training, and Research
- Education and training
- Research
- Personal accounts from deployments
- Disaster Medicine Resources / References
3. Other Professionals
3.1 Librarians
- Not sure I know how to answer this one. Whatever is created must be incorporated into MeSH, since that is the thesaurus we depend on.
Specific on causative agents (etiology), communication methods, strategies, response groups (Red Cross, fire, police, health departments, etc.), event duration, etc..
3.2
Academics/Researchers
Information Technology Related Topics (in the context of emergency response systems) such as
- Information Overload Research for User Interface Design
- Data Visualization
- Network Security Designs
- Telecommunication
Internet (Intranet) Networks for Public Health. In
- HIPAA considerations during health emergencies
- Issues that are unique to rural communities.
Decision making during extreme events. The relationship between public health and emergency management decisions and decision makers
· type and level of emergency level
· roles and responsibilities of key actors (general)—clearly delineated with hierarchical clarity
· types of resources and services required, where to access them, and who is responsible
o health (including for emergency services and maintenance of chronic care)
o social services
o food and other supplies
o housing
o access to financial support and personal finances
· legal rights and responsibilities of key actors, including the general public
Agent based simulation, modeling and computer simulation
- Remote sensing
- Geographic Information Systems
- Global Position Systems
- Geospatial Analysis
- Cartography
- Geovisualization
- Humanitarian Knowledge Management
- Disaster Risk Reduction
- Plans/protocols by locality;
- Plans/protocols by hazard;
- Clinical & epidemiological guidance by hazard;
- Public information guidance by hazard (public health has been notoriously awkward when issuing public information, leading to a whole different set of problems);
- Case studies searchable by hazard, country, state, response organization, outcome;
- Guidelines disseminated by public health organization at federal; state; local level;
- Disease reporting requirements by locality;
- Diagnostic testing information by agent/hazard;
Please
see references noted above. Drafts of documents can be provided on request.
4. International Professionals
It would be interesting to use indexing software to automatically index and develop such an ontology based on keyword frequency. I think this would be an interesting exercise in itself (showing areas of strength and weakness in both the database collection and the current literature) but it would also complement the implicit knowledge held by practitioners.
Medical security of mass events
Whatever ontology is created by librarians is unlikely to be used by contemporary practitioners. Authors won’t use it because they are forced to fit their work into categories that never quite fit. Searchers won’t use it because the term that they are using isn’t the same one that the author used. One only has to observe that of all the ontologies created by librarians to date, why are none of them used by any of the popular Web search engines???
Precision engineering is the key word that will describe the ontology.
9. International Considerations
The national Library
of Medicine has an important role in aiding other countries in the accumulation
and dissemination of medical information and knowledge.
a. What specific contributions in the above
disaster information areas might be important for NLM to provide
internationally?
1. Practitioners
The
language thing makes it hard. I
work exclusively with English resources and most of them are from the
Core public health plans (eg. necessary for evaluating flows of people, food, and between countries)
Normally, when a disaster strikes, we frantically call various international organizations such as WHO, UNICEF, IFRC, ICRC, OFDA, NGOs, and contacts in various other organizations to obtain decision support information. Fact is, we're lucky if we can do the former. There is no time available in the emergency response timetable. One stop shopping approach both enables and saves time.
If NLM can more or less provide such service, international disaster relief may become more effective because we would be able to achieve the following:
(a) - more targeted intervention instead of the present stereotypical cookbook approach
(b) - effective stockpiling
(c) - geographical pre-positioning
(d) - improved targeting of rapid health assessments
(e) - briefing or orientation packages for staff deployed to the field
(f) - knowledge of key players, roles and coverage for improved operational coordination
(g) - better strategic decision making by senior managers
(h) - provide an entry point for relevant expertise at NIH, CDC, HHS, FEMA and other organizations where necessary
By facilitating more efficient targeting of response, NLM will contribute to more efficient use of shrinking funds for international humanitarian assistance.
General knowledge is universal. We might want to include threat agents that are not prevalent in US but would impact other countries.
IAEA and WHO are helpful
The
greatest service the NLM could perform would be in the area of Operational
Consulting. As an
Continued development and delivery of timely and/or internationally topical specialized information collections.
2. Medical and Health Professionals
I think there would need to be special efforts to include information that is useful to developing countries that doesn’t rely on high tech solutions that we have in developed countries. A lot of care would also be needed to make it culturally appropriate. Last, but in many ways first, it would need to entail a dialogue with stakeholders to see what – if anything – they would like from such a resource.
Same kind of material but multilingual
3. Other Professionals
3.1 Librarians
Influence all health and law enforcement libraries to be open to govt. public health workers as needed. Negotiation with vendors to change purchasing models for articles and archiving plans/COOP for subscribers. Group of trained library professionals willing and able to serve [EIS or DMORT model]
3.2
Academics/Researchers
Collaboration at the international level with other ongoing emergency planning activities (e.g., WHO, World Bank, EU, regional and bilateral donors) and prospective planning with countries, taking into account financial and other resources.
I
worked on a project in
Public health tends to have distinct organizational cultures that vary by country, these need to be clarified when providing public health literature/material from each country. The US has a federal system that impacts the way public health receives its funding and takes actions during a response, a hierarchy that influences the way decisions are made and resources are allocated, though the underlying public health science remains the same as anywhere else.
But making as much quality (validated methods) public health information available as possible on a global scale would be an invaluable service. It may be that one country has devised a method for running rapid outbreak investigations that it more effective than other methods currently favored elsewhere.
By
their nature, disasters are international.
The evidence base should serve the global community. Countries may make modifications based
on their cultural and economic status.
Specific benchmarks must be defined that will enable the world community
to eventually reach the optimal state.
4. International Professionals
I think it would be very useful to create an international network that allowed librarians and archivists in developed countries (where most of the resources are located) to share expertise with those in developing countries. It would also be useful to lobby for more publications to adopt Creative Commons licenses for works that deal with disaster preparedness and response, since it is hard to justify proprietary approaches to this area – a project such as this could be a powerful voice in that regard.
In terms of what local libraries could provide, I think the simple act of networking this information will help local actors to access information. Certainly there is the issue of protecting and recovering records, which is a critical issue in many disasters, and something which would have a large impact if we can develop best practices for general distribution.
Brief
summaries of the health situation in countries at risk from natural or man-made
disasters;
Brief summaries of health implications of specific emergencies (floods, earthquakes, industrial accidents, conflicts) under the specific environmental (climatic, social, logistics) conditions to be expected in different countries/regions.
(Content for briefing kits as suggested in item 4 above)
- Has
anyone considered the language problem? Automatic translation is poor, at
best. Translation is still
essentially a human activity.
And that costs money.
Wikipedia gets around that only through contributions of passionate
and dedicated voluntary contributors.
It is a huge issue (and big barrier to communication) in
- What about culture? A readily understandable analogy or metaphor in one culture may well be meaningless in another. And even though documents may be translated, a perfectly innocent word in one culture may not be so in another culture.
- And then there is the global infrastructure necessary to enable other countries to have access. This is no small issue when many recipients are beyond the end of the pipeline and cannot access many of the wonderful graphics available on the web.
NLM has to project itself as an International Repository for Disaster Management and allow the United Nations to foster a program of affiliation with all Member States.
9.b. What contributions from other countries
could be made to NLM in the disaster information area? This could include important information
sources in other countries not traditionally used in the
1. Practitioners
See
above. That is a problem in
emergency management – even within states in the
Pandemic planning, local government methods of dealing with health emergencies
Discussed above under "Lessons Learned", particularly Question#7. Particularly information available only in-country such as baseline health data (e.g., potential health risks in countries) and other focused background information in advance of disasters.
Two
excellent international partners and sources of health information that might
be difficult to access in the
First had experience. We get that in rad/nuc
Best practices and “lessons learned” documents from the international community for emergency events would be a big boon to the entire global emergency management community.
2. Medical and Health Professionals
One of the great things developing countries could teach us is how to respond if all our high tech solutions (internet, advanced medical technology) fail such as if there were large blackouts or in events like a large earthquake, etc. We had a lecture from an old Army nurse one time and she explained that they always taught about ways to improvise should equipment not work, etc.
Multicultural and Multilingual resources
I
know that there’s a lot of people that look at
3. Other Professionals
3.1 Librarians
- Access to quality health information in the event of a disaster
- Work with other federal agencies, such as CDC, in disseminating information on global topics such as SARS & Pandemic Flu.
- Develop alternative ways to access the resources made available by NLM (similar to WISER)
- More promotion of the toxicological family of databases. I know first responders who still rely on small pocket cards. Education in what is available and how it is available from the point of need.
Assessment tools (Culturally and linguistically relevant). Directory of on-call personnel with training and expertise.
3.2
Academics/Researchers
Analysis
of data collected by UN (WHO, OCHA) on medical impacts of disasters, public
health issues etc. World Bank and
UN have studied this more than the
The
Nordic countries have excellent disaster relief plans, but are predicated on
strong health and social safety nets that we do not have in the
The
red plan and white plan standard rescue procedures used in
Public
health practices from
This could include important information sources in other
countries not traditionally used in the
4. International Professionals
There is a lot of material in other countries – local contingency plans, lessons learned, case studies, etc – but it is difficult to access as many of these documents are either not in digital form or are held locally. By providing an example of open document collection, NLM could work with other institutions in these countries to encourage and help them to share more widely, thus building recognition for their contributions. However this would have to be done through official institutions – either government or academic – which would bring its own bias away from community-based approaches.
National
emergency response organizations and institutions, including non-governmental
organizations, are often overlooked. Reports from such as well as international
sources can provide valuable inputs to resources in the sense of item a. above,
needed by practitioners.
Sounds to me like one needs to think in terms of global networking, not case-by-case additions. Librarians really do need to rethink their business model.
The SIPRI experience can be used to formulate a mechanism for data exchange with UN Member States.
12. NLM experience (if not mentioned in
prior answers)
Have you ever used
MEDLINE/PubMed or any other NLM system (e.g. WISER REMM, TOXNET) to find
information related to Emergency Preparedness or Management? If so characterize your experience and
reaction.
1. Practitioners
I know most of them exist but have not used them more than just looking once or twice.
All of them. They’re terrific. The gold standard. For example, click on the PubMed header:
I love medline. In the early 1980’s I was trained as a medline searcher (the old days when you needed a number and had to pay). WISER would benefit from treatment algorithms. I don’t know bio world well enough.
I have done extensive literature searching using PubMed/MEDLINE for over 8 years now, including special research into public health preparedness and hazardous substance response applications. It is an invaluable resource.
2. Medical and Health Professionals
As
part of the Large Scale Emergency Readiness (LaSER) Project at
I have for literature searches on articles I was working on
3. Other Professionals
3.1 Librarians
I looking in NLM’s book catalog for ideas on the types of books to recommend for a group that asked for a list of books to have in an emergency shelter, and I had a really hard time. In the end, I had better results from Amazon.
Yes, PubMed frequently. Need to have public health emergency similar to clinical emergency for NLM Document Delivery service.
3.2
Academics/Researchers
Yes; mediocre.
I use MEDLINE very often but predominantly to find scientific or clinical articles to supplement my work. There is very little information related to public health management or public health emergency management. My experience has been similar with PubMed.
This
is a very difficult task as the material is so scattered and unstructured.
Keywords generally are inadequate in the MESH index.
13. Anything we left out
Please add any other
information or comments that you think we should have asked for or any question
you think should be added to this response guide.
1. Practitioners
There is a lack of a smooth interface for the victims of a disaster in transferring from the health care process to the community service process. Often this occurs long after the immediate occurrence of the disaster and a meaningful hand over process needs to start when the person is still in the health care process.
There is no clear cut legislative or executive mandate on the obligations of government in reacting to a disaster. It is not clear what is the explicit goals of government actions or the mandates for action, whether it be local, state or federal when it comes to the details of what a person or community is entitled to. Said in a different way there is no current single ethical stance of what the responsibilities of government are at any level of government including the affected community.
There
is no place, no venue for the hosting the dialogue on what is from the relief
and recovery point of view, about what are the good things and bad things about
our present legislative environment?
Are FEMA’s programs just right, or more than the federal government
should do, or shortcomings? What
are the states’ roles?
This is an administration that is incredibly touchy about anything in the news. You can’t even be quoted in a house organ.
Probably the most important question. This should be answered or determined before any project that provides some "service" can start, let alone hope for success. We must know who comprises the following groups (my opinion is stated below each group):
1. Beneficiaries:
My opinion is that these are the actual or potential populations affected by disasters and other humanitarian emergencies, suffering from, or at risk of preventable mortality.
2. Information Suppliers:
Holders of baseline health and background data pertinent to emergency health prevention, preparedness or response in disasters and humanitarian emergencies.
3. Information Partners:
Subset of Information Suppliers who have signed a formal information-sharing agreement for a defined data set.
4. Information Users:
Planners, implementers, managers and monitors of emergency preparedness and response activities.
5. Target Audience:
Subset of Information Users: strategic decision-makers for the allocation of resources, deployment of relief efforts, implementation of preparedness or preventive measures and those deployed to the field.
6. Stakeholders:
Participants in the project who are in a position to advise on its course, content and methods.
7. Investors:
Contributors to this project of financial or human resources on a general or geographical basis.
This may sound rather cynical, but everybody will be asking: "That’s all well and good , but what’s in it for us?" "What's in it for you", I'd reply. I'm glad you asked me that question. At no cost, you and your organization will be getting:
1. 'Value-added information' - information which gains value and importance by consolidation, analysis, context, structure, maintenance and availability. This constitutes knowledge in the data-information-knowledge-wisdom ladder.
2. One-stop shopping - timesaving, consolidated information resources
3. Geographically-focused data - the easiest to use method for finding the information you are looking for
4. Tailored service - Information packages on request (e.g., a briefing pack for field staff). NLM benefits from providing this information because the chances are that others need similar packages.
5. ** Decision support - Fulfillment of the users objectives. They get structured, key and targeted information to help them make better and more timely decisions. Which in turn helps them reach beneficiaries more effectively with the right stuff, at the right time and targeted to the right (most vulnerable) people.
I think that ReliefWeb does the best job of doing this. But they provide very little information for the health and medical relief community. They tend to focus on transportation, logistics (tents, latrines), communications, fuel supply, food distribution.
It
would be wonderful if the NLM were to be asked to join
The same mini-serfdoms that exist across agencies that preclude effective interagency planning and response at the federal level are just as strong at the state level.
The overall preparedness community suffers from information hoarding and "information asymmetry" to borrow a concept from the recent book Freakonomics (Levitt and Dubner, 2006)
2. Medical and Health Professionals
Assuming
we're talking about organizing literature (written documents, and, perhaps,
videos) in relation to emergency preparedness, we'll need to define:
·
Scope of the
emergency for which we are preparing - anything that requires, or may require,
a public health (including clinical) response that decompensates, or may
decompensate, the local, region, or national public health/care system. All of
these terms will need to be defined, especially the scope of "public
health." Presumably, to be useful, it would have to encompass all aspects
necessary to prepare for and to respond to the envisioned emergency. That may
take us into areas that are not generally within the domain of NLM.
·
Coherent
conceptual models for emergency preparedness - eg, prepare, respond (to threat,
actual event, etc), asses aftermath, act to cope and improve (repeating the
cycle)
·
Scope of
literature/resources to be made available to implement whatever conceptual
model is adopted; how responses are to be collected, indexed, and made
available
·
Scope of
assessment of assembled resources, ie, what's worth considering, especially,
based on empirical evaluation of cost-effectiveness - no mean feat
·
Scope of
quality improvement efforts related to all of the above.
Emergency
preparedness encompasses 2 essential aspects: Natural disasters and Terrorism. With respect to the latter, there's a
potential "game theory" aspect: The more information is made
accessible to disaster planners and responders, the more it may become
available to terrorists, allowing them to thwart potentially preparations and
responses. That would argue for limiting access to information resources,
rather than making them generally available. Restricting access to such
resources may inhibit the ability to collect them from some (eg, foreign)
sources, if these sources are deemed to be "leaky."
There
are at least 3 dimensions for preparing and responding:
·
Widespreadness
of the threat or event
·
Seriousness
(including duration) of the threat or event
·
Thoroughness
(breadth and depth) of preparation and response for each point in the matrix
formed by the above 2 dimensions.
In
public health terms, the issue is how much, and to what extent, is the public
health system likely to be (or has it been) decompensated? There is, of course,
a related issue: What's the planned reserve capacity for each point in this
space (and how can it be maximized at any level of resources)? Compare an
explosion at an oil refinery in a well-resources metropolitan area with a
worldwide pandemic with a virulent organism that affect 10-15% of the
population at any one time over the period of a year. A key aspect of
preparation and response is likely to be information systems, not only in terms
of surveillance of threats, but also of capacity to respond, before, during, and
after an event, and how that capacity can be managed dynamically, including,
eg, transporting, safeguarding, and supporting first responders and health care
workers (however the latter are defined).
With
respect to literature, there are 2 general approaches:
·
Panning for
gold
·
Compacting
trash.
Panning
for gold essentially depends on using experts to identify the "good
stuff" (and indexing it according to a coherent conceptual model of what
it is necessary to know). This approach allows the easy identification of gaps
in knowledge that could be the focus of future research. The emphasis here is
on "facts" (or, using another metaphor, the relevant and valid
contents of vessels).
Compacting
trash essentially means collecting everything that appears to be relevant,
indexing it, and asking users to find what they need to know. This approach
epitomizes the current WWW. The emphasis here is on "sources"
(vessels whose contents might be relevant and valid for the purpose).
3.2
Academics/Researchers
Suggest addressing ethical issues related to distributive justice, etc. at the meeting.
END OF COMPILATION
Appendix D:
Details of International Websites
Important International and National Websites
Compiled by Hal Newman
Managing editor of Big Medicine
Regional
organizations launch Redhum, the new humanitarian website for Latin America and
the Caribbean [Last verified: Nov
9 07/
One of Redhum goals is to provide easy and organized access to quality and updated humanitarian information from the region that will allow for better preparation and response in the event of a disaster. The site will provide internationally the latest Situation reports on emergencies, calendar of activities (training and meeting), on-line contact lists of Who is doing What Where (3W), maps, and vacancies. Redhum, as a website and a network, also brings about best practices in terms of response capacity of the relief community through the timely and transparent dissemination of information on all humanitarian emergencies.
Redhum is an interagency initiative
based on agreements with the Secretariat for the Coordination Center for the
Prevention of Natural Disasters in Central America (CEPREDENAC) and the
Regional Disaster Information Center for Latin America and the Caribbean
(CRID); it is supported by the Regional Interagency Working Group for Risk,
Emergencies and Disasters (REDLAC) and works closely with national disaster
management authorities through SG-CEPREDENAC. Six Redhum information assistants
have been posted so far in
Inspired from other information
management initiatives such as Southern Africa http://www.sahims.net and
for Development and Cooperation (SDC), the Government of Kuwait, and OCHA.
Business
and Industry Council for Emergency Planning and Preparedness (BICEPP)
[Last verified: Sep 29 07/
British
Columbia Provincial Emergency Program [Last verified: Sep 29 07/
Canadian Disaster Database [Last verified: Sep 29 07/ Ottawa ON Canada]--The Canadian Disaster Database contains detailed disaster information on over 700 natural, technological and conflict events (excluding war) that have directly affected Canadians over the past century. The database helps citizens and government to better assess and manage risks. As well, it’s a valuable resource for researchers and students to see how disasters and our vulnerability to them have changed over time. http://www.psepc-sppcc.gc.ca/res/em/cdd/index-en.asp
City
of Los Angeles Emergency Preparedness Department
[Last verified: Sep 29 07/ Los Angeles CA USA]--The Emergency
Preparedness Department will provide citywide emergency management program
leadership, continuity, and direction to enable the City of Los Angeles and its
partners to respond to, recover from, and mitigate the impact of natural,
manmade, or technological disasters upon its people or property. http://www.lacity.org/epd/
Comisión Nacional de Prevención
de Riesgos y Atención de Emergencias (C.N.E.) [Last verified: Sep 29 07/ San Jose Costa
Rica]--La Comisión Nacional de Prevención de Riesgos y Atención de Emergencias
(C.N.E.), se esfuerza día con día, para coordinar los esfuerzos, tanto de las
comunidades como de las Instituciones de primera respuesta y de Gobierno, para
prevenir situaciones de riesgo para la población costarricense, así como las
atenciones de primer impacto causadas por algun tipo de desastre, ya sea
natural o antropogénico. www.cne.go.cr/
Coordinating
Centre for the Prevention of Natural Disasters in Central America
[Last verified: Sep 29 07/ Antigua Base de Howard
Emergency
Management Alberta [Last verified: Sep 29 07/
Manitoba
Emergency Measures Organization [Last
verified: Sep 29 07/
Montreal
Emergency Preparedness Centre [Last verified: Sep 29 07/ Montreal QC
Canada]--The mission of the Emergency Preparedness Centre (EPC) (formely the
Emergency Measures Office - EMO) is to prevent major disasters and ensure the
municipality is well-prepared for major emergencies. It is also responsible for
providing support to the overall coordination of responses during a major
emergency and the recovery period following it, while still respecting the
responsibilities allocated to the differents parties. http://services.ville.montreal.qc.ca/csc/an/accubmua.htm
National Center for Disaster Prevention [Coyoacán Mexico]--La responsabilidad principal del Centro Nacional de Prevención de Desastres (CENAPRED) consiste en apoyar al Sistema Nacional de Protección Civil (SINAPROC) en los requerimientos ténicos que su operación demanda. Realiza actividades de investigación, capacitación y difusión acerca de fenómenos naturales y antropogenicos que pueden originar situaciones de desastre, así como acciones para reducir y mitigar los efectos negativos de tales fenómenos, para coadyuvar a una mejor preparación de la población para enfrentarlos. www.cenapred.unam.mx/
National Search & Rescue Secretariat [Ottawa ON Canada]--The National Search and Rescue Secretariat (NSS) is an independent agency of government, reporting to the Lead Minister for Search and Rescue (the Minister of National Defence).The NSS was established in 1986 to support and promote the activities of the National SAR Program (NSP) as a means to achieve highly effective and economically responsible search and rescue programs throughout Canada. The NSS coordinates central activities for the federal element of search and rescue... https://www.nss.gc.ca/site/index_e.asp
New
Brunswick Emergency Measures Organization [
Newfoundland and Labrador Emergency Measures Organization [St John's NL Canada]--The Provincial Emergency Measures Program is responsible for the development and maintenance of effective provincial emergency preparedness, response and recovery measures with a view to mitigating the human suffering and loss of property caused by actual or imminent emergencies and disasters in Newfoundland and Labrador. http://www.mpa.gov.nl.ca/mpa/emo.html
Northwest
Territories Emergency Measures Organization [
Nova Scotia
Emergency Management [
Public
Safety and Emergency Preparedness Canada [
Regional
Disaster Information Center Latin America and the Caribbean [San
Jose Costa Rica]--CRID is an initiative sponsored by six organizations that
decided to join efforts to ensure the compilation and dissemination of
disaster-related information in Latin America and the Caribbean. Its mission is
to promote the development of a prevention culture in the Latin American and
Up-To-Date
AusAID Australian Agency for International
Development [Jan 13 06 Canberra ACT]--The
Australian Government's overseas aid program is a Federal Government funded
program that reduces poverty in developing countries. The Australian Agency for
International Development (AusAID) manages the program.
Australian Business Volunteers
(ABV) [Jan 11 06 Deakin ACT]--ABVs are
experts in their fields who share their work skills to help build up micro,
small and medium sized businesses in the developing countries of
Australian Center for International
Agricultural Research [Jan 13 06 Canberra ACT]--ACIAR is
a statutory authority that operates as part of the Australian Government's
development cooperation programs. The Centre encourages
Australian
Centre for International & Tropical Health & Health Nutrition
Although not solely dealing with Indigenous health, there is still quite a
bit of information available on this website. They provide information about
education, particularly University courses in Indigenous health, and also about
their current research projects. ACITHN has been a formal entity since
Australian
Council for International Development [Jan 11 06 Deakin ACT]--This Australian coordinating agency
lists weekly vacancies with Australian aid agencies both in
Australian Development Gateway [Jan 13 06 Canberra ACT]--Development Gateways
are innovative Internet portals that seek to maximize the interchange of
development information with the objective of assisting countries achieve
sustainable development and to reduce poverty. The Development Gateway
Foundation based in
Australian Indigenous HealthInfoNet This website provides an extensive amount of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health information, including important cultural information as well. There is on-line information and a vast amount of links to additional websites, publications or articles. The Australian Indigenous HealthInfoNet is an innovative web resource that makes knowledge and information on Indigenous health easily accessible to inform practice and policy. Our web resource is a 'one-stop info-shop' for people interested in improving the health of Indigenous Australians. We provide quality, up-to-date knowledge and information about many aspects of Indigenous health, and support 'yarning places' (electronic networks) that encourage information-sharing and collaboration among people working in health and related sectors. http://www.healthinfonet.ecu.edu.au/
Australian Indigenous Health Promotion Network (AIHPN) The Network is dedicated to improving the health of Indigenous Australians through education, professional development, mobilisation and advocacy. It is an organisation controlled by its members and is comprised of both Indigenous and non Indigenous health professionals. http://www.indigenoushealth.med.usyd.edu.au/
Australian
Rural Health Education Network (ARHEN) ARHEN is a
national communication and coordination body for all University Departments of
Rural Health (UDRH) in
Australian Strategic Policy Institute [Jan 13 06 Barton ACT]--ASPI has been set up to help Australians understand the critical strategic choices which our country will face over the coming years, and to help Government make better-informed decisions. This is important. Defence is one of the key functions of Government, and a major area of national expenditure. But it remains a difficult and arcane area of public policy - beset by technicalities, obscured by jargon and wreathed in tradition. Australians live in a complex and strategically dynamic region. Like people everywhere, we face risks from terrorism and other transnational threats. But we also face unique uncertainties about the stability of our immediate neighbourhood, and about the strategic balance of the wider Asia-Pacific region. We must meet major technological challenges to keep our forces up to date. And we must overcome managerial and budget problems to achieve the strategic goals we set ourselves. www.aspi.org.au/
Australian Volunteers International (AVI) [Jan 11 06 Melbourne VIC]--Most assignments
are for 2 years, although there are limited positions for a lesser
period. AVI also offers younger volunteers (ie 18+) shorter team-based
opportunities for 8-12 weeks. "Australian Volunteers International is
Australian Youth Ambassadors for Development (AYAD)Program [Jan 11 06 Canberra ACT]--This program places skilled young Australian volunteers, aged 18-30, on assignments up to 12 months in developing countries around Asia/Pacific. "The Australian Youth Ambassadors for Development Program (AYAD) was launched in 1998 by the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Alexander Downer, to strengthen mutual understanding between Australia and the countries of the Asia Pacific and make a positive contribution to development." www.ausaid.gov.au/youtham/default.cfm
Council for International
Development [Jan 13 06 Wellington NZ]--The
Council for International Development (CID) was formed in 1985 by a small group
of aid and development agencies which identified the need to coordinate some
activities and present a single voice on issues of common concern. Today CID
has 79 members that include most of
GAP Australia [Jan 11 06 South Yarra VIC]--This agency offers 17-20 year olds the opportunity to live and work in another country and culture, usually the year after leaving school. "GAP is a journey. It’s an opportunity to challenge yourself, gain independence and discover the world. A chance to live and work in a different country and culture, to take a break from study, grow in confidence and widen your perspectives. GAP is about helping others and learning about yourself. It’s not a holiday. It’s the best year of your life." www.gapaustralia.org
Indigenous Community Volunteers
(ICV) [Jan 11 06
Oaktree Foundation [Australia Jan 11 06 Camberwell VIC]--Australia's first entirely youth run international aid organisation, Oaktree's Research & Project Development Team offers young people the opportunity to work on the development of its overseas projects through research and project proposal contributions. "The Oaktree Foundation is a movement of passionate young people seeking to empower and equip children and youth in the developing world. The foundation is made up of volunteers (aged 25 and under), as we believe that young people have the passion, motivation and energy necessary for making positive change in our world. Oaktree also has a network of industry professionals who mentor our volunteers and provide them with support and guidance. Oaktree recognises the immense difference between the material and social wealth of those living in privileged communities compared with those in developing communities, and we accept that with great privilege comes great responsibility to help those less fortunate." www.theoaktree.org
PALMS Australia [Jan 12 06 Croydon Park NSW]--This Catholic agency places a large
number of Global Mission participants in a wide variety of overseas
cross-cultural situations. "Palms
TransRemote [Jan 12 06
Volunteering for International
Development from Australia [Jan 13 06
Youth Challenge
Australia [Jan 13 06 Lindfield NSW]--Are you
looking for an exciting volunteer program that combines grass roots community
development work in Central and South America, Central Australia and the
Pacific with personal development, teamwork and community service? Are you
looking to immerse yourself in an entirely different culture while you lend a
hand to construct community buildings and infrastructure? Are you looking to
assist medical outreach prevention and awareness programs or help on projects
that manage and conserve the environment? Youth Challenge
Agence européenne pour le developpement et la santé
(AEDES)
The European Agency for the Development and Health focuses on public health
policies, food security and social programmes such as gender policy. http://www.aedes.be
Council of
The Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe has set up the Open Partial
Agreement in 1987. This intergovernmental Agreement is a platform for
cooperation in the field of major natural and technological disasters between
Eastern Europe, the Mediterranean area and
European Commission/Commission Européenne
The European Commission embodies and upholds the general interest of the
European Commission's Humanitarian Aid Office (ECHO)
The European Union’s mandate to ECHO is to provide emergency assistance and
relief to the victims of natural disasters or armed conflict outside the
European Union. The aid is intended to go directly to those in distress,
irrespective of race, religion or political convictions. http://europa.eu.int/comm/echo/en/index_en.htm
European Environment Agency (EEA), Copenhagen, Denmark
The EEA aims to support sustainable development and to help achieve significant
and measurable improvement in Europe’s environment through the provision of
timely, targeted, relevant and reliable information to policy making agents and
the public. http://www.eea.eu.int
European Directorate General Joint Research Centre (JRC)
The Joint Research Centre (JRC) Directorate-General is an integral part of the
European Commission. It provides independent scientific and technical advice to
the Commission, the European Parliament, the Council of Ministers and EU Member
States in support of European Union (EU) policies. Its main aim is to help to
create a safer, cleaner, healthier and more competitive
European Laboratory for Structural Assessment – Earthquake
Engineering (ELSA), Ispra,
The construction of bridges, viaducts, buildings or tunnels, which can
withstand earthquakes, involves using particularly sophisticated simulation
laboratories. The most prestigious of these is ELSA, which is a technological
flagship for the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre. http://europa.eu.int/comm/research/success/en/env/0071e.html
European Research Area (ERA)
On 18, January 2000 the European Commission adopted the platform “Towards a European
Research Area” which is meant to contribute to the creation of better overall
framework conditions for research in
European Space Agency (ESA)
The European Space Agency is
European Union (EU)
The European Union was set through the process of European integration was
launched on
European Centre for Disaster Medicine/ Centre européen pour la
Médecine des catastrophes (CEMEC), San Marino It promotes the
prevention and mitigation of the effects of natural and technological
disasters. http://www.diesis.com/cemec
European University
Centre for Cultural Heritage/Centre Universitaire Européen pour les Biens
Culturels (CUEBC), Ravello, Italy.
CUEBC is an experimental laboratory that conducts scientific research
and specialist matters. It is part of the
European Natural
Disasters Training Centre/Centre Européen de Formation sur les Risques Naturels
(AFEM), Ankara, Turkey.
AFEM's main goal is to reduce the destructive effects of hazards through
research, training and education at all levels, from policy makers to field
workers associated with disaster preparedness and response. http://www.europarisks.coe.int/afem50.htm
European Centre for
Prevention and Forecasting of Earthquakes/Centre Européen pour la Prévention et
la Prévision des Tremblements de Terre (ECPFE), Athens, Greece.
ECPFE is involved in all aspects of prevention as well as in the
development of practical ways of managing earthquakes. http://www.europarisks.coe.int/ecpfe50.htm
European Centre on Geomorphological Hazards/Centre Européen sur les
Risques Geomorphologiques (CERG),
CERG is concerned with studying the major hazards associated with earthquakes
and landslides. http://www.europarisks.coe.int/cerg50.htm
Euro-Mediterranean Seismological Centre/Centre Sismologique Euro-Méditerranéen
(CSEM),
The activity of CSEM members is devoted to the promotion of seismological
research.
http://www.emsc-csem.org
http://www.csem.bruyeres.cea.fr
European Centre for Geodynamis and Seismology/Centre Européen de
Géodynamique et de Sismologie (ECGS), Walferdange, Luxemburg
The Centre acts as a link between scientific research and its application to the
prevention and interpretation of hazards. http://www.ecgs.lu
European Centre on Training and Information of Local and Regional
Authorities and Population on the Field of Natural and Technological Disasters
/Centre Européen de Formation des Autorités Locales et Régionales dans le
domaine des Catastrophes Naturelles et Technologiques (ECMHT),
It provides training and information of local and regional authorities in the
field of major hazards. http://www.europarisks.coe.int/ecmht50.htm
Euro Mediterranean
Centre on Evaluation and Prevention of Seismic Risk/Centre Européen sur
l’Evaluation et la Prévention du Risque Sismique (CEPRIS), Rabat, Morocco.
It works to develop a unified strategy and common framework for
coordinating regional seismo-tectonic zoning and assessment of seismic hazards
and risks in the Mediterranean region. http://www.europarisks.coe.int/cepris50.htm
European Centre for School Training in Risk Prevention/Centre
Européen sur la Formation Scolaire à la Prévention des Risques (CSLT), Sofia,
Bulgaria
The Centre develops and promotes general and partial educational policies,
training concepts and teaching methods in the field of risk prevention training
in schools. http://www.bg400.bg/cslt
Euro-mediterranean Centre for Research on Arid Zones/Centre
Euro-Mediterranééen sur les Zones Arides (CRSTRA), Algiers, Algeria
The centre conducts scientific and technical research programmes on arid zones
and zones threatened with desertification and drought. http://www.europarisks.coe.int/crstra50.htm
European Centre of Technogenic Safety/Centre Européen de Sécurité
Technologique (TESEC),
TESEC is a scientific research and educational organization. http://www.europarisks.coe.int/tesec50.htm
European Centre for Vulnerability of Industrial and Lifeline
Systems/Centre Européen sur la Vulnérabilité des Réseaux et Systèmes
Industriels (ECILS),
It promotes programmes for theoretical and applied research of urban
vulnerability. http://www.iziis.ukim.edu.mk
European Centre on Urban Risks/Centre Européen sur les Risques
Urbains (CERU),
Its principal functions are to provide a framework for coordinating relief and
natural and technological hazard management and for devising a common strategy
to combat urban hazards. http://www.europarisks.coe.int/ceru50.htm
European Centre on Floods/Centre Européen sur les Inondations
(AECF),
It concentrates on proposals to prevent the risk of flooding. http://www.europarisks.coe.int/aecf50.htm
Euro-Mediterranean Centre on Insular Coastal Dynamics/Centre
Européen de la Dynamique Côtière Insulaire (IcoD), Valletta, Malta
ICoD’s main brief is to work in three main areas of education, applied research
and information activities related to coastal dynamics. http://www.icod.org.mt/IcoD/ICoD main.htm
Scientific Centre of
It conducts research with the objective of evaluating major ecological risks
and restoring degraded habitats.
http://www.europarisks.coe.int/ooe50.htm
European Centre of New Technologies for the Management of Major
Natural and Technological Hazards/Centre Européen des Nouvelles Technologies
pour la Gestion des Risques Naturels et Technologiques Majeurs (ECNTRM),
Moscow, Federation of Russia
One of its primary objectives is the use of space technologies for the
forecasting, prevention and relief in major natural and technological
disasters. http://www.europarisks.coe.int/ecntrm50.htm
European Centre for
Research into Techniques for Informing Populations in Emergency
Situations/Centre Européen de Recherche sur les Techniques d’Information de la
Population dans les Situations d’Urgences/Centro Europeo de Investigacion de
técnicas de information a la poblacion en Situaciones de Emergencia (CEISE),
Madrid, Spain
Its work concerns methods of informing the public in ermergency situations. http://www.proteccioncivil.org
European Inter-regional Centre for Training Rescue Workers /Centre
Européen de Formation Inter-Régionale pour les Sauveteurs (ECTR),
It provides training of rescue workers and related instructors for humanitarian
assistance. http://www.europarisks.coe.int/ectr50.htm
European Centre on Geodynamical Hazards of High Dams/Centre Européen
sur les Risques Géodynamiques liés aux Grands Barrages (GHHD), Tbilissi,
The Centre is created to develop multinational, multidisciplinary approaches to
the problems of geodynamic hazards, generated by high dams. http://www.europarisks.coe.int/ghhd50.htm
European Advisory Evaluation Committee for Earthquake Prediction
(EAECEP)
While not a Centre but a Committee of the Council of Europe, this institution
of 13 specialists was established in 1993 by the Committee of Ministers and
works closely with the EUR-OPA Specialized Centres. It is responsible for
giving advice on earthquake prediction made by scientists. http://www.europarisks.coe.int/eaecep.htm
European Centre for
The Centre is an international organisation supported by 24 European States,
based in
Natural
Hazards Competence Centre [Jan 14 06 Davos-Dorf
Center for Middle East Peace & Economic Cooperation--The Center for Middle East Peace & Economic Cooperation encourages all relevant parties – Israel, the Palestinians, Arab countries, the United States, Europe, etc. – to reach just and comprehensive peace that will bring an end to the Israeli-Arab conflict. With this mission in mind, the Center's activities include travel in the region, diplomatic exchanges, and conferences featuring Middle Eastern and relevant international leaders seeking peace. The Center brings Middle Eastern policy makers, American and European officials, and international business leaders together to help provide an atmosphere that encourages a peaceful resolution to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Established in 1989 by then-Slim Fast Foods Chairman S. Daniel Abraham and then-Utah Congressman Wayne Owens, the Center is a private, non-profit, non-partisan organization. http://www.centerpeace.org/
McGill
Middle East Program in Civil Society and
ADPC is a regional resource center established in 1986 dedicated to disaster
reduction for safer communities and sustainable development in
ADRC was established in July 1998 to promote multilateral cooperation for
disaster reduction and to network the various players in the region. It has
held annual meetings to network the focal points in governments of its member
countries. Its activities focus on information sharing, capacity building and
cooperation. It has developed several successful capacity building programmes
with its member countries. http://www.adrc.or.jp
Asian Institute of Technology (AIT),
AIT is an international graduate institution of higher learning with a mission
to develop highly qualified and committed professionals who will play a leading
role in the sustainable development of the region and its integration into the
global economy. http://www.ait.ac.th
Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC),
Its goal is to advance economic dynamism and sense of community within the
Asia-Pacific region. APEC has established itself as the primary regional
vehicle for promoting open trade and practical economic and technical
cooperation. http://www.apecsec.org.sg
Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), Bangkok, Thailand
The ASEAN Declaration states that the aims and purposes of the association are
to accelerate the economic growth, social progress and cultural development in
the region through joint endeavors in the spirit of equality and partnership in
order to strengthen the foundation for a prosperous and peaceful community of
South-East Asian nations. It further aims to promote regional peace and
stability through abiding respect for justice and the rule of law in the
relationship among countries in the region and adherence to the principles of
the United Nations Charter. http://www.aseansec.org
BRAC [Jan 12 06 Dhaka
Bangladesh]-- www.brac.net/index2.htm
With a vision of "a just, enlightened, healthy and democratic Bangladesh
free from hunger, poverty, environmental degradation and all forms of
exploitation based on age, sex, religion and ethnicity," BRAC started as
an almost entirely donor funded, small-scale relief and rehabilitation project
to help the country overcome the devastation and trauma of the Liberation War.
Today, BRAC has emerged as an independent, virtually self-financed paradigm in
sustainable human development. It is the largest in the world employing 97,192
people, with the twin objectives of poverty alleviation and empowerment of the
poor. Through experiential learning, BRAC today provides and protects
livelihoods of around 100 million people in
Center on Integrated Rural Development for
CIRDAP is a regional, intergovernmental and autonomous institution established
in July 1979 by the countries of
Coordinating Committee for Coastal and Offshore Geoscience
Programmes in East and
CCOP is an Intergovernmental Organization focused on regional geo-scientific
aspects. It consists of 11 member countries i.e., Cambodia, China, Indonesia,
Japan, Republic of Korea, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, The Philippines,
Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and is supported by 14 cooperating countries and
several international organizations. http://www.ccop.or.th
Japan Center for Conflict
Prevention (JCCP) [Jan 11 06
South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), Kathmandu,
Nepal
SAARC was established when its charter was formally adopted on 8 December, 1985
by the heads of state of Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan
and Sri Lanka. SAARC provides a platform for the peoples of
Disaster Recovery Business
New resources for disaster planning and response involving nursing homes [July 23 Washington DC USA]--HHS’ Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality today released Emergency Preparedness Atlas: U.S. Nursing Home and Hospital Facilities, which is intended to help local communities identify the health care facilities (hospitals and nursing homes) that could be available and prepared to provide assistance under emergency conditions in their communities.
The Emergency Preparedness Atlas includes six case studies in North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, southern California, Washington, and Utah that each include a series of maps depicting the locations and capacity of nursing homes and hospitals as well as their geographic relationship to a variety of emergency management and bioterrorism preparedness regions, such as HAZMAT response regions, emergency management regions, and Red Cross chapters. The Atlas includes maps for all 50 states with the location of hospitals and nursing homes in each state, and it displays the locations relative to the distribution of the elderly population in the case study states.
“States, local communities and other planners need accurate and reliable information about nursing homes and other facilities that care for some our nation’s most vulnerable citizens,” said AHRQ Director Carolyn M. Clancy, M.D. “This new resource can help stimulate productive discussions among planners to further our nation’s preparation and response efforts.”
Also published with the Atlas is a report, Nursing Homes in Public Health Emergencies, which presents the results of a series of focus groups convened to collect information about disaster- and bioterrorism-related planning activities among nursing homes in the same six states used in the Atlas case study series. The report addresses the roles that nursing homes could play in regional preparedness, for example arranging with hospitals to transfer their less-critically ill or recovering patients to nursing homes.
“Planning resources such as the atlas and accompanying report will help prepare our nation, at all levels of government, to respond to the adverse health effects of public health emergencies and disasters,” said HHS Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response RADM Craig Vanderwagen, MD, USPHS.
Emergency Preparedness Atlas:
To order a copy of the Atlas or Nursing Homes in Public Health Emergencies, contact the AHRQ Publications Clearinghouse at 800-358-9295 or by sending an E-mail to ahrqpubs@ahrq.hhs.gov.
AHRQ has funded more than 60 emergency preparedness-related studies, workshops, and conferences to help hospitals and health care systems prepare for public health emergencies. More information about these projects can be found online at http://www.ahrq.gov/prep/.
All
India Disaster Mitigation Institute [Jan 12 06 Gujurat
ASEAN Experts Group on
Disaster Management (AEGDM) ASEAN cooperation on natural and man-made
disasters is coordinated by AEGDM which was established in 1976 and meets
regularly to discuss and share experiences of the region’s disaster management
and mitigation activities.
http://www.adpc.ait.ac.th/pdr-sea/newsletter/issue3/pdr-update.html
Asian Disaster Preparedness Center [Jan 12 06 Klong Luang Pathumthani Thailand]-- The Asian Disaster Preparedness Center (ADPC) is a non-profit organization supporting the advancement of safer communities and sustainable development, through implementing programs and projects that reduce the impact of disasters upon countries and communities in Asia and the Pacific, by: Developing and enhancing sustainable institutional disaster risk management capacities, frameworks and mechanisms, and supporting the development and implementation of government policies; facilitating the dissemination and exchange of disaster risk management expertise, experience and information; and raising awareness and enhancing disaster risk management knowledge and skills. www.adpc.net
Center for
Disaster Management [Jan 14 06 Boğaziçi University Bebek/
Center
for Disaster Management and Humanitarian Assistance (CDMHA) [Jan
15 06
Center of Excellence in
Disaster Management & Humanitarian Assistance [Jan 12 06 Tripler Army Medical
Center Hawaii]--COE is a
federally funded project given a mandate by the US Congress to improve the
coordination and integration of the world's response to natural disasters,
humanitarian crises and peace operations.
COE was established in response to experiences of the
Center
for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters [Jan 13 06
Centre
for Disaster Studies at James Cook University [Jan 14 06
Queensland Australia]--The Centre for Disaster Studies is a multi disciplinary
research unit presently housed in the School of Tropical Environment Studies
and Geography of James Cook University. The Centre has acted as the
university's face to the public and the professionals in the Emergency
Management and Meteorology fields, city councils and other researchers since
its establishment in 1979. The Centre for Disaster Studies was formally
established a few years after
Coordinating Council for Disaster Management (CCGC), Mozambique CCGC is the government body responsible for policy decisions relating to disasters. The prime minister chairs the CCGC and his deputy is the minister of foreign affairs.
Disaster Management Bureau
(DMB), Ministry of Disaster Management and Relief (MDMR),
MDMR is the principal government body, overseeing the disaster management
activities in the country. Disaster Management Bureau and Directorate of Relief
and Rehabilitation work directly under the Ministry.
Disaster Management Center (DMC),
Disaster Management Facility
(DMF), World Bank,
Disaster Management Institute of
Southern Africa (DMISA), South Africa DMISA is an organization where
everyone involved in disaster management can relate to others with similar interests,
and creates opportunities for the improvement of disaster management in
Disaster Management Technical
Council (CTGC),
The CTGC provides technical back-up to the National Disaster Management
Institute (INGC), an autonomous institution under the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs and Cooperation.
Disaster Management Unit, (DMU), Standing Office of the Central Committee for Flood and Storm Control (CCFSC), Vietnam The Vietnam Disaster Management Unit (DMU) is the mechanism chosen by the Government of Vietnam and UNDP to join together over 1000 years of Vietnamese flood protection culture with twenty-first century western technology to better protect the entire population of Vietnam against the annual natural disasters that ravage the country. http://www.undp.org.vn/dmu/index.html
Disaster Management and
Mitigation Unit (DMMU), Zambia In 1998, the government of
Disasters Roundtable of
the National Academies [Mar 5 06]--The Disasters Roundtable's
mission is to facilitate and enhance communication and the exchange of ideas
among scientists, practitioners, and policymakers in order to identify urgent
and important issues related to the understanding and mitigation of natural,
technological, and other disasters. The Disasters Roundtable convenes three
annual workshops in
Gujarat State Disaster
Management Authorities (GSDMA), India The Government of Gujarat established
the Gujarat State Disaster Management Authority in February, 2001 to co-ordinate
the comprehensive earthquake recovery program. The GSDMA is registered as a
society with a vision to go beyond reconstruction and make
High Powered Committee (HPC) on
Disaster Management Plans, Government of India
HPC has been constituted to review existing arrangements for preparedness and
mitigation of natural and man made disasters including industrial, nuclear,
biological and chemical disasters; recommend measures for strengthening
organizational structures, and recommend a comprehensive model plan for
management of these disasters at National, State and District Level. http://www.ndmindia.nic.in/committee/hpcomm.html
Hungarian National Directorate
General for Disaster Management (HNDGDM), Budapest
From January, 2000 an integrated organization, the National Directorate for
Disaster Management, Ministry of Interior has been established in Hungary as
the central organ of the integral national disaster management. It was
established on the basis of the legal predecessors, that is, the Civil
Protection and the Fire Service. The system of protection against disasters is
divided into three levels: international, national, the level of
municipalities.
Instituto Nacional de Gestao de
Calamidades (INGC),
It manages day-to-day matters relating to disasters is the responsibility of
the National Disaster Management Institute. This is an autonomous institution
under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation.
Sustainable Environment and
Ecological Development Society (SEEDS),
SEEDS, a non-profit voluntary organization, is a collective endeavour of young
professionals drawn from development related fields. It originated as an
informal group of like-minded people, getting together for the purpose of
creative research projects of academic interest. The group was later formalized
in early 1994 and has been active in the field ever since. It is involved in
research activities in community development, disaster management,
environmental planning, transport planning, and urban and regional planning.
Activities are carried out on behalf of government, semi-government and
international development agencies. Independent programs on vital issues are
also taken up. http://www.gdrc.org/uem/seeds.html
International
Search and Rescue Advisory Group (INSARAG) [Jan 15 06
ochaonline.un.org/webpage.asp?MenuID=2894&Page=549
Institute for Crisis, Disaster & Risk Management at The George Washington University [Jan 14 06 Washington DC]--The goal of The Institute for Crisis, Disaster, and Risk Management is to improve the disaster, emergency, and crisis management plans, actions and decisions of government, corporate, and not-for-profit organizations by transforming theory into practice. The Institute's objectives are to create and teach courses in crisis, disaster, and risk management; conduct research, and create knowledge through its research activities; and disseminate knowledge through education al programs, professional forums, and workshops. The Institute faculty and staff work to facilitate exchanges of crisis management information, knowledge, and best practices among all sectors. The Institute is engaged in both domestic and international endeavors. www.gwu.edu/~icdrm/
International Institute for Disaster Risk Management [Jan 12 06 Makati City Philippines]-- The International Institute for Disaster Risk Management (IDRM) philosophy is to promote international standards and world best practices in risk management through continued mutual sharing towards professional excellence in developing countries. IDRM works on principles of continuous learning, organizational and individual professional development. IDRM specialists and partners are committed to appropriate, user-friendly, innovative and cost-effective solutions for the promotion of community safety, self-reliance and sustainability. Established in 1998 at the request of the Philippine Government, IDRM International is a uniquely self-reliant, not-for-profit organization. IDRM effectively transfers knowledge and expertise to its development partners by working with people to help build their capacities and confidence in implementing sustainable Risk Management programs and projects in their communities. www.idrmhome.org/index.html
NATO Euro-Atlantic Disaster Response Coordination Center [Jan 15 06 Brussels Belgium]--The Euro-Atlantic Disaster Response Coordination Centre (EADRCC), created in 1998 as the focal point for coordinating disaster relief efforts of the 46 Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council (EAPC) nations in case of natural or technological disasters within the EAPC geographical area, will: inform the Secretary General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and through him the EAPC as well as the Senior Civil Emergency Planning Committee (SCEPC) about disasters in EAPC countries and requests for international assistance; to coordinate the response to disasters within the EAPC area upon request of the stricken country; promote EAPC countries participation in the non-standing Euro-Atlantic Disaster Response Unit (EADRU); act as an information-sharing tool for EAPC nations on disaster assistance. All those tasks are performed in close cooperation with the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN-OCHA). To ensure this cooperation, a UN-OCHA Liaison Officer is permanently based in the EADRCC. www.nato.int/eadrcc/home.htm
National Center for Disaster
Management (NCDM), New Delhi, India
NCDM has been established by the Government of India and located in the Indian
Institute of Public Administration with the objectives of providing training
programs for senior and middle level administrative government officials which
sensitize them for disaster mitigation; coordinating the research activities in
different aspects of disaster management at national level.
National Committee for Disaster
Management (NCDM),
In 1995, as a result of the country’s experience with regularly occurring
disasters, the Royal Government of Cambodia established NCDM. Its
responsibilities are defined in terms of, not only providing timely and
effective emergency relief to the victims of disasters, but also developing
preventive measures to reduce loss of lives and property. This is accomplished
by applying scientific and technical knowledge to mitigate disasters.
National Disaster Management
Centre (NDMC),
Its mission is to improve knowledge, awareness and understanding of disasters,
and to coordinate and facilitate access to information and resources in order
to promote and support comprehensive, integrated and effective disaster
management in
ProVention Consortium (Disaster
Management Facility, World Bank)
ProVention Consortium (hosted by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red
Crescent Societies in Geneva) The ProVention Consortium, launched by the World
Bank in 2000 and currently hosted by the International Federation, is a global
partnership dedicated to increasing the safety of vulnerable communities and to
reducing the impacts of disasters in developing countries, still
disproportionately affected by disasters. A broad membership, ProVention
includes international financial institutions and donor governments,
international development and humanitarian organisations, leading academic
institutions, private sector actors and civil society organisations. The goal
of the Consortium is to reduce the risk and impacts of disasters on the poor
through forging partnerships between different disciplines and sectors,
supporting policy reform, developing innovative approaches to the practice of
disaster risk management and sharing knowledge and resources. http://www.proventionconsortium.org
Regional Consultative Committee
(RCC) in Disaster Management,
Within the framework of the Advisory Council, an ADPC Consultative Committee on
Regional Cooperation in Disaster Management has been established. The Committee
comprises members of the ADPC Board of Trustees/Advisory Council who are
working in key Government positions in the National Disaster Management systems
of countries of the Asian region. The role of RCC is to provide an informal
consultative mechanism for development of action strategies for disaster
reduction in the region and promotion of cooperative programs on a regional and
sub-regional basis; so as to guide ADPC’s work.
United Nations Center for
Regional Development/Disaster Management Planning Hyogo Office (UNCRD/DMPHO),
Office of Civil Defence (OCD)
and the National Disaster Coordinating Council (NDCC),
The OCD is the executive arm of the NDCC. Its primary mission is to coordinate,
on the national level, the activities and functions of various agencies and
instrumentality of the National Government, private institutions and civic
organizations devoted to public welfare so that the facilities and resources of
the entire nation may be utilized to the maximum extent for the protection and
preservation of the civilians. http://www.ndcc.gov.ph/
UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction [Jan 13 06 Geneva Switzerland]--The ISDR aims at building disaster resilient communities by promoting increased awareness of the importance of disaster reduction as an integral component of sustainable development, with the goal of reducing human, social, economic and environmental losses due to natural hazards and related technological and environmental disasters. Recognising that natural hazards can threaten any one of us, the ISDR builds on partnerships and takes a global approach to disaster reduction, seeking to involve every individual and every community towards the goals of reducing the loss of lives, the socio-economic setbacks and the environmental damages caused by natural hazards. In order to achieve these goals, the ISDR promotes four objectives as tools towards reaching disaster reduction for all: Increase public awareness to understand risk, vulnerability and disaster reduction globally; Obtain commitment from public authorities to implement disaster reduction policies and actions; Stimulate interdisciplinary and intersectoral partnerships, including the expansion of risk reduction networks; and Improve scientific knowledge about disaster reduction. www.unisdr.org/
University of Wisconsin Disaster Management Center [Jan 14 06 Madison WI USA]-- Serving the learning needs of disaster/emergency management professionals in the developing world since 1982, the University of Wisconsin–Disaster Management Center (UW–DMC) has worked closely with experts recognized for their field experience to develop disaster management training activities with a practical emphasis. The center's goal is to help improve the emergency management performance of non-governmental organizations, local and national governments, and international organizations, through a comprehensive professional development program in disaster management. Distance learning (leaving this Web site) is the principal approach for this international program. dmc.engr.wisc.edu
Active
Learning Network for Accountability and Performance (in Humanitarian
Action) (ALNAP) ALNAP was established in 1997, following the multi-agency
evaluation of the
African
Centre for Disaster Studies (ACDS) [Jan 14 06
Potchefstroom University, South Africa]-- acds.co.za The African Centre for Disaster
Studies (ACDS) was established in January 2002 at the Potchefstroom University
for Christian Higher Education within the School for Social and Government
Studies. The explicit aim of the ACDS is to address the need for world-class
training, education and research in disaster related activities within southern
African
Network Campaign on Education for All (ANCEFA) The Africa Network
Campaign on Education for All (ANCEFA) emerged in 2000 following the World
Education Summit in
Beasley Intercultural [Jan 13 06 Marrickville NSW]-- www.intercultural.com.au Beasley Intercultural is a leading cross-cultural consultancy and training company operating across the Asia-Pacific region. We partner with our clients to enable them to better navigate the challenges of working globally. Our intercultural services enable clients to: Minimise the time involved to 'hit the ground running' when working regionally or globally; Ensure diverse teams deliver results; Manage effectively in global and virtual workplaces; Reduce miscommunication across cultures and languages and therefore save costs; Understand what is really going on in remote locations to enable informed, strategic decisions; Manage risk and avoid common pitfalls in the global workplace. We are committed to providing the highest level of service to our clients by focusing on business outcomes. We deliver relevant and practical training programs and consultancy services which make a difference.
Center of Scientific Investigation and Higher
Education (CICESE),
Ensenada, Mexico
CICESE is dedicated to conducting scientific research in basic and applied
science, as well as developing new technologies and highly skilled human resources
in three major disciplines: Earth Sciences, Oceanography and Applied Physics. http://www.cicese.mx/cicese/ingles.html
East West Center, Honolulu,
Hawai
The East-West Center is an internationally recognized education and research
organization established by the U.S. Congress in 1960 to strengthen
understanding and relations between the United States and the countries of the
Asia Pacific region. The Center carries out its mission through programs of
cooperative study, training and research. Professionals and students from the
Education International Education International represents more than 29 million teachers and education workers. Our 348 member organizations operate in 166 countries, from pre-school to university. As the world’s largest Global Union Federation, and the only one representing education workers in every corner of the globe, Education International unites all teachers and education workers no matter where they are. http://www.ei-ie.org/en/index.php
Emergency Management Australia
Institute (EMAI), Mount Macedon, Australia
Emergency Management Australia’s research and training centre at Mount Macedon
was renamed the Emergency Management Australia Institute (EMAI) in January,
2002. The change was made to better reflect the institute as an integral part
of EMA’s core business and to stress the holistic nature of the organization’s
operations across its sites in
European Centre for School Training in Risk
Prevention/Centre Européen sur la Formation Scolaire à la Prévention des
Risques (CSLT),
Sofia, Bulgaria
The Centre develops and promotes general and partial educational policies, training concepts and teaching methods in the field of risk prevention training in schools.
European Centre of Technogenic
Safety/Centre Européen de Sécurité Technologique (TESEC),
TESEC is a scientific research and educational organization.
Family Medicine Digital Resources Library--To support and enhance the sharing and collaborative development of educational resources among family medicine educators through a Digital Library that includes resources for all levels of family medicine education. http://fmdrl.org/
Global Campaign for Education "Millions of parents, teachers and children around the world are calling on their governments to provide free, good quality, basic education for all the world's children. They are part of the Global Campaign for Education; we add our voice to their call." - Nelson Mandela and Graca Machel, April 2002. Education is a basic human right and fundamental to the fight for human dignity and freedom. For 125 million children and 880 million adults, that right is violated everyday. The Global Campaign for Education promotes education as a basic human right, and mobilizes public pressure on governments and the international community to fulfill their promises to provide free, compulsory public basic education for all people; in particular for children, women and all disadvantaged, deprived sections of society. http://www.campaignforeducation.org/
Global Development Learning Network [Jan 13 06 Washington DC]-- www.gdln.org The Global Development Learning Network (GDLN) is a global partnership of learning centers (GDLN Affiliates) that offer the use of advanced information and communication technologies to connect people working in development around the world. By applying tools and services developed in the field of distance learning – learning that takes place when participants in an event are separated by space and time – GDLN Affiliates enable organizations, teams, and individuals around the world to communicate, share knowledge, and learn from each others’ experiences in a timely and cost-effective manner.
Global Information Networks in Education GINIE has developed, in participation with professionals in the field, an Internet-based network with the following capacities: web pages that with a click of a mouse, can provide rapid access to full-text documents that users can review, save to disk or print; web pages that provide organized links to GINIE partner and associate sites, as well as other high quality links to content related to education in nations in crisis and at risk; an on-line searchable database which focuses on documents and materials created by education professionals working internationally; uploadable website-based document transfer protocols which allow field professionals to conveniently send their materials to the GINIE database; on-line conferences on topics requested by field professionals designed around specific themes to encourage professional collaboration and contribution to the GINIE database; secured websites that allow limited access to internal documents and dialogue for working groups; GINIE's mailing list that acts as an on-going information distribution system for busy professionals; and customized technical support and training for GINIE partners interested in learning how to use these capacities more effectively. http://www.ginie.org/
Inter-Agency Network for Education in Emergencies [Jan 12 06 Paris France]-- www.ineesite.org The Inter-Agency Network for Education in Emergencies (INEE) serves a unique purpose in reaching out to education practitioners around the world working in situations of emergencies and crisis. In view of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the EFA Declaration and the Dakar Framework, INEE promotes access and completion of education of high quality for all persons affected by emergencies, crises or chronic instability. INEE's web site has a wide-range of Good Practice Guides for Education in Emergencies and other current research and information. This web site, along with an active list-serve, make INEE a flexible and responsive mechanism for sharing resources and experiences.
Moodle--Moodle is a course management system (CMS) - a free, Open Source software package designed using sound pedagogical principles, to help educators create effective online learning communities. You can download and use it on any computer you have handy (including webhosts), yet it can scale from a single-teacher site to a 50,000-student University. This site itself is created using Moodle, so check out the Moodle Demonstration Courses or read the latest Moodle Buzz. http://moodle.org/
Children's
Environmental Health Network [Sep 10 06]--The Children's Environmental Health Network is a national
multi-disciplinary organization whose mission is to protect the fetus and the
child from environmental health hazards and promote a healthy environment. To
achieve this mission, the Network has had several goals:
* to promote the development of sound public health and child-focused national
policy
* to stimulate prevention-oriented research
* to educate health professionals, policy makers and community members in
preventive strategies; and
* to elevate public awareness of environmental hazards to children.
Today, CEHN is the voice of children’s environmental health in the nation’s
capitol, one that is uniquely informed by a strong basis in pediatric and
environmental health science. http://www.cehn.org/
Global Monitoring for the Environment and Security (GMES)--GMES is a joint initiative of the European Space Agency and the EC. Many programmes (EC, ESA, others) will eventually contribute to GMES. In November 2001 the ESA Ministerial Council approved a new 5-year ESA programme dedicated to GMES, called the Earthwatch GMES Services Element (GSE for short). This is the very first programme dedicated to GMES. GSE will deliver policy-relevant services to end-users, primarily (but not exclusively) from Earth Observation sources. GSE is a key element of GMES, because it will enable end-users to become key players in the move from present generation Earth Observation satellites to future European systems that will deliver vital information on global environment and security. http://earth.esa.int/gmes
Geoscience
Health - An EcoSystem Approach--Many ecological disasters can be directly traced to careless exploitation of the environment, with human beings as first perpetrator and then victim. Our health closely mirrors the health of our surroundings: this is the basis of the “Ecohealth” approach. It recognizes the inextricable links between humans and their biophysical, social, and economic environments, and that these links are reflected in a population’s state of health. http://www.idrc.ca/in_focus_cities/ev-27266-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html
Instituto Nicaraguense de Estudios Territoriales
(INETER), Managua, Nicaragua, (Nicaraguan Institute for Territorial Studies)
INETER is the technical and scientific body of the state that provides its
services to the entire population in such areas as basic information as well as
projects and studies of the environment which contribute to socio-economic
development and the lowering of vulnerability to natural disasters,
continuously tracking dangerous natural phenomena. http://www.ineter.gob.ni
International Research Institute for Climate Prediction (IRI), New
York,
National
Atmospheric Release Advisory Center (NARAC) [Mar 5 06]--The National Atmospheric Release
Advisory Center, NARAC, provides tools and services that map the probable
spread of hazardous material accidentally or intentionally released into the
atmosphere. NARAC provides atmospheric plume predictions in time for an
emergency manager to decide if taking protective action is necessary to protect
the health and safety of people in affected areas. Located at the
National
Environmental Health Association [Sep 10 06]-- The National Environmental Health Association (NEHA) had
its origins in the state of
StormCenter Communications, Maryland, USA--StormCenter Communications provides leading-edge monitoring and visuals to help the media, government agencies and emergency managers better understand environmental issues to enable the media and educators to increase public awareness. http://www.stormcenter.com/
Adventist Development and Relief
Agency International (ADRA) [Feb 4 06 Silver Spring MD USA]--ADRA works to
improve the quality of life for people in developing countries through
integrated community-based development and disaster preparedness and response
activities that incorporate its five core portfolio activities. ADRA is the
humanitarian affiliate of the
African Methodist Episcopal Church Service and Development Agency, Inc. (AME-SADA) [Feb 4 06 Washington DC USA]--Service and Development Agency, Inc., the international humanitarian relief and development agency of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, is committed to helping people help themselves, providing essential assistance to those in need through health, education and micro-enterprise programs; because we are our brother’s keeper. http://www.amecnet.org/sada/sada.htm
American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
(AJJDC) [Feb 4 06
American Jewish World Services (AJWS) [Jan 12 06 New York NY]--AJWS is an independent not-for-profit organization founded in 1985 to help alleviate poverty, hunger and disease among the people of the world regardless of race, religion or nationality. It breathes life into Judaism's imperative to pursue justice and helps American Jews act upon a deeply felt obligation to improve the chances for survival, economic independence and human dignity for all people. The inspiration for AJWS' work is drawn from the demand for social justice expressed in traditional Jewish sources. AJWS is a Jewish response to the needs of communities throughout the globe, regardless of race, religion or nationality. The Torah makes it clear that it is a Jewish mandate to respond to the needs of the poor and needy, Jews and non-Jews, and even enemies who are in need. Doing tzedakah, righteous deeds, is part of the Jewish obligation to participate in tikkun olam - helping to repair the world. www.ajws.org/
Baptist World Alliance/Baptist World Aid (BWA/BWAid) [Feb 4 06 Falls Church VA USA]--Baptist World Aid (BWAid) works through Baptist communities around the world, mitigating suffering and providing long-range help for persons in need regardless of religion, nationality, tribe or class. BWAid also helps poor people avoid situations of famine and malnourishment and improve their capacity for self-help and wage earning. http://www.bwanet.org/bwaid
Catholic Medical Mission Board (CMMB) [Feb 4 06 New York NY USA]--Founded in 1928 and rooted in the healing ministry of Jesus, Catholic Medical Mission Board works collaboratively to provide quality healthcare programs and services without discrimination to people in need around the world. http://www.cmmb.org
Catholic Relief Services (CRS) [Feb 4 06
Episcopal Relief and Development (ERD) [Feb 4 06 New York NY USA]--Episcopal Relief and Development is a major response of the Episcopal Church to God's call to serve Christ in all persons, to love our neighbors, and to respect the dignity of every human being. Episcopal Relief and Development raises, receives, and disburses money and other resources for the relief of human suffering. Episcopal Relief and Development provides emergency relief in times of disaster; it assists in the rehabilitation of lives, property, and organizations; it initiates and joins in partnership with those who identify and address root causes of suffering; and it supports and extends the social ministry of the church. http://www.er-d.org
Interchurch Medical Assistance, Inc. (I.M.A.) [Feb 4 06 New Windsor MD USA]--I.M.A. is a nonprofit organization providing comprehensive technical and material assistance for overseas health programs of partner churches, faith-based development and relief organizations, and public and private agencies with similar goals. Major activities focus on disease elimination and treatment; strengthening health care systems; procurement of medicines, medical supplies and equipment; and serving as liaison between international funding entities and overseas health-related community organizations, with emphasis placed on partnership, technical exchange, training and capacity building. As a Member association of 12 Protestant relief and development agencies, I.M.A. works through a worldwide network of faith communities affiliated with its member agencies. www.interchurch.org
Who Counts? An initiative by
Mango [Jan 12 06
Benfield Hazard Research Center [Jan 14 06 London UK]-- www.benfieldhrc.org/ The Benfield Hazard Research Centre provides a conduit for the transfer of cutting-edge natural hazard and risk research, practice, and innovation from the academic environment to the business world and government and international agencies. Through the rapid application of new research and practice, the Centre facilitates the improvement of natural hazard and risk assessment and the reduction of exposure to natural catastrophes. The intellectual products of the Benfield Hazard Research Centre fall into two categories: Strategic, curiosity-driven research into natural hazards and the processes that drive them. Applied studies targeted at reducing the impact of natural hazards on society, including: Hazard & risk assessment; Hazard monitoring and forecasting; Hazard mitigation, management and avoidance; Development of effective early warning systems; Education and training; Preparedness.
Center for Hazards and Risk
Research at Columbia University [Jan 14 06 New York USA]-- www.ldeo.columbia.edu/chrr/
Columbia University's physical and social scientists are undertaking a new research
program in disasters and risk management motivated by a clear and compelling
need to reduce the catastrophic impacts on society from natural and
human-induced hazards. The Center for Hazards and Risk Research (CHRR) draws on
Center for Hazards Research at
California State University [Jan 15 06 Chico CA]-- www.csuchico.edu/geop/chr/
The Center for Hazards Research coördinates hazards-related research and
educational activities by faculty and students at California State University,
Chico, and research associates at other institutions throughout California. CHR
work to date has largely focused on earthquake, flood, drought, and wildfire
hazards, mainly in the State of
Hazard Reduction and Recovery
Center [Jan 14 06
Major Accident Hazards Bureau [Jan 14 06 Ispra Italy]-- mahbsrv.jrc.it/ The Major Accident Hazards Bureau (MAHB) is a special Unit within the Joint Research Centre's Institute for the Protection and Security of the Citizen, Hazard Assessment Unit, dedicated to scientific and technical support for the actions of the European Commission in the area of the control of Major Industrial Hazards. The overall mission of the Bureau is to assist other services of the Commission, and in particular Directorate General Environment in the successful implementation of European Union policy on the control of major hazards and the prevention and mitigation of major accidents. To fulfil this mission, MAHB carries out scientific and technical activities related to the day to day implementation of relevant Community legislation. Since 1982, when the Original Seveso Directive (Council Directive 82/501/EEC) was approved by the Council of Ministers after the famous accident at Seveso, there has been Community provision for the control of major industrial hazards.
NASA Earth Observatory : Natural
Hazards [Jan 15 06
Risk Frontiers Natural Hazards
Research Centre [Jan 14 06
The James and Marilyn Lovell
Center for Environmental Geography and Hazards Research [Jan 15 06 San
Marcos TX]-- www.geo.txstate.edu/lovell/index.htm The
pinnacle of scientific exploration in the 20th Century was NASA's Apollo
program. On Apollo 8, Astronauts Lovell, Borman, and Anders showed all of
humanity how truly fragile and precious the Earth's environment is. The
"Blue Marble in Space" remains one of the most enduring visions of
the Apollo program. During the Apollo 13 mission, Captain Lovell and his crew
captured the focus of the entire world. They illustrated the courage and daring
that have been associated with exploration of unknown environments since the
Voyages of Discovery crisscrossed the world. The James and
The Natural Hazards Research and Applications Information Center at the University of Colorado [Jan 15 06 Boulder CO]-- www.colorado.edu/hazards/ The mission of the Natural Hazards Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder is to advance and communicate knowledge on hazards mitigation and disaster preparedness, response, and recovery. Using an all-hazards and interdisciplinary framework, the Center fosters information sharing and integration of activities among researchers, practitioners, and policy makers from around the world; supports and conducts research; and provides educational opportunities for the next generation of hazards scholars and professionals.
Pan American Health Organization
The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) is an international public
health agency with 100 years of experience in working to improve health and
living standards of the countries of the
Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) [Mar 5 06]--The mission of the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), as an agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, is to serve the public by using the best science, taking responsive public health actions, and providing trusted health information to prevent harmful exposures and disease related to toxic substances. ATSDR is directed by congressional mandate to perform specific functions concerning the effect on public health of hazardous substances in the environment. These functions include public health assessments of waste sites, health consultations concerning specific hazardous substances, health surveillance and registries, response to emergency releases of hazardous substances, applied research in support of public health assessments, information development and dissemination, and education and training concerning hazardous substances. http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/
American Academy for Emergency Medicine [Mar 5 06]--The American Academy of Emergency Medicine is the specialty society of Emergency Medicine with 5,000 members. http://www.aaem.org/
American Association of Health Plans - Bioterrorism and
Emergency Preparedness [Mar 5 06]--Welcome to
Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP) [Mar 5 06]--The Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP) is a tri-service agency of the Department of Defense specializing in pathology consultation, education and research. AFIP maintains 22 subspecialty departments with a combined workforce of over 820 personnel, including over 120 pathologists and other scientists. In 2001 AFIP consulted on over 92,000 cases, including 55,000 sent for an expert "second opinion." 90% are tumor pathology cases -revealing difficult, unusual or rare entities not typically seen in the military or civilian medical communities. AFIP experts also conducted 27,000 cytology cases for the U.S. Air Force in 2001, and another 10,000 cases for quality assurance and risk management. http://www.afip.org/
Armed Forces
Radiobiology Institute [Mar 5 06]--AFRRI, a triservice
laboratory chartered in 1961, conducts research in the field of radiobiology
and related matters essential to the operational and medical support of the
U.S. Department of Defense and the military services. The institute
collaborates with other governmental facilities, academic institutions, and
civilian laboratories in the
Center for Humanitarian
Psychology [Jan 12 06
Center for Law and the Public's
Health at
Center for Public Health
Preparedness, University at
Centers for Disease Control [Jan 12 06 Atlanta GA]--The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is one of the 13 major operating components of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which is the principal agency in the United States government for protecting the health and safety of all Americans and for providing essential human services, especially for those people who are least able to help themselves. Since it was founded in 1946 to help control malaria, CDC has remained at the forefront of public health efforts to prevent and control infectious and chronic diseases, injuries, workplace hazards, disabilities, and environmental health threats. Today, CDC is globally recognized for conducting research and investigations and for its action oriented approach. CDC applies research and findings to improve people’s daily lives and responds to health emergencies—something that distinguishes CDC from its peer agencies. www.cdc.gov
Centers for Public Health Preparedness [Mar 5 06]--By reaching and teaching the public health workforce, the Centers for Public Health Preparedness (CPHP) help to ensure a strong public health system when and where it is needed. Through their commitment to providing lifelong learning opportunities to public health professionals, schools of public health prepare the public health workforce to meet health threats and emergencies. The network of 50 CPHP is a unique partnership between accredited schools of public health, dentistry schools, medical schools, and veterinary schools and state and local health departments. The power of the network lies in the partnerships. It provides a countrywide defense system through the preparation of front-line public health workers and first responders. http://www.asph.org/acphp/
Crisis & Emergency Risk Communication: By Leaders for Leaders--This resource, available free online from the Centers for Disease Control, gives leaders tools to help them speak to the public, media, partners, and stakeholders during an intense public-safety emergency. Topics include the psychology of communicating in a crisis, the leader’s role as a spokesperson, working with media during a crisis, and public health and media law. www.cdc.gov/communication/emergency/leaders.pdf
Epidemic Intelligence Service [Mar 5 06]--The EIS was established in 1951 following the start of the Korean War as an early warning system against biological warfare and man-made epidemics. The program, composed of medical doctors, researchers, and scientists who serve in 2-year assignments, today has expanded into a surveillance and response unit for all types of epidemics, including chronic disease and injuries. http://www.cdc.gov/eis/
European Agency for the
Development and Health [Jan 26
Foodborne Outbreak Response and Surveillance Unit [Mar 5 06]--The term Foodborne Diseases encompasses a diverse collection of acute illnesses cause by bacteria, viruses, parasites, and chemicals. Only a small proportion of foodborne illness occurs in the setting of a recognized outbreak. Nevertheless, outbreak data are uniquely valuable in establishing a link between foodborne illness and specific foods or settings. This site has been established to provide public health officials, researchers, and the general public with information on foodborne disease outbreaks. Our role is to investigate outbreaks and establish both short-term control measures and long-term improvements to prevent similar outbreaks in the future. We strive to work closely with state and local health departments to investigate foodborne outbreaks and make information available to the public.
Headington Institute [Jan 12
06
Institute of Medicine of the National Academies [Mar 5 06]--The nation turns to the Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the National Academies for science-based advice on matters of biomedical science, medicine, and health. A nonprofit organization specifically created for this purpose as well as an honorific membership organization, the IOM was chartered in 1970 as a component of the National Academy of Sciences. The Institute provides a vital service by working outside the framework of government to ensure scientifically informed analysis and independent guidance. The IOM's mission is to serve as adviser to the nation to improve health. The Institute provides unbiased, evidence-based, and authoritative information and advice concerning health and science policy to policy-makers, professionals, leaders in every sector of society, and the public at large.
InterHealth [Jan 12 06
International Health Exchange [Jan 12 06 London UK]--International Health Exchange supports initiatives to bring about sustained improvements to people’s health in developing countries by providing appropriately experienced people to organisations requiring their skills. Publications: Our publication The Health Exchange magazine brings you first-hand coverage of the challenges facing health practitioners in developing countries, reporting on the practical approaches to health development and exploring the issues affecting people’s health in low-income countries. The magazine also provides you with news and information about jobs and courses in health development. We also produce a number of handbooks and guides, including a Course Calendar that lists courses from over 90 universities all over the world. www.ihe.org.uk
National Center for
Environmental Health [Mar 5 06]--The environment is everything around us -
the air we breathe, the water we drink and use, and the food we consume. It's
also the chemicals, radiation, microbes, and physical forces with which we come
into contact. Our interactions with the environment are complex and are not
always healthy. We at the
National Center for Infectious Diseases (NCID) [Mar 5 06]--The mission of the National Center for Infectious Diseases (NCID) is to prevent illness, disability, and death caused by infectious diseases in the United States and around the world. To accomplish this goal, our staff members work in partnership with local and state public health officials, other federal agencies, medical and public health professional associations, infectious disease experts from academic and clinical practice, and international and public service organizations. We accomplish our mission by conducting surveillance, epidemic investigations, epidemiologic and laboratory research, training, and public education programs to develop, evaluate, and promote prevention and control strategies for infectious diseases. http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/index.htm
National Disaster Medical System
[Mar 5 06]--The National Disaster Medical System (NDMS) is a section within the
U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Federal Emergency Management Agency,
Response Division, Operations Branch, and is responsible for supporting Federal
agencies in the management and coordination of the Federal medical response to
major emergencies and Federally declared disasters including: Natural Disasters
Technological Disasters, Major Transportation Accidents, Acts of Terrorism
including Weapons of Mass Destruction Events http://ndms.dhhs.gov/index.html
National Governors Association--The National Governors Association Center for Best Practices produced this issue brief titled “State Strategies for Fully Integrating Public Health into Homeland Security.” http://www.nga.org/Files/pdf/FULLYPUBLICHEALTH.pdf
RAND Center for Domestic and
International Health Security [Mar 5 06
University of South Dakota Disaster Mental Health Institute--The mission of the Disaster Mental Health Institute (DMHI) is the promotion, development, and application of both practice and research in disaster mental health. The Institute was founded in 1993, and was designated a South Dakota Board of Regents Center of Excellence in 1997. The institute also hosts an annual "Conference on Innovations in Disaster Mental Health." The DMHI Web site provides in-depth information about the institute and conference, a list of available publications, as well as several online booklets on coping with the aftermath of disasters.
World Health Organization: Health Action in Crises--The principal objective of the WHO Health Action in Crises department is to reduce avoidable loss of life, burden of disease and disability in crises in indicative list of crisis-prone and crisis-affected countries. http://www.who.int/hac/en/
http://www.missionsupplies.co.uk/
MapAction [Jan 11 06 Lime
Farm Cottage, Little Missenden, Buckinghamshire
Fritz Institute [Jan 12 06 San Francisco CA]--Fritz Institute is a non-profit organization dedicated to addressing complex operational challenges in the delivery of humanitarian aid to people and communities in need worldwide. We work to strengthen the efficiency and effectiveness of the humanitarian sector by collaborating with the corporate sector and academic community to leverage best practices, technology, and resources that can be used by all humanitarian organizations. Fritz Institute was founded in 2002 by Mr. Lynn Fritz, a social entrepreneur and philanthropist, who recognized that effective front-line humanitarian operations must be supported by strong back room capabilities: effective operational processes, efficient uses of technology, objective performance metrics, and institutionalized learning across the humanitarian sector. Mr. Fritz is the former chairman and CEO of Fritz Companies, a Fortune 1000 global logistics corporation. www.fritzinstitute.org
SUMA Humanitarian Supply Management System [Jan 12 06 San Jose Costa Rica]--When a major disaster strikes a country, local and international communities respond with an outpouring of assistance. Disaster managers must be prepared to receive large quantities of unsolicited donations that may not meet the needs of the affected population. The process of sorting through tons of supplies and ensuring that urgently needed items reach the disaster victims can overwhelm relief workers. SUMA, the Supply Management System from the PAHO/WHO, is an information management tool that helps national authorities to make order of the chaos often caused by uncoordinated humanitarian assistance. SUMA uses simple software to track items from the moment donors commit to sending supplies until they are distributed effectively to the affected population.
www.disaster-info.net/SUMA/index.html
SATELLIFE [Jan 29 06
Making Cities Work Urban Strategy: USAID. USAID's Urban Programs Team is dedicated to increasing economic prosperity, democracy and security in the world's rapidly growing cities. The Team works across sectors to advance the Agency's Making Cities Work Strategy in the following areas: City Management and Governance; Municipal Finance; Housing; Infrastructure and Services; Local Economic Growth; Urban Health and Environment; Urban Security.
http://www.makingcitieswork.org/
Urban Health Resource Centre [UHRC] is a non profit Indian organization which aims to address health issues of the urban poor through a consultative and knowledge-sharing approach in partnership with the government and civil society. UHRC develops innovative urban health programs in diverse cities. Experiences from these programs are used to influence larger health initiatives such as the Urban Health component of National Rural Health Mission and similar programs of Non-Government stakeholders through proactive information dissemination and advocacy. http://www.uhrc.in/
Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation SDC Urban
Health. By the year 2000, about half of the global human
population had become urban citi-zens, most of them living in the rapidly
growing cities of
www.sdc-health.ch/priorities_in_health/pro_poor_health_service/urban_health
The International Society for Urban Heath [ISUH] is an association of researchers, scholars, and professionals from various disciplines and areas of the world who study the health effects of urban environments and urbanization. Membership in ISUH is open to anyone who is interested in the health of urban populations. The goals of ISUH are to encourage research, interventions, and program evaluations that lead to healthier cities in the 21st century.
Center for Research on Inner City Health [CRICH]
is
http://www.stmichaelshospital.com/crich/
The International Healthy Cities Foundation. The
term Healthy Cities was coined in 1985. It was the title of a speech given at
an international meeting in
http://www.healthycities.org./overview.html
Johns
Hopkins Urban Health Institute is a collaboration and a vital connection
with
http://www.jhsph.edu/urbanhealth
The
Urban Health Program at
Central
Building Research Institute (CBRI),
Environment
and Society Institute (ESI), State University of New York,
It offers courses on engineering and applied sciences and hosts the
Institute
for Hazards Mitigation Planning and Research, College of Architecture and Urban
Planning, University of Washington The objective of the Institute
for Hazards Mitigation Planning and Research is to encourage the incorporation
of hazards mitigation principles into disaster preparedness, response and
recovery practices through planning programs, community involvement and
research to support the creation of more disaster-resistant and sustainable
communities in the Pacific Northwest. http://depts.washington.edu/mitigate
www.caup.washington.edu
Urban
Geoscience Division of Geoscience
Action Without Borders Search for over 48,000 nonprofit and community organizations in 165 countries by name, location or mission; thousands of volunteer opportunities in your community and around the world; and a nonprofit career centre with hundreds of job and internship listings. http://www.idealist.org/
Aid Workers Network This practical site gives advice on finding your first job, as well as highlighting openings for experienced practitioners/LEPS. "When working in relief and development projects, we often face situations others have encountered before us. Sometimes we ask around and consult a few colleagues for their opinions and advice. Other times we "jump in at the deep end" and do as best we can under the circumstances. Aid Workers Network links relief and development field staff to share support, ideas and best practice. This web site is being developed by a team of experienced aid workers to provide a comprehensive resource for busy field workers needing practical advice and proven resources to help with their current work." www.aidworkers.net
AlertNet [Jan 11 06
Beijing International Volunteers Association (BIVA) [Feb 24 06]--Beijing International Volunteers Association (BIVA) is a not-for-profit organization established in China with the support of China International Center for Economic and Technical Exchanges (CICETE) and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). BIVA is committed to human resource-based work with individuals and organizations involved in social improvement and development, with a special emphasis on volunteerism. www.civa.org.cn/english/home.htm
Careers Without Borders [Jan
11 06
DEVJOBS [Jan 11 06 Los
Banos,
Dev-Zone [Jan 11 06 Aotearoa
NZ]-- www.dev-zone.org/jobs This New Zealand based site
includes details of a large number of humanitarian and development positions
globally. "Dev-Zone is an independent Aotearoa New
EU-CORD [Jan 11 06
Expats Network [Jan 11 06
an international aid workers association created in 1998. AVESI is a non-profit
and independent organisation initiated by Aid Workers, for Aid Workers. Almost
6000 membres registered in the Directory. An average of 700 daily visits, 20
000 monthly. More than 30 French and International NGOs, regularly advertising.
250 job ads online less 3 months old, and continuously updated."
Geekcorps [Feb 24 06]--Geekcorps is a US-based, non-profit organization that places international technical volunteers in developing nations to contribute to ICT projects while transferring the technical skills required to achieve long-term stability. Ultimately we strive to cross-pollinate developing nations with the skills needed to maximize the benefits of modern telecommunications. Our current applicant database contains more than 3,500 technical specialists willing to share their talents and experience in developing nations. In all cases, we carefully match applicants with projects based on the skills that are needed based on our assessments and the scopes of work provided by partner businesses. Much of our past work has been performed in conjunction with ICT SME’s, but we have also contributed directly to government projects and other organizations while retaining the skills-transfer element of our programs. http://geekcorps.org/
Hands On Network --Hands On Network is at the forefront of a growing civic movement of people coming together to strengthen communities through meaningful volunteer action. Hands On will support the mobilization of 6.4 million volunteers and 100,000 volunteer leaders over the next two years. The Hands On Campaign will engage volunteers in projects designed to have immediate, tangible impact on children and education, health and wellness, and the environment. Hands On Network’s Corporate Service Council, an alliance of CEOs and civic leaders, is leading the campaign to engage volunteer participation and leadership in meaningful projects across the country. We are launching a people raising campaign. Join Us. Raise your hands. http://www.handsonnetwork.org/home/
Médecins sans Frontières (MSF)/Doctors without Borders--Recruits health professionals and logistics as volunteers for overseas humanitarian assignments. "Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is an international humanitarian aid organisation that provides emergency medical assistance to populations in danger in more than 70 countries. In countries where health structures are insufficient or even non-existant, MSF collaborates with authorities such as the Ministry of Health to provide assistance. MSF works in rehabilitation of hospitals and dispensaries, vaccination programmes and water and sanitation projects. MSF also works in remote health care centres, slum areas and provides training of local personnel. All this is done with the objective of rebuilding health structures to acceptable levels." www.msf.org
UN Volunteers -- "The United Nations Volunteers programme (UNV) is the volunteer arm of the United Nations. It was created by the UN General Assembly in 1970 to serve as an operational partner in development cooperation at the request of UN member states. It reports to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and works through UNDP's country offices around the world. In 2004, its seventh consecutive year of growth, the UNV programme mobilized some 7,300 volunteers, representing 166 nationalities, who served in 140 countries. Since 1971, more than 30,000 UN Volunteers from developing and industrialized nations have supported peace, relief and development initiatives worldwide." www.unv.org/index.htm
Voluntary Service Overseas--VSO was voted
top international development charity in the International Aid and Development
category at the Charity Awards 2004 for its work in promoting innovative
approaches to globalising volunteering. Our approach to volunteering has
changed dramatically over the years. We no longer send school-leavers - today
the average age of a volunteer is 38 and most placements are for two years. We
are a leading development charity with almost 2,000 skilled professionals
currently working in over 40 countries. We respond to requests from governments
and community organizations throughout
Volunteer Match:—Volunteer Match is a leader in the nonprofit world dedicated to helping everyone find a great place to volunteer. The organization offers a variety of online services to support a community of nonprofit, volunteer and business leaders committed to civic engagement. Our popular service welcomes millions of visitors a year and has become the preferred internet recruiting tool for more than 30,000 nonprofit organizations. Read more in our latest annual report. http://www.volunteermatch.org/
Volunteering
World Service Enquiry --What job
opportunities are there for me in a relief or development agency in the
World Volunteer Web --The World Volunteer Web is brought to you by the United Nations Volunteers (UNV) programme in partnership with the following organizations: CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation; Inter-American Development Bank (IDB); International Association for Volunteer Effort (IAVE); International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC); Merrill Associates; Millennium Campaign; OneWorld.net; Portal do Voluntário. The World Volunteer Web supports the volunteer community by serving as a global clearinghouse for information and resources linked to volunteerism that can be used for campaigning, advocacy and networking. It is an online hub where the community can meet, share resources and coordinate activities to mobilize volunteer action in support of the Millennium Development Goals. www.worldvolunteerweb.org/
Arctic Change--The objective of this NOAA website is to present recent indicators that describe the present state of the Arctic climate and ecosystem in an accessible, understandable, and credible historical context. http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/detect/
EuroTempest--EuroTempest provides real-time
forecasts out to 5 days ahead for European windstorms and their localised
potential wind damage. The interactive web-based service http://www.eurotempest.com
offers local damage forecasts, down to postcode level, for winter storms
affecting seven European countries (
Climate Institute--The Climate Institute has been in a unique position to inform key decision-makers, heighten international awareness of climate change, and identify practical ways of achieving significant emissions reductions. This has been done through several different media including symposia, conferences, roundtables, and special briefings. http://www.climate.org/climate_main.shtml
Climate Variability and Predictability [CLIVAR]--To describe and understand the physical processes responsible for climate variability and predictability on seasonal, interannual, decadal, and centennial time-scales, through the collection and analysis of observations and the development and application of models of the coupled climate system, in cooperation with other relevant climate-research and observing programmes. To extend the record of climate variability over the time-scales of interest through the assembly of quality-controlled paleoclimatic and instrumental data sets. To extend the range and accuracy of seasonal to interannual climate prediction through the development of global coupled predictive models. http://www.clivar.org/
Global Drought Monitor--The Global Drought Monitor is a free internet application which monitors the severity of drought worldwide on an ongoing basis. The product will aid humanitarian relief by assisting warnings of potential food, water and health problems. The Global Drought Monitor will also benefit the general public, government and industry by improving awareness of droughts and their impacts. Global Drought Monitor
Global Warming: early Warning Signs--Global temperature in 1998 was the hottest in the historical record, and the temperature increase over the 20th century is likely to be the highest of the past millennium. Global average temperatures have warmed about one degree Fahrenheit (0.6�C) since 1900. The ten warmest years on record have occurred since 1987, seven of them since 1994. This map illustrates the local consequences of global warming. http://www.climatehotmap.org/
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change--The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has been established by WMO and UNEP to assess scientific, technical and socio- economic information relevant for the understanding of climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation. http://www.ipcc.ch/
International Research Institute for Climate and Society--The mission of the IRI is to enhance society's capability to understand, anticipate and manage the impacts of seasonal climate fluctuations, in order to improve human welfare and the environment, especially in developing countries. This mission is to be conducted through strategic and applied research, education and capacity building, and provision of forecast and information products, with an emphasis on practical and verifiable utility and partnerships. http://iri.ldeo.columbia.edu/
Linking Climate Adaptation
Network--The objective of the Linking Climate Adaptation (LCA) Network is
to help communities, policy-makers, practitioners and academics share
experiences and knowledge about adaptation to climate change. Funded by the
Department for International Development and implemented by the
http://www.linkingclimateadaptation.org/
National
Climatic Data Centre--NCDC is the world's largest active archive of
weather data. NCDC produces numerous climate publications and responds to data
requests from all over the world. NCDC operates the
National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service--NESDIS provides timely access to global environmental data from satellites and other sources to promote, protect, & enhance the Nation's economy, security, environment, & quality of life. National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service
National Lightning Safety Institute--(NLSI) is a non-profit, non-product advocacy of lightning safety for both people and structures: * Personal Lightning Safety means anticipating a high-risk situation and moving to a low-risk location. * Structural Lightning Safety means using various exterior and interior defensive systems in a detailed, site-specific process. http://www.lightningsafety.com/
NOAA Storm
Prediction Centre--The Storm Prediction Center (SPC) is part of the
National Weather Service (NWS) and the
NOAA-CIRES
Climate Diagnostics Centre--What are Climate Diagnostics, anyway?
Most people hear the word "diagnosis" only when they go to the
doctor. After taking your medical history, performing a physical examination
and perhaps ordering some "diagnostic" lab tests, the doctor
pronounces "You have the flu," or some other diagnosis. What we do at
the
Science Policy Assessment and
Research on Climate--Each day, in the face of deep uncertainty, millions of
decisions are made that respond to and influence the behavior of climate. How
does the nation’s multi-billion dollar investment in climate research affect
those decisions? How can the societal value of this scientific investment be
enhanced? These are the core organizing questions for Science Policy Assessment
and Research on Climate (SPARC) which conducts research and assessments,
outreach, and education aimed at helping climate science policies better
support climate-related decision making in the face of fundamental and often
irreducible uncertainties. SPARC is a joint project of the
Tropical Storm Risk--The Tropical Storm Risk
(TSR) venture developed from the