Bittersweet and Paradoxical

The American Red Cross is the most active nonprofit organization involved in disaster planning and response in the United States. The organization deployed nearly 50,000 volunteers to provide essential support to victims of some 125,000 domestic disasters, including home fires, hurricanes, wildfires, and floods, in a recent two‐year period. This study asks how American Red Cross disaster response volunteer experiences function to cultivate satisfaction and, at the other end of the spectrum, the kind of dissatisfaction that leads people to quit; it pays particular attention to ways in which volunteer management shapes dissatisfaction and fatigue because of implications for volunteer retention. Paradoxically, the Red Cross facilitates the highly satisfying act of helping victims, but volunteers feel dissatisfied when management practices get in the way of helping. The study suggests voluntary organizations that rely on skilled, long‐term volunteers to deliver services should evaluate and strengthen their communication strategies, recognition practices, and support systems for volunteers in distress.     

Community Resilience and Decision Theory Challenges for Catastrophic Events

Extreme and catastrophic events pose challenges for normative models of risk management decision making. They invite development of new methods and principles to complement existing normative decision and risk analysis. Because such events are rare, it is difficult to learn about them from experience. They can prompt both too little concern before the fact, and too much after. Emotionally charged and vivid outcomes promote probability neglect and distort risk perceptions. Aversion to acting on uncertain probabilities saps precautionary action; moral hazard distorts incentives to take care; imperfect learning and social adaptation (e.g., herd‐following, group‐think) complicate forecasting and coordination of individual behaviors and undermine prediction, preparation, and insurance of catastrophic events. Such difficulties raise substantial challenges for normative decision theories prescribing how catastrophe risks should be managed. This article summarizes challenges for catastrophic hazards with uncertain or unpredictable frequencies and severities, hard‐to‐envision and incompletely described decision alternatives and consequences, and individual responses that influence each other. Conceptual models and examples clarify where and why new methods are needed to complement traditional normative decision theories for individuals and groups. For example, prospective and retrospective preferences for risk management alternatives may conflict; procedures for combining individual beliefs or preferences can produce collective decisions that no one favors; and individual choices or behaviors in preparing for possible disasters may have no equilibrium. Recent ideas for building “disaster‐resilient” communities can complement traditional normative decision theories, helping to meet the practical need for better ways to manage risks of extreme and catastrophic events.     

Opportunities and Challenges for Public Libraries to Enhance Community Resilience

This study bridges a gap between public library and emergency management policy versus practice by examining the role of public libraries in the community resource network for disaster recovery. Specifically, this study identifies the opportunities and challenges for public libraries to fulfill their role as a FEMA‐designated essential community organization and enhance community resilience. The results indicate there are several opportunities for libraries to enhance community resilience by offering technology resources and assistance; providing office, meeting, and community living room space; serving as the last redundant communication channel and a repository for community information and disaster narratives; and adapting or expanding services already offered to meet the changing needs of the community. However, libraries also face challenges in enhancing community resilience, including the temptation to overcommit library capacity and staff capability beyond the library mission and a lack of long‐term disaster plans and collaboration with emergency managers and government officials. Implications for library and emergency management practice and crisis research are discussed.     

Agent‐Based Recovery Model for Seismic Resilience Evaluation of Electrified Communities

In this article, an agent‐based framework to quantify the seismic resilience of an electric power supply system (EPSS) and the community it serves is presented. Within the framework, the loss and restoration of the EPSS power generation and delivery capacity and of the power demand from the served community are used to assess the electric power deficit during the damage absorption and recovery processes. Damage to the components of the EPSS and of the community‐built environment is evaluated using the seismic fragility functions. The restoration of the community electric power demand is evaluated using the seismic recovery functions. However, the postearthquake EPSS recovery process is modeled using an agent‐based model with two agents, the EPSS Operator and the Community Administrator. The resilience of the EPSS–community system is quantified using direct, EPSS‐related, societal, and community‐related indicators. Parametric studies are carried out to quantify the influence of different seismic hazard scenarios, agent characteristics, and power dispatch strategies on the EPSS–community seismic resilience. The use of the agent‐based modeling framework enabled a rational formulation of the postearthquake recovery phase and highlighted the interaction between the EPSS and the community in the recovery process not quantified in resilience models developed to date. Furthermore, it shows that the resilience of different community sectors can be enhanced by different power dispatch strategies. The proposed agent‐based EPSS–community system resilience quantification framework can be used to develop better community and infrastructure system risk governance policies.     

The disaster relief and social work after the Wenchuan earthquake in Mainland China

ABSTRACT

This paper mainly focuses on the development of disaster social work in Mainland China and the intervention of social work in disaster relief. Before the Wenchuan earthquake and in the initial stage of post-earthquake, disaster social work was mainly based on individual psychotherapy; from the earthquake to the year of 2012 in which post-earthquake recovery and reconstruction was completed, the disaster relief began to emphasise community building and integration, while the basic framework for disaster social work was also established. Social workers begin to explore the new mode of developmental and localised disaster social work. By combining with the practical experiences from disaster social work, this paper tries to highlight the dilemmas confronting disaster relief in Mainland China and put forward some corresponding countermeasures and suggestions, which could improve the future disaster relief system in Mainland China.     

Missing value imputation method for disaster decision-making using K nearest neighbor

Due to destructiveness of natural disasters, restriction of disaster scenarios and some human causes, missing data usually occur in disaster decision-making problems. In order to estimate missing values of alternatives, this paper focuses on imputing heterogeneous attribute values of disaster based on an improved K nearest neighbor imputation (KNNI) method. Firstly, some definitions of trapezoidal fuzzy numbers (TFNs) are introduced and three types of attributes (i.e. linguistic term sets, intervals and real numbers) are converted to TFNs. Then the correlated degree model is utilized to extract related attributes to form instances that will be used in K nearest neighbor algorithm, and a novel KNNI method merging with correlated degree model is presented. Finally, an illustrative example is given to verify the proposed method and to demonstrate its feasibility and effectiveness.     

Communicating Actionable Risk for Terrorism and Other Hazards⋆

We propose a shift in emphasis when communicating to people when the objective is to motivate household disaster preparedness actions. This shift is to emphasize the communication of preparedness actions (what to do about risk) rather than risk itself. We have called this perspective “communicating actionable risk,” and it is grounded in diffusion of innovations and communication theories. A representative sample of households in the nation was analyzed using a path analytic framework. Preparedness information variables (including content, density, and observation), preparedness mediating variables (knowledge, perceived effectiveness, and milling), and preparedness actions taken were modeled. Clear results emerged that provide a strong basis for communicating actionable risk, and for the conclusion both that information observed (seeing preparedness actions that other have taken) and information received (receiving recommendations about what preparedness actions to take) play key, although different, roles in motivating preparedness actions among the people in our nation.     

自然灾害冲击对农村家庭非农就业选择的影响

利用国家重点研发计划重点专项2018年调研数据,构建了自然灾害冲击对农村家庭非农就业选择影响的理论框架,采用Probit模型验证了自然灾害冲击对农户家庭成员非农就业选择的影响。研究发现:自然灾害冲击对农户家庭成员非农就业选择有显著正向影响,这一正向影响会随着自然灾害强度的增加而不断提升;人力资本和社会资本的嵌入,会弱化自然灾害对农户家庭成员非农就业选择的影响,信贷约束却会强化这一影响。这意味着现阶段面对自然灾害冲击,农户家庭成员应积极尝试非农就业,不仅能够促进资本存量重构,还可以缓解家庭生计压力,增加农户家庭收入,避免农户家庭因灾致贫。     

长江三角洲城市群洪涝灾害脆弱性评估及影响因素分析

长江三角洲城市群人口、财产、基础设施高度密集,暴雨洪涝灾害带来的影响越来越大,对该区域城市洪涝灾害脆弱性进行评估是保障长江三角洲区域一体化、可持续发展的基础。以长江三角洲城市群中心区27个城市为研究对象,基于超效率DEA模型,将洪涝灾害脆弱性看作一个负面“生产活动”,构建城市洪涝灾害脆弱性评估模型,在分析脆弱性空间分异特征的基础上确定该地区城市洪涝灾害脆弱性的主要影响因素。结果显示：从整体上看,长江三角洲城市群洪涝灾害脆弱性水平差异较大,安徽及浙江远高于江苏和上海,其中,上海的洪灾脆弱性最低;从空间上看,脆弱性分布有明显的地域集聚特征,脆弱性高的城市分布在浙江东南沿海和安徽南部丘陵地区;降雨量、城市发展水平及基础设施的完善性等因素对城市洪涝灾害脆弱性影响显著。     

曹雪芹的无神论思想——兼论高鹗的神权观

曹雪芹的无神论思想在《红楼梦》前八十回中有大量体现,其中虽然写了许多神仙的故事,但是这些神仙的名字都叫茫茫大士,渺渺真人,空空道人,警幻仙姑;而地名则叫大荒山,无稽压,太虚幻境等等.曹的用意十分明确:这些不过是渺、茫、空、幻,荒诞的无稽之谈,属于"贾(假)语村言",和此书不记何年何代,地点可南可北一样,都是为了给此书蒙上一层虚无飘渺的色彩,以掩盖其现实严肃的政治内容.曹雪芹虽写了一系列神话故事,但一写到现实的和尚,尼姑,道士,道婆一类人物,大都采取揭露和批判的态度.与高鹗在后四十回中大量传播神权和因果报应得封建迷信思想,形成鲜明的对比.