The National Hurricane Study Program has been in existence for over 20 years and develops information for States and Counties to assist them in managing their resources to minimize the adverse effects resulting from hurricanes.

It’s an annoyingly “1.0″ website, with the only interactivity or action coming from a list of linked acronyms (no-one does them better – or worse – than the government) and a rotating Corps of Engineers castle. But the information linked under those acronyms is – where available – rich and useful. (There’s a huge number of ‘empty’ links for individual counties and areas, and the main website admits “it is far from complete”.) Everything from Post-Storm Assessments,  behavioral data on hurricane evacuation studies, a limited number of hurricane evacuation studies (some very dated), and maps with “SLOSH” data (expectations for Sea, Lake and Overland Surge from Hurricanes) and evacuation routes and surge maps are available for certain locals.

Data from individual areas can also be found by using the “Other Links – State/County/City” link. This is where the website could really be useful. For Virginia, for example, the following information is available:

Take H1N1, for instance. What is the best way to quickly disseminate authoritative information about the disease? PLoS (Public Library of Science), a leader in open-access, peer-reviewed publishing, to the rescue!

“PLoS Currents: Influenza, which we are launching today, is built on three key components: a small expert research community that PLoS is working with to run the website; Google Knol with new features that allow content to be gathered together in collections after being vetted by expert moderators; and a new, independent database at the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) called Rapid Research Notes, where research targeted for rapid communication, such as the content in PLoS Currents: Influenza will be freely and permanently accessible. To ensure that researchers are properly credited for their work, PLoS Currents content will also be given a unique identifier by the NCBI so that it is citable.”

While the postings are not subject to the same rigorous peer-review process as formally published scientific journals use, “inappropriate” submissions are being screened out by two experts in the fields of microbiology and infectious disease. While many of the articles listed are focused specifically on the biology of the virus, other topics can be found here as well, such as “Swine origin influenza A (H1N1) virus and ICU capacity in the US: Are we prepared?” and “Reducing influenza spreading over the airline network“, which uses different models to determine the most effective method for containing the spread of disease through air travel.

The National Library of Medicine maintains a collection of more than 30 environmental health websites under the auspices of the Environmental Health and Toxicology SIS (Specialized Information Services). Topics covered range from the specific (Health effects from the collapse of the World Trade Center) to the general (Tornadoes).  The links contained within each page vary, but most begin with a set of ‘Overview’ links, all from US Government sites, and then may go on to include links to glossaries, data and research sites, and law and policy. Almost all include links to specialized research from the National Library of Medicine’s databases, such as Pubmed, Toxline, Hazardous Substances Data Bank, ChemID Plus, Household Products Database, Tox Town and Medline Plus.

New hurricane guides available
“The Hampton Roads Emergency Management Committee and the Virginia Department of Emergency Management and VDEM have redesigned the Virginia Hurricane Guide. As part of the Ready Virginia public information campaign, the guide contains essential hurricane season information, such as evacuation routes, traffic reversal plans along Interstate 64, bridge/tunnel/ferry closure plans in the Hampton Roads area and family preparedness.

New sections of the guide explain staying in place versus evacuation, the importance of storm surge, and how public shelters are designed to help evacuees. The revised evacuation route section clarifies that I-64 is only one of many evacuation routes, and the guide gives detailed instruction about how to make a family emergency plan, get an emergency supply kit and stay informed during emergencies.

For the 2009 hurricane season, 250,000 copies of the guide were printed; most will be distributed by state and local agencies, private businesses and nonprofit organizations. Any organization interested in distributing the guides should contact the VDEM Public Affairs Office at (866) 782-3470. An interactive, Web-based version is also available at www.ReadyVirginia.gov. A federal homeland security grant paid for the printing costs.”

While we’re on the topic of open-source public health items, this special supplement to the AMA’s journal “Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness” (June 2009, Vol. 3) is freely available online. Article topics range from public policy (“National Strategy for Health Care System Preparedness”) to  Business Continuity (“Importance of Business Continuity in Health Care”) to NIMS (“Review of Hospital Preparedness Incidents to National Incident Management System Compliance”).

If you are interested in this topic and are a member of the University of Richmond community, you might want to check out our other Disaster Medicine journals, including the International Journal of Disaster Medicine, the Internet Journal of Rescue and Disaster Medicine, and Prehospital and Disaster Medicine. As always, let me know if you have any troubles viewing the links, or want to do a more refined search for a topic in this area.

Here’s a summary:

• Scientific American mainly sums up blog entries from the “60 Second Science” blog. But there’s also a detailed interview transcript with Dr. Chris Olsen, Director of the Olsen Laboratory, a veterinary medicine lab in Wisconsin where Influenza ‘A’ viruses are studied, and a link to the April 2009 cover story called, “How to Prevent the Next Pandemic” that describes the work of the Global Viral Forecasting Initiative.

• The New England Journal of Medicine is, of course, a fantastic authoritative source in medical research, and their H1N1 page contains many interesting articles, including “Managing and Reducing Uncertainty in an Emerging Influenza Pandemic”, which honestly asserts the fact that pandemic control must begin when the spread and fatality of the disease are unknown. Editorials and “Perspective” articles, with titles such as, “Digital Disease Detection – Harnessing the Web for Public Health Surveillance” flesh out (no pun intended) the hard-core science articles.

• The Lancet (a British medical journal) has also opened their pages:

“The Lancet’s H1N1 Resource Centre is the result of a collaborative effort by the editors of over 40 Elsevier-published journals and 11 learned societies who have agreed to make freely available on this site any relevant content. All papers have been selected by a Lancet editor, grouped by topic and fulltext pdfs made available to download free of charge.”

(If you haven’t seen an Elsevier price quote, you can’t appreciate the magnitude of this – Elsevier articles are notoriously expensive.)

• Finally, the NLM/NIH Environmental Health and Toxicology page is a wonderful compendium of all things related to H1N1. Among other resources, they link to 8 different National Academies Press titles, and the fulltext of the 1978 Institute of Medicine (also National Academies) book “The swine flu affair: decision-making on a slippery disease“.

From the Series Foreward:

Every disease has a story to tell: about how it started long ago and began to disable or even take the lives of its innocent victims, about the way it hurts us, and about how we are trying to stop it. In this Biographies of Disease series, the authors tell the stories of the diseases that we have come to know and dread…

This is the biography of a disease, but it is also the story of real people who made incredible sacrifices to stop it in its tracks.”

The author of the Influenza volume, Roni K. Devlin, is a practicing physician with a sub-specialty in Infectious Diseases. She covers the topic of influenza in a way that is both thorough and engaging. Starting with an explanation of “germ theory”, six chapters detail everything from the makeup and discovery of the virus, the epidemiology of influenza, particularly how it relates to H5N1 (avian flu – remember this was published before swine flu became all the rage), to the pandemic of 1918. But this is not solely a history book (try “The Great Influenza” by John M. Barry, or “Flu” by Gina Kolata for that). The last three chapters detail the clinical ‘manifestations’ of the flu, methods of diagnosis, future research possibilities, and prevention and treatment options.

In addition, this slim volume is replete with tables, illustrations, and other useful details, including a timeline going back to Hippocrates, a glossary, and a bibiliography with many references to online resources. Swine flu merits a fairly long entry in the index. Altogether, this is an accessible but scholarly resource. It’s Library of Congress Subject Heading is “Influenza–History–Popular Works”, but that doesn’t begin to touch the science detailed in it. Check it out!

News release

Free access to world-renowned public health database to assist swine-flu effort

1 May 2009

CABI today has announced free access to its specialist Global Health database – the definitive database for public health information – www.cabdirect.org/globalhealth

Simultaneously CABI has developed a Swine flu ‘dashboard’ that brings together up-to-the-minute information on the virus (http://www.netvibes.com/cabialerts).The ‘dashboard’ includes resources from CABI and critical advice from key health organizations such as the World Health Organization (WHO) and Centers for Disease Control (CDC).

“Our mission is to help people worldwide through the provision of scientific knowledge,” said Dr Trevor Nicholls, CEO of CABI. “Today we are offering our most applicable resource, over the coming weeks, to help health professionals and others working on the front line.”

In a fast changing sequence of events that has led to the rapid escalation of concern from WHO, and the reaction of national governments in considering their response to a possible influenza pandemic, release of the database is designed to give urgently needed support to those who need it most: scientists, medical professionals and health authorities investigating the causes and treatments of the disease and linkages to past outbreaks.

Influenza researchers urgently need to be able to refer back to previous scientific work in this area to understand the behaviour of previous strains of the virus and to research effective mechanisms for handling earlier outbreaks.

The Global Health database brings together global knowledge on every aspect of influenza since 1910. The knowledge it contains could provide a key weapon in health researchers’ response in understanding and controlling the virus.

Much of the data in Global Health is derived from publications that have long since vanished. They tell us a great deal about past pandemics, from rates and patterns of transmission, duration, timing of epidemiological peaks, geographical distribution of the disease, government preparedness and quarantine provisions through to effects on different age and social groups, severity in developing versus developed countries, symptoms, causes of mortality (secondary problems, especially pneumonia, were devastating in the Spanish flu) and mortality rates.

By opening the door to a wealth of historical information on past pandemics, the Global Health database has the potential to reveal vital clues in the international fight against swine flu (influenza A – H1N1).

CABI Swine Flu Dashboard – www.cabdirect.org/globalhealth

Global Health database – http://www.netvibes.com/cabialerts

Media contact: Sarah Wilson, PR and Corporate Communications Manager, tel: +44 (0) 1491 829 361, mob: +44 (0) 7516 928 845, email: s.wilson@cabi.org

Editor’s notes

About CABI

CABI is a not-for-profit science-based development and information organization. Its mission and direction are influenced by member countries that help guide the activities undertaken. These include publishing; development projects and research; and microbial services. CABI produces key scientific information, including CAB Abstracts – the world-renowned bibliographic database covering agriculture and the environment. CABI also publishes multimedia compendia, books, e-books and full text internet resources aiming to further science and its application to real life. Our expertise includes animal and veterinary sciences, entomology, plant sciences, environmental sciences, human health, parasitology, mycology, crop protection, rural economics, rural development and leisure and tourism. For more information go to www.cabi.org

About the Global Health database

The Global Health database is published by CABI which has recorded public health and veterinary research since 1910. Global Health is the only specialist bibliographic abstracting and indexing database dedicated to public health research and practice. With more than two million records, Global Health is the definitive international public health database for academics, researchers, NGOs, policy makers, clinicians, healthcare professionals and students. The database covers all pathogens relevant to human health, including swine flu.

Once I have a minute, I’ll do some looking and see what’s there, but it looks interesting, and potentially very useful.

The USGS website is a gift that keeps on giving as far as historic information on earthquakes is concerned. Need a list (with descriptions) of the earthquakes which caused 1000 or  more deaths since 1900? Here you are. What about US National Seismic Hazard Maps (so people can keep arguing about whether or not earthquakes are predictable events)? Here, along with Seismic Design Values for Buildings, a Java-based calculator which can provide Hazard Curves, design parameters from ASCE and international building codes, and “uniform hazard response spectra”. How about an estimate of the number of people and the names of cities exposed to severe shaking following significant earthquakes worldwide? Yup, that’s here too, under the “PAGER – Prompt Assessment of Global Earthquakes for Response” heading. Because I’m working on a loaner computer, I can’t look at the Google Earth tools, but I’ve bookmarked them for later because so many of them look interesting. Finally, a page of preparedness-related website links gives great resources for students in our ESM/Disaster Science program, including the LA City Fire Department Earthquake Preparedness Handbook, the NEHRP (the Federal Government’s earthquake risk reduction program), and others.

Craig Fugate

Craig Fugate, formerly Director of Florida’s Division of Emergency Management (a post he held for 8 years), has been named to head FEMA, with Jason R. McNamara coming on as his Chief of Staff. McNamara was formerly Director of Emergency Management at Dewberry, one of FEMA’s largest contractors.

Here’s a video of Fugate at work in his previous job. This is a great example of a fully-stocked “Media Center” with public service announcements, lessons learned, and even sessions with school children available in video format, coupled with copies of disaster plan materials: emergency checklists, disaster supply lists and even links to help Florida businesses create business plans.