“This resource page allows you to search and explore our collection of nearly 7000 EFOP papers dating from 1986 to present. You can begin by selecting the search link below or you can browse some of the more recent papers by general topic. Most EFO Papers published since FY98 are now available to download or read online. You’ll see links in our online catalog citations to these papers when they are available in digits.”lecting the search link below or you can browse some of the more recent papers by general topic. Most EFO Papers published since FY98 are now available to download or read online. You’ll see links in our online catalog citations to these papers when they are available in digits.”

Topics covered range from Emergency Management, through all aspects of Fire Safety, to Organizational Effectiveness and Strategic Planning.

“To determine where the need is the greatest, planners require accurate information about the extent and location of the damage.

Airplanes and helicopters can capture detailed images. However, to be useful, these images must be pieced together and matched to scale, and even sunlight angle. In such cases, satellite images are preferable, because capture wide regions at one time.”

Particularly moving are the high-resolution slides (with explanatory notes) of the coast of Sendai before and after the tsunami.

Within minutes of hearing about the 9.0 magnitude earthquake off the coast of Japan in March, Googlers around the world—from engineers to webmasters to product managers—immediately started organizing a Google Crisis Response resource page with disaster-related information such as maps and satellite imagery, Person Finder and news updates and citizen videos on YouTube. In Japan, Person Finder went live within an hour of the earthquake. More than 600,000 contact entries have been made since then—more than all other disasters combined—and there have been several reports of people finding their loved ones safe. I was inspired by my colleagues’ ability to launch tools about an hour after the earthquake struck; the Tokyo office, in particular, has really been helping to drive the rapid response and provided real-time information to teams across the globe, even while aftershocks were rocking the city and buildings were still swaying.

The Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) is a specialised agency within the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), an intergovernmental organisation of industrialised countries, based in Paris, France.

Did you know that four US Government agencies are responsible for earthquake risk reduction? USGS, NSF, FEMA and NIST all work together under the coordinating umbrella of the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program. An excellent historical overview of the NEHRP is available here.

Meanwhile, USGS is, as always, the best source for one-stop information shopping on earthquakes and geological hazards. Here’s an example:

PAGER update for the major quake off the coast of Japan.

FEMA Administrator Fugate at CSIS

At CSIS on February 17, FEMA administrator Craig Fugate described FEMA’s role as one of support and coordination. In a session of the CSIS-LSU Series on Disaster Management and Emergency Response moderated by director Rick “Ozzie” Nelson of CSIS’s Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Program, Administrator Fugate presented three key messages:

• the public is part of the solution;
• the private sector is a valuable resource; and
• FEMA is authorized to support governors or a lead federal agency.

When responding to disasters, administrator Fugate described a hierarchy of needs: (1) physical access, (2) safety, and (3) search and rescue. Too much time, he said, is wasted on assessment rather than response. On security, he said, calling out the National Guard has an important psychological impact, showing decisive action and preserving the fragile peace.

The University of Canterbury’s Digital Media Group developed the Christchurch Quake Map. In their words, it “present[s] a time-lapse visualisation of the earthquake and its aftershocks, primarily to help those outside the affected area understand what those of us in Canterbury are experiencing. It plots earthquake data from GeoNet (note: GeoNet’s recent quakes list does not list all quakes) on a map using the Google Maps API, with the size of the circle denoting the magnitude (the higher the magnitude, the larger the circle) and the colour showing the focal depth (see the legend below the map).”

A “Daily Energy Release” chart plots the number of quakes per day, and the cumulative energy released from those quakes.

They have gathered together books, reports and articles on topics as diverse as Human Behavior, Federal Aid, Media, Coast Guard, Victims, Property Losses, Resilience… the list goes on and on. Books and articles are citation links only (unless you happen to be an NETC LRC patron), but many of the reports are linked directly through the LRC catalog.

If you’re a University of Richmond Library patron, feel free to contact me about getting access to any of the books and articles you find through this page.

[Image courtesy of NOAA's Environmental Visualization Program.]

Some of the best information for the field of Emergency Services Management comes from the practitioners, and the Natural Hazards Observer is no exception. A free publication from the University of Colorado at Boulder’s Natural Hazards Center, this bi-monthly newsletter takes an ‘all-hazards’ approach to disaster preparedness and hazard mitigation. The stated goal of the Natural Hazards Center is to promote information sharing between researchers, practitioners and policy makers, and their newsletter fits that mission beautifully. It also manages to do so in a funny (sometimes snarky!) way, with political-style cartoons to illustrate the articles clearly.

In-depth articles, written for those with a general overall level of knowledge in the field, cover a range of news-worthy events. January’s issue, for example, contained articles on Haiti’s recovery and the challenges that country faces, TSA scanner issues and their coverage in the news, polio in the Congo, the summer heat waves in Russia, how to communicate effectively about emergency management and natural hazards issues, and an “invited comment” from a California-based emergency manager who discussed the rationale behind a “72-hour” readiness-plan, from a psychological, physical and even PR standpoint. As useful as the articles are (they are filled with quotes, links and statistics, with endnotes where applicable), my favorite part of the newsletters come at the end, in the “Resources” section. Here, studies, websites and publications of interest are reviewed in detail. Much of my collection development work for building the ESM collection at Boatwright Library comes from this section. Finally, the “Contracts and Grants” section gives an excellent overview of who is working on what, and those types of contacts are often the best resources for researchers.