Thesis (M.A. in Security Studies (Homeland Security and Defense))--Naval Postgraduate School, March 2006. / AD-A445 450. Thesis Advisor(s): Christopher Bellavita. "March 2006." Includes bibliographical references (p.69-71). Also available online.

The recent emergencies on college campuses including the Virginia Tech massacre of April, 2007, the Northern Illinois University shootings and the Union University tornado highlight the importance of disaster preparedness within the university community. This study is a survey exploring the daily rhythms of student life, the communication channels open to students and students composition and characteristics. This survey finds that students have frequent access to communication technologies which can be utilized as warning channels. The study also concludes that many students do not actively seek out information relative to emergency preparedness and the gaps in the populations knowledge require increased disaster education by the university.

In this thesis, an emergency management system taking advantage of mobile computing and its awareness on context is provided. The framework primarily aims to create an infrastructure for acquiring implicit and explicit data about an emergency situation by using capabilities of smart mobile devices and converting them into value-added information to be used in phases of emergency management. In addition to conceptual description of the framework, a real prototype implementation is developed and successful application of the framework is demonstrated. Sample cases are analyzed in conjunction with the prototype and an experiment for reporting an emergency situation is carried out by a group of participants in order to demonstrate the applicability and feasibility of the framework. Data collected during the experiment are examined in order to determine the advantages of the proposed system in comparison with traditional emergency reporting efforts.

In the event of a radioactive dispersal device (RDD), the assessment of the internal contamination level of victims is necessary to determine if immediate medical follow-up is necessary. Thermo Scientific's TPM-903B Portal Monitor was investigated to determine if it is a suitable first cut screening tool for internal contamination assessment of victims. A portal monitor was chosen for this study because they are readily accessible, transportable, easy to assemble, and provide whole body count rates due to the detector size. The TPM-903B was modeled in Monte Carlo N-Particles Transport Code Version 5 (MCNP). This computational model was validated against the portal monitor's response to a series of measurements made with four point sources in a polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) slab box. Using the validated MCNP5 model and models of the MIRD male and female anthropomorphic phantoms, the response of the portal monitor was simulated for the inhalation and ingestion radionuclides from an RDD. Six representative phantoms were considered: Reference Male, Reference Female, Adipose Male, Adipose Female, Post-Menopausal Adipose Female, and 10-Year-Old Child. The biokinetics via Dose and Risk Calculation Software (DCAL) was implemented using both the inhalation and ingestion pathways to determine the radionuclide concentrations in the organs of the body which were then used to determine the count rate of the portal monitor as a function of time. Dose coefficients were employed to determine the count rate of the detector associated with specific dose limits. These count rates were then compiled into procedure sheets to be used by first responders during the triaging of victims following an RDD.

The occurrence of devastating natural disasters in the past several years have prompted communities, responding organizations, and governments to seek ways to improve disaster preparedness capabilities locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally. A holistic approach to design used in the aerospace and industrial engineering fields enables efficient allocation of resources through applied parametric changes within a particular design to improve performance metrics to selected standards. In this research, this methodology is applied to disaster preparedness, using a community's time to restoration after a disaster as the response metric. A review of the responses from Hurricane Katrina and the 2010 Haiti earthquake, among other prominent disasters, provides observations leading to some current capability benchmarking. A need for holistic assessment and planning exists for communities but the current response planning infrastructure lacks a standardized framework and standardized assessment metrics. Within the humanitarian logistics community, several different metrics exist, enabling quantification and measurement of a particular area's vulnerability. These metrics, combined with design and planning methodologies from related fields, such as engineering product design, military response planning, and business process redesign, provide insight and a framework from which to begin developing a methodology to enable holistic disaster response planning. The developed methodology was applied to the communities of Shelby County, TN and pre-Hurricane-Katrina Orleans Parish, LA. Available literature and reliable media sources provide information about the different values of system parameters within the decomposition of the community aspects and also about relationships among the parameters. The community was modeled as a system dynamics model and was tested in the implementation of two, five, and ten year improvement plans for Preparedness, Response, and Development capabilities, and combinations of these capabilities. For Shelby County and for Orleans Parish, the Response improvement plan reduced restoration time the most. For the combined capabilities, Shelby County experienced the greatest reduction in restoration time with the implementation of Development&Response capability improvements, and for Orleans Parish it was the Preparedness&Response capability improvements. Optimization of restoration time with community parameters was tested by using a Particle Swarm Optimization algorithm. Fifty different optimized restoration times were generated using the Particle Swarm Optimization algorithm and ranked using the Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution. The optimization results indicate that the greatest reduction in restoration time for a community is achieved with a particular combination of different parameter values instead of the maximization of each parameter.

<p>This thesis combines theories from cross-cultural psychology with literature on group faultlines to understand cultural barriers to communication and cooperation experienced in multinational emergency management teams. The aim is to investigate whether the faultline concept is a viable theoretical vocabulary for addressing cultural differences in communication and cooperation (in the domain of emergency management). Culture is defined as a relatively organized system of shared meanings which influences people’s cognition, values, behaviors, and so on. Group faultlines are hypothetical dividing lines that may split a team into homogeneous subgroups based on demographic characteristics. Three papers are included in the thesis, all of which investigate various aspects of group behavior in relation to emergency management. Results suggest that faultlines can be formed not only by demographic characteristics, but also by culturally-driven behavior. The results presented in the papers and in this thesis are meant to supply emergency management personnel with general knowledge of cultural differences and ideas for future ‘cultural awareness’ training. The thesis contributes to the scientific community by taking cross-cultural research into the applied domain so that its findings can be made relevant to people in multinational organizations.</p>

published_or_final_version / Architecture / Master / Master of Architecture

Emergency services are very important in every society and that is why their activities should not be impeded by any avoidable barrier, especially with regard to transportation. One problem that is affecting the smooth running of emergency services in Henry County, Indiana is train movement across the county. The train tracks run through the county preventing road traffic flow when a train is crossing or has stopped. As a result, ambulances, police, or fire service vehicles have to wait for minutes or travel long distances to go around the train. This thesis focuses on developing response service areas maps based on the current response time and two models to generate shortest route around train obstructions. The data used for this thesis was provided by Henry County GIS Department, including shape files of police stations, police service areas, ambulance stations, ambulance service areas, fire stations, fire service areas, railroad and streets. The response service areas were designed based on the current response time. This was accomplished using ArcGIS network analyst extension which provides tools to design series of concentric circles based on the distance from the common center. Apart from the service areas maps for the emergency services which provide an idea as to where the services need to be extended in the county, the results of this thesis also include two models designed to generate shortest possible route as well as selection of a closest emergency facility to an incident site. The thesis could help improve the transportation aspect of emergency services in the county. / Department of Geography

This study addressed emergency management preparedness and local citizen recovery from a disaster event through a case study of the Elkhart County, Indiana 18 October 2007 tornado. A discussion of the disaster recovery process of Amish households in northern Indiana enables local emergency managers to gain a better understanding of disaster recovery needs for specialized populations. The primary objective to be addressed by this thesis was to create a tornado climatology for emergency managers to use as part of a comprehensive, local hazard analysis. Secondary to that was to examine the differences in Amish and non-Amish response to a tornado event in Indiana’s Homeland Security District 2 and formulate suggestions for tailoring local emergency management programs to this diverse community. / Department of Geography

Greater Victoria, a conurbation of about 335,000 people located in southwestern British Columbia, Canada, is subject to significant seismic hazards. The major regional seismic factor is the offshore Juan de Fuca tectonic plate, subducting beneath North America along the 1,100 km-long Cascadia Subduction Zone (CSZ), a megathrust fault. This environment generates three types of potentially damaging earthquakes—shallow, subduction, and deep. This research examines how the Transfusion Medicine (TM) component within transfusing facilities in Greater Victoria and the balance of Vancouver Island might function following these types of earthquakes. A shallow earthquake of magnitude (M)7 or greater that occurs near enough could heavily damage critical infrastructure in Greater Victoria. Decisions regarding the alternatives of (a) rapidly relocating a facility for storing and/or processing blood products within or near Greater Victoria or (b) transporting people injured in an earthquake to transfusing hospitals in or beyond Greater Victoria, or (c) both (a) and (b), may need to be made within the first few hours following a locally destructive earthquake. A subduction event (M8 to 9.2) in the CSZ could reduce or halt production of blood products in nearby Vancouver, diminish the supply of stored blood in southwestern coastal British Columbia, and sharply increase demand for blood products. Post-subduction-event conditions would likely result in a temporary shortage of blood products in at least two regional health authorities, and would test the response of a few key related functions within smaller, more remote health care facilities. A subduction event also would impact ground transportation routes, airports, and wharves, making the transportation of blood products to and around Vancouver Island more difficult. The researcher interviewed several professionals whose work supports the blood contingency emergency response by the Canadian Blood Services, the Vancouver Island Health Authority (VIHA), and the British Columbia Ministry of Health, to obtain information that could help maintain the TM function in post-quake circumstances. To prepare informants to answer questions regarding the health care implications of these earthquakes, the researcher generated--per earthquake type--order of magnitude estimates of the numbers of hospitalizations that would likely result in Greater Victoria or/and Vancouver Island. The study examines the inventorying and transportation of blood products, some communication, decision-making, and blood product distribution considerations—plus the hazard mitigation and vulnerability reduction aspects—that could be included in an earthquake-specific blood contingency plan for VIHA transfusing facilities. It also considers how VIHA could sustain the function of the TM Laboratory role within transfusing hospitals during post-earthquake circumstances in which some of their facilities for storing, monitoring, analyzing, or transfusing blood products are inoperable. The risks of damaging earthquakes, and accompanying tsunamis affecting populated areas and health system assets in coastal British Columbia, are real. Implementing the recommendations of this study may help various players involved in the regional processing, distribution and allocation of blood products to: (a) define a more efficient response to earthquake impacts upon their operations, (b) reduce injury to people and damage to crucial equipment used in the health system, and ultimately, (c) save lives. / Graduate / 0769 / 0368 / 0766 / sanderson.b1@gmail.com