As social media platforms have become vital means of communications, it has become imperative for emergency managers and policy makers to understand how people are interacting with different agencies on these platforms for enhancing community response coordination during disasters. Although many public agencies have already adopted social media platforms for crisis communication purposes, empirical evidence on whether and how these agencies are effectively engaged on these platforms is lacking. This research aims to examine crisis communication activities of a variety of agencies on Twitter in response to Hurricane Irma in 2017. In this study, we analyzed 13,353 hurricane-related tweets posted by the local agencies from eight counties in East Central Florida as well as federal, state, and other levels of organizations during the hurricane response period. An engagement metric was applied on these tweets to determine which agencies were most active in disseminating information during Hurricane Irma. The results revealed the most engaged local agencies in Twitter during Hurricane Irma for crisis communications and the Emergency Support Functions (ESFs) associated with them in coordinating disaster response activities. We further investigated Twitter profiles and relevant attributes of these actively engaged agencies, and the contents of the hurricane-related tweets during Hurricane Irma. The study found that local agencies remain active and engaged in Twitter during a disaster compared to other levels of agencies. The ESF representing communication (ESF #2) was one of the most frequent ESFs associated with these active agencies. The results also provided insights on crisis communication performance of these agencies in terms of the three dimensions of social media engagement including popularity, commitment, and virality, which are correlated to the counts of like, reply, and retweet of each post, respectively. The study includes recommendations to local government and partner organizations and emergency managers to improve crisis communication in social media and suggests future research directions.

Although remote sensing has been used in predicting, monitoring, and assessing hazards and disasters for over 50 years, its use in the transportation domain is still in its infancy. This study was conducted to identify the research needs involving the use of remote sensing for such applications within the transportation domain. The first step taken was to determine the current state of remote sensing applications in the transportation domain associated with the prediction, monitor, and assessment of hazards and disasters. The second step was to identify the impacts that such events may cause and the information needed to prevent or reduce their impacts. With the knowledge of the required information, remote sensing requirements and technology limitations were defined. Then according to the knowledge of the current state of research and the limitations of remote systems, future research needs were identified. Finally, the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) was used to rank these research needs.

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Investigations of children's adjustment following the experience of a residential fire or other disaster has indicated that the level of PTSD symptoms experienced by the child victims varies as a function of exposure and degree of loss incurred due to the trauma in a dose-response relationship. Additionally, other variables may interact with the level of exposure and loss to increase or decrease children's risk of posttraumatic symptomatology following the fire. Children's use of coping strategies has also been shown to significantly predict children's level of posttraumatic stress symptomatology. This study examined the mediating role of coping as well as the contributions of children's attributional style and family environment in the explanation of children's posttraumatic symptomatology following residential fire. In the current study, 108 children and their parents were assessed approximately one to three months and again approximately seven to ten months following their experience of a residential fire. Results indicated that at the second assessment, attributional style served as a moderator between the degree of loss children experienced and children's use of coping strategies. Children with helpless attributional styles reported low levels of active and avoidant coping regardless of their level of loss due to the fire. Children with positive attributional styles reported using low levels of coping only if they also reported low levels of loss; in contrast, those children who reported positive attributional styles and high levels of loss reported using considerably higher levels of coping. In addition, the data indicated that coping acted as a mediator between loss and posttraumatic stress symptoms both at the first and the second assessments. Children's coping activities following a trauma like residential fire may be the avenue through which loss exerts its influence on children's psychological symptoms following residential fire. / Master of Science

Abstract The frequency of natural disasters and its negative consequences in terms of the number of people killed, property destroyed and negative environmental impacts caused in the affected communities constitute one of the basic foundations and motivations for the development and use of ICT and other means of preventing as well as responding to disasters in the world today. This is simply because disaster management constitutes an important part of any developmental framework. Unfortunately a majority of these natural disasters occur in developing countries where information flow is greatly hampered because the national actors in disasters lack the skills to use ICT to prepare for and to response to disasters in their communities. Current study aims at studying the use of ICT in disaster management in Cameroon-a less developing country south of the Sahara To achieve the aim of this study, a quantitative research approach was chosen. A total sample of 150 organisations was selected from a population of 285 organisations within Cameroon, that are directly or indirectly involved with disaster management or developmental issues of any nature. In total 150 questionnaires were administered to these selected national actors by mail, internet, telephone and self-administration and 85 of the organisations respondended to the questionnaire. After collecting and analysing the data, the authors came to the conclusions that; disasters occur in Cameroon on frequent bases causing lots of damages thus the need for ICT use in humanitarian logistics to move information and material. Results showed that national actors use the radio and local TV (CRTV) for disaster preparedness and the mobile phone for disaster response, while the internet and computer techonology, foreign TV, Fixed phone and fax had a very low usage rate or sometimes not used at all. The reason for low usage or no usage was due to problems encountered by national actors in an attempt of trying to use them. Against this background, the authors suggested a number of recommendations that could improve the degree of ICT usage. One of them was that the Cameroon government should partner with private sector firms to make ICT infrastructure available by investing more and improving on the telecommunication sector in the country. This will solve the problem of poor ICT infrastructure, poor radio and TV signals, limited internet connectivity accessibility and availability in Cameroon.

<p><strong>Abstract</strong></p><p>The frequency of natural disasters and its negative consequences in terms of the number of people killed, property destroyed and negative environmental impacts caused in the affected communities constitute one of the basic foundations and motivations for the development and use of ICT and other means of preventing as well as responding to disasters in the world today. This is simply because disaster management constitutes an important part of any developmental framework. Unfortunately a majority of these natural disasters occur in developing countries where information flow is greatly hampered because the national actors in disasters lack the skills to use ICT to prepare for and to response to disasters in their communities. Current study aims at studying the use of ICT in disaster management in Cameroon-a less developing country south of the Sahara</p><p>To achieve the aim of this study, a quantitative research approach was chosen. A total sample of 150 organisations was selected from a population of 285 organisations within Cameroon, that are directly or indirectly involved with disaster management or developmental issues of any nature. In total 150 questionnaires were administered to these selected national actors by mail, internet, telephone and self-administration and 85 of the organisations respondended to the questionnaire.</p><p>After collecting and analysing the data, the authors came to the conclusions that; disasters occur in Cameroon on frequent bases causing lots of damages thus the need for ICT use in humanitarian logistics to move information and material. Results showed that national actors use the radio and local TV (CRTV) for disaster preparedness and the mobile phone for disaster response, while the internet and computer techonology, foreign TV, Fixed phone and fax had a very low usage rate or sometimes not used at all. The reason for low usage or no usage was due to problems encountered by national actors in an attempt of trying to use them. Against this background, the authors suggested a number of recommendations that could improve the degree of ICT usage. One of them was that the Cameroon government should partner with private sector firms to make ICT infrastructure available by investing more and improving on the telecommunication sector in the country. This will solve the problem of poor ICT infrastructure, poor radio and TV signals, limited internet connectivity accessibility and availability in Cameroon.<strong></strong></p>

This thesis examines how local knowledge is identified and implemented in disaster responseand recovery programmes conducted by international aid organizations. The case that isexamined in the analysis is the International Federation of Red Cross and Red CrescentSocieties response and recovery operations conducted in the aftermath of the Nepalearthquake 2015-2019. Using the method of content analysis, the final report of the Nepaloperation is analyzed using categorizations of local knowledge and informed by previousresearch on local knowledge in disaster operations, along with international aid organizations'engagement with local knowledge.The main findings of this study shows that the implementation of activities that utilize orseeks to identify local knowledge is heavily concentrated to the recovery phase of theoperation, with no activities informed by local knowledge found in the response phase. Allcategories of local knowledge are found throughout the operation, with socio-culturalknowledge being the most prominently utilized, whilst environmental knowledge andorganizational knowledge remains underrepresented. Activities that were not informed bylocal knowledge, or utilized local knowledge to some degree created unintendedconsequences, suggesting that for a productive utilization of local knowledge, it has to beconsidered in all steps of the operational planning.