Disaster Management Days 2 and 3

Rather briefer report from remainder of conference...


Met a nice man from Mexico who had just arrived and was (like me) expecting to be able to walk to the venue.  We shared a taxi.  His talk was on Physical vulnerability of critical facilities in Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands


Other papers I found especially interesting included several reporting various indices and tools to assess and compare disaster preparedness, readiness and resilience, including these from the Argonne National Laboratory:


Assessing community and region emergency-services capabilities 
Community resilience: measuring a community’s ability to withstand

I was also fascinated by a couple of presentations on emergency services responses.  One of these highlighted a fairly simple problem that ought to be fairly straightforward to address.  Apparently emergency responders (n the US state of Alabama at least) often report that traffic congestion significantly affects their ability to reach people in need, and that they are rarely given traffic information when setting off to jobs. Yet emergency dispatchers report that they often give this information but feel it makes little difference to outcomes. A case for dispatchers/controllers to spend the occasional shift in the vehicle with responders? And/or to use existing traffic information systems?

A much more complicated issue is how to co-ordinate responses to exceptional events, such as  the July 2005 bombings on the London public transport system. One paper reported the use of mathematical modelling to optimise the use of resources when responding to mass casualties across multiple incident scenes.    A major issue with this work may be persuading key decision makers that mathematical models have something valuable to offer, and helping them to understand how and why the models may work.

Disaster Management Day 1

OK so a lot has been happening while I haven't been posting, but no time to relate that just at the moment.


I'm at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, attending the Disaster Management 2011 Conference organised jointly by UCF and Wessex Institute of Technology (UK).


We were welcomed to the event by Carlos Brebbia (WIT) and Alain Kassab (UCF) who each told us a lot about their respective organisations.  We then had a very interesting keynote talk by Naim Kapucu, from the Centre for Public and Non-Profit Management.  He described how his PhD research was on the emergency responses to the terrorist attacks on the USA in September 11th 2001. On completing this he thought he would move into more general policy issues but fate had different ideas. He relocated to Florida and in 2004 the central region was struck by four hurricanes in rapid succession. This inevitably drew him back into the field of emergency responses to large scale disasters. 


[Florida is so accustomed to extreme weather events that every lecture theatre on campus has its own copy of the disaster response plan. The reality of this was brought home to me as I noticed the janitor's office next to the ladies loo was marked as a hurricane emergency local resource centre].


Dr Kapucu's research has made use of social network analysis to explore the interrelationships between the various federal, state, local, public and private sector organisations that all have a role to play in disaster management. he showed us some fascinating visual representations of the these networks, which can be used to diagnose weaknesses or breakdowns that may place the public at risk.


Towards the end of the day it was my turn to present the paper I co-authored with folks at Coventry: The contribution of human psychology to disaster management: mitigation, advance preparedness, response and recovery.  Given this rather inclusive title, luckily in my presentation I only had to plot out a broad overview of the areas where work has been done, and highlight gaps where there is potential for further development. The talk went well (I think) and I had some interesting questions, including one from a US healthcare professional about the phenomenon of 'worried well' self-presenting to emergency departments in crises, and another on the ways in which online social networking may give us an insight into the behaviour of volunteers in a disaster. More great ideas for further research...
The paper is available (in full text, via open access) at http://library.witpress.com/pages/PaperInfo.asp?PaperID=22040


During the final session of the day we became aware of a thunderstorm and high winds which necessitated a swift retreat back to the conference hotel.  I'm very grateful to the team who looked after us, reassured us and got us indoors safely before the threatened 'dime-sized' hailstones arrived. 

Spring soon to be be springing

Term restarted yesterday, so seems a reasonable time to post again - plus the winter solstice has been and gone, so the days are getting longer...

Managed to send a paper off yesterday, which should be published in conference proceedings.  Now just need to arrange a US visa and flight, etc, so I can attend and present it.

Very pleased to say that PhD student Felicity had a successful Progress Review Panel at the end of her first year of research. Well done!

I also got my membership card for the allotment today, so much fantasising about digging, sowing, growing and eating...

Cold feet, RSI and the common cold

Not only have a cold but now in danger of getting repetitive strain injury from fixing a little (ish) problem in the disaster management spreadsheet that our interns are working on. Lots of abstracts have been truncated as a consequence of being exported from RefWorks.  Note to self: Never ever use this method again - always export directly from SCOPUS. 

Am hoping to get the mended spreadsheet back up on our SharePoint site tomorrow.

Fog, frost and technical snags

Sent a large part of yesterday on the M6, travelling to and from and meeting with colleagues in the North.  Managed to skip most of the fog and car mishaps, and the visit was well worth while - for me anyway.

I met some healthcare colleagues I'd last seen at the Endocrine Nurse Update event in September.  They were kind enough to show me around their PCOS clinic and let me sit in a for a while.  We also had some early stage discussions about possible applied research collaboration.

Writing an outline draft of a paper today and responding to various emails about the Disaster Management research.  We have had a few technical problems and have had to resort to delivering data in person.  I hope everyone is wrapped up well...

Clunky link but: The weekend saw progress with both the leaf clearing and my new home made coat.  Had to stop at the pockets as I was having a bit of a mental block interpreting the instructions. But I've worked it out now and might get it finished next weekend.

Can it really be Friday already?

Where does the time go???

Packaged up some data from my PCOS research and sent it off for independent analysis by my two colleagues Lynne and Rachael.  Will be really interesting to get together and compare our analyses.  Having others look at data you've collected is great as they always spot things you haven't.

Ran through the online coding test I've designed for interns on the disaster management project.  It seems to be working ok so I should be able to post the link to individuals once they've gotten through the literature searching task on SCOPUS.

Prepared a presentation for Monday to talk through with NHS colleagues I am meeting in the North of England.  Looking forward to seeing them again, and sitting in on their clinics.

And for the weekend: if the wind and rain stops I shall mostly be sucking up leaves from the garden.  If it doesn't, I hope to make a Butterick Pattern B5297. It says "FAST AND EASY" - that remains to be seen...

Testing the interns

Slower going today:

Writing some instructions on literature searching, and designing a test for our (so far) six prospective interns on the disaster management project. Applicants need to pass so we can ensure the quality and consistency of our data analysis.

Also happily signed off the ethics screening protocol for Felicity's survey of assistance dog providers. Looking forward to the data coming in.

Oh and meanwhile... while my hubbie was out treating an elderly patient the other night, he saw a farm offering private allotments.  I talked to them them today and should be getting one in January.  After several years on the waiting list in Warwick I am reaching a fever pitch of excitement!

Delegation...

hmmm... been spending longer than I planned literature reviewing for the Disaster Management paper.  So time for some delegation.  I've set the parameters and analytical framework  - just need someone conscientious to follow my instructions and put the hours in.

I've offered this as a voluntary internship for a student who wants to develop their research skills, with the possibility of joint authorship as a reward at the end.  Hope someone takes it up...

pis credit: nothing to do with post - I just liked the wiki commons picture of the day.

Literature Searching in Disaster Management

Most of today has been spent literature searching in preparation for a manuscript my colleague and I are writing.

Percy, C. & Chen, Y.F.
The potential contribution of human psychology to disaster management: advance preparedness, acute responses and longer term psychosocial effects.
Paper to be presented to the 2nd International Conference on Disaster Management and Human Health: Reducing Risk, Improving Outcomes, 11 - 13 May 2011, Orlando, USA

Fortunately such searches no longer have to be done by hand or on foot, thanks to the university's excellent online library facilities.

Jam tomorrow

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Progress to date on sabbatical objectives...? hmmm

Spent morning reading and commenting on a draft PhD thesis chapter.  A fascinating area of research: the history and scope of animal based therapies. 

Spent afternoon drafting some continuing professional development programmes around health behaviour change, for health professionals.  Then in discussions about what professional bodies we should apply to for accreditation or endorsement of these.

May seem unrelated to my PCOS work, but coming up with externally funded courses like these, and marketing them successfully, is ultimately very important in creating time and funds for applied research activities. I am hoping that generating income towards our departmental targets will help me raise the funds I need personally to attend next year's Disaster Management conference. So I' hoping for jam tomorrow...

And I made a bid to supervise another PhD student this afternoon - hoping I am successful as the proposed project uses interpretative phenomenological analysis - one of my favourite research approaches.

I was also delighted to hear from someone running a specialist PCOS clinic, who'd attended my talk to the Endocrine Nurse Update last week. The very person I was hoping to catch up with over lunch but managed somehow to miss.  Am hopeful that this will lead to a fruitful and mutually beneficial collaboration.

Picture credit: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Malnalekvar.jpg

Whoopsie: double entry

Forgot to write my blog yesterday: "quel dommage!"

But just to show that I wasn't actually just goofing off somewhere...

Met with Disaster Management colleague Fang yesterday to plan the first draft of our paper for the conference in Florida next year. 

Have spent a lot of today reading details on various funding sites, including The British Academy, to whom I may be requesting help with conference travel costs.

Also spent time discussing marks with my co-assessor of MSc Health Psychology dissertation projects.  Some great studies:

• The experience of male breast cancer
• Assessing shared decision making in healthcare consultations
• The experience of women alcoholics
• The psychological impact of eczema
• Health information-seeking via the internet

We hope that some of our students will eventually submit their work for publication.

Sunshine on a rainy day...

wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sunshine_fractal.png

Submitted our grant application today - now need to wait twelve weeks or so to hear if we get through to the next stage of the competition...

Also booked a few more dates for our motivational interviewing training.

And the sun has come out - finally.

Bit of progress

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1_RON.jpg

Picked up my Romanian lei today in preparation for next week's trip to Cluj-Napoca for the
24th European Health Psychology Conference, 1-4 September. At least as important, picked up my second poster from the printers.

Hoping to meet some hospital staff in Bulgaria the following week, to talk about motivational interviewing interventions for health behaviour change - but still awaiting confirmation on that front...

Meanwhile, just had a paper accepted for a conference next spring on disaster management - good job I have a 3 month sabbatical coming up...