DEVELOPMENT OF A RESEARCH-BASED SHORT MESSAGE CREATION TOOL FOR WILDFIRE EMERGENCIES

Wireless Emergency Alerts are short message alerts that authorities can send to devices in specific geographical regions during times of imminent threat. These messages give authorities the ability to distribute important information in a timely manner to those who need it most. The majority of research regarding best practices for creating short message alerts is vague and requires interpretation before implementation. This thesis reviews and analyzes research and evidence-based guidance currently available to those creating short message alerts. Using the research, evidence-based guidance, and subsequent analysis, fifteen user prompts were developed and implemented to build a message creation tool that generates wildfire evacuation messages. The result of using the tool is a wildfire-based evacuation message that auto-incorporates the research and guidance currently available. This thesis helps develop a foundation for the bridge between short message alert research and the practical generation of messages during imminent threat emergencies

State of Arizona hazard mitigation plan, 2013

abstract: The Plan identifies hazard mitigation actions and projects that have the potential to reduce the loss of life and property, human suffering, economic disruption, and disaster assistance costs resulting from natural and human-caused disasters in Arizona. This Plan also meets requirements of a Standard State Mitigation Plan for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).tableOfContents: Executive summary -- Purpose, authority and approval -- 1. Introduction. What is hazard mitigation? -- DMA 2000 requirements and official adoption and approval -- 2. Planning process -- 3. State and county descriptions. State overview -- County overviews -- Apache County -- Cochise County -- Coconino County -- Gila County -- Graham County -- Greenlee County -- La Paz County -- Maricopa County -- Mohave County -- Navajo County -- Pima County -- Pinal County -- Santa Cruz County -- Yavapai County -- Yuma County -- 4. Risk assessment. Overview -- Hazard profiles -- Dam failure -- Disease -- Drought -- Earthquake -- Extreme heat -- Fissures -- Flooding/flash flooding -- Hazardous materials incidents -- Landslide/mudslides -- Levee failure -- Severe winds -- Subsidence -- Terrorism -- Wildfires -- Winter storms -- 5. Mitigation strategy. Section changes -- Hazard mitigation goals -- State capability assessment -- Local capability assessment -- Mitigation actions -- Funding sources -- Hazard mitigation activity in Arizona -- 6. Coordination of local mitigation planning. Section changes -- Local funding and technical assistance -- Local plan integration -- Prioritizing local assistance -- 7. Plan maintenance procedures. Section changes -- Plan monitoring & evaluation -- Plan updating -- Monitoring progress of mitigation activities -- 8. Plan tools. Acronyms -- Definitions -- Appendix A. Arizona state & federal declared disasters -- Appendix B. Climate change -- Appendix C. NFIP & flood loss data -- Appendix D. Riskmap progress status -- Appendix E. Federal & state regulated dams in Arizona -- Appendix F. Community vulnerability to wildfire los

Making a Step Forward Towards Urban Resilience. The Contribution of Digital Innovation

Starting from 'wicked problem' theory as the landmark for framing disaster events in terms of policy issue for city governments, this paper highlights the contribution provided by Big Data analytics and digital innovation in dealing with disaster risks. The research aims at answering the following question: what is the role that 'smart technologies' play in strengthening urban resilience to disaster risks

Race, Class, Risk and Trust: Risk Communication in Post-Katrina New Orleans

The main focus of this study is on risk communication about dangerous environmental events in post-Katrina New Orleans, and the influence that race and class have on that process. It seeks to determine the assessment of New Orleans residents of the various possible sources of risk information that are available to them, and how race and socioeconomic class affect their level of trust in those sources. A 37-question telephone survey was conducted in Orleans Parish by the Public Policy Research Lab at Louisiana State University in June and July of 2012. There were 414 completed surveys, with 278 landline telephone and 136 cell phone respondents. The overall margin of error was +/- 4.8% at a 95% confidence interval. SPSS software was used to analyze data testing four hypotheses for each of two research questions on risk assessment: the first on race, the second on class (socioeconomic status, or SES ). An ANCOVA was used to test the hypotheses of the first research question, while Pearson\u27s Product Moment Correlation Coefficient Test was used to test the second. A trust index was constructed by aggregating Likert-scales responses to questions on the elements of trust in sources, and an SES index was constructed by aggregating education and income responses. After controlling for SES, Whites were shown to have significantly more trust in mass media, local community leaders and spokespersons, and interpersonal communication than Blacks did. After controlling for race, SES was found to be negatively correlated with trust in local TV news, non-news websites, and social media sites. Tests of correlation were also run on frequency of media use and trust in sources of risk messages

Considering Vermont\u27s Future in a Changing Climate: The First Vermont Climate Assessment

The Vermont Climate Assessment (VCA) paints a vivid picture of a changing climate in Vermont and calls for immediate strategic planning to sustain the social, economic and environmental fabric of our state. The VCA is the first state-scale climate assessment in the country and speaks directly to the impacts of climate change as they pertain to our rural towns, cities and communities, including impacts on Vermont tourism and recreation, agriculture, natural resources and energy

Recovering the Moca River: An Exploration through Sustainable Strategies for Developing Countries

Natural watercourses are being negatively affected by growing urbanization in different cities of the world. Within these circumstances the concept of river restoration has gained relevance, becoming a worldwide priority in water management. In developing countries, river restoration plans, conditioned by social and economic limitations, are mainly focused on a single approach, typically relying on short-term, low technology strategies. In the long term, these strategies tend to fail because they usually avoid integral solutions that address the interconnected factors contributing to river degradation. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to develop a framework of river restoration planning for developing countries that sustains the health of the river, the welfare of the ecosystem and the safety of the community. This framework develops three strategies with potential techniques to address the impacts of water pollution, flooding risk, and informal settlement in river ecosystems. Techniques responding to each of these strategies were described under a matrix that expresses their suitability with respect to a set of attributes or criteria selected for analysis. an explanatory case study approach in the Moca River, Dominican Republic, was used to apply the three strategies

Making intelligent systems team players: Case studies and design issues. Volume 1: Human-computer interaction design

Initial results are reported from a multi-year, interdisciplinary effort to provide guidance and assistance for designers of intelligent systems and their user interfaces. The objective is to achieve more effective human-computer interaction (HCI) for systems with real time fault management capabilities. Intelligent fault management systems within the NASA were evaluated for insight into the design of systems with complex HCI. Preliminary results include: (1) a description of real time fault management in aerospace domains; (2) recommendations and examples for improving intelligent systems design and user interface design; (3) identification of issues requiring further research; and (4) recommendations for a development methodology integrating HCI design into intelligent system design

Using semantic drift on social media for event detection, differentiation and segmentation

With observable paradigm shift in computer science from predictive modeling to the generative one, it became important to maximise exploration of the pathways towards useful data production. With currently dominating statistical and compositional data augmentation strategies, opportunities also emerged for more application-driven routes. The main value of such approaches lies in their capacity to offer insights into context or event specific data productions, currently overlooked by more topologically neutral machine learning approaches. The purpose of this thesis is therefore to provide empirical evidence for useful data generation by dynamic event-specific lexical semantic resources. Various Web 2.0 applications due to their popularity have been accumulating large amounts of semantically rich metadata, which became readily available and easily exploitable. Tags, usually consisting of a single word, are one type of such data. Tag uses can vary largely across systems and platforms; Also known under the term folksonomy, tags are usually non-hierarchical and open-ended, thus re-flecting users' unique perspectives regarding various contexts, or resources. This platform-enabled liberty of expression, however, has led to situations of frequent semantic ambiguity due to spelling mistakes, morphological variations, polysemy, multilingualism or inaccurate tag-to-resource associations. As a consequence, tag spaces are often regarded as inconsistent, noisy and hardly reliable data sources. Recent surge of interest amongst distributional semanticists in long- and short-term fluctuations of word meanings on social media has suggested routes for successful temporal sense disambiguation, thus inviting discussions around useful real-world applications for such emerging data resources. One of such applications - event analytics from the crowd behaviour perspective - is gaining an increasing attention from researchers and practitioners, especially in the fields of operations and situational management. Pursuing pragmatic aims of event detection, differen- tiation and segmentation, this application domain is represented predominantly by repetitive catastrophic events (such as natural hazards), during which directly or indirectly exposed populations tend to share their situational experiences on social media. This thesis consists of three main parts, each corresponding to specific problem in event analytics: (i) detection, (ii) differentiation and (iii) segmentation. In the first part I used the concept of ontological semantic proximity on the words candidates for semantic drift in order to highlight the dynamics of their semantic oscillations within event-specific category (i.e., flooding). In my second experiment I followed on these initial findings and performed an analysis verifying whether semantically unstable lexical material can augment our knowledge about main sub-types of floods, such as `slow' (e.g., groundwater and pluvial floods) and `fast' (surface water and riverine floods) ones. In my third experiment I employed combined lexico-visual modalities of the crowdsourced material to reconstruct changing perceptions of flood events in order to understand how event severity can or cannot determine situationally resilient behaviours

Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation: Special Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

This Special Report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation (SREX) has been jointly coordinated by Working Groups I (WGI) and II (WGII) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The report focuses on the relationship between climate change and extreme weather and climate events, the impacts of such events, and the strategies to manage the associated risks. The IPCC was jointly established in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), in particular to assess in a comprehensive, objective, and transparent manner all the relevant scientific, technical, and socioeconomic information to contribute in understanding the scientific basis of risk of human-induced climate change, the potential impacts, and the adaptation and mitigation options. Beginning in 1990, the IPCC has produced a series of Assessment Reports, Special Reports, Technical Papers, methodologies, and other key documents which have since become the standard references for policymakers and scientists.This Special Report, in particular, contributes to frame the challenge of dealing with extreme weather and climate events as an issue in decisionmaking under uncertainty, analyzing response in the context of risk management. The report consists of nine chapters, covering risk management; observed and projected changes in extreme weather and climate events; exposure and vulnerability to as well as losses resulting from such events; adaptation options from the local to the international scale; the role of sustainable development in modulating risks; and insights from specific case studies