The effect of person order on egress time: a simulation model of evacuation from a neolithic visitor attraction.

Objective: The aim of this study was to model the egress of visitors from a Neolithic visitor attraction. Background: Tourism attracts increasing numbers of elderly and mobility-impaired visitors to our built-environment heritage sites. Some such sites have very limited and awkward access, were not designed for mass visitation, and may not be modifiable to facilitate disabled access. As a result, emergency evacuation planning must take cognizance of robust information, and in this study we aimed to establish the effect of visitor position on egress. Method: Direct observation of three tours at Maeshowe, Orkney, informed typical time of able-bodied individuals and a mobility-impaired person through the 10-m access tunnel. This observation informed the design of egress and evacuation models running on the Unity gaming platform. Results: A slow-moving person at the observed speed typically increased time to safety of 20 people by 170% and reduced the advantage offered by closer tunnel separation by 26%. Using speeds for size-specific characters of 50th, 95th, and 99th percentiles increased time to safety in emergency evacuation by 51% compared with able-bodied individuals. Conclusion: Larger individuals may slow egress times of a group; however, a single slow-moving mobility-impaired person exerts a greater influence on group egress, profoundly influencing those behind. Application: Unidirectional routes in historic buildings and other visitor attractions are vulnerable to slow-moving visitors during egress. The model presented in this study is scalable, is applicable to other buildings, and can be used as part of a risk assessment and emergency evacuation plan in future work

"Like Residential Schools All Over Again": Experiences of Emergency Evacuation from the Assin'skowitiniwak (Rocky Cree) Community of Pelican Narrows

In Canada, northern Indigenous communities are evacuated on an annual basis due to fire and flood, but little is known about their experiences. This ethnographic community-based research relied on 56 interviews and grounded theory to uncover the experiences of residents evacuated from the Assin’skowitiniwak (Rocky Cree) community of Pelican Narrows in northern Saskatchewan due to wildfire in the summer of 2017. It was found that provincial standardization and reliance on top-down, centralized approaches stunted the community’s agency and did not address their specific needs. This led to separated families, unmet physical and cultural needs, negative emotional experiences of the evacuation, and frustration due to the lack of acknowledgement of their skills and knowledge relating to fire management. Like Scharbach (2014) this thesis found that there was incongruence between the needs of the Pelican residents and current provincial emergency management policies and suggests changes to improve the experiences of evacuations from northern Indigenous communities. This thesis addresses issues relating to risk, vulnerability, resilience (specifically cultural resilience), and using Elders as resources. I suggest that risk and vulnerability should not be defined categorically, but rather situationally, to ensure those who need assistance get it, and those who do not are not separated from their families and communities. Keeping families and communities together in familiar settings with access to traditional food and activities and allowing them to be more involved in their own disaster mitigation efforts would help to tap into cultural resilience and would represent culturally safe policy

Use of a Behavioral Health Framework to Assess Perceptions of Hurricane Evacuation Support Services in New Orleans, Louisiana

This dissertation presents research conducted during the hurricane seasons of 2017 and 2018 in New Orleans, Louisiana. The research’s purpose was to assess citizen perceptions of evacuation support services offered during mandatory evacuation events. A prospective quantitative survey and qualitative, open-ended, semi-structured interview assessed perceptions. Both research methods were designed and assessed using the constructs of the Health Belief Model, a public health model created to assess perceived barriers, benefits, risks, severity, self-efficacy, and cues to action regarding health programming. Quantitative research yielded 211 surveys, representing opinions of New Orleans residents within 1-km Euclidian distance of an evacuation pick-up marker. Qualitative research yielded 20 interviews detailing perceptions of evacuation support in New Orleans across Evacuspot zones. Quantitative findings found that: social support systems influence decisions to evacuate and influence varies by race; gendered preference for evacuating in New Orleans is higher for males; pet ownership lowers evacuation preference; the elderly have a lower preference for evacuation; disability status does not impact evacuation preference; there is no association found in awareness of evacuation assistance programming by education level, but there is an association by race; there is no association found between homeowners and non-homeowners in self-reported evacuation compliance; and, trust in the City of New Orleans varies significantly by race and education level. Qualitative findings included perceived barriers of pet ownership, finances, age, anxiety, property ownership, traffic, lack of preparedness messaging, low levels of trust in city services, and misunderstanding of programming; perceived benefits of personal comfort; risk perceptions that were influenced by perceptions of city competency; low perceived self-efficacy to use evacuation programming; few local cues to action to utilize programming; and perceptions of severity influenced by x misunderstandings of the Saffir-Simpson scale. Results led to conclusions regarding the current prospective efficacy of City-Assisted Evacuation in New Orleans, and enabled recommendations for improving programming strategies. This research seeks to move evacuation behavior research from vulnerability-factor based research to multi-variable, intersectional, community informed assessment strategies, and contributes to literature on proactive emergency management strategies and expressed preference approach research

State-led humanitarian evacuation: a critical history, 1942-1999

This thesis, situated within the historiography of humanitarianism, seeks to explain how humanitarian evacuation came to be viewed as a solution to problems of civilian protection during crises, and how the US and UK, who evacuated the greatest number of civilians during the 20th century, instrumentalized evacuation to further their geostrategic goals. Four cases studies focus on major evacuations of the 20th century that illustrate how evacuation became a tool of both civilian protection and international relations. Spotlighting the nexus between military actors and non-governmental organisations, the case studies critically explore the motives of evacuators, the rationale they presented to the public, and the outcomes of the evacuation projects. While recognizing that states have mixed motives for their humanitarian operations, I claim that all evacuations essentially signify a series of political failures, and that in cases where the US and UK were aggressors and rescuers, they spun their failures into narratives of rescue and redemption. In this way, I argue, the militaristic state strategically communed itself with its victims, blurring the distinctions between aggressor and victim in service to a hegemonic rescue narrative in an attempt to limit criticism in order to defend national prestige and bolster geostrategic endeavours. In illustrating these points across the use of state-led humanitarian evacuation through four case studies, this thesis makes an original contribution to the field of humanitarian history by offering a new interpretation of humanitarian evacuation that gives insight into relationships between repressive and ideological state apparatuses within a humanitarian context. I contend that state and NGO performances of hegemonic rescue narratives strengthen state apparatuses through the reproduction of American and British foundational national myths and in turn relations of power

Long-term effects of living through both evacuation and the bombing of London during the Second World War as perceived by those who experienced them : A qualitative study

Considering the Second World War such events as evacuation and the bombing of London affected millions of people, there is very little psychological research and therefore literature investigating the long-term effects. Several previous studies have been quantitative in nature, relying on questionnaires to explore the effects of evacuation alone (e.g. Foster, Davies & Steele 2003). This study is the first of its kind in that its aim is to ask those who experienced both evacuation and the bombing of London what they consider to be the long-term effects. Ten participants recruited through a poster campaign took part in one-to-one, face-to-face interviews to investigate their experiences and the long-term effects they perceive affect their lives in the present. Grounded Theory (Glaser & Strauss 1967) methodology was used to analyse the data. Several multi-dimensional concepts and a theoretical model emerged from the data that demonstrate the effects these participants experience that have endured for more than sixty years and the origins of these effects. Some of the findings of this enquiry echo existing literature. Most importantly the enquiry produced new and significant information regarding the long-term effects of both evacuation and the bombing of London relating to the formation and development of identity and both physical and psychological survival

The State of Readiness of Criminal Justice Agencies in an All-Hazards Emergency Preparedness World

This exploratory research examines the presence of four key elements of disaster and emergency preparedness–sustainability, planning, training, and information dissemination–within local level criminal justice and supporting agencies. Data were gathered during interviews with personnel from 32 local level agencies in North Carolina. Findings reflect an overall propensity to equip, plan, train, and inform personnel for an agency’s mission away from their specific worksite during the response or recovery phase of an emergency event rather than for the safety and security of personnel and facilities during and immediately following an event. This trend is revealed by the low to moderate number of organizations reporting (a) the presence of stockpiled disaster supplies, (b) written agency-specific emergency operations and continuity of operations plans, (c) training exercises incorporating those plans, and (d) the dissemination of information throughout their workforce regarding their agency’s plans. This project suggests the necessity to investigate further the status of disaster/emergency management preparedness in the criminal justice system at the local level throughout the state and the country

Safety Talk and Service Culture: Flight Attendant Discourse in Commercial Aviation.

PhDThe discourse of commercial aviation flight attendants has historically received no sociolinguistic attention. To address this gap, this thesis explores how flight attendants use language in workplace-related contexts to construct their professional identity and community. I draw on interactional sociolinguistics (Goffman 1981; Schiffrin 1994; Tannen 1993) and sociological research (Van Maanen and Barley 1984; Williams 1986; Marschall 2002) to address how flight attendants use language to orient to occupationally related knowledge and practices which contribute to the discursive construction of community. Data come from two sources: 1) A corpus of 150 textual incident reports submitted by flight attendants to a US government agency which include summaries and proposed causes of the incidents in flight attendants’ own words. 2) A corpus of 105 unique discussion threads containing 4,043 posts to a website hosting several discussion forums aimed primarily at flight attendants. The forums are not affiliated with either government bodies or airline employers and are a virtual space for flight attendants to discuss aspects of their job away from occupational demands. Following Bucholtz and Hall (2004), I show how identity is contextually related and situationally constructed, and emerges from discursive orientations to professional practice, indexicality, ideology, and performance. Moreover, there are certain intersubjective relationships embedded in the discourse which emerge from and add detail to the situational identity constructed through flight attendant discourse. Indexical stances and ideologies which are grounded in institutional training frame and are heightened in the discursive performances of the reports and forum posts. These ideologies motivate and enhance the existing institutional, physical, and sociocultural divisions between flight attendants and pilots, which may have consequences for intercrew cohesion in emergency situations.Overseas Research Students Awards Scheme (ORSAS)

Words to Live By: How Experience Shapes our Information World at Work, Play and in Everyday Life

Background: A considerable amount of effort has been spent studying information behaviours and practices associated with formal, professional contexts and documentary, tangible sources of information. Comparatively, relatively little is known about non–documentary and experience-based information found in informal, nonformal, blue collar and rural contexts. Experiences of everyday life are often neglected from a research standpoint because they are seen as common, familiar, and unremarkable. Research Question: By exploring familiar experiences of everyday life in one specific, marginalized context, my goals were to contribute to the body of interdisciplinary literature describing non–problem–based phenomena and non–documentary, experience-based sources of information; to extend our understanding of work, leisure and everyday life information practices in informal and non-professional contexts; and to elevate these less frequently studied experiences and information sources above the trivial theoretically. To address this gap, the present study asks, what is the nature of experience in the remote, rural village of Whitney, Ontario, Canada across the domains of work, leisure and maintenance activities? Method: I interviewed 24 adult residents of the village ranging in age from their early twenties to their late eighties using a semi–structured interview protocol. I also gathered data through several photo–methodologies including documentary photography, photo–voice, and photo–elicitation. Printed documentary evidence reflecting experiences in the village were obtained through environmental scanning. I analyzed data according to grounded theory from the perspective of everyday life information seeking theories, drawing support from serious leisure, lifelong learning, and experiential education theories where appropriate. Discussion: Reinforcing previous Information Behaviour theory, results show that informal information channels and interpersonal sources are frequently preferred over formal ones, and that contextual factors continue to influence information seeking and use across the domains of work, play and everyday life. More study is required to explain the characteristics and qualities that insulate small worlds like this from information poverty, as well as the effects of interruptions in the network of interpersonal sources relied on heavily in this context. This research also highlights how the social characteristics of information seeking and use add depth to discussions of leisure experiences. A working definition of experiential information is provided. Keywords: Experiential Information, Everyday Life Information Seeking (ELIS), Informal Information Behaviours, Information Poverty, Information Seeking Behaviours, Information Seeking and Use (ISU), Rural Information Seeking, Tacit Knowledge, Leisure Experience, Everyday Life Experienc

Exploring the data needs and sources for severe weather impact forecasts and warnings : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Emergency Management at Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand

Figures 2.4 & 2.5 are re-used with permission.The journal articles in Appendices J, L & M are republished under respective Creative Commons licenses. Appendix K has been removed from the thesis until 1 July 2022 in accordance with the American Meteorological Society Copyright Policy, but is available open access at https://doi.org/10.1175/WCAS-D-21-0093.1Early warning systems offer an essential, timely, and cost-effective approach for mitigating the impacts of severe weather hazards. Yet, notable historic severe weather events have exposed major communication gaps between warning services and target audiences, resulting in widespread losses. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has proposed Impact Forecasts and Warnings (IFW) to address these communication gaps by bringing in knowledge of exposure, vulnerability, and impacts; thus, leading to warnings that may better align with the position, needs, and capabilities of target audiences. A gap was identified in the literature around implementing IFWs: that of accessing the required knowledge and data around impacts, vulnerability, and exposure. This research aims to address this gap by exploring the data needs of IFWs and identifying existing and potential data sources to support those needs. Using Grounded Theory (GT), 39 interviews were conducted with users and creators of hazard, impact, vulnerability, and exposure (HIVE) data within and outside of Aotearoa New Zealand. Additionally, three virtual workshops provided triangulation with practitioners. In total, 59 people participated in this research. Resulting qualitative data were analysed using GT coding techniques, memo-writing, and diagramming. Findings indicate a growing need for gathering and using impact, vulnerability, and exposure data for IFWs. New insight highlights a growing need to model and warn for social and health impacts. Findings further show that plenty of sources for HIVE data are collected for emergency response and other uses with relevant application to IFWs. Partnerships and collaboration lie at the heart of using HIVE data both for IFWs and for disaster risk reduction. This thesis contributes to the global understanding of how hydrometeorological and emergency management services can implement IFWs, by advancing the discussion around implementing IFWs as per the WMO’s guidelines, and around building up disaster risk data in accordance with the Sendai Framework Priorities. An important outcome of this research is the provision of a pathway for stakeholders to identify data sources and partnerships required for implementing a hydrometeorological IFW system

Software agents & human behavior

People make important decisions in emergencies. Often these decisions involve high stakes in terms of lives and property. Bhopal disaster (1984), Piper Alpha disaster (1988), Montara blowout (2009), and explosion on Deepwater Horizon (2010) are a few examples among many industrial incidents. In these incidents, those who were in-charge took critical decisions under various ental stressors such as time, fatigue, and panic. This thesis presents an application of naturalistic decision-making (NDM), which is a recent decision-making theory inspired by experts making decisions in real emergencies. This study develops an intelligent agent model that can be programed to make human-like decisions in emergencies. The agent model has three major components: (1) A spatial learning module, which the agent uses to learn escape routes that are designated routes in a facility for emergency evacuation, (2) a situation recognition module, which is used to recognize or distinguish among evolving emergency situations, and (3) a decision-support module, which exploits modules in (1) and (2), and implements an NDM based decision-logic for producing human-like decisions in emergencies. The spatial learning module comprises a generalized stochastic Petri net-based model of spatial learning. The model classifies routes into five classes based on landmarks, which are objects with salient spatial features. These classes deal with the question of how difficult a landmark turns out to be when an agent observes it the first time during a route traversal. An extension to the spatial learning model is also proposed where the question of how successive route traversals may impact retention of a route in the agent’s memory is investigated. The situation awareness module uses Markov logic network (MLN) to define different offshore emergency situations using First-order Logic (FOL) rules. The purpose of this module is to give the agent the necessary experience of dealing with emergencies. The potential of this module lies in the fact that different training samples can be used to produce agents having different experience or capability to deal with an emergency situation. To demonstrate this fact, two agents were developed and trained using two different sets of empirical observations. The two are found to be different in recognizing the prepare-to-abandon-platform alarm (PAPA ), and similar to each other in recognition of an emergency using other cues. Finally, the decision-support module is proposed as a union of spatial-learning module, situation awareness module, and NDM based decision-logic. The NDM-based decision-logic is inspired by Klein’s (1998) recognition primed decision-making (RPDM) model. The agent’s attitudes related to decision-making as per the RPDM are represented in the form of belief, desire, and intention (BDI). The decision-logic involves recognition of situations based on experience (as proposed in situation-recognition module), and recognition of situations based on classification, where ontological classification is used to guide the agent in cases where the agent’s experience about confronting a situation is inadequate. At the planning stage, the decision-logic exploits the agent’s spatial knowledge (as proposed in spatial-learning module) about the layout of the environment to make adjustments in the course of actions relevant to a decision that has already been made as a by-product of situation recognition. The proposed agent model has potential to be used to improve virtual training environment’s fidelity by adding agents that exhibit human-like intelligence in performing tasks related to emergency evacuation. Notwithstanding, the potential to exploit the basis provided here, in the form of an agent representing human fallibility, should not be ignored for fields like human reliability analysis