Menstrual hygiene: a ‘silent’ need during disaster recovery

Post-disaster relief and recovery operations seldom focus on women’s priorities regarding menstrual hygiene. There is an increasing awareness to incorporate inclusive, participatory, and gender-sensitive strategies for implementation of response programmes. This article presents empirical findings related to menstrual hygiene management (MHM), demonstrating it is integral to women’s privacy and safety during recovery. Using case studies from India, the 2012 Assam floods and 2013 Cyclone Phailin in Odisha, this article explores menstrual hygiene practices in a post-disaster context. The data were collected through participatory learning and action tools such as focus group discussions, household interviews, priority ranking, and observations. It emerged that menstrual hygiene was overlooked at the household level during recovery; women and adolescent girls faced seclusion and isolation, exacerbating privacy and security concerns post-disasters. Some humanitarian agencies have an ad hoc approach towards MHM, which is limited to distribution of sanitary pads and does not address the socio-cultural practices around MHM. There is a need for strategic planning to address MHM with a gender-sensitive and inclusive approach. This article draws practical and policy inferences from the research for stronger approaches towards initiating behaviour change in MHM, and addressing attitudes and knowledge regarding menstrual hygiene

Menstrual hygiene: a 'silent' need during disaster recovery

Post-disaster relief and recovery operations seldom focus on women’s priorities regarding menstrual hygiene. There is an increasing awareness to incorporate inclusive, participatory, and gender-sensitive strategies for implementation of response programmes. This article presents empirical findings related to menstrual hygiene management (MHM), thus demonstrating it is integral to women’s privacy and safety during recovery. Using case studies from India, the 2012 Assam floods and 2013 Cyclone Phailin in Odisha, this article explores menstrual hygiene practices in a post-disaster context. The data were collected through participatory learning and action (PLA) tools such as focus group discussions, household interviews, priority ranking, and observations. It emerged that menstrual hygiene was overlooked at the household level during recovery; women and adolescent girls faced seclusion and isolation, exacerbating privacy and security concerns post-disasters. Some humanitarian agencies have an ad hoc approach towards MHM, which is limited to distribution of sanitary pads, and does not address the socio-cultural practices revolving around MHM. There is a need for strategic planning to address MHM with a gender-sensitive and inclusive approach. This article draws practical and policy inferences from the research for stronger approaches towards initiating behaviour changes in MHM, and addressing attitudes and knowledge regarding menstrual hygiene

Community pharmacy type 2 diabetes risk assessment: demographics and risk results

Objectives: To determine the demographics and risk results of patients accessing a community pharmacy diabetes risk assessment service. Method: Participating patients underwent an assessment using a validated questionnaire to determine their 10-year risk of developing type 2 diabetes. Patients were given appropriate lifestyle advice or referred to their general practitioner if necessary. Key findings: In total, 21 302 risk assessments were performed. Nearly one-third (29%) of 3427 risk assessments analysed yielded a result of moderate or high chance of developing the condition. Conclusions: Community pharmacies can identify a significant number of patients at risk of developing type 2 diabetes in the next 10 years. Further follow-up work needs to be done to determine the cost-effectiveness of such a service and the consequences of receiving a risk assessment

Variation of the Diameter of the Sun as Measured by the Solar Disk Sextant (SDS)

The balloon-borne Solar Disk Sextant (SDS) experiment has measured the angular size of the Sun on seven occasions spanning the years 1992 to 2011. The solar half-diameter -- observed in a 100-nm wide passband centred at 615 nm -- is found to vary over that period by up to 200 mas, while the typical estimated uncertainty of each measure is 20 mas. The diameter variation is not in phase with the solar activity cycle; thus, the measured diameter variation cannot be explained as an observational artefact of surface activity. Other possible instrument-related explanations for the observed variation are considered but found unlikely, leading us to conclude that the variation is real. The SDS is described here in detail, as is the complete analysis procedure necessary to calibrate the instrument and allow comparison of diameter measures across decades.Comment: 41 pages; appendix and 2 figures added plus some changes in text based on referee's comments; to appear in MNRA

An interdisciplinary study of the seismic exposure dynamics of Santiago de Chile

This paper presents an interdisciplinary study of the spatiotemporal dynamics of seismic exposure. Out of the three components of risk—hazard, exposure, and vulnerability—exposure is the least studied, and is commonly treated as being constant in time. This approach neglects the dynamics associated with rapid development and urbanization, misrepresenting exposure in risk assessments. In this paper, mixed research methods are used to understand the dynamics of exposure in Santiago, the capital of Chile, between 1992 and 2017. First, residential exposure is modelled for three epochs using census data and public databases. Then, semi-structured interviews are conducted with local experts in engineering, planning, and disaster risk reduction to unveil the role of earthquake risk information in urban policy and development. Results show a steady expansion and densification of the city over the last 25 years, which is expected to continue in the future. The preferred building material for this growth is reinforced concrete, which rises from 3 to 17% as a proportion of the total structures in the city. It is also found that urban planning policy is disconnected from earthquake risk, which is perceived as a non-issue due to high local compliance with seismic codes. Thus, the continuous growth and homogenization of the built environment creates a singular dependence and blind trust in the local seismic academic and professional communities to provide earthquake resilience through safe buildings. These conditions configure a fragile but highly enabling environment for increasing seismic resilience in the city

Modelling the temporal dynamics of seismic exposure in Santiago, Chile

Among the three components of seismic risk—hazard, exposure and vulnerability—exposure is the least studied. This paper presents the preliminary results of a study on the temporal dynamics of seismic exposure in the last 25 years for the city of Santiago, Chile. Exposure models with a census-block resolution are built for two different epochs—1992 and 2017—and compared. Results show that the city has grown both horizontally (i.e., expanding) and vertically (i.e., densifying) in the study period. Also, that reinforced concrete is becoming the preferred building material, going from 3% to 17% of the total buildings in the city. Considering the constant update of seismic design regulations in Chile, the formality of construction, the high compliance to codes, and the constant evolution of building practice in Chile, these results imply that the city is evolving into a seismically safer state. This research is the first step towards a time-dependent seismic risk assessment for the city of Santiago. This tool will be used to further explore how urban planning decisions affect the evolution of risk in time

Assessing seismic safety from a justice standpoint

Disasters occur when a hazard interacts with an exposed and vulnerable society or community, whose capacities to cope with the hazardous event are exceeded. The fact that large, damaging earthquakes impact different segments of society disproportionately can be perceived as an injustice. Conceptualizing this problem within the domain of justice implies a recognition that its source is the result of an unequal social system formed by a long sequence of human decisions, and not by God’s or nature’s desires. The discussion of disaster justice is still nascent, with the term itself being coined only in 2010. However, disaster justice can be understood as a concern of how the crisis and systemic collapse caused by disasters bring issues of socioecological justice to the front. Disaster justice stems from, builds on, and refers to some of the concepts and claims of environmental and climate justice, but expands them to address the scale, scope, dynamics, and challenges that are particular to disaster contexts as opposed to normal times. This article presents the different frameworks of social justice in the context of environmental hazards (i.e., environmental, climate, and disaster justice) and opens the discussion about how justice claims can be incorporated into the discussion and practice of providing seismic safety and increasing disaster resilience

Understanding earthquake resilience in Chile: The pros and cons of safe buildings

Chile is one of the most seismic yet also one of the most earthquake-resilient countries in the world. This article seeks to understand the process of resilience building in the country and its implications for urban contexts. For this purpose, semi-structured interviews are conducted to 16 Chilean experts from the fields of seismic engineering, urban planning, emergency management and disaster risk reduction (DRR), and representatives from different public and private stakeholders (e.g., academics, practitioners, public servants, local government authorities). Results show that the main approach that the Chilean state has used to provide seismic resilience has been purely rational, by means of safe and high-quality buildings. This has led to earthquake risk being essentially absent from the urban planning regulation. Although this approach has provided good overall results in time, over-reliance in seismic safety of buildings has contributed to a weak national DRR system which failed its most recent test after the 2010 earthquake and tsunami. The increasing complexity and concentration of people and assets in cities, together with the dynamism of knowledge about local seismicity are challenging this rational approach. Thus, a call for a more comprehensive approach for seismic resilience provision arises, which based on the successfully provided safe buildings could also tackle the social and political dimensions of earthquake risk in urban contexts

A framework for design engineering education in a global context

This paper presents a framework for teaching design engineering in a global context using innovative technologies to enable distributed teams to work together effectively across international and cultural boundaries. The DIDET Framework represents the findings of a 5-year project conducted by the University of Strathclyde, Stanford University and Olin College which enhanced student learning opportunities by enabling them to partake in global, team based design engineering projects, directly experiencing different cultural contexts and accessing a variety of digital information sources via a range of innovative technology. The use of innovative technology enabled the formalization of design knowledge within international student teams as did the methods that were developed for students to store, share and reuse information. Coaching methods were used by teaching staff to support distributed teams and evaluation work on relevant classes was carried out regularly to allow ongoing improvement of learning and teaching and show improvements in student learning. Major findings of the 5 year project include the requirement to overcome technological, pedagogical and cultural issues for successful eLearning implementations. The DIDET Framework encapsulates all the conclusions relating to design engineering in a global context. Each of the principles for effective distributed design learning is shown along with relevant findings and suggested metrics. The findings detailed in the paper were reached through a series of interventions in design engineering education at the collaborating institutions. Evaluation was carried out on an ongoing basis and fed back into project development, both on the pedagogical and the technological approaches