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Extreme events are the occasion for many people’s encounters with climate change. Though causation is complex and no one event is directly attributable to climate change, when we consider Cassandra, we can consider what people encounter in assistance after an extreme event. This chapter takes the case of assistance to displaced people after Katrina to explore how care and surveillance were intertwined. Methods include analysis of government documents as well as interviews. When we consider assistance people receive, we often focus on the intended assistance and how it worked or did not. Evaluation is difficult, not least because criteria for determining what it means to work are uncertain. However, if we include the process of gaining assistance as part of the experience, we broaden concerns from the instrumental outcomes to the mixed messages people get in assistance. Assistance appears in a context, where the most vulnerable people have reasons to mistrust government and nonprofits, and where in the United States assistance has come intertwined with supervisory rules, a focus on getting people to work, and a need to manage criminal histories. Trust in government may be limited, emergency care can operate outside ordinary legal frameworks when providers are new, and legal accountability for assistance may be experienced as confining, despite caregivers’ intent.

The recent increase in the use of military resources for foreign disaster assistance has raised questions about the appropriateness of this role for the military. Argues that using the military for foreign disaster assistance is inappropriate in most cases. The military’s concepts and methods of operation are contrary to the supportive and participative concepts of disaster assistance. Without a significant change in the way the military functions, their involvement in foreign disaster assistance is justified in only the rare catastrophic disaster or where truly unique capabilities are required.

Disaster mutual assistance (DMA) or mutual aid is a reciprocal arrangement between organizations that permits and prearranges one company to access resources from another company to recover from disaster impacts faster. As a practical tool to access response resources quickly, DMA can be an important element of an effective emergency management process, but the decision to provide (or not to provide) DMA is challenging and involves a number of factors. The purpose of this paper is to present the results of a study conducted to identify DMA decision criteria and their weights based on electricity companies operating in North America.

The authors employed a combination of Delphi and analytical hierarchy process (AHP) methods. Delphi method identified the decision criteria that should be considered before electricity utilities enact their DMA agreements. A standard AHP calculated the weights of identified DMA criteria.

In total, 11 criteria were identified and classified into three main groups: responding criteria, requesting criteria and disaster criteria. Of the 11, “Emergency Conditions” within the responding criteria group, “Extent of Damage” of the requesting criteria group, and “Size of Disaster”, associated with the disaster criteria group, had the highest weight. Three other factors (“Work Safety Practice”, “Natural Hazards” and “Availability of Resources”) carried a noticeable weight difference, while the remaining factors were weighted relatively lower.

At present, a decision to provide mutual assistance is highly subjective, based on “gut feel”, and dependent on interpersonal relationships between the requestor and the provider. However, mobilizing and dispatching electricity industry crews is a risky and costly operation for both requesting and responding companies and requires careful assessment for which a cost-benefit threshold has not been developed. This cost-benefit perspective is often frowned upon owing to the intended altruistic nature of DMA agreements and its influence on decision makers. The developed criteria in this study are intended to assist electricity companies in making a more informed and quantifiable decision when deliberating a request for mutual assistance. These criteria may also be used by assistance-requesting companies to better identify electricity companies that are more likely to provide assistance to them.

This study contributes to the literature by examining the current state of DMA in electricity utilities, identifying decision criteria and weighing such criteria to enable electricity companies in making more objective decisions, thereby, increasing the overall effectiveness of their disaster management process.

Since 1980, the principal form of crop loss assistance in the United States has been provided through the Federal Crop Insurance Program. The Federal Crop Insurance Act of 1980 was intended to replace disaster programs with a subsidized insurance program that farmers could depend on in the event of crop losses. Crop insurance was seen as preferable to disaster assistance because it was less costly and hence could be provided to more producers, was less likely to encourage moral hazard, and less likely to encourage producers to plant crops on marginal lands. Despite substantial growth in the program, the crop insurance program has failed to replace other disaster programs as the sole form of assistance. Over the past 20 years, producers received an estimated $15 billion in supplemental disaster payments in addition to $22 billion in crop insurance indemnities.

External assistance is often urgently required when an area is struck by a catastrophe. Central government-oriented aid (CGA), national non-governmental organizations aid (NNA), and international humanitarian aid (IHA) are three typical aid models, and national counterpart aid (NCA) is an innovative model for post-Wenchuan earthquake recovery and reconstruction (PWERR). The purpose of this paper is to make a comparative study of the aid models in order to develop recommendations on external assistance for better post-disaster recovery and reconstruction (PDRR).

This study was performed in three steps: a case study on the NCA model during the PWERR; a documentary research on the CGA, NNA and IHA models; and a comparative analysis of the four models.

The results of the comparative study show that the NCA model is more efficient and effective than the other three typical aid models. However it must be based on the premise of a centralized government.

The NCA model contributes to disaster management in a developing country context. It develops a viable model for developing countries in coping with the catastrophe, can enhance their ability for domestic self-assistance, and has reference to the construction of national integrated disaster management systems.

This paper empirically researches the innovative NCA model, and compares it with commonly used aid models for the PDRR. Although it is a Chinese experience, the systematic inter-governmental collaboration of the NCA model has reference to other countries in disaster management.

The purpose of this research is to understand whether an organization knows if it is ready to respond to a disaster and whether it has the capabilities to deliver relief. Our initial motivation was to identify unique resources possessed by the United States Navy (USN) and United States Marine Corps (USMC) due to their unique and critical capabilities for humanitarian operations. The recent frequency of disasters around the world suggests these events will continue to create demand for relief capabilities. For this reason we need to understand readiness metrics not just for USN and USMC but for humanitarian organizations (Hos) in general.

We survey relevant literature for understanding how HOs define and develop readiness metrics and associated factors. We studied documents including peer-reviewed scholarly articles, government documents, white papers, research papers and Department of Defense (DoD) briefings. We study literature that is significantly written for DoD, one, the vast experience of USN and USMC and two, the lessons learned have been documented. The literature offers substantial information on what readiness means and why it is important. This documented information is critical because it is known to the researchers in humanitarian operations that data is hard to come by.

The framework for readiness proposed at the end of this article is context the emergency responder probably uses in an informal fashion. The validation of readiness framework, we find exists in the supporting literature we review.

The understanding of readiness metrics for humanitarian operations for the organizations we study may offer insight into other HOs. The insights we gain may not be pivotal or counterintuitive to the conclusions based on commonsense. However, they are supported by the literature review. We formalize the concept based on conclusions of a set of diverse set of researchers and practitioners such as academic scholars, DoD personnel and government officials involved in humanitarian missions, USAID representatives that are repeatedly tasked for being ready, military and government officers from host and foreign countries and many more.

This chapter describes the complexity of large-scale disaster recovery programs in the United States, the challenges faced by these programs, and the importance of multiteam systems in overcoming these challenges.

This chapter is a case study based on the experience of the authors in hurricane recovery programs.

Multiteam systems provide the range of expertise and experience needed to implement complex large-scale disaster recovery programs. For such disasters, responsibility for recovery work needs to be divided among specialized teams with unique expertise, some of which act as checks and balances for others. Challenges facing these teams include ensuring compliance with multiple Federal and state requirements, providing sufficient training to program staff, modifying procedures in response to changing program policies, and communicating changes for all pressure to move quickly, while at the same time facing intense pressure to process applications for assistance as rapidly as possible.

This chapter provides organizations responsible for disaster recovery important information about the scope of work and challenges they are likely to face following a large-scale disaster.

The occurrences of disasters have become a common phenomenon in the world and there is evidence that the frequency and intensity of disasters are increasing. There have been more than 7,000 disaster events and around 265 million displacements in the period from 2008 to 2018, which constitutes more than three times of conflict and violence-related displacements (Disaster Displacement – A global review, 2019). Natural disasters are responsible for nearly 60,000 deaths per year on average and are responsible for 0.1% of global deaths. Various forms of natural disasters pose significant threats to lives, livelihoods, economic development, and ecological diversity around the world. Similar to the world scenario, Sri Lanka has a similar situation. Sri Lanka has been identified as a drought hot spot. Nearly, 15,000 people per million are at risk of disaster-induced displacement every year in Sri Lanka. During the Tsunami, in 2004, 31,000 human lives were lost, and more than a million people were displaced. Thus, natural disasters cause a huge negative impact on society and the economy in Sri Lanka. In this context, the main objectives of this study are to overview the disasters and displacements that have occurred during the last two decades and to explore the livelihood activities of the affected people and their best practices of disaster resilience. Secondary data were used to overview the disasters and displacements of the last two decades and the related policy framework of the country. Primary data were used to identify livelihood activities and disaster-resilient strategies of the affected people. In-depth interviews were conducted with an unstructured questionnaire from 15 recovered families who have been affected by Tsunami and landslides that occurred in the country. The purposive sampling method was used to select families from the most disaster-affected areas. Descriptive methods were used to analyze the data. The study revealed five recovery strategies followed by displaced people from tsunamis and landslides. Those are continuing with the previous livelihood activities as much as possible, moving to different livelihood activities, moving to different areas to find better jobs, attaining external assistance, and self-management on household finance. Finally, policy guidelines for building resilience in communities that will help to enhance their capacity to cope and recover from vulnerability are proposed in improving their lives.

Extant research shows mixed results on the impact of expressed negative emotions on donations in online charitable crowdfunding. This study solves the puzzle by examining how different types of negative emotions (i.e. sadness, anxiety and fear) expressed in crowdfunding project descriptions affect donations.

Data on 15,653 projects across four categories (medical assistance, education assistance, disaster assistance and poverty assistance) from September 2013 to May 2019 come from a leading online crowdfunding platform in China. Text analysis and regression models serve to test the hypotheses.

In the medical assistance category, the expression of sadness has an inverted U-shaped effect on donations, while the expression of anxiety has a negative effect. An appropriate number of sadness words is helpful but should not exceed five times. In the education assistance and disaster assistance categories, the expression of sadness has a positive effect on donations, but disclosure of anxiety and fear has no influence on donations. Expressions of sadness, anxiety and fear have no impact on donations in the poverty assistance category.

This work has important implications for fundraisers on how to regulate the fundraisers' expressions of negative emotions in a project's description to attract donations. These insights are also relevant for online crowdfunding platforms.

Online crowdfunding research often studies negative emotions as a whole and does not differentiate project types. The current work contributes by empirically testing the impact of three types of negative emotions on donations across four major online crowdfunding categories.

Both the military and non-military organizations (NMO) bring assets, skills, and capabilities to a humanitarian crisis, however, their capabilities and competencies are very diverse. Identification of the specific competencies and capabilities that are core to these types of organizations can enable better planning by both military and NMOs, allowing them to achieve greater effectiveness and efficiency in the humanitarian response. The purpose of this paper is to explore the core capabilities of the military and NMOs engaged in humanitarian operations.

The work builds on existing literature on the core competency of the corporation. The authors extend the concept of the ability to identify, cultivate, and exploit the core capabilities in the private sector to the organizations that want to respond efficiently and effectively to disasters. The authors develop a core competencies test for such organizations.

The research identifies the competencies and capabilities that are core to the US military and NMOs for humanitarian assistance and disaster relief. By identifying such abilities the authors establish a vein of research for exploring the role of such organizations to facilitate greater understanding among academics, policy makers, and decision makers in public administration, public health, and international aid.

Existing literature in humanitarian logistics does not adequately address identification of those competencies and capabilities that are core to the military organizations and NMOs and are most needed during the operational life cycle of a humanitarian crisis. In addition to identifying them, the authors compare the core capabilities of the military and NMO.