Aktas, Yasemin;
So, Emily;
(2022)
Disaster Reconnaissance Missions: Is a Hybrid Approach the Way Forward?
Frontiers in Built Environment
, 8
, Article 954571. 10.3389/fbuil.2022.954571.
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Abstract
When a catastrophic natural hazard event occurs, it causes human casualties, damage to buildings and infrastructure, and affects livelihoods, society, and the wider economy. Much of the damage caused by natural disasters is visible only for a short time, because search and rescue, demolition and rebuilding often start within a few days. It is therefore important that damage assessments start rapidly after an event. For the earthquake community, the need for speedy but systematic post-earthquake investigations has led to the formation of several international earthquake reconnaissance teams whose aim is to be available for rapid deployment after an earthquake. They are composed of earthquake specialists from different disciplines, and generally include team members from the affected countries. Each team conducts a survey whose exact scope depends on the scale and type of damage. But the study generally includes investigations of the seismological and geological aspects of the event, the damage to buildings and to infrastructure, and the way in which relief and rescue have been conducted. On return, the team typically communicates their findings through technical meetings and produces a report which is commonly made available on openly accessible websites. The Learning from Earthquakes programme of the California-based Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI1) has the most experience in such field reconnaissance missions and has conducted more than 150 investigations since it began after the 1971 San Fernando, California earthquake. In the United Kingdom, the Earthquake Engineering Field Investigation Team (EEFIT2) is a joint venture between industry and universities and has conducted more than 30 investigations since its formation in 1982 following the Irpinia (Italy) earthquake of 1980. Similar organisations exist in several other countries (Spence, 2014). The cross-cultivation of these findings across different historical events have been fundamental in improving our science. The cumulative findings of the missions have been instrumental in formulating research programmes worldwide, which have studied aspects of the physical damage, response, and recovery from multiple events. These research programmes in turn have led to steady improvements of national and international codes of practice for building, as well as assisting in understanding the vulnerability of different types of affected facilities and in developing ways to enhance earthquake safety internationally (Spence and So, 2021). Disasters that occurred in 2020 and 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic challenged the disaster risk resilience community to come up with alternative ways of achieving the objectives of a reconnaissance activity. With international travel being disrupted, teams were unable to physically go to the disaster-stricken areas for a field study of damage to buildings and infrastructure. This situation was attempted to be overcome through hybrid missions. These combined remotely coordinated fieldwork and assessment of alternative data sources for deployment for a remote investigation, as detailed in what follows.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Disaster Reconnaissance Missions: Is a Hybrid Approach the Way Forward? |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.3389/fbuil.2022.954571 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.3389/fbuil.2022.954571 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third-party material in this article are included in the Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
| UCL classification: | UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science > Dept of Civil, Environ and Geomatic Eng UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10151943 |
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