http://dspace.udel.edu:8080/dspace/handle/19716/35 http://dspace.udel.edu:8080/dspace/retrieve/15794 http://dspace.udel.edu:8080/dspace/handle/19716/35 Search the Channel search http://dspace.udel.edu:8080/dspace/simple-search http://dspace.udel.edu:8080/dspace/handle/19716/4297 Title: DRC Annual Report, 2008 <br/> <br/>Abstract: Includes information regarding projects and activities conducted as well as documents produced by the Disaster Research Center and its staff during the calendar year 2008. Also includes a report on the activities of the Center's E. L. Quarantelli Resource Collection. http://dspace.udel.edu:8080/dspace/handle/19716/4242 Title: Conventional Beliefs and Counterintuitive Realities <br/> <br/>Authors: Quarantelli, E. L. <br/> <br/>Abstract: This paper discusses major myths and widely held incorrect beliefs about individual and group behaviors in disaster contexts. Why can we categorize such views as invalid? Because now there has been more than half a century of systematic social science studies (and an earlier half century of less well known scattered works) that have established the actual parameters of the behavior of individuals and groups in natural and technological disaster situations (for recent summaries of the extensive research literature, see Lindell, Perry, and Prater, 2006; National Research Council, 2006; and Rodriguez, Quarantelli, and Dynes, 2006). All is not known, and serious gaps remain in knowledge about important topics, but we are at this time far beyond just educated guesses on many dimensions of the relevant behaviors. Our focus is on six different behavioral aspects of disasters, primarily occurring around the impact time period of such crises. Stated in just a few words, we look at panic flight and at antisocial looting behavior, supposed passivity in emergencies, role conflict and abandonment, severe mental health consequences, and the locus of whatever problems surface. We present what is often assumed, believed, or stated on these matters—at least in popular discourse and to a varying extent in policy, planning, and operational circles—as over against what study and research has found. http://dspace.udel.edu:8080/dspace/handle/19716/4229 Title: Origin and History of the International Research Committee on Disasters (RC-39) <br/> <br/>Authors: Quarantelli, E. L. <br/> <br/>Abstract: This version of the origin and history of RC-39 was prepared by E. L. Quarantelli, President Emeritus of the RC-39 and Professor Emeritus, University of Delaware (USA). The RC-39 developed out of the fact that sociologists predominated in the pioneering stage of disaster studies. http://dspace.udel.edu:8080/dspace/handle/19716/4192 Title: A Brief Summary of Social Science Warning and Response Literature: A Report to COT Netherlands <br/> <br/>Authors: Trainor, Joseph; McNeil, Sue <br/> <br/>Abstract: For more than five decades, researchers have explored the dynamics of warnings and warning response in the disaster context. This report is intended to briefly summarize findings related to this topic. The ultimate goal is to provide a basic understanding of how social science research related to warnings and evacuations might inform policy makers and emergency managers. Before we begin discussing the details of warning messages, the first and most important issue for readers to note is that the decision making processes of most evacuees and even non-evacuees are rational and calculated. Contrary to media depictions and other’s perceptions of the public that suggest animal-like, irrational, or antisocial behavior it is important that we begin this discussion knowing that people typically “rise to the occasion” during disasters. Although it would be wrong to suggest that people never make irrational decisions it is important that we begin this summary by recognizing that when we look at the broad patterns of human behavior documented through scientific/empirical studies, people who are experiencing a disaster far more often than not act in very rational and predictable ways. This finding above all others holds true in social science research. It is important to recognize this truth because it allows policy makers and emergency managers to move beyond the notion that the problem with warning and response is “getting people to be rational and do what we say” and instead allows us to move towards understanding “how can we change our approach so that it takes into account how people process warning information. While the difference may seem subtle, in practice it is quite important. The first sees overcoming irrationality as the problem while the second sees the institutional/organizational approach to warning as the problem.