Disasters or mass-casualty incidents are uncommon events. The use of simulation is an ideal training modality in full-scale exercises as it immerses the participants in a replication of the actual environment where they can respond to simulated casualties in accordance with existing protocols.

The objective of this scoping review is to answer the research question: “How effective is simulation, as assessed in full-scale exercises, for response to disasters and mass-casualty incidents world-wide?” Studies on full-scale exercises, as defined in World Health Organization (WHO) simulation exercise toolbox, that were published in peer-reviewed journals using the English language from 2001 through 2021 were included. Twenty studies were included from searching PubMed, Embase, and Web of Science. Simulated casualties were the most common simulation modality. Using Kirkpatrick’s levels of evaluation to synthesize the data, simulation was reported to be generally effective and mostly demonstrated at the levels of learning of individuals and/or systems, as well as reaction of individuals. Evaluations at levels of behavior and results were limited due to the uncommon nature of disasters and mass-casualty incidents. However, evaluation outcomes across the full-scale exercises were varied, leading to the inability to consolidate effectiveness of simulation into a single measure. It is recommended for best evidence-based practices for simulation to be adhered to in full-scale exercises so that the trainings could translate into better outcomes for casualties during an actual disaster or mass-casualty incident. In addition, the reporting of simulation use in full-scale exercises should be standardized using a framework, and the evaluation process should be rigorous so that effectiveness could be determined and compared across full-scale exercises.

With the collapse of the medical system in Syria, Israel began providing Syrians with humanitarian aid, first to the war-injured and then general medical treatment. We developed a novel specialist ambulatory care concept to provide medical care for Syrian children. Children with their caregivers were transported by bus across the border from Syria to our medical center in Israel for day-stay outpatient-clinic advanced evaluation and treatment due to coordination between Syrian, Red Cross, and Israeli authorities, including Israeli Defense Forces. This retrospective field report includes 371 Syrian children treated as outpatients at Galilee Medical Center between January 2016 and September 2018. In our experience, this novel pediatric ambulatory care concept has been feasible, efficient, and successful in providing specialist care for children in a crisis region devoid of access to health care. We believe it can also serve adult patients and be implemented in other crises and disasters scenarios.

Now that the opportunity to build back from COVID in an intelligent and thoughtful way has largely passed us by, how do we cope with the existential threat of ecological collapse? We posit that economic concerns have been granted undeserved weight in conversations around climate policy, while the role of philosophy has thus far been an untapped resource of potentially liberating knowledge that can inspire action and a deliberative, collective reconsideration of what parts of society should be valued.

Ethical decision making in disaster and emergency management requires more than good intentions; it also asks for careful consideration and an explicit, systematic approach. The decisions made by leaders and the effects they have in a disaster must carry the confidence of the community to which they serve. Such decisions are critical in settings where resources are scarce; when decisions are perceived as unjust, the consequences may erode public trust, result in moral injury to staff, and cause community division. To understand how decisions in these settings are informed by ethics, a systematic literature review was conducted to determine what ethical guidance informs decision making in disaster and emergency management. This study found evidence of ethical guidance to inform decision making in disaster management in the humanitarian system, based on humanitarian principles. Evidence of the application of an ethical framework to guide or reference decision making was varied or absent in other emergency management agencies or systems. Development and validation of ethical frameworks to support decision making in disaster management practice is recommended.

The application and provision of prehospital care in disasters and mass-casualty incident response in Europe is currently being explored for opportunities to improve practice. The objective of this translational science study was to align common principles of approach and action and to identify how technology can assist and enhance response. To achieve this objective, the application of a modified Delphi methodology study based on statements derived from key findings of a scoping review was undertaken. This resulted in 18 triage, eight life support and damage control interventions, and 23 process consensus statements. These findings will be utilized in the development of evidence-based prehospital mass-casualty incident response tools and guidelines.

During the summer of 2022, several regions worldwide, including Iran, were subjected to intense monsoon rains, resulting in significant adverse impacts on the health, economy, and social well-being of affected populations. However, by focusing on adaptation and resilience measures, not only could the negative consequences of this phenomenon be mitigated, but as evidenced by other countries, the opportunity presented by rainwater could be utilized to promote development, health, and socioeconomic welfare in these areas. This concise report aims to explore the lessons learned from this phenomenon, including its strengths and weaknesses.

Here discussed is the relevance of non-pharmacological therapy, especially cooking therapy, in supporting the mental health recovery of adolescent disaster victims, especially those affected by the natural eruption of Mount Merapi in Yogyakarta, Indonesia.

The law of belligerent occupation permits the Occupying Power to administer and use the natural resources in the occupied territory under the rules of usufruct. This provision has no counterpart in the provisions of humanitarian law applicable to non-international armed conflicts, which may suggest that any exploitation of natural resources by non-State armed groups is illegal. The International Committee of the Red Cross's updated 2020 Guidelines on the Protection of the Environment in Armed Conflict did not touch on this issue, and nor did the International Law Commission in its 2022 Draft Principles on the Protection of the Environment in Relation to Armed Conflicts, where it applied the notion of sustainable use of natural resources instead of usufruct. The present paper aims to fill this gap. It first reviews the development of the concept of usufruct and then studies whether the current international law entitles non-State armed groups with de facto control over a territory to exploit natural resources. By delving into the proposals raised by some commentators to justify such exploitation for the purpose of administering the daily life of civilian populations, the paper advocates for a limited version of this formula as the appropriate lex ferenda. In the final section, the paper discusses how situations of disaster, as circumstances which may preclude the wrongfulness of the act, may justify the exploitation of natural resources by non-State armed groups in the current international legal order.

This article1 explores the messy practice of decolonising a concept through collaborative work between scholars researching together the meaning of everyday humanitarianism in Tanzania. Humanitarianism is typically understood as the state-centric, formal, Northern-driven helping of distant others in crisis. Using the concept of everyday humanitarianism, our article challenges these assumptions in three ways. First, it explores the everyday humanitarian actions of ordinary citizens in times of crisis. Second, it explores these responses in a Southern context. Third, it focuses explicitly on the givers and not only the receivers of humanitarian help. Our work grounds decolonisation in the actual practices of research aimed at theory building as an iterative back-and-forth exchange with particular attention to power, rather than as a transplant of Northern theory on the South, or its opposite. Our first argument is that the objective of collaborative research to capture the local politics of giving and then use these practices to interrogate the theoretical concept of everyday humanitarianism can be decolonising. Second, we argue that the practices of the academic labour that produces knowledge or inductive theory can also be decolonising. Understanding both the challenges and the possibilities of decolonising ‘humanitarianism’ will provide an opportunity to document and thus legitimate the complexity that is inherent in decolonising a discipline.

This article examines the problem of flooding in colonial Tonkin through two interrelated lenses: the history of disasters as social and political phenomena, and the history of technology and the constraints that shape its use. With a gradient ten times steeper than the Mekong, the Red River (Sông Cái in Vietnamese) is notorious for its huge seasonal fluctuations and violent floods. For centuries, local rulers and cultivators constructed dikes to protect fields and settlements, though breaches and inundations were frequent. French administrators were convinced that they could improve the flooding situation with modern know-how. From the 1890s, colonial engineers carefully studied the river's behavior, examined a range of different schemes to control it, and debated the extent to which the straitjacketing of the river might gradually exacerbate flood risk. Despite their deep-seated misgivings about the problems caused by dikes, they were ultimately forced to work within the parameters of pre-colonial hydraulic works. The result was an intensification of existing dependencies and flood vulnerabilities, which finally came to a head under the combined pressures of extreme weather and war, and which ultimately played an important role in undermining colonial authority in the Red River delta.