Topic: Crisis Response

The 3000+ household-based survey established that nearly 4000 people had died in the weeks in Puerto Rico, following Hurricane Maria, and not 59 as reported by the US government. The official death toll was revised.

This paper calls for re-thinking how data are leveraged in planning for and responding to disasters in the United States, by calling for preempting the needs of medically vulnerable populations, and provisioning for disruptions in major utilities during natural disasters.

Our team at CrisisReady has built interactive decision-making tools to help first responders and aid agencies make decisions on mobilization and resource allocation based on near real-time population displacement data. We have built instances for the Dixie wildfire in California, and hurricanes Ida, Fiona and Ian.

CrisisReady is an international research-response platform based at Harvard University and Direct Relief. Co-led by Caroline Buckee, Satchit Balsari, and Andrew Schroeder, the platform’s Data-Methods-Translational Framework allows the CrisisReady team to scale data-driven decision making through a network of regional partners.

The 3000+ household-based survey established that nearly 4000 people had died in the weeks in Puerto Rico, following Hurricane Maria, and not 59 as reported by the US government. The official death toll was revised.

In 2016, to assist the Hong Kong Jockey Club Disaster Preparedness and Response Institute (HKJC DPRI) and other disaster management players in Hong Kong in identifying priority areas for research, training, and partnerships, HKJC DPRI launched a study titled “Disaster Preparedness in Hong Kong – A Scoping Study” to assess the current disaster preparedness situation in Hong Kong.

For this project, we analyzed over one million patient visits to the underground hospitals supported by the Syrian American Medical Society, to establish the epidemiology of presenting complaints and availability of health services through the progression of the war.

We surveyed 1000 households to establish the impact of “formal” refugee status on education, jobs, identity and a sense of belonging among the Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh.

The COVID-19 Mobility Data Network (CMDN) is a network of infectious disease epidemiologists at universities around the world working with technology companies to use aggregated mobility data to support the COVID-19 response. The goal of the CMDN is to provide daily updates to decision makers at the state and local levels on how well social distancing interventions are working, using anonymized, aggregated data sets from mobile devices, along with analytic support for interpretation.

The Kumbh Mela is the world’s largest mass gathering, where tens of millions congregate at one of four holy sites in India during a several week-long festival. The government builds an ephemeral city — replete with roads, sanitation, and power — in which religious groups and small business provide food, shelter, sermons, and entertainment for the visiting pilgrims. In 2013, Harvard University sent a multi-disciplinary research team of faculty and students with backgrounds in theology, urban planning, public health, and business to study the world’s largest mass gathering.

On September 20 2017, Hurricane Maria made landfall in Puerto Rico,USA, damaging homes, roads, hospitals, and water, power and communication lines.  Though the official death toll stood at less than 60, reports from the island seemed to suggest otherwise. Denied access to these data, Harvard University Professors Caroline Buckee, Satchit Balsari, Rafael Irizzary, and Jennifer Leaning oversaw a household based survey that estimated excess mortality in Puerto Rico from September 20 through December 31, 2017 was closer to 4000, and not 59, as estimated by the US government. 

Building integrated translational pipelines that use data rapidly and effectively to address health effects of natural disasters will require substantial investment, which must rely on evidence of which approaches improve outcomes. But promising solutions are available.