Benefits of Managing the Capacity of Special Needs Shelters with Cross-County Collaboration Case Study in Florida

2017-01-01
A significant task of planners involved in emergency disaster management is planning for the optimal assignment of people to emergency shelters. This complex task depends on the available infrastructure and roadway characteristics and can take on additional complexity when older populations are considered because their health conditions may deteriorate during a disaster. Older people may also require special assistance even though they are not listed in the registries of people with special needs. This paper specifically focuses on the assignment of older populations to shelters. The paper presents a spatial optimization methodology based on data from a geographic information system. The focus is on the segment of the population 85 years old and older and on the use of potential benefits of cross-county collaboration in special needs shelter (SpNS) management. Such collaboration can help in using additional shelter capacity between neighboring counties (a) to overcome the lack of capacity in a county and (b) to assign the demand to a close shelter across county borders. The methodology was applied to a case study of five counties in the Florida Panhandle. Because the SpNS demand for the 85+ age group was not known exactly, a sensitivity analysis was conducted for different demand levels. From an emergency management perspective, this type of cross-county utilization can provide a means to use existing regular shelters in multiple counties to serve the 85+ population.
TRANSPORTATION RESEARCH RECORD

Suggestions

Accessibility modeling in earthquake case considering road closure probabilities: A case study of health and shelter service accessibility in Thessaloniki, Greece
ERTUĞAY, KIVANÇ; Argyroudis, Sotiris; Düzgün, Hafize Şebnem (2016-08-01)
One of the main focuses of disaster management is to decrease the impact of disasters by developing efficient emergency management plans and strategies. In this context, accessibility modeling of emergency related services such as health, fire, security services, or shelter sites in earthquake case can be a valuable tool for disaster managers, especially in assessing the vulnerability of urban districts as well as the sufficiency and appropriateness of the emergency service sites. Although there are several...
Developing performance measures to evaluate impact of cross-county collaboration for populations with access and functional needs
Alişan, Onur; Tüydeş Yaman, Hediye (Elsevier BV, 2018-10-01)
Efficient planning for disasters can significantly reduce their adverse impact on the public; however, assigning people to shelters becomes problematic especially while planning for those at-risk populations such as older adults who may need special assistance. In addition, hurricane registries may not reflect the actual number of people with access and functional needs. This can lead to a shelter capacity deficit in a county, which may be mitigated by collaborations among neighboring counties. The overall ...
ANALYZING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN DISASTER RISK MITIGATION AND URBAN PLANNING PROCESSES: THE CASE STUDY OF ESKISEHIR CITY
Sert Özkiremitçi, Merve; Balaban, Osman; Department of City and Regional Planning (2022-5-11)
The aim of this study is to discuss the effectiveness and efficiency of urban planning in reducing the risk of natural disasters in cities and to analyse the relationship between planning and disaster mitigation processes. The study focuses particularly on the analysis of Eskişehir case with reference to data and information on disaster risk analysis, existing urban development plans as well as the plan implementation processes. After the 1999 Gölcük and Düzce Earthquakes, Eskişehir has also faced and to a ...
The evaluation of public awareness and community preparedness parameter in GIS-based spatial tsunami human vulnerability assessment (MeTHuVA)
Tüfekçi Enginar, Duygu; Süzen, Mehmet Lütfi; Yalçıner, Ahmet Cevdet (Springer Science and Business Media LLC, 2020-11-01)
Catastrophic tsunami events in the past decades reveal the need to improve disaster risk reduction management systems. Although the actions born with this need began in the countries affected by the recent major events, mainly in Indonesia, after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and in Japan, after the 2011 Tohoku tsunami, it started to spread to other tsunami-prone coastal areas. The development of risk reduction strategies begins with determining the possible worst-case scenarios for the region and identifyi...
Performance and Cost of Cross-County Collaboration in Special Needs Shelter (SpNS) Planning
Alişan, Onur; Tüydeş Yaman, Hediye (2018)
Planning for disasters in advance can significantly reduce their impact on the public; however, it becomes very challenging when dealing with special needs populations and their assignment to shelters. Older populations may also require such special attention, although they may or may not be listed in the registries, since their health conditions may deteriorate rapidly in the aftermath of a disaster. A previous study has shown the benefits of possible cross-county collaboration while assigning older popula...
Citation Formats
O. Alişan, H. Tüydeş Yaman, and H. Ozel, “Benefits of Managing the Capacity of Special Needs Shelters with Cross-County Collaboration Case Study in Florida,” TRANSPORTATION RESEARCH RECORD, pp. 131–143, 2017, Accessed: 00, 2020. [Online]. Available: https://hdl.handle.net/11511/57491.