「脆弱性(Vulnerability)」とは何か

“WHAT can men do, what do they do, and what do they want to do ?”—these are the uestions that Prof. Thorndike seeks to answer in a very comprehensive and elaborate treatise. His undertaking is inspired by the belief that man has the possibility of almost complete control of his fate if only he will be guided by science, and that his failures are attributable to ignorance or folly. The main approach is through biological psychology, but all the social sciences are appealed to and utilized in an effort to deal with the human problem as a whole. The relative immaturity of the sciences dealing with man is continually stressed, but it is claimed that they provide a body of facts and principles which are “far above zero knowledge”, and that even now they are capable of affording valuable guidance in the shaping of public policy. Human Nature and the Social Order By E. L. Thorndike. Pp. xx + 1020. (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1940.) 18s. net.

Human Nature and the Social Order

In his seminal book, Shewhart (1931) makes no demand on the distribution of the characteristic to be plotted on a control chart. How then can we explain the idea that normality is, if not required, at least highly desirable? I believe that it has come about through the many statistical studies of control-chart behavior. If one is to study how a control chart behaves, it is necessary to relate it to some distribution. The obvious choice is the normal distribution because of its ubiquity as a satisfactory model. This is bolstered by the existence of the Central Limit Theorem.

Sampling: Design and Analysis

The importance of social capital for sustainable development, is by now well recognized. Anthropologists, sociologists, political scientists, and economists have in their own ways, demonstrated the critical role of institutions, networks, and their supporting norms and values, for the success of development interventions. This success often hinges on accurate assessments of social capital in target communities. But the nature, and impact of social capital - the institutions, relationships, attitudes, and values that govern interactions among people - are not easily quantified. "Understanding and Measuring Social Capital" provides a conceptual review, and measurement tools, in a form readily available for development practitioners. The book discusses the respective value of quantitative, and qualitative approaches to the analysis of social capital, illustrating the discussion with examples, and case studies from many countries. It also presents the Social Capital Assessment Tool, which combines quantitative, and qualitative instruments to measure social capital at the level of household, community, and organization, drawing on multidisciplinary, empirical experiences, an application which can provide project managers with valuable baseline, and monitoring information about social capital in its different dimensions.

Understanding and Measuring Social Capital: A Multidisciplinary Tool for Practitioners

Attributed to the recent COVID-19 pandemic, panic buying is now a frequent occurrence in many countries, leading to stockouts and supply chain disruptions. Consequently, it has received much attention from academics and the retail industry. The aim of this study is to review, identify, and synthesise the psychological causes of panic buying, which is a relatively new and unexplored area in consumer behaviour research. A systematic review of the related literature is conducted. The review suggests that panic buying is influenced by (1) individuals’ perception of the threat of the health crisis and scarcity of products; (2) fear of the unknown, which is caused by negative emotions and uncertainty; (3) coping behaviour, which views panic buying as a venue to relieve anxiety and regain control over the crisis; and (4) social psychological factors, which account for the influence of the social network of an individual. This study contributes to the literature by consolidating the scarce and scattered research on the causes of panic buying, drawing greater theoretical insights into each cause and also offers some implications for health professionals, policy makers, and retailers on implementing appropriate policies and strategies to manage panic buying. Recommendations for future research are also provided.

/pdf/the-psychological-causes-of-panic-buying-following-a-health-1o6t5rtc52.pdf

The Psychological Causes of Panic Buying Following a Health Crisis.

The post-disaster emergency medical rescue (EMR) is critical for people's lives. This paper presents a stochastic Petri net (SPN) model based on the process of the rescue structure and a Markov chain model (MC), which is applied to the optimization of the EMR process, with the aim of identifying the key activities of EMR. An isomorphic MC model is developed for measuring and evaluating the time performance of the EMR process during earthquakes with the data of the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake. This paper provides a mathematical approach to simulate the process and to evaluate the efficiency of EMR. Simultaneously, the expressions of the steady state probabilities of this system under various states are obtained based on the MC, and the variations of the probabilities are analyzed by changing the firing rates for every transition. Based on the concrete data of the event, the authors find the most time consuming and critical activities for EMR decisions. The model results show that the key activities can improve the efficiency of medical rescue, providing decision-makers with rescue strategies during the large scale earthquake.

/pdf/stochastic-petri-net-based-modeling-of-emergency-medical-46lin1i1wo.pdf

Stochastic Petri Net Based Modeling of Emergency Medical Rescue Processes during Earthquakes.

Community, Environment and Disaster Risk Management provides a series of cross-disciplinary approaches and methods which are exemplified by case studies from different parts of the world. Volume 18 looks at how cities and countries recover from catastrophic disasters with a specific focus on Asia.

/pdf/recovering-from-catastrophic-disaster-in-asia-v6asz32s8j.pdf

Recovering from Catastrophic Disaster in Asia

Abstract Understanding media frames and the public resonance during disasters is essential for making inclusive climate change and adaptation policies in the context of increasingly extreme weather events. In this study, we use the extreme weather and flood event that occurred in July 2021 in Zhengzhou, China, as a case study to investigate how official media in China reported this event and how the public responded. Moreover, since one accountability investigation report regarding this disaster was released in January 2022, we also compared these posts between the emergency response period and the post-crisis learning period after the report’s release. Topic modeling using the LDA (Latent Dirichlet Allocation) method and emotion analysis were conducted to analyze the posts from Weibo, China’s primary social media platform. The results demonstrated that the posts from official media and the public comments differed in both topics and emotions, with relatively little coherence. During the emergency response period, the media’s posts focused more on the facts, such as the extreme weather event, the places where it occurred, the impacts, and the search and rescue efforts, while the public comments were more about help appeals from the neglected ones in the rural areas, and emotional expressions such as moral support, condolence or encouragement to the victims and their families. After the accountability investigation in January, the media’s posts primarily covered the investigation process, the punishment, the attribution of disaster consequences, and the lessons learned, while the public’s comments were relatively emotional, praised the good, condoled the victims, and condemned the villains. The dominant emotion from the media’s posts was “like” in July 2021, but it became depression in January 2022. Anger was the prevalent emotion from the public during all the stages. This study provided valuable knowledge to the current understanding of the different patterns and dynamics of official media reports and the public’s resonance in disaster management. 

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-022-01457-1.pdf

Topical and emotional expressions regarding extreme weather disasters on social media: a comparison of posts from official media and the public

How do public investments in public health actually impact health outcomes? This question has not been investigated enough, especially regarding infectious diseases. This study investigates the correlations between public health expenditure and the incidence of tuberculosis in China using a provincial panel dataset. The analysis focuses on the correlations between public health expenditure and tuberculosis incidence, using the fixed effects models and Two Stage Least Squares (2SLS) method. Overall, a 10% increase of public health expenditure per capita is associated with a 0.0019% decrease of tuberculosis incidence. A series of robustness tests show that the correlation between public health expenditure and TB incidence is valid. Future research should focus more on the performance of public health, particularly infectious diseases like tuberculosis, and provide references for health policymakers.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/hpm.3034

How investment in public health has impacted the prevalence of tuberculosis in China: A study of provincial variations between 2005 and 2015.

Increasing resilience at the community level is important for reducing the impact of disasters, particularly given the growing number of disaster events around the globe. Prior studies have paid more attention to the resilience of rural and urban communities, while a larger number of transitional communities have not received enough attention. Based on a survey in Guangdong Province, China, the 10-Item Conjoint Community Resiliency Assessment Measurement (CCRAM-10) was employed to assess the perceived community resilience of seven community types in urban, rural and transitional communities. Multiple linear regression was also conducted, to measure the influence of community types. The results show that transitional communities have the lowest level of resilience, while urban communities have the highest. Although differences in resilience exist among different community types, they all show a high level of collective efficacy. Urban and rural communities are strong predictors of community resilience, as are the following sociodemographic categories: being male, younger, married, more highly educated, and not religious. However, differences are found in the specific dimensions. The study also provides recommendations on how physical and social infrastructure could be used to promote community resilience. 

Ziqiang Han

Papers

Stochastic Petri Net Based Modeling of Emergency Medical Rescue Processes during Earthquakes.

Recovering from Catastrophic Disaster in Asia

Topical and emotional expressions regarding extreme weather disasters on social media: a comparison of posts from official media and the public

How investment in public health has impacted the prevalence of tuberculosis in China: A study of provincial variations between 2005 and 2015.

Resilience in urban, rural, and transitional communities: An empirical study in Guangdong, China