Publication Opportunities

Participants in the 2021 Researchers Meeting and 46th Annual Natural Hazards Workshop are invited to submit their scholarly work to the International Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters, Natural Hazards Review, and to a special issue of the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. More information on these partner journals follows. We also hope you will visit our list of publication outlets for additional opportunities to share your scholarly work.

Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences

Special Issue on Advances in Machine Learning for Natural Hazards Risk Assessment

This special issue fills an urgent need to properly under stand the potential for AI and machine learning in the field of disaster risk analysis, communicate potential pitfalls and limitations, and provide examples of best practice. This special issue presents some of the recent advances and applications of machine learning in natural hazards risk assessment, covering the following topics:

Exposure data collection and automatic building classification;
Risk mapping and damage assessment;
Development of hazard intensity and vulnerability models;
Monitoring population and urban growth;
Post-disaster damage and loss detection;
Modelling of socio-economic vulnerability;
When to use AI or machine learning vs. when to use conventional disaster risk analysis models;
Data, models, uncertainty, and performance metrics;
Ethical considerations in the use of AI for disaster risk modelling.

Those interested in contributing can submit to NHESS here: https://www.natural-hazards-and-earth-system-sciences.net/

International Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters

General Call for Papers

The International Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters (IJMED) is published by the International Sociological Association Research Committee on Disasters, (ISA-RC39). As the official journal of the RC39, IJMED focuses on the social and behavioral aspects of relatively sudden collective stress situations typically referred to as disasters or mass emergencies. The journal addresses issues of theory, research, planning, and policy. The central purpose is publication of results of scientific research, theoretical and policy studies, and scholarly accounts of such events as floods and earthquakes, explosions and massive fires, disorderly crowds and riots, energy cut-offs and power blackouts, toxic chemical poisonings and nuclear radiation exposures, and similar types of crisis-generating situations. Its audience includes specialists within various areas of research and teaching plus people working in the field who are responsible for mitigation, preparedness, response, or recovery actions.

Those interested in submitting their work to IJMED can learn more about the journal and the submission process at http://ijmed.org/. Questions should be directed to the journal editors, Shih-Kai (Sky) Huang and H. Tristan Wu, at ijmed.editors@gmail.com.

International Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters

Special Issue on Longitudinal Recovery Research: Progress in Theories, Methodologies, Ethics, and Applications

Submission Deadline: February 28, 2022
Expected Publication Date: November 2022 Issue or March 2023 Issue

Disasters are becoming more frequent and intense, affecting more people around the world. As a result, many communities face new disasters while still recovering from (or still experiencing) earlier events, making recovery even more complex and challenging. These increasing and cascading recovery challenges present important research areas for the disaster research community.

For many years, recovery was the least studied phase of the disaster life cycle, leading to a very limited understanding of the complex long-term effects of disasters on communities, individuals, and households. But that is changing thanks to systematic long-term recovery studies over the last couple of decades across the world, for example after the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami, Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the BP Oil Spill in 2010, the 2011 Triple Disaster (Earthquake, Tsunami, and Nuclear Crises) in Japan, and many other events. Recovery studies in different parts of the world have contributed to our understanding of long-term recovery patterns and disparities, success factors, best practices for the ethical conduct of research, data collection and analytical methods, measurement of recovery, and other topics. Innovations in the methods and data used for recovery research in the past couple of decades and a growing history of longitudinal studies in our field offer new insights that future recovery studies can build upon.

This special issue will provide an opportunity for the disaster research community to examine the current state and progress in the area of longitudinal recovery research, identify gaps, and reflect on future directions in this field of scholarship.

Topics of Interest:

Through this special issue, we will collect multiple perspectives on longitudinal and longterm recovery to identify progress and remaining gaps for future research. Moreover, we aim for this special issue to transcend disciplinary boundaries — with papers hailing from different scientific disciplines. We seek a three-pronged approach for this special issue: 1) papers that utilize longitudinal datasets to understand recovery, 2) theoretical and/or conceptual papers that inform methodological or theoretical advances in recovery measurement, modeling, or data collection, and 3) studies that apply recovery research to practice and policy. We outline these three main areas below — posing related questions of interest. To gain a multidisciplinary and multicultural perspective on long-term recovery, we welcome and encourage submissions from all disciplines, career stages, cultures, and places.

1) Exploring Outcomes of Longitudinal Recovery Data: Recovery is long, evolving, unequal, and complex. Longitudinal data on recovery allows us to track the complexities, inequalities, compounding effects of disasters and learn about successful adaptation of communities to the new normal or bouncing toward a more resilient state. We are interested in papers that explore both the long-term successes and failures that follow a disaster, with special interest in the following topics and welcoming other areas of contribution as well:

the conceptualization of recovery and effects on equity;
international, multidisciplinary, comparative, cross-cultural recovery studies;
the compounding effects and challenges of recovery from multiple subsequent disasters;
inequalities in recovery and the exacerbation of vulnerabilities; and/or
stories and factors contributing to successful recovery.

2) Methodological Advances in Longitudinal Recovery Data: Outside of the direct results of longitudinal recovery data, we are interested in lessons regarding how to best collect this data as well as how longitudinal recovery data can inform methods to estimate future recovery. Learning from the multiple approaches to data collection is especially important to promote non-extractive data collection. Using longitudinal data to examine and adjust existing policy frameworks or simulation methods of recovery can support post-disaster decisions before an event. We are especially interested in studies expounding the methodological advances regarding:

measures of recovery that consider the multifaceted nature of recovery and multiple units of analysis (e.g., individuals, households, businesses, etc.);
training and pedagogical issues related to educating students in recovery research;
approaches to collecting information alongside communities and for empowering respondents and their communities
comparisons between collection of qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-methods data; and/or
uses of longitudinal data in models of recovery.

3) Applied Examples of Longitudinal Recovery Data: Finally, it is necessary to identify and demonstrate how longitudinal recovery research can be thoughtfully applied to policy and practice. From an ethical data collection standpoint, it is especially important to draw connections between research and practice to ensure our data collection informs action. Therefore, we seek papers that consider:

examples in which policy or practice is studied through or informs the design of recovery research; and/or
examples in which outcomes from longitudinal recovery research informs policy or practice.

These three areas are of course not mutually exclusive and we highly encourage submissions that cover multiple of these topic areas.

Submission Information:
Manuscripts should be submitted to the guest editors at: ijmedspecissue@gmail.com.

Manuscripts can be prepared in the forms of a perspective/commentary article, a review article, or original research. Regardless of the submission type, manuscripts must be written in English, 12-point font, one-inch margins, double-spaced on Letter or A4, ASA citation format. Acceptable electronic file formats are Microsoft Word, (.doc or .docx), Rich text (.rtf), or Open Office (.odt). A commentary article should be 2,000 to 4,000 words in length, whereas the length of a review article or original research should be limited to between 6,000 and 10,000 words. For other formatting requirements, please check the guidance from the IJMED’s website at http://ijmed.org/article-submission/.

Guest Editors:
Sara Hamideh, Stony Brook University
Sabine Loos, United States Geological Survey

Co-Editors
Heather Champeau, University of Colorado, Boulder
Alessandra Jerolleman, Jacksonville State University
Jason Rivera, SUNY Buffalo State
Haorui Wu, Dalhousie University

Natural Hazards Review

Call for Papers

The Natural Hazards Review is sponsored by the Infrastructure Resilience Division of the American Society of Civil Engineers, and published by ASCE Journals. The journal addresses the range of events, processes, and consequences that occur when natural hazards interact with the physical, social, economic, and engineered dimensions of communities and the people who live, work, and play in them. As these conditions interact and change, the impact on human communities increases in size, scale, and scope. Such interactions necessarily need to be analyzed from an interdisciplinary perspective that includes both social and technical measures. For decision makers, the risk presents the challenge of managing known hazards, but unknown consequences in time of occurrence, scale of impact, and level of disruption in actual communities with limited resources. The journal is dedicated to bringing together the physical, social, and behavioral sciences; engineering; and the regulatory and policy environments to provide a forum for cutting edge, holistic, and cross-disciplinary approaches to anticipating risk, loss, and cost reduction from natural hazards.

Those interested in submitting their work to the Natural Hazards Review can learn more about the journal and the submission process at Natural Hazards Review website. Questions should be directed to the journal editors, Louise Comfort, Chief Editor, Social Sciences, lkc@pitt.edu and Nasim Uddin, Chief Editor, Engineering, uddin@uab.edu.

International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health

Call for Papers for a Special Issue on Disaster Recovery and Population Health

Authors are invited to submit their research to a special issue of the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health on the topic of Disaster Recovery and Population Health. Full details can be found at the journal website. The deadline for manuscript submissions is April 30, 2022, although acceptances are rolling and accepted articles will be posted immediately. The special issue will be guest edited by Professors David M. Abramson, Mark J. VanLandingham, and Mary C. Waters. Please keep reading for their call for submissions.

We have been particularly interested in the long-term effects of disaster exposure on individuals, families, and communities, and we recognize that there has been a gathering momentum of scholarship and studies on that topic by many within the fields of public health, social sciences, critical disaster studies, social ecology, engineering, and other disciplines. We regard this as an opportune time to reflect on what has been learned about recovery and its relationship to health and well-being, what such studies say about social institutions and population vulnerability and resilience, and more generally how recovery research has advanced the art and methodology of disaster science. This special issue will provide the field with an opportunity to review what has been learned about recovery and to consider the gaps to be filled. We are interested in original research, systematic reviews, and perspectives and commentaries that focus on methodological and epistemological aspects of individual and population recovery; the determinants and trajectories of long-term recovery, including those factors that mediate or moderate recovery; and systemic factors, as well as policies and practices, that support or inhibit successful recovery.

It has been a decade since FEMA released the U.S. National Disaster Recovery Framework, a guidance document that provided the first organizational structure for federal, state, local, territorial, and tribal recovery efforts, although much of the work has been unfunded. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, over those ten years there have been 146 distinct billion-dollar climate disasters in the United States. Countless communities have been confronted with the challenges of managing a disaster recovery effort while facing new and emerging hazards, including biological and technological threats as well as anthropocentric ones. With each disaster, policy-makers and community leaders speak of “building back better” or of acclimating to a New Normal. This special issue will contribute to the evidence base supporting, or refuting, such proclamations.

Among the “sub-themes” that contributors are asked to consider include the following, although this should not be regarded as an exhaustive list:

The means, methods, and measures of disaster recovery, particularly long-term recovery;
The tensions between infrastructure and population recovery—how should funding and effort be prioritized, given the needs to reconstruct and redevelop brick and mortar, as well as the need to attend to health and human service systems and displaced populations?
What contributes to population recovery—to what extent is recovery dependent upon individual and household characteristics, to community-level characteristics (and neighborhood effects), to broader systemic and institutional practices and norms?
How does the intersection of race, class, and gender influence the speed with which populations recover?
Are there certain civic institutions or social conditions that have an “outsize” influence on population recovery—for example, housing stability and educational systems?
How is disaster recovery experienced along the life-course? Do children and youth, young adults, and older adults recover in different ways and at different rates? Is each group responsive to different recovery stimuli?
How can we incorporate recovery research into emergency management and recovery practices? How can we tie what we have learned among researchers to specific policies?
Are there “social determinants of recovery,” similar to social determinants of health? How might “upstream variables,” such as those related to history and culture, be incorporated into such a framework?

We look forward to reading your submissions and are eager to see the field take a giant step forward on the strength of your insights and scholarship. If you have questions, please contact us at the email addresses below.

Special Issue Guest Editors
David M. Abramson, New York University, da76@nyu.edu
Mark J. VanLandingham, Tulane University, mvanlan@tulane.edu
Mary C. Waters, Harvard University, mcw@wjh.harvard.edu