the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
| 10 Mar 2023
Earthquake Response Timeliness: Disaster Managers Experience in Responding to Earthquakes in Iran
Abstract. This paper explores the timeliness of main response activities in the Bam earthquake in order to shed light in disaster response effectiveness in the aftermath of the earthquake. Disaster managers who were involved in disaster response activities in the Bam earthquake were selected using snowball sampling method and 30 participants were interviewed. The interviews data were analyzed applying thematic analysis method. The results showed that the extensive damage and large number of casualties challenged the local emergency response services. The problem was compounded by the lack of personnel in the first few hours after the earthquake. Iran’s disaster management system was not prepared to cope with a disaster of this scale. According to the interview data, a response timeline to the earthquake was developed for 48 hours after the earthquake that can assist disaster manager in designing a proper action plan (strategic response plan) prior to an earthquake in the region. This is an efficient way of dealing with disaster response challenges in the aftermath of earthquakes.
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Reza Hassanzadeh
Status: closed
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RC1: 'Comment on nhess-2023-12', Anonymous Referee #1, 07 Jun 2023
This manuscript evaluates societal response timeliness on earthquake disasters, using the 2003 Bam earthquake in Iran as an example. The data used for the evaluation consist of interviews with several actors in the emergency response chain that is processed and structured to extract significant information on the timeliness of different response actions. The paper concludes with general and specific recommendations on earthquake disaster response measures. Although the paper is readable, it requires extensive spell-checking before resubmission. The Figures are partly of inacceptable quality.
The scientific work presented belongs to the field of social sciences and does not exploit geoscientific or at least environmental information. It is solely based on interview information and uses socio-scientific methods, where I am not sure the general audience of NHESS is familiar with. Consequently, I may suggest to present this work to a journal in the field of social sciences. If, however, the work would be suitable for NHESS, I would recommend the authors to present the data and especially the methodology applied in much more detail, also accompanied by appropriate illustrations and presentations of examples.
Abstract: Please specify Magnitude, Location and Date of the Bam earthquake when first mentioning it.
P107: The mentioned “Thematic analysis” is not well-know to a geoscientific community, I may suppose. Please explain.
P153: Please explain “snowball sampling” applied to your data sufficiently using an example
P207: Which “criteria”? How many? Please specify
P213: How was the assignment done? Automatically? Manually? Please explain and provide examples
P216: Please supply a list or a Figure showing “thematic analysis”: “themes”, “criteria”, “assignement”…
Figure 2: What is shown in the map?
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-2023-12-RC1 -
AC1: 'Reply to RC1', Reza Hassanzadeh, 19 Jun 2023
Reply to RC1
Dear Editor,
I greatly appreciate the valuable comments of reviewer. I have tried to incorporate changes to reflect all of the suggestions provided by the reviewers.
I have highlighted the changes within the manuscript. Here is a point-by-point response to the reviewers' comments.
We hope the manuscript after careful revisions meet your high standards.
Yours sincerely,
RC1: (C: Reviever’s comment)
C: This manuscript evaluates societal response timeliness on earthquake disasters, using the 2003 Bam earthquake in Iran as an example. The data used for the evaluation consist of interviews with several actors in the emergency response chain that is processed and structured to extract significant information on the timeliness of different response actions. The paper concludes with general and specific recommendations on earthquake disaster response measures. Although the paper is readable, it requires extensive spell-checking before resubmission. The Figures are partly of inacceptable quality.
Answer: I have read the paper several times and revised all spelling mistakes. Also, I have increased the quality of the figures and replaced them in the text.
C: The scientific work presented belongs to the field of social sciences and does not exploit geoscientific or at least environmental information. It is solely based on interview information and uses socio-scientific methods, where I am not sure the general audience of NHESS is familiar with. Consequently, I may suggest to present this work to a journal in the field of social sciences. If, however, the work would be suitable for NHESS, I would recommend the authors to present the data and especially the methodology applied in much more detail, also accompanied by appropriate illustrations and presentations of examples.
Answer: I have tried to review response phase activities timeliness in the aftermath of the Bam earthquaks. This paper will give readers an idea on what are the main respose activities and how they should be done in a timely manner. It will open up new questions regarding response activities by evelauting real situation in the Bam City after the earthquake occurrence.
C: Abstract: Please specify Magnitude, Location and Date of the Bam earthquake when first mentioning it.
Answer: I have revised the abstract as shown in the following:
Abstract. This paper explores the timeliness of main response activities in the Bam earthquake in order to shed light in disaster response effectiveness in the aftermath of the earthquake. Disaster managers who were involved in disaster response activities in the Bam earthquake (on 26 December 2003 with the magnitude of 6.3 mb) were selected using snowball sampling method and 30 participants were interviewed.
C: P107: The mentioned “Thematic analysis” is not well-know to a geoscientific community, I may suppose. Please explain.
Answer: I have explained “Thematic analysis” in line number 194 - 206 as mentioned in the following:
Transcribing the recording by the researcher helped an initial familiarisation with the data (Braun and Clarke, 2006). Through the transcribing process, all identifiable information was removed from the transcripts and the researcher called them interview 1 (Int1) to interview 30 (Int30). The unit of analysis is formed by individual lines of the transcript, and eachspoken passage contains a section in the transcripts. The coding was done manually using Excel software to be able to conduct the study using the well-known Thematic Analysis (TA) method (Boyatzis, 1998; Braun and Clarke, 2006). Thematic analysis is a method for identifying, analyzing, and reporting main themes in data that consists of the following stages, as seen in Figure 4. Based on this method, qualitative data were analized with aim of looking for patterns in the meaning of the data to find themes. “It is an active process of reflexivity in which the researcher's subjective experience is at the center of making sense of the data” (Braun and Clarke, 2006).
Figure 4. Thematic analysis flowchart
In order to facilitate analysing data deductively, in the early steps of analysis, “borrowing” concepts and codes from existing literature was utilized (Benaquisto and Given, 2008). Thus, the initial codes and concepts were identified by a review of existing literature documenting disaster response activities, timeliness and effectiveness in the aftermath of earthquakes, and concepts associated with disaster response metrics (Abir et al., 2017). These were mainly useful in terms of organizing the data relevant to borrowed themes (e.g. ‘response activities’, ‘warning and alerting’, ‘response timeliness’, ‘response effectiveness’, ‘resources distribution’ , etc.), specifically ‘timeliness and efficacy’ (Abir et al., 2017).
C: P153: Please explain “snowball sampling” applied to your data sufficiently using an example.
Answer: I have explained “snowball sampling” in line 153 and line 163 as follow:
They were selected based on the snowball sampling or chain-referral sampling method (Biernacki and Waldorf, 1981). In this method after observing the initial subject, the researcher asks for assistance from the subject to help identify people with a similar trait of interest. The researcher then observes the nominated subjects and continues in the same way until a sufficient number of subjects are obtained.
Disaster responders (managers and experts) in main organizations who were involved in the response activities to the Bam earthquake, and they were experienced in a variety of response activities to the other earthquake with varying degrees of education and age were selected by the researcher using snowball sampling method. This is a non-probability sampling method where new interviewee are introduced by other interviewees to form part of the sample.
C: P207: Which “criteria”? How many? Please specify.
Answer: This section was revised in line 213.
Three criteria were determined in order to assign data to different themes. These criteria were included as mentioned in the following: 1. which response activity participants was referred to, 2. the time of reaching to the damaged area by responders of that specific response activity, and 3. describing how that activity was done in the damaged area.
C: P213: How was the assignment done? Automatically? Manually? Please explain and provide examples.
Answer: This was mentioned in line 198.
The coding was done manually using Excel software to be able to conduct the study using well-known Thematic Analysis (TA) method (Boyatzis, 1998; Braun and Clarke, 2006).
C: P216: Please supply a list or a Figure showing “thematic analysis”: “themes”, “criteria”, “assignement”…
Answer: This was mentioned in line 215.
Thus, participant must referred to a specific response activity in their comments in order to be assigned to the specific code such as “alerting and warning, situational awareness (damage, loss and needs assessment), conducting USAR operations, evacuating casualties and providing medical services, delivering supplies and distributing resources, burying corpses, and international support”. In certain circumstances, it was difficult to clearly assign some comments solely to one particular component of cognitive process (theme). In such cases, the comments were attributed to relevant themes for completeness of data and then were analysed within the broader context of the results.
Figure 4. Thematic analysis flowchart
C: Figure 2: What is shown in the map?
Answer: I have redesigned the map. It is shown the geographical location of Bam city in Kerman Province, Southwest of Iran.
Figure 2. The geographical location of Bam city in Kerman Province, Southeast of Iran.
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AC1: 'Reply to RC1', Reza Hassanzadeh, 19 Jun 2023
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RC2: 'Comment on nhess-2023-12', Anonymous Referee #2, 07 Sep 2023
Summary
This paper presents a qualitative investigation of crisis response to Iran earthquakes (between 1981 and 2003). Based on interviewing and content analysis, the authors detail the manifestation of timeliness in an empirical case study that primarily comprise interviewing. The paper concludes by identifying critical aspects of timeliness and situational awareness.
Strengths
This paper provides a deep investigation of crisis response in Iran, a region from which crisis response remains less documented. The authors made the efforts to interview a diversified spectrum of actors. To that extent, the empirical data seems to be very rich and, in my view, can support conceptualization. Finally, timeliness is a burning challenge and is worth examining, in particular in relation to situational awareness.
Scope of investigation and methodology
The authors provide clear information about the diversity of organizations involved in earthquake response and also explain very well how they proceeded with data collection. However, I suggest that they clarify their peculiar interest in timeliness in the methodology section.
The findings section starts by mentioning that 8 themes were identified in the analysis of empirical data. My understanding is that all these themes relate to timeliness. The cognitive and methodological process by which the authors came up with the 8 themes and relate them to timeliness remains unclear to me. Did the authors first theoretically identify timeliness and then searched for its manifestation in empirical data? Or, alternatively, did they identify themes and then related these themes (in a more abductive fashion) to timeliness?
In every case, the reader needs more transparency and explanation of the authors’ choices and focus on timeliness. In particular, I invite them to explain when, and why, they focused on timeliness through the research.
Also, they could also explain whether they identified other themes in their research.
Qualitative research is frequently collaborative or, at least, led by dialogical reasoning (Klein & Myers, 1999). Had the authors any occasion to be challenged on their qualitative analysis? Confrontation of findings with peers and practitioners can drive research reliability and accountability. If the authors had any chance to refine their analysis by doing so, they should state it and explain how discussions, presentation or previous reviewing helped them refine their work.
Further conceptualization of timeliness
Consistently with my previous comments on the author’s focus on timeliness, I strongly recommend further exploration of the notion of timeliness (at least from a theoretical perspective). In my view, this concept is central to the paper and I strongly recommend the authors to define and further review it. They can relate on books that extensively documented time issues in crisis response (Hardt, 2014).
I also invite them to discuss this notion. What do we already know on the importance and impact of timeliness on crisis response, as well as its inner challenges? Also, by reviewing the literature, the authors might identify that many papers focus on time constraints and need for timely response (rather than focusing on timeliness). Hence, they might need to put into perspective the concept of timeliness with notions, such as time constraints and response.
In my view, further conceptualization of timeliness will also help the authors define the theoretical contribution of their work. In other words, they will more easily explain how their research enriched existing knowledge and approaches to this concept.
Relevance of the case study
The authors focus on a specific sequence of earthquakes that took place in Iran between 1981 and 2003 (20 years ago). At a global scale, the impact of natural hazards has increased, and disruptive events have multiplied and changed. Subsequently, governments have designed and implemented technologies and processes to address disasters and hazards. These technologies significantly change the course of any crisis response (for instance Copernicus was created in 1998, then social media developed).
This means that: i) other more recent cases do exist, ii) one could assume that the reality of disaster management has significantly changed since the events that the paper focuses on.
For this reason, I invite the authors to argue the relevance of the cases under study, rather than more recent cases.
Also, I invite the authors to further argue the generalizability of their findings, in particular the relevance of findings in light of more recent events that involved information sharing between organizations and on social media.
Theoretical foundation of concepts
The findings comprise the notion of situational awareness. However, the provided definition differs from the common definitions that can be found in the literature (the authors do not provide any formal definition on p.12). This is confusing for the reader. Empirically, the presented phenomenon (delays in understanding the loss and the need for resources), rather refers to difficulties inherent to sensemaking rather than situational awareness. Situational awareness can be defined as an individual or collective capacity to keep track of a situation, reflect it and anticipate what could be achieved, depending on the evolution of the situation (Fathi & Fiedrich, 2022). Both sensemaking and situational awareness are important in crisis response. However, the former is a means to reach the latter. In the findings, (line 256 and line 261), the verbatims rather express the difficulty to make sense of the situation because of the lack of resources.
For this reason, I would invite the authors to further put into perspective their data with the concepts they propose.
Findings structure
The articulation of the various elements provided by the authors in the findings section remains unclear. In particular, the reader needs to understand what the demonstration is about. Why do the authors focus on various occurrences of timeliness? Why these (and not others)? Do the authors want to highlight what the crisis responders managed to achieve in relation to timeliness? Or on the contrary, do they intend to point at sources of struggle for crisis responders? I invite the authors to clarify the meaning of each topic presented in the findings (as well as their interconnection). I think that they can improve the findings by explaining what they intend to demonstrate at the beginning of the section.
Also, they could further articulate the points that they present in the findings, but also in the discussion and conclusion. In particular, I would be curious to further understand whether timeliness in alerting and warning affected timeliness in delivering supplies and burying corpses (or whether the problems were independent).
Also, every subsection of the empirical findings comprises information about situational awareness. I strongly invite the authors to further explore, both empirically and theoretically, the connection between timeliness and situational awareness. I could easily figure that situational awareness supports timely reaction and response. However, the causal-effect could also work in the other direction (meaning that timely response is a way not to loose track of the crisis response and maintain a satisfactory level of situational awareness). In sum, I really think that the empirical cases are promising. But I believe that the authors could significantly improve the impact of their work by further theorizing and further articulation of the various notions (and facts).
Scientific contribution
I believe that further examining the ties between timeliness and situation awareness would help strengthen the contribution of the paper. The contribution to knowledge, theory and practice remains undetailed in this version of the paper.
English editing
The document requires extensive editing. The grammar of some sentences should be corrected and remain difficult to understand. For instance, the use of which/that is sometimes wrong.
Good luck with your paper!
References
Fathi, R., & Fiedrich, F. (2022). Social Media Analytics by Virtual Operations Support Teams in disaster management: Situational awareness and actionable information for decision-makers. Frontiers in Earth Science, 10, 941803. https://doi.org/10.3389/feart.2022.941803
Hardt, H. (2014). Time to react: The efficiency of international organizations in crisis response. Oxford University Press.
Klein, H. K., & Myers, M. D. (1999). A Set of Principles for Conducting and Evaluating Interpretive Field Studies in Information Systems. MIS Quarterly, 23(1), 67–93. JSTOR. https://doi.org/10.2307/249410
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-2023-12-RC2 -
AC2: 'Reply on RC2', Reza Hassanzadeh, 20 Oct 2023
Reply to RC2
Dear Editor,
I greatly appreciate the valuable comments of reviewer. I have tried to incorporate changes to reflect all of the suggestions provided by the reviewers.
I have highlighted the changes within the manuscript. Here is a point-by-point response to the reviewers' comments.
I hope the manuscript after careful revisions meet your high standards.
Yours sincerely,
Author
RC2: 'Comment on nhess-2023-12', Anonymous Referee #2,
Scope of investigation and methodology
C1. The authors provide clear information about the diversity of organizations involved in earthquake response and also explain very well how they proceeded with data collection. However, I suggest that they clarify their peculiar interest in timeliness in the methodology section.
Answer:
I have clarified this as explained in the following:
A review of existing literature on earthquake disaster response and disaster response metrics helped inform the development of a topic guide for data collection. The topic guide covered several thematic areas, which sought to elicit the perceptions of participants concerning earthquake risk; previous earthquake experiences; levels of preparedness to response; disaster response activities, and disaster response timeliness (a time when responders reached the damaged area). However, timeliness in response activities was the main target to investigate in this paper.
C2. The findings section starts by mentioning that 8 themes were identified in the analysis of empirical data. My understanding is that all these themes relate to timeliness. The cognitive and methodological process by which the authors came up with the 8 themes and relate them to timeliness remains unclear to me. Did the authors first theoretically identify timeliness and then searched for its manifestation in empirical data? Or, alternatively, did they identify themes and then related these themes (in a more abductive fashion) to timeliness?
Answer:
I have described this as explained in the following:
Based on previous literature, I knew timeliness is at the heart of efficient disaster response. Then, I identified abductively 8 themes that were relevant to disaster response activities and search for their timeliness in empirical data. This process was explained in the following section and I have tried to clarify what have been done:
Transcribing the recording by the researcher helped an initial familiarization with the data (Braun and Clarke, 2006). Through the transcribing process, all identifiable information was removed from the transcripts and the researcher called them interview 1 (Int1) to interview 30 (Int30). Individual lines of the transcript form the unit of analysis, and each spoken passage contains a section in the transcripts. The coding was done manually using Excel software to be able to conduct the study using the well-known Thematic Analysis (TA) method (Boyatzis, 1998; Braun and Clarke, 2006). Thematic analysis is a method for identifying, analyzing, and reporting main themes in data that consists of the following stages, as seen in Figure 4. Based on this method, qualitative data were analyzed with aim of looking for patterns in the meaning of the data to find themes. “It is an active process of reflexivity in which the researcher's subjective experience is at the center of making sense of the data” (Braun and Clarke, 2006).
In order to facilitate analyzing data, in the early steps of analysis, “borrowing” concepts and codes from existing literature was utilized (Benaquisto and Given, 2008). Thus, the initial codes and concepts were identified abductively by a review of existing literature documenting disaster response activities, timeliness and effectiveness in the aftermath of earthquakes, and concepts associated with disaster response metrics (Abir et al., 2017). These were mainly useful in terms of organizing the data relevant to borrowed themes (e.g. ‘response activities’, ‘warning and alerting’, ‘response timeliness’, ‘response effectiveness’, ‘resources distribution’ , etc.), specifically ‘timeliness and efficacy’ (Abir et al., 2017).
Three criteria were determined in order to assign data to different themes. These criteria were included as mentioned in the following: 1. which response activity participants was referred to, 2. the time of reaching to the damaged area by responders of that specific response activity, and 3. describing how that activity was done in the damaged area. Thus, the participant must refer to a specific response activity in their comments in order to be assigned to the specific code such as “alerting and warning, situational awareness (damage, loss, and needs assessment), conducting USAR[1] operations, evacuating casualties and providing medical services, delivering supplies and distributing resources, burying corpses, and international support”. In certain circumstances, it was difficult to assign some comments solely to one particular component of the cognitive process (theme). In such cases, the comments were attributed to relevant themes for completeness of data and then were analyzed within the broader context of the results.
C3. In every case, the reader needs more transparency and explanation of the authors’ choices and focus on timeliness. In particular, I invite them to explain when, and why, they focused on timeliness through the research.
Answer:
Based on the previous literature and experiences “timeliness “was clearly identified in order to have an efficient disaster response. Here, we only measure timeliness and efficiency of disaster response activity based on empirical data from a case study.
C4. Also, they could also explain whether they identified other themes in their research.
Answer:
Yes, based on empirical data, several interviewees related inefficiency in disaster response to the whole cycle of disaster management and several other themes were emerged such as “preparedness” and “risk mitigation” but as I only focus on timeliness in disaster response activities, then I have not mentioned the other themes. Main point of other themes suggesting clearly that responders were not being prepared for such a dramatic disaster that caused such a huge number of losses and damage.
C5. Qualitative research is frequently collaborative or, at least, led by dialogical reasoning (Klein & Myers, 1999). Had the authors any occasion to be challenged on their qualitative analysis? Confrontation of findings with peers and practitioners can drive research reliability and accountability. If the authors had any chance to refine their analysis by doing so, they should state it and explain how discussions, presentation or previous reviewing helped them refine their work.
Answer:
Yes, my assumption was that the disaster response activities were not functional in responding to the Bam earthquake. In the first interview, I have challenged the interviewee with the direct question of what he thought about it and why we had such a big number of losses. This approach was not helping to find out the timeliness in disaster response activities in the case of the Bam earthquake, as interviewee started to justify and defend his organization on this situation. This approach was not helpful. I had to change several questions for the next round of interviews.
The other challenge was that several interviewees were very well aware of all aspect of disaster response activities, but few of them had were specialist in an specific task like firefighting or medical care. I had to get specific theme from single transcript and then combine them to come up with something tangible. As, Klein and Myers (1999) mentioned a crucial principle that called “the Interdependence of the Seven Principles”. It is obviously infeasible and distracting to describe every aspect of the context. The researcher has to choose what to say depending upon the audience and the story that he or she wants to tell. Clearly, the whole (the final published story) affects the parts (how each individual principle is applied), and the application of each part affects the whole” (Klein & Myers, 1999, P.78). Therefore, I had to come up with specific themes to be able to conclude on timeliness in disaster response activities that other researchers specifically had discussed them separately in terms of their efficacy in responding to the Bam earthquake.
Further conceptualization of timeliness
C6. Consistently with my previous comments on the author’s focus on timeliness, I strongly recommend further exploration of the notion of timeliness (at least from a theoretical perspective). In my view, this concept is central to the paper and I strongly recommend the authors to define and further review it. They can relate on books that extensively documented time issues in crisis response (Hardt, 2014).
I also invite them to discuss this notion. What do we already know on the importance and impact of timeliness on crisis response, as well as its inner challenges? Also, by reviewing the literature, the authors might identify that many papers focus on time constraints and need for timely response (rather than focusing on timeliness). Hence, they might need to put into perspective the concept of timeliness with notions, such as time constraints and response.
In my view, further conceptualization of timeliness will also help the authors define the theoretical contribution of their work. In other words, they will more easily explain how their research enriched existing knowledge and approaches to this concept.
Answer:
Hardt (2014) explained many examples on time issues in crisis response. As, He suggested, “efficiency remains an overlooked but significant determinant of effectiveness in the conduct of peace operations. Quicker decision-making (Howorth, 2000) leads to quicker interventions, and ultimately peace operations that are less likely to fail.” In addition, Larsen (2003) identified a series of the most important consequences of slow responses: “frequent delays, human suffering and death, diminished credibility, opportunities lost, and escalating costs” (Larsen, 2003).
In response, Hardt (2014) suggested that to resolve time issues in crisis response, responders had to go through the informal decision-making processes in order to conduct operations in a timely and efficient manner. As, delays can cost lives. Hardt (2014) explained that the differences in response rates could be effected by a variety of factors, including “informal relations among key decision-makers, the intensity of the conflict, and the preexisting political connections that some member states may have to the host state and conflict parties”. In case of earthquakes’ disaster response, time issue is relevant to these factors and how accurate information are delivered to the front line.
Relevance of the case study
C7. The authors focus on a specific sequence of earthquakes that took place in Iran between 1981 and 2003 (20 years ago). At a global scale, the impact of natural hazards has increased, and disruptive events have multiplied and changed. Subsequently, governments have designed and implemented technologies and processes to address disasters and hazards. These technologies significantly change the course of any crisis response (for instance Copernicus was created in 1998, then social media developed).
This means that: i) other more recent cases do exist, ii) one could assume that the reality of disaster management has significantly changed since the events that the paper focuses on.
For this reason, I invite the authors to argue the relevance of the cases under study, rather than more recent cases.
Also, I invite the authors to further argue the generalizability of their findings, in particular the relevance of findings in light of more recent events that involved information sharing between organizations and on social media.
Answer:
Based on National Geophysical Data Center / World Data Service (Table 1), Iran had experienced several significant earthquakes. The Bam earthquake in 2003 was a massive earthquake that caused around 31000 deaths. After this, we had only two major earthquakes those caused less than 1000 deaths. Regarding recent earthquake, the argument is, how that is possible to discuss in depth challenges with people who have no idea about the depth of damage and massive fatality rate on the scene. Therefore, I had to focus on major earthquakes such as Bam to find out the real answers to my questions. Another aspect of this research is, every single earthquake has its own response phase. The more devastating earthquake, the more actions are needed. The more complicated it will get. The Bam earthquake was the one to look into and find out how disaster response happened on the scene.
Regarding changes in the last 20 years: Yes, we had many changes in disaster management phases in Iran on papers. Lots of laws and regulations did come up in last two years. We had comprehensive risk mitigation plan, comprehensive preparedness plan, and comprehensive response plan in national and provincial level. However, I know none of them will be a real improvement as long as we do not invest in community risk management. I have supervised comprehensive risk mitigation, preparedness and response plan for Kerman province and I can guarantee nothing will come out of this.
There are a lot changed since 2003 in terms of technology and social media, but I hope they can help us on disaster response phase in Iran someday. In advanced countries, yes, they can help. Twitter, Facebook, People Finder, Instagram, Telegram and so on. Here, we are dealing with a different world and in case of devastating earthquake such as Bam; none of them can be operational. Fathi and Fiedrich (2022) suggested the use of Virtual Operations Support Teams (VOST) to increase disaster manager’s situational awareness in a timely manner regarding what is happening on the scene by analyzing social media feeds in a case study of the 2021 flood in Wuppertal, Germany. I agree flooding can happen in or around a river, and then we can say it is somehow predictable that the level of disruptions will be somehow in a specific direction. In case of earthquake, it is very different; the earthquake can hit a massive region and destroy all buildings and infrastructure that no one can use their smartphone to communicate any data. Other issue is how accurate this information can be. Is there any prejudice toward any group? Is there any other challenges? I have written this paper after five other ones and I know how it feels to be at the heart of this problem. Social media can help, if there is infrastructure running and people are able to provide information. In advanced countries, it is possible and counting on social media can help disaster managers. Nevertheless, in case of developing countries like Iran, it is in early stages on the use of social media in disaster response phase in real actions.
Table 1. Significant Earthquake in Iran that caused more than 100 deaths (National Geophysical Data Center / World Data Service (NGDC/WDS)).
code
Date
Region
Depth
Magnitude
Deaths
1
11/12/2017
Kermanshah - Sar e pol Zahab
18 km
7.3
630
2
8/11/2012
Ahar, Haris and Varzagan
18 km
6.5
306
3
2/22/2005
Zarand
22 km
6.4
612
4
12/26/2003
Bam
52 km
6.6
31000
5
6/22/2002
Ab Garm-Abhar-Avaj
21 km
6.5
261
6
5/10/1997
Birjand, Ghaen
29 km
7.2
1728
7
2/28/1997
Ardabil
18 km
6.1
1100
8
6/20/1990
Rudbar and Manjil
9 km
7.7
50000
9
5/27/1989
Do Gobadan, Fars, Yasuj
37 km
5.8
114
10
7/28/1981
Se, Kerman (Sirch)
24 km
7.1
3000
11
6/11/1981
Se, Kerman (Golbaf)
25 km
6.7
3000
Theoretical foundation of concepts
C8. The findings comprise the notion of situational awareness. However, the provided definition differs from the common definitions that can be found in the literature (the authors do not provide any formal definition on p.12). This is confusing for the reader. Empirically, the presented phenomenon (delays in understanding the loss and the need for resources), rather refers to difficulties inherent to sensemaking rather than situational awareness. Situational awareness can be defined as an individual or collective capacity to keep track of a situation, reflect it and anticipate what could be achieved, depending on the evolution of the situation (Fathi & Fiedrich, 2022). Both sensemaking and situational awareness are important in crisis response. However, the former is a means to reach the latter. In the findings, (line 256 and line 261), the verbatim rather express the difficulty to make sense of the situation because of the lack of resources.
For this reason, I would invite the authors to further put into perspective their data with the concepts they propose.
Answer:
Timeliness in situational awareness (damage, loss and needs assessment)
Situational awareness (SA) is defined in FEMA's National Response Framework as “the ability to identify, process, and comprehend the critical information about an incident – knowing what is going on around you [requiring] continuous monitoring of relevant sources of information regarding actual incidents and developing hazards” (Department of Homeland Security/Federal Emergency Management Agency, 2016). Furthermore, another concept to deal with in this situation is sensemaking. Corde (2020) stated, “Sensemaking is literally the act of making sense of an environment, achieved by organizing sense data until the environment “becomes sensible” or is understood well enough to enable reasonable decisions”. Sensemaking in crises is very different from a routine processes, as require individuals to make sense of what is occurring now and to consider what should be done next in a shamble situation (Boudes and Laroche, 2009;Weick 1995; Weick and Sutcliffe 2015). Here, these two main concepts: sensemaking and situational awareness are challenging as people should make sense of the situation and be aware of what is going on in the environment. However, sensemaking is a means to reach the situational awareness. As discussed in the following verbatim.
Situational awareness in the case of the Bam earthquake means to be aware of the extent of damage and loss, and what and how much required resources is needed to cope with the disaster. As outlined by some of the participants, it was a slow process of assessing the damaged area and reporting to top disaster managers on the real situation in Bam city. First reports were ambiguous that reported light destructions of buildings in the area that seems there was lack of conducting proper field observation before this report:
“ ... I got to my office around 6 a.m., the first official call was from police brigade in Bam city at 6:30 reporting on the situation in Bam city as light damage level in the area. There was no news about the governor of Bam at that time...” (Int6)
Being able to report on the situation in the affected area needs dedicated personnel who in Bam city, they were injured or killed or their relative were effected severely by the earthquake:
“...We could not find anyone, no mayor, no governor; everybody was missing...there were no facilities on the scene to assess the extent of damage... Many organizational personnel were killed or injured...no one was at work at 5:27 a.m. on Friday morning at the weekend...” (Int20)
In first disaster management meeting in Kerman city, still there was not clear information on what happened in Bam. We had real observations around 8:30 a.m, and the second report on the situation of Bam city at 11:00 a.m. declaring massive destruction to buildings that caused many causalities:
“…We flied to Bam city by a helicopter. Above Bam, we witnessed a destroyed city. It was around 9:30 a.m.…” (Int9)
“...The second report on the situation in Bam city announced at 11:00 a.m. reporting extensive building damage and population loss...” (Int14)
Findings structure
C9. The articulation of the various elements provided by the authors in the findings section remains unclear. In particular, the reader needs to understand what the demonstration is about. Why do the authors focus on various occurrences of timeliness? Why these (and not others)? Do the authors want to highlight what the crisis responders managed to achieve in relation to timeliness? Or on the contrary, do they intend to point at sources of struggle for crisis responders? I invite the authors to clarify the meaning of each topic presented in the findings (as well as their interconnection). I think that they can improve the findings by explaining what they intend to demonstrate at the beginning of the section.
Also, they could further articulate the points that they present in the findings, but also in the discussion and conclusion. In particular, I would be curious to further understand whether timeliness in alerting and warning affected timeliness in delivering supplies and burying corpses (or whether the problems were independent).
Also, every subsection of the empirical findings comprises information about situational awareness. I strongly invite the authors to further explore, both empirically and theoretically, the connection between timeliness and situational awareness. I could easily figure that situational awareness supports timely reaction and response. However, the causal-effect could also work in the other direction (meaning that timely response is a way not to loose track of the crisis response and maintain a satisfactory level of situational awareness). In sum, I really think that the empirical cases are promising. But I believe that the authors could significantly improve the impact of their work by further theorizing and further articulation of the various notions (and facts).
Answer:
- Findings
By reviewing existing literature and analyzing interview data, eight main themes were developed regarding disaster response timeliness in each activity in the aftermath of the Bam earthquake including: alerting and warning, situational awareness (damage, loss and needs assessment), conducting USAR operations, evacuating casualties and providing medical services, delivering supplies and distributing resources, burying corpses, and international support. These themes (as the main themes in disaster response phase) are described and contextualized in the following sections to shade light on these questions:
- What were the sources of struggle for crisis responders in responding to the Bam earthquake?
- How timeliness was effected by the disaster responders actions and operations in responding to the Bam earthquake.
- Were there any interdependencies of timeliness in actions that can affect other upcoming disaster response activities?
Scientific contribution
C10. I believe that further examining the ties between timeliness and situation awareness would help strengthen the contribution of the paper. The contribution to knowledge, theory and practice remains undetailed in this version of the paper.
Answer:
I have added the following text to the conclusion section of the manuscript:
Timeliness refers to the speed of conducting response activities in the aftermath of an earthquake. The aim of timeliness in response activities means saving more lives. Timely response activities lead to proper situational awareness. Response activities including: alerting and warning, situational awareness (damage, loss and needs assessment), conducting USAR operations, evacuating casualties and providing medical services, delivering supplies and distributing resources, burying corpses, and international support.
Timeliness in alerting and warning means providing accurate and quick information on the magnitude, depth and the exact location of an earthquake occurrence. This information can guide disaster managers to the right direction and making informed decision on how to respond to an earthquake. Timeliness in situational awareness (damage, loss and needs assessment) means collecting timely and accurate information on the number of damaged buildings, their destruction level and their locations. Regarding population losses, responders need to know about the number of injuries, the severity level of injured people and their locations. With this kind of timely information, disaster responders can prioritize where to go to save more lives (although ethical aspect of this kind of operation needs to be considered). Another aspect in situational awareness is how to estimate the required needs to cope with such a disaster. Therefore, these demonstrate how interconnected and interrelated are the response activities to a disaster. As, timely and accurate information on the magnitude and location of an earthquake can assist disaster responders to get to a scene quickly. This is the beginning of an unfolding fast response to a disaster meaning that timely response based on accurate and timely information is an approach to not only lose track of the crisis response, but also assist a satisfactory level of situational awareness.
English editing
C11. The document requires extensive editing. The grammar of some sentences should be corrected and remain difficult to understand. For instance, the use of which/that is sometimes wrong.
Answer:
I have read the manuscript several times and asked one of native English speaker to read it and he revised it carefully and hope the current version of the manuscript is in a good shape.
Here, I have replied to the comments. Also, I have revised the manuscript based on the comments and it is ready to be submitted to the journal.
[1] Urban Search and Rescue
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-2023-12-AC2
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AC2: 'Reply on RC2', Reza Hassanzadeh, 20 Oct 2023
Status: closed
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RC1: 'Comment on nhess-2023-12', Anonymous Referee #1, 07 Jun 2023
This manuscript evaluates societal response timeliness on earthquake disasters, using the 2003 Bam earthquake in Iran as an example. The data used for the evaluation consist of interviews with several actors in the emergency response chain that is processed and structured to extract significant information on the timeliness of different response actions. The paper concludes with general and specific recommendations on earthquake disaster response measures. Although the paper is readable, it requires extensive spell-checking before resubmission. The Figures are partly of inacceptable quality.
The scientific work presented belongs to the field of social sciences and does not exploit geoscientific or at least environmental information. It is solely based on interview information and uses socio-scientific methods, where I am not sure the general audience of NHESS is familiar with. Consequently, I may suggest to present this work to a journal in the field of social sciences. If, however, the work would be suitable for NHESS, I would recommend the authors to present the data and especially the methodology applied in much more detail, also accompanied by appropriate illustrations and presentations of examples.
Abstract: Please specify Magnitude, Location and Date of the Bam earthquake when first mentioning it.
P107: The mentioned “Thematic analysis” is not well-know to a geoscientific community, I may suppose. Please explain.
P153: Please explain “snowball sampling” applied to your data sufficiently using an example
P207: Which “criteria”? How many? Please specify
P213: How was the assignment done? Automatically? Manually? Please explain and provide examples
P216: Please supply a list or a Figure showing “thematic analysis”: “themes”, “criteria”, “assignement”…
Figure 2: What is shown in the map?
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-2023-12-RC1 -
AC1: 'Reply to RC1', Reza Hassanzadeh, 19 Jun 2023
Reply to RC1
Dear Editor,
I greatly appreciate the valuable comments of reviewer. I have tried to incorporate changes to reflect all of the suggestions provided by the reviewers.
I have highlighted the changes within the manuscript. Here is a point-by-point response to the reviewers' comments.
We hope the manuscript after careful revisions meet your high standards.
Yours sincerely,
RC1: (C: Reviever’s comment)
C: This manuscript evaluates societal response timeliness on earthquake disasters, using the 2003 Bam earthquake in Iran as an example. The data used for the evaluation consist of interviews with several actors in the emergency response chain that is processed and structured to extract significant information on the timeliness of different response actions. The paper concludes with general and specific recommendations on earthquake disaster response measures. Although the paper is readable, it requires extensive spell-checking before resubmission. The Figures are partly of inacceptable quality.
Answer: I have read the paper several times and revised all spelling mistakes. Also, I have increased the quality of the figures and replaced them in the text.
C: The scientific work presented belongs to the field of social sciences and does not exploit geoscientific or at least environmental information. It is solely based on interview information and uses socio-scientific methods, where I am not sure the general audience of NHESS is familiar with. Consequently, I may suggest to present this work to a journal in the field of social sciences. If, however, the work would be suitable for NHESS, I would recommend the authors to present the data and especially the methodology applied in much more detail, also accompanied by appropriate illustrations and presentations of examples.
Answer: I have tried to review response phase activities timeliness in the aftermath of the Bam earthquaks. This paper will give readers an idea on what are the main respose activities and how they should be done in a timely manner. It will open up new questions regarding response activities by evelauting real situation in the Bam City after the earthquake occurrence.
C: Abstract: Please specify Magnitude, Location and Date of the Bam earthquake when first mentioning it.
Answer: I have revised the abstract as shown in the following:
Abstract. This paper explores the timeliness of main response activities in the Bam earthquake in order to shed light in disaster response effectiveness in the aftermath of the earthquake. Disaster managers who were involved in disaster response activities in the Bam earthquake (on 26 December 2003 with the magnitude of 6.3 mb) were selected using snowball sampling method and 30 participants were interviewed.
C: P107: The mentioned “Thematic analysis” is not well-know to a geoscientific community, I may suppose. Please explain.
Answer: I have explained “Thematic analysis” in line number 194 - 206 as mentioned in the following:
Transcribing the recording by the researcher helped an initial familiarisation with the data (Braun and Clarke, 2006). Through the transcribing process, all identifiable information was removed from the transcripts and the researcher called them interview 1 (Int1) to interview 30 (Int30). The unit of analysis is formed by individual lines of the transcript, and eachspoken passage contains a section in the transcripts. The coding was done manually using Excel software to be able to conduct the study using the well-known Thematic Analysis (TA) method (Boyatzis, 1998; Braun and Clarke, 2006). Thematic analysis is a method for identifying, analyzing, and reporting main themes in data that consists of the following stages, as seen in Figure 4. Based on this method, qualitative data were analized with aim of looking for patterns in the meaning of the data to find themes. “It is an active process of reflexivity in which the researcher's subjective experience is at the center of making sense of the data” (Braun and Clarke, 2006).
Figure 4. Thematic analysis flowchart
In order to facilitate analysing data deductively, in the early steps of analysis, “borrowing” concepts and codes from existing literature was utilized (Benaquisto and Given, 2008). Thus, the initial codes and concepts were identified by a review of existing literature documenting disaster response activities, timeliness and effectiveness in the aftermath of earthquakes, and concepts associated with disaster response metrics (Abir et al., 2017). These were mainly useful in terms of organizing the data relevant to borrowed themes (e.g. ‘response activities’, ‘warning and alerting’, ‘response timeliness’, ‘response effectiveness’, ‘resources distribution’ , etc.), specifically ‘timeliness and efficacy’ (Abir et al., 2017).
C: P153: Please explain “snowball sampling” applied to your data sufficiently using an example.
Answer: I have explained “snowball sampling” in line 153 and line 163 as follow:
They were selected based on the snowball sampling or chain-referral sampling method (Biernacki and Waldorf, 1981). In this method after observing the initial subject, the researcher asks for assistance from the subject to help identify people with a similar trait of interest. The researcher then observes the nominated subjects and continues in the same way until a sufficient number of subjects are obtained.
Disaster responders (managers and experts) in main organizations who were involved in the response activities to the Bam earthquake, and they were experienced in a variety of response activities to the other earthquake with varying degrees of education and age were selected by the researcher using snowball sampling method. This is a non-probability sampling method where new interviewee are introduced by other interviewees to form part of the sample.
C: P207: Which “criteria”? How many? Please specify.
Answer: This section was revised in line 213.
Three criteria were determined in order to assign data to different themes. These criteria were included as mentioned in the following: 1. which response activity participants was referred to, 2. the time of reaching to the damaged area by responders of that specific response activity, and 3. describing how that activity was done in the damaged area.
C: P213: How was the assignment done? Automatically? Manually? Please explain and provide examples.
Answer: This was mentioned in line 198.
The coding was done manually using Excel software to be able to conduct the study using well-known Thematic Analysis (TA) method (Boyatzis, 1998; Braun and Clarke, 2006).
C: P216: Please supply a list or a Figure showing “thematic analysis”: “themes”, “criteria”, “assignement”…
Answer: This was mentioned in line 215.
Thus, participant must referred to a specific response activity in their comments in order to be assigned to the specific code such as “alerting and warning, situational awareness (damage, loss and needs assessment), conducting USAR operations, evacuating casualties and providing medical services, delivering supplies and distributing resources, burying corpses, and international support”. In certain circumstances, it was difficult to clearly assign some comments solely to one particular component of cognitive process (theme). In such cases, the comments were attributed to relevant themes for completeness of data and then were analysed within the broader context of the results.
Figure 4. Thematic analysis flowchart
C: Figure 2: What is shown in the map?
Answer: I have redesigned the map. It is shown the geographical location of Bam city in Kerman Province, Southwest of Iran.
Figure 2. The geographical location of Bam city in Kerman Province, Southeast of Iran.
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AC1: 'Reply to RC1', Reza Hassanzadeh, 19 Jun 2023
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RC2: 'Comment on nhess-2023-12', Anonymous Referee #2, 07 Sep 2023
Summary
This paper presents a qualitative investigation of crisis response to Iran earthquakes (between 1981 and 2003). Based on interviewing and content analysis, the authors detail the manifestation of timeliness in an empirical case study that primarily comprise interviewing. The paper concludes by identifying critical aspects of timeliness and situational awareness.
Strengths
This paper provides a deep investigation of crisis response in Iran, a region from which crisis response remains less documented. The authors made the efforts to interview a diversified spectrum of actors. To that extent, the empirical data seems to be very rich and, in my view, can support conceptualization. Finally, timeliness is a burning challenge and is worth examining, in particular in relation to situational awareness.
Scope of investigation and methodology
The authors provide clear information about the diversity of organizations involved in earthquake response and also explain very well how they proceeded with data collection. However, I suggest that they clarify their peculiar interest in timeliness in the methodology section.
The findings section starts by mentioning that 8 themes were identified in the analysis of empirical data. My understanding is that all these themes relate to timeliness. The cognitive and methodological process by which the authors came up with the 8 themes and relate them to timeliness remains unclear to me. Did the authors first theoretically identify timeliness and then searched for its manifestation in empirical data? Or, alternatively, did they identify themes and then related these themes (in a more abductive fashion) to timeliness?
In every case, the reader needs more transparency and explanation of the authors’ choices and focus on timeliness. In particular, I invite them to explain when, and why, they focused on timeliness through the research.
Also, they could also explain whether they identified other themes in their research.
Qualitative research is frequently collaborative or, at least, led by dialogical reasoning (Klein & Myers, 1999). Had the authors any occasion to be challenged on their qualitative analysis? Confrontation of findings with peers and practitioners can drive research reliability and accountability. If the authors had any chance to refine their analysis by doing so, they should state it and explain how discussions, presentation or previous reviewing helped them refine their work.
Further conceptualization of timeliness
Consistently with my previous comments on the author’s focus on timeliness, I strongly recommend further exploration of the notion of timeliness (at least from a theoretical perspective). In my view, this concept is central to the paper and I strongly recommend the authors to define and further review it. They can relate on books that extensively documented time issues in crisis response (Hardt, 2014).
I also invite them to discuss this notion. What do we already know on the importance and impact of timeliness on crisis response, as well as its inner challenges? Also, by reviewing the literature, the authors might identify that many papers focus on time constraints and need for timely response (rather than focusing on timeliness). Hence, they might need to put into perspective the concept of timeliness with notions, such as time constraints and response.
In my view, further conceptualization of timeliness will also help the authors define the theoretical contribution of their work. In other words, they will more easily explain how their research enriched existing knowledge and approaches to this concept.
Relevance of the case study
The authors focus on a specific sequence of earthquakes that took place in Iran between 1981 and 2003 (20 years ago). At a global scale, the impact of natural hazards has increased, and disruptive events have multiplied and changed. Subsequently, governments have designed and implemented technologies and processes to address disasters and hazards. These technologies significantly change the course of any crisis response (for instance Copernicus was created in 1998, then social media developed).
This means that: i) other more recent cases do exist, ii) one could assume that the reality of disaster management has significantly changed since the events that the paper focuses on.
For this reason, I invite the authors to argue the relevance of the cases under study, rather than more recent cases.
Also, I invite the authors to further argue the generalizability of their findings, in particular the relevance of findings in light of more recent events that involved information sharing between organizations and on social media.
Theoretical foundation of concepts
The findings comprise the notion of situational awareness. However, the provided definition differs from the common definitions that can be found in the literature (the authors do not provide any formal definition on p.12). This is confusing for the reader. Empirically, the presented phenomenon (delays in understanding the loss and the need for resources), rather refers to difficulties inherent to sensemaking rather than situational awareness. Situational awareness can be defined as an individual or collective capacity to keep track of a situation, reflect it and anticipate what could be achieved, depending on the evolution of the situation (Fathi & Fiedrich, 2022). Both sensemaking and situational awareness are important in crisis response. However, the former is a means to reach the latter. In the findings, (line 256 and line 261), the verbatims rather express the difficulty to make sense of the situation because of the lack of resources.
For this reason, I would invite the authors to further put into perspective their data with the concepts they propose.
Findings structure
The articulation of the various elements provided by the authors in the findings section remains unclear. In particular, the reader needs to understand what the demonstration is about. Why do the authors focus on various occurrences of timeliness? Why these (and not others)? Do the authors want to highlight what the crisis responders managed to achieve in relation to timeliness? Or on the contrary, do they intend to point at sources of struggle for crisis responders? I invite the authors to clarify the meaning of each topic presented in the findings (as well as their interconnection). I think that they can improve the findings by explaining what they intend to demonstrate at the beginning of the section.
Also, they could further articulate the points that they present in the findings, but also in the discussion and conclusion. In particular, I would be curious to further understand whether timeliness in alerting and warning affected timeliness in delivering supplies and burying corpses (or whether the problems were independent).
Also, every subsection of the empirical findings comprises information about situational awareness. I strongly invite the authors to further explore, both empirically and theoretically, the connection between timeliness and situational awareness. I could easily figure that situational awareness supports timely reaction and response. However, the causal-effect could also work in the other direction (meaning that timely response is a way not to loose track of the crisis response and maintain a satisfactory level of situational awareness). In sum, I really think that the empirical cases are promising. But I believe that the authors could significantly improve the impact of their work by further theorizing and further articulation of the various notions (and facts).
Scientific contribution
I believe that further examining the ties between timeliness and situation awareness would help strengthen the contribution of the paper. The contribution to knowledge, theory and practice remains undetailed in this version of the paper.
English editing
The document requires extensive editing. The grammar of some sentences should be corrected and remain difficult to understand. For instance, the use of which/that is sometimes wrong.
Good luck with your paper!
References
Fathi, R., & Fiedrich, F. (2022). Social Media Analytics by Virtual Operations Support Teams in disaster management: Situational awareness and actionable information for decision-makers. Frontiers in Earth Science, 10, 941803. https://doi.org/10.3389/feart.2022.941803
Hardt, H. (2014). Time to react: The efficiency of international organizations in crisis response. Oxford University Press.
Klein, H. K., & Myers, M. D. (1999). A Set of Principles for Conducting and Evaluating Interpretive Field Studies in Information Systems. MIS Quarterly, 23(1), 67–93. JSTOR. https://doi.org/10.2307/249410
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-2023-12-RC2 -
AC2: 'Reply on RC2', Reza Hassanzadeh, 20 Oct 2023
Reply to RC2
Dear Editor,
I greatly appreciate the valuable comments of reviewer. I have tried to incorporate changes to reflect all of the suggestions provided by the reviewers.
I have highlighted the changes within the manuscript. Here is a point-by-point response to the reviewers' comments.
I hope the manuscript after careful revisions meet your high standards.
Yours sincerely,
Author
RC2: 'Comment on nhess-2023-12', Anonymous Referee #2,
Scope of investigation and methodology
C1. The authors provide clear information about the diversity of organizations involved in earthquake response and also explain very well how they proceeded with data collection. However, I suggest that they clarify their peculiar interest in timeliness in the methodology section.
Answer:
I have clarified this as explained in the following:
A review of existing literature on earthquake disaster response and disaster response metrics helped inform the development of a topic guide for data collection. The topic guide covered several thematic areas, which sought to elicit the perceptions of participants concerning earthquake risk; previous earthquake experiences; levels of preparedness to response; disaster response activities, and disaster response timeliness (a time when responders reached the damaged area). However, timeliness in response activities was the main target to investigate in this paper.
C2. The findings section starts by mentioning that 8 themes were identified in the analysis of empirical data. My understanding is that all these themes relate to timeliness. The cognitive and methodological process by which the authors came up with the 8 themes and relate them to timeliness remains unclear to me. Did the authors first theoretically identify timeliness and then searched for its manifestation in empirical data? Or, alternatively, did they identify themes and then related these themes (in a more abductive fashion) to timeliness?
Answer:
I have described this as explained in the following:
Based on previous literature, I knew timeliness is at the heart of efficient disaster response. Then, I identified abductively 8 themes that were relevant to disaster response activities and search for their timeliness in empirical data. This process was explained in the following section and I have tried to clarify what have been done:
Transcribing the recording by the researcher helped an initial familiarization with the data (Braun and Clarke, 2006). Through the transcribing process, all identifiable information was removed from the transcripts and the researcher called them interview 1 (Int1) to interview 30 (Int30). Individual lines of the transcript form the unit of analysis, and each spoken passage contains a section in the transcripts. The coding was done manually using Excel software to be able to conduct the study using the well-known Thematic Analysis (TA) method (Boyatzis, 1998; Braun and Clarke, 2006). Thematic analysis is a method for identifying, analyzing, and reporting main themes in data that consists of the following stages, as seen in Figure 4. Based on this method, qualitative data were analyzed with aim of looking for patterns in the meaning of the data to find themes. “It is an active process of reflexivity in which the researcher's subjective experience is at the center of making sense of the data” (Braun and Clarke, 2006).
In order to facilitate analyzing data, in the early steps of analysis, “borrowing” concepts and codes from existing literature was utilized (Benaquisto and Given, 2008). Thus, the initial codes and concepts were identified abductively by a review of existing literature documenting disaster response activities, timeliness and effectiveness in the aftermath of earthquakes, and concepts associated with disaster response metrics (Abir et al., 2017). These were mainly useful in terms of organizing the data relevant to borrowed themes (e.g. ‘response activities’, ‘warning and alerting’, ‘response timeliness’, ‘response effectiveness’, ‘resources distribution’ , etc.), specifically ‘timeliness and efficacy’ (Abir et al., 2017).
Three criteria were determined in order to assign data to different themes. These criteria were included as mentioned in the following: 1. which response activity participants was referred to, 2. the time of reaching to the damaged area by responders of that specific response activity, and 3. describing how that activity was done in the damaged area. Thus, the participant must refer to a specific response activity in their comments in order to be assigned to the specific code such as “alerting and warning, situational awareness (damage, loss, and needs assessment), conducting USAR[1] operations, evacuating casualties and providing medical services, delivering supplies and distributing resources, burying corpses, and international support”. In certain circumstances, it was difficult to assign some comments solely to one particular component of the cognitive process (theme). In such cases, the comments were attributed to relevant themes for completeness of data and then were analyzed within the broader context of the results.
C3. In every case, the reader needs more transparency and explanation of the authors’ choices and focus on timeliness. In particular, I invite them to explain when, and why, they focused on timeliness through the research.
Answer:
Based on the previous literature and experiences “timeliness “was clearly identified in order to have an efficient disaster response. Here, we only measure timeliness and efficiency of disaster response activity based on empirical data from a case study.
C4. Also, they could also explain whether they identified other themes in their research.
Answer:
Yes, based on empirical data, several interviewees related inefficiency in disaster response to the whole cycle of disaster management and several other themes were emerged such as “preparedness” and “risk mitigation” but as I only focus on timeliness in disaster response activities, then I have not mentioned the other themes. Main point of other themes suggesting clearly that responders were not being prepared for such a dramatic disaster that caused such a huge number of losses and damage.
C5. Qualitative research is frequently collaborative or, at least, led by dialogical reasoning (Klein & Myers, 1999). Had the authors any occasion to be challenged on their qualitative analysis? Confrontation of findings with peers and practitioners can drive research reliability and accountability. If the authors had any chance to refine their analysis by doing so, they should state it and explain how discussions, presentation or previous reviewing helped them refine their work.
Answer:
Yes, my assumption was that the disaster response activities were not functional in responding to the Bam earthquake. In the first interview, I have challenged the interviewee with the direct question of what he thought about it and why we had such a big number of losses. This approach was not helping to find out the timeliness in disaster response activities in the case of the Bam earthquake, as interviewee started to justify and defend his organization on this situation. This approach was not helpful. I had to change several questions for the next round of interviews.
The other challenge was that several interviewees were very well aware of all aspect of disaster response activities, but few of them had were specialist in an specific task like firefighting or medical care. I had to get specific theme from single transcript and then combine them to come up with something tangible. As, Klein and Myers (1999) mentioned a crucial principle that called “the Interdependence of the Seven Principles”. It is obviously infeasible and distracting to describe every aspect of the context. The researcher has to choose what to say depending upon the audience and the story that he or she wants to tell. Clearly, the whole (the final published story) affects the parts (how each individual principle is applied), and the application of each part affects the whole” (Klein & Myers, 1999, P.78). Therefore, I had to come up with specific themes to be able to conclude on timeliness in disaster response activities that other researchers specifically had discussed them separately in terms of their efficacy in responding to the Bam earthquake.
Further conceptualization of timeliness
C6. Consistently with my previous comments on the author’s focus on timeliness, I strongly recommend further exploration of the notion of timeliness (at least from a theoretical perspective). In my view, this concept is central to the paper and I strongly recommend the authors to define and further review it. They can relate on books that extensively documented time issues in crisis response (Hardt, 2014).
I also invite them to discuss this notion. What do we already know on the importance and impact of timeliness on crisis response, as well as its inner challenges? Also, by reviewing the literature, the authors might identify that many papers focus on time constraints and need for timely response (rather than focusing on timeliness). Hence, they might need to put into perspective the concept of timeliness with notions, such as time constraints and response.
In my view, further conceptualization of timeliness will also help the authors define the theoretical contribution of their work. In other words, they will more easily explain how their research enriched existing knowledge and approaches to this concept.
Answer:
Hardt (2014) explained many examples on time issues in crisis response. As, He suggested, “efficiency remains an overlooked but significant determinant of effectiveness in the conduct of peace operations. Quicker decision-making (Howorth, 2000) leads to quicker interventions, and ultimately peace operations that are less likely to fail.” In addition, Larsen (2003) identified a series of the most important consequences of slow responses: “frequent delays, human suffering and death, diminished credibility, opportunities lost, and escalating costs” (Larsen, 2003).
In response, Hardt (2014) suggested that to resolve time issues in crisis response, responders had to go through the informal decision-making processes in order to conduct operations in a timely and efficient manner. As, delays can cost lives. Hardt (2014) explained that the differences in response rates could be effected by a variety of factors, including “informal relations among key decision-makers, the intensity of the conflict, and the preexisting political connections that some member states may have to the host state and conflict parties”. In case of earthquakes’ disaster response, time issue is relevant to these factors and how accurate information are delivered to the front line.
Relevance of the case study
C7. The authors focus on a specific sequence of earthquakes that took place in Iran between 1981 and 2003 (20 years ago). At a global scale, the impact of natural hazards has increased, and disruptive events have multiplied and changed. Subsequently, governments have designed and implemented technologies and processes to address disasters and hazards. These technologies significantly change the course of any crisis response (for instance Copernicus was created in 1998, then social media developed).
This means that: i) other more recent cases do exist, ii) one could assume that the reality of disaster management has significantly changed since the events that the paper focuses on.
For this reason, I invite the authors to argue the relevance of the cases under study, rather than more recent cases.
Also, I invite the authors to further argue the generalizability of their findings, in particular the relevance of findings in light of more recent events that involved information sharing between organizations and on social media.
Answer:
Based on National Geophysical Data Center / World Data Service (Table 1), Iran had experienced several significant earthquakes. The Bam earthquake in 2003 was a massive earthquake that caused around 31000 deaths. After this, we had only two major earthquakes those caused less than 1000 deaths. Regarding recent earthquake, the argument is, how that is possible to discuss in depth challenges with people who have no idea about the depth of damage and massive fatality rate on the scene. Therefore, I had to focus on major earthquakes such as Bam to find out the real answers to my questions. Another aspect of this research is, every single earthquake has its own response phase. The more devastating earthquake, the more actions are needed. The more complicated it will get. The Bam earthquake was the one to look into and find out how disaster response happened on the scene.
Regarding changes in the last 20 years: Yes, we had many changes in disaster management phases in Iran on papers. Lots of laws and regulations did come up in last two years. We had comprehensive risk mitigation plan, comprehensive preparedness plan, and comprehensive response plan in national and provincial level. However, I know none of them will be a real improvement as long as we do not invest in community risk management. I have supervised comprehensive risk mitigation, preparedness and response plan for Kerman province and I can guarantee nothing will come out of this.
There are a lot changed since 2003 in terms of technology and social media, but I hope they can help us on disaster response phase in Iran someday. In advanced countries, yes, they can help. Twitter, Facebook, People Finder, Instagram, Telegram and so on. Here, we are dealing with a different world and in case of devastating earthquake such as Bam; none of them can be operational. Fathi and Fiedrich (2022) suggested the use of Virtual Operations Support Teams (VOST) to increase disaster manager’s situational awareness in a timely manner regarding what is happening on the scene by analyzing social media feeds in a case study of the 2021 flood in Wuppertal, Germany. I agree flooding can happen in or around a river, and then we can say it is somehow predictable that the level of disruptions will be somehow in a specific direction. In case of earthquake, it is very different; the earthquake can hit a massive region and destroy all buildings and infrastructure that no one can use their smartphone to communicate any data. Other issue is how accurate this information can be. Is there any prejudice toward any group? Is there any other challenges? I have written this paper after five other ones and I know how it feels to be at the heart of this problem. Social media can help, if there is infrastructure running and people are able to provide information. In advanced countries, it is possible and counting on social media can help disaster managers. Nevertheless, in case of developing countries like Iran, it is in early stages on the use of social media in disaster response phase in real actions.
Table 1. Significant Earthquake in Iran that caused more than 100 deaths (National Geophysical Data Center / World Data Service (NGDC/WDS)).
code
Date
Region
Depth
Magnitude
Deaths
1
11/12/2017
Kermanshah - Sar e pol Zahab
18 km
7.3
630
2
8/11/2012
Ahar, Haris and Varzagan
18 km
6.5
306
3
2/22/2005
Zarand
22 km
6.4
612
4
12/26/2003
Bam
52 km
6.6
31000
5
6/22/2002
Ab Garm-Abhar-Avaj
21 km
6.5
261
6
5/10/1997
Birjand, Ghaen
29 km
7.2
1728
7
2/28/1997
Ardabil
18 km
6.1
1100
8
6/20/1990
Rudbar and Manjil
9 km
7.7
50000
9
5/27/1989
Do Gobadan, Fars, Yasuj
37 km
5.8
114
10
7/28/1981
Se, Kerman (Sirch)
24 km
7.1
3000
11
6/11/1981
Se, Kerman (Golbaf)
25 km
6.7
3000
Theoretical foundation of concepts
C8. The findings comprise the notion of situational awareness. However, the provided definition differs from the common definitions that can be found in the literature (the authors do not provide any formal definition on p.12). This is confusing for the reader. Empirically, the presented phenomenon (delays in understanding the loss and the need for resources), rather refers to difficulties inherent to sensemaking rather than situational awareness. Situational awareness can be defined as an individual or collective capacity to keep track of a situation, reflect it and anticipate what could be achieved, depending on the evolution of the situation (Fathi & Fiedrich, 2022). Both sensemaking and situational awareness are important in crisis response. However, the former is a means to reach the latter. In the findings, (line 256 and line 261), the verbatim rather express the difficulty to make sense of the situation because of the lack of resources.
For this reason, I would invite the authors to further put into perspective their data with the concepts they propose.
Answer:
Timeliness in situational awareness (damage, loss and needs assessment)
Situational awareness (SA) is defined in FEMA's National Response Framework as “the ability to identify, process, and comprehend the critical information about an incident – knowing what is going on around you [requiring] continuous monitoring of relevant sources of information regarding actual incidents and developing hazards” (Department of Homeland Security/Federal Emergency Management Agency, 2016). Furthermore, another concept to deal with in this situation is sensemaking. Corde (2020) stated, “Sensemaking is literally the act of making sense of an environment, achieved by organizing sense data until the environment “becomes sensible” or is understood well enough to enable reasonable decisions”. Sensemaking in crises is very different from a routine processes, as require individuals to make sense of what is occurring now and to consider what should be done next in a shamble situation (Boudes and Laroche, 2009;Weick 1995; Weick and Sutcliffe 2015). Here, these two main concepts: sensemaking and situational awareness are challenging as people should make sense of the situation and be aware of what is going on in the environment. However, sensemaking is a means to reach the situational awareness. As discussed in the following verbatim.
Situational awareness in the case of the Bam earthquake means to be aware of the extent of damage and loss, and what and how much required resources is needed to cope with the disaster. As outlined by some of the participants, it was a slow process of assessing the damaged area and reporting to top disaster managers on the real situation in Bam city. First reports were ambiguous that reported light destructions of buildings in the area that seems there was lack of conducting proper field observation before this report:
“ ... I got to my office around 6 a.m., the first official call was from police brigade in Bam city at 6:30 reporting on the situation in Bam city as light damage level in the area. There was no news about the governor of Bam at that time...” (Int6)
Being able to report on the situation in the affected area needs dedicated personnel who in Bam city, they were injured or killed or their relative were effected severely by the earthquake:
“...We could not find anyone, no mayor, no governor; everybody was missing...there were no facilities on the scene to assess the extent of damage... Many organizational personnel were killed or injured...no one was at work at 5:27 a.m. on Friday morning at the weekend...” (Int20)
In first disaster management meeting in Kerman city, still there was not clear information on what happened in Bam. We had real observations around 8:30 a.m, and the second report on the situation of Bam city at 11:00 a.m. declaring massive destruction to buildings that caused many causalities:
“…We flied to Bam city by a helicopter. Above Bam, we witnessed a destroyed city. It was around 9:30 a.m.…” (Int9)
“...The second report on the situation in Bam city announced at 11:00 a.m. reporting extensive building damage and population loss...” (Int14)
Findings structure
C9. The articulation of the various elements provided by the authors in the findings section remains unclear. In particular, the reader needs to understand what the demonstration is about. Why do the authors focus on various occurrences of timeliness? Why these (and not others)? Do the authors want to highlight what the crisis responders managed to achieve in relation to timeliness? Or on the contrary, do they intend to point at sources of struggle for crisis responders? I invite the authors to clarify the meaning of each topic presented in the findings (as well as their interconnection). I think that they can improve the findings by explaining what they intend to demonstrate at the beginning of the section.
Also, they could further articulate the points that they present in the findings, but also in the discussion and conclusion. In particular, I would be curious to further understand whether timeliness in alerting and warning affected timeliness in delivering supplies and burying corpses (or whether the problems were independent).
Also, every subsection of the empirical findings comprises information about situational awareness. I strongly invite the authors to further explore, both empirically and theoretically, the connection between timeliness and situational awareness. I could easily figure that situational awareness supports timely reaction and response. However, the causal-effect could also work in the other direction (meaning that timely response is a way not to loose track of the crisis response and maintain a satisfactory level of situational awareness). In sum, I really think that the empirical cases are promising. But I believe that the authors could significantly improve the impact of their work by further theorizing and further articulation of the various notions (and facts).
Answer:
- Findings
By reviewing existing literature and analyzing interview data, eight main themes were developed regarding disaster response timeliness in each activity in the aftermath of the Bam earthquake including: alerting and warning, situational awareness (damage, loss and needs assessment), conducting USAR operations, evacuating casualties and providing medical services, delivering supplies and distributing resources, burying corpses, and international support. These themes (as the main themes in disaster response phase) are described and contextualized in the following sections to shade light on these questions:
- What were the sources of struggle for crisis responders in responding to the Bam earthquake?
- How timeliness was effected by the disaster responders actions and operations in responding to the Bam earthquake.
- Were there any interdependencies of timeliness in actions that can affect other upcoming disaster response activities?
Scientific contribution
C10. I believe that further examining the ties between timeliness and situation awareness would help strengthen the contribution of the paper. The contribution to knowledge, theory and practice remains undetailed in this version of the paper.
Answer:
I have added the following text to the conclusion section of the manuscript:
Timeliness refers to the speed of conducting response activities in the aftermath of an earthquake. The aim of timeliness in response activities means saving more lives. Timely response activities lead to proper situational awareness. Response activities including: alerting and warning, situational awareness (damage, loss and needs assessment), conducting USAR operations, evacuating casualties and providing medical services, delivering supplies and distributing resources, burying corpses, and international support.
Timeliness in alerting and warning means providing accurate and quick information on the magnitude, depth and the exact location of an earthquake occurrence. This information can guide disaster managers to the right direction and making informed decision on how to respond to an earthquake. Timeliness in situational awareness (damage, loss and needs assessment) means collecting timely and accurate information on the number of damaged buildings, their destruction level and their locations. Regarding population losses, responders need to know about the number of injuries, the severity level of injured people and their locations. With this kind of timely information, disaster responders can prioritize where to go to save more lives (although ethical aspect of this kind of operation needs to be considered). Another aspect in situational awareness is how to estimate the required needs to cope with such a disaster. Therefore, these demonstrate how interconnected and interrelated are the response activities to a disaster. As, timely and accurate information on the magnitude and location of an earthquake can assist disaster responders to get to a scene quickly. This is the beginning of an unfolding fast response to a disaster meaning that timely response based on accurate and timely information is an approach to not only lose track of the crisis response, but also assist a satisfactory level of situational awareness.
English editing
C11. The document requires extensive editing. The grammar of some sentences should be corrected and remain difficult to understand. For instance, the use of which/that is sometimes wrong.
Answer:
I have read the manuscript several times and asked one of native English speaker to read it and he revised it carefully and hope the current version of the manuscript is in a good shape.
Here, I have replied to the comments. Also, I have revised the manuscript based on the comments and it is ready to be submitted to the journal.
[1] Urban Search and Rescue
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-2023-12-AC2
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AC2: 'Reply on RC2', Reza Hassanzadeh, 20 Oct 2023
Reza Hassanzadeh
Reza Hassanzadeh
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