The main narrative of the film “In the Shadow of Ebola” is to show the impact from the top to bottom of the disease and the response to that disease. This includes international decisions affecting the nation of Liberia, the national government’s actions affecting the local communities and families there. Disease awareness and infrastructure are the main focus.
One of the main vulnerabilities that affect the community, is time and money. As the individuals have to wait for a long time, the report estimates that approximately 810,680 gallons of fuel is burned and wasted. This is a paramount issue with the rising cost of gas everyday. As many say, time is money. This relates to those stuck in these jams because these jams, along with large amounts of gas also wastes a lot of time. Motorists spend about 1.5 million hours annually sitting in traffic annually. In addition, $38 are wasted in those 1.5 million hours.
This article focuses on the importance of good command systems like NIMS, the vital role of communication within and inter agency, and the necessity for good planning and fixing issues that are found beforehand. The issues described in support of the main point of the article, show how the failure of command, communication, and planning resulting in hundreds of civilians and first responders needlessly dying. Because of other's poor performace and preparation, others had to pay the ultimate price.
I researched more into landfills and how they are made, located, decompose over time, and health concerns.
This article goes over the land needs for disposal as well as some of the politics of it. http://www.waste360.com/mag/waste_year_landfill
This video explains how landfills work and how they decompose as well as their potential threats to health. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pC1u6rJkyzA
This research article goes into the challenges that are faced when constructing building and other projects ontop of or near landfill sites. http://faculty.engineering.asu.edu/kavazanjian/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/32_Construction-on-Old-Landfills.pdf
The program provides successful participants a certification. A Master’s degree in Disaster Resilience Leadership is available through a 36 credit hour course.
Both the online web portal and the mobile app provide a simple but effective dashboard that displays data and progress. A video documenting the system is linked below:
With its large amount of citations and a wide variety of sources, we can extrapolate that this research article was made with a good deal of time and care. There are even citations to other works by Galea, but it appears that the only original research done for the article was interviewing responders and patients.
The main argument that Sonja makes is that there does not exist any international organization with capabilities and expertise to respond to nuclear disasters. Further, with talk of forming such an organization/team since Fukushima, any international nuclear disaster strike team will need to have good relations with the communities and workers that they help as well as good communication at the international level to see the maximum effective response.
The report details the effects, both long and short term, of the effects of nuclear disasters on the population and environment. The knowledge gained form this report will help prevent or mitigate future disasters like this one if/should they occur.