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Our paper using participatory GIS to measure accessibility of people with movement disabilities has been published in Applied Geography. Below please find the abstract: "Although evaluation of the accessibility of people with disability (PWDs) is necessary to design effective transportation policy measures to ensure better mobility for PWDs, little empirical research are available on this subject. This study thus aims to address this gap by developing a methodological framework and applying this framework to assessing the accessibility of earthquake evacuation routes for people with movement-related disabilities (PMDs), one type of PWDs, in the city of Dhaka, Bangladesh. Specifically, this comprehensive accessibility index is composed of four components including accessibility from home to shelter, perceived accessibility of evacuation route, accessibility of entrance of the shelter, perceived accessibility of internal circular space and entrance of the residential building. Participatory GIS approach is employed in the data collection 455 PMDs were surveyed from 13 wards of Dhaka. Accessibility of each considered parameter and the overall indicator are poor in most cases. 45.2% of the wards are found to have relatively poor conditions of overall accessibility during evacuation. Relations of various accessibility components with socio-economic factors and level of disability are examined as well. PMDs with higher levels of disabilities and older PMDs perceive lower accessibilities of evacuation routes, circulation space, and entrance gate of residence, while male and more educated PMDs perceive circular space and entrance gate of residence to be more accessible."  Fig. 1. Framework of data collection and calculation of accessibility index.
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Our new paper, entitled "Perceptions of earthquake risks and knowledge about earthquake response among movement challenged persons in Dhaka City of Bangladesh, has been published in the International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction (impact factor: 4.32). Below please find the abstract:
"Dhaka, Bangladesh is one Asian city that is at high risk of earthquakes. Persons with physical disabilities, particularly movement challenged persons (MCPs), is highly vulnerable to earthquakes because of their mobility impairment. This study aims to explore risk perceptions of earthquakes and knowledge about response to earthquakes among MCPs in Dhaka through a 2020 survey of 455 respondents. Four risk perception measures are developed: perceived probability of an earthquake, fear, perceived threat to life, and perceived damage to property in the event of an earthquake. Subsequent factor analysis reveals that these four measures are loaded on one factor named risk perception. Measures of knowledge about response to earthquakes include knowledge of where to seek shelter while being inside and outside of home during an earthquake, location of critical facilities and existence of evacuation route in the locality as well as their knowledge about National Plan for Disaster Management (NPDM) of Bangladesh. This study finds that mobility aid, age, income, education, building structure, previous experience with earthquake are significantly related to risk perceptions. MCPs who have participated in the training know what they should do in the event of an earthquake irrespective of being outside or inside of home. MCPs with more education are more likely to know about NPDM and the existence of fault lines in Bangladesh. Lack of accessibility in training centers and lack of dissemination of information about training are key reasons behind MCPs not participating in the training." Our paper entitled "Data-driven modeling reveals the Western dominance of global pubic interest in earthquakes" has been published in Humanities and Social Sciences Communications (Nature Springer journal). Below please find the abstract: "Catastrophic earthquakes stimulate information-seeking behaviors beyond the affected geographical boundaries; however, our understanding of the dynamics of global public interest in earthquakes remains limited. Herein, we harness big data to examine the dynamic patterns of global public interest, concerning 17 significant worldwide earthquakes over 2004–2019. We find that the global community shows a higher level of interest when an earthquake occurs in developed countries than in developing countries; however, they lose their interest in the former more rapidly than the latter. Regardless of the affected nation, there is a one- to two-week “golden” time window when attention can be leveraged for fundraising and humanitarian aid. Our findings suggest that European citizens who are highly interested in earthquakes emerge as a potential key community to achieve great inclusiveness in policy interventions to solicit international aid. The findings of this study hints how big data can be utilized to identify “time windows of opportunities” for international humanitarian organizations to efficiently raise donations, charities and aid resources around the world."  Fig. 1. Discrepancy between the top 10 deadliest and most recognized earthquakes since 2004: casualties (a) and initial global search activity volumes (GSAVs; (b)) of the 17 identified earthquakes. The size of circles in (a) and (b) represents the corresponding earthquake’s casualties and initial GSAVs. Black dots depict earthquakes in both categories (deadliest and most recognized). Blue and red dots depict the remainder of the deadliest and most recognized earthquakes, respectively. Areas colored in ivory depict the 62 nations that contribute to the daily GSAV data (Source: Kam et al. in press)  Fig. 2. Consistency between Google Trends and Wikipedia pageview data. Time series of daily GSAVs (a) and daily views of the Wikipedia “Earthquake” webpage (b) from July 2015– August 2019, which was retrieved on January 1, 2020. (Source: Kam et al. in press) |
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