بابک امیدوار

Introduction: Drought is considered as a complex and creeping natural hazard associated with pervasive socio-economic and environmental impacts. Given the water reserves, per capita consumption, and average rainfall, Iran can be regarded as one of the countries facing the risk of lack of physical water resources and therefore proper management of drought in the country is an important issue. The main objective in the present study was to identify the dimensions gaining less attention in the context of executive drought management measures. METHODS: This was an applied-developmental study performed with the field method along with documentary studies. The data collection tool, data collection method, and data analysis method were a researcher-made questionnaire, structured interview, Q methodology using factor analysis, respectively. The statistical population of the study consisted of 12 executives of the Forests, Range, and Watershed Management Organization, Deputy ABFA of ministry of energy, Agricultural Promotion, Training, and Development Organization, and Deputy Minister of Water and Soil of Ministry of Agricultural Jihad active in drought management executive actions in the country. To derive the questionnaire items using the expert opinion, 24 items on drought management performance measures were selected in four technical-structural, socio-economic, managerial, and environmental-climatic aspects and factor interpretation was performed on them. FINDINGS: Based on the factor analysis of the results, the two technical-oriented and management-centered technical-oriented subjective models that both criticized the executive actions in the socio-economic dimension, were specified among the executives of the drought management field. Thus, according to the experts, most problems in the country in the field of drought management were in the socio-economic sector and most of the achievements in the technical-structural dimension. CONCLUSION: The results of the viewpoints of the executive managers indicated that most of them considered health promotion in drought crisis as one of the achievements of the executive measures in this field in the country which can be used as a strength in future planning.

Sustainability and resiliency analysis of cities is not completed without considering the whole system of interacting sectors. The purpose of this study is to introduce an algorithm for assessment of overall seismic resiliency increase of urban areas due to the reduction of Intra- and Interdependencies between different sectors and retrofitting infrastructures. The proposed method is versatile, and different dimensions of resiliency, i.e., social, economic, technical, physical, institutional, and security dimensions of resiliency are considered in the study. In this research, the technical dimension, i.e., the functionality of water and power networks are modeled as an example, and some solutions to increase overall resiliency of an urban district against earthquake is investigated. The algorithm is based on the inoperability input-output model, and the interaction between water and power sectors in a metropolitan district is surveyed. Based on the results of a number of Monte Carlo simulations of different dependency scenarios, it is quantitatively shown that the decrease in interdependency has a direct and great effect on the increase in serviceability and overall resiliency indices, but the pattern of this effect is different between various earthquake scenarios. It is concluded that the reduction of interdependency has an increasing effect on the overall resiliency index. Thus, an optimum value for interdependency reduction can be obtained to increase resiliency index using the Pareto principle, and the influence of reducing of interdependency on increasing the resiliency of a region as a whole is investigated. The proposed model may be used in system analysis for other dependent sectors and for different disasters and can also be considered as a helpful measure for decision-makers in sustainability and resiliency enhancement studies.

The study of the resilience of the cities against earthquake is one of the necessities for the reduction of losses and death toll of the earthquakes. Resilience has various definitions and there is not a unique comprehensive model for its quantitative assessment. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to provide a comprehensive quantitative indicator for resilience and to study the efficacy of social and governance strategies in improvement of urban resilience against earthquake. To achieve this aim, first effective dimensions and indices of resilience of urban areas were explored and extracted by reviewing available research studies and experts elicitation method. Then based on experts’ opinions and pairwise comparison the model was justified and the relative weights for dimensions and indices were obtained and a comprehensive overall resilience index was introduced. Using the proposed index, the efficacy of different social and governance strategies were compared considering three different earthquake scenarios of North-Tehran, Ray fault, and floating faults. The comparisons were based on three metrics i.e. absolute value of resilience increase, distance from the origin of the Pareto chart considering implementation duration time and costs, and the ratio of cost to resilience increase. In this regard, strategy S3 (90 percent increase of social resilience), strategy S1 (10 percent increase of social resilience) and strategy S3 were the optimal ones based on the first, second and third metrics, respectively. On the whole, the social strategies had better efficiency than the governance ones, but it seems in practice the social and governance strategy categories must be implemented in an integrated manner which could be considered as a future research proposal.

INTRODUCTION: The frequency of natural disasters is high in Iran due to its special climatic and geophysical conditions. However, the provision of better services to trauma victims requires further research. Decisions on emergency accommodation and meeting the needs of the victims are often made in conditions of uncertainty, and the lack of appropriate studies leads to the provision of low-quality and intermittent services. METHODS: This applied and descriptive-analytical study was conducted to determine the advantages and disadvantages of relief tents using documentary and library resources, observation, and interviews with officials and experts, and the effective standards for the construction system of emergency accommodation. The thermal comfort of the victims was then investigated using the guidelines of the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE), interviews with the victims, and field tests. Moreover, solutions are introduced for the improvement and optimization of relief tents, and a new building system is introduced for the emergency accommodation of victims in incidents by removing the disadvantages of the systems previously used in emergency accommodation. FINDINGS: According to the observations and investigations, the previously used emergency shelters do not meet the needs of the accident survivors properly and their design does not correspond to the users’ culture and needs. The problems with the current accommodating methods include lack of privacy, lack of protection against disturbing cold and heat, and inappropriate and non-standard dimensions of the existing tents. Solutions have been presented to solve the existing problems and a new system for emergency accommodation has been introduced based on field observations and interviews with experts. CONCLUSION: It is noteworthy that the votes of 22 percent of people are in the range of slightly warm to slightly cold; which shows that these people are satisfied with their accommodation regarding thermal comfort. 78 percent of the people's votes were outside the satisfaction range. Due to the chambered structure of the tent, direct sunlight in the summer, the lack of proper air exchange, the weakness of the structural components of the tent and the lack of heat retention in the winter, proper mechanical systems should be used to provide thermal comfort, which is not feasible in practice due to the extent of the incidents and large amounts of equipment and resources needed which bolds the importance of the proposed construction system.

According to statistics from the Ministry of Interior of Iran, more than 75% of the waste produced in the country is landfilled. Many of the programs proposed by waste management organizations and municipalities have not been effective due to the failure to consider the impacts of various economic and non-economic variables on waste generation. Therefore, this study aims to increase the effectiveness of proposed waste management programs for Tehran in line with sustainable development. An empirical modeling approach was used, utilizing 120 months of data (April 2011 to March 2021) to develop models for predicting different types of waste generation. Additionally, the statistical relationship between 32 macroeconomic variables, including industry and mining, agriculture, urban management, population, and climate, and five waste generation variables was examined at a 90% confidence level. The results indicate that 79% of the variations in the total waste generation tonnage, 73.4% of the variations in the mixed waste tonnage at the source, 80.3% of the variations in the separated dry waste tonnage at the source, and 81.4% of the variations in the construction and demolition waste tonnage in Tehran can be predicted using the models developed in this study. 

INTRODUCTION: One of the environmental issues faced by the majority of large human settlements in the world is natural disasters and their effects. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to present a model using Interpretive Structural Modeling (ISM) for explaining the relationship between the factors affecting disaster management in order to improve its effectiveness. METHODS: In this study, quantitative method were used. For identifying the factors influencing disaster management, thematic analysis and second-order confirmatory factor analysis were used and confirmed through SmartPLS. Then the main model of the study was developed based on ISM using the views of experts in the field of disaster management. FINDINGS: The findings showed that risk evaluation, risk management, and management actions were the fundamental factors in the disaster management model which consisted of 19 sub-factors. Convergent validity of the study was found to be higher than 0.5 based on Average Variance Extracted (AVE) and reliability was higher than 0.7 based on Cronbach’s alpha, also Composite Reliability (CR) was calculated to be larger than 0.6, which showed that the suggested factors completely measure the intended concept in the study. CONCLUSION: According to the results, the proposed model shows the relation between factors affecting reduction of damages caused by disasters using the ISM. It can be used in different stages of disaster management because it explains the relation between 12 levels of different factors and enables managers and planners to clearly understand what activities need to be taken for more effective disaster management.