Promoting comprehensive disaster policy through interdisciplinary collaboration

Systems science is a field dedicated to the study of systems within society or nature.1 It routinely draws on disciplines including engineering, medicine, economics and the environmental sciences. Analyses that use a systems science approach typically consider interactions between a system (eg, public transportation within a city) and the environment in which it functions (eg, weather conditions), and account for dynamic behaviour (eg, individuals’ responses to a severe weather event).2 Although public policy provides an additional layer of societal context for any given system, legal and policy factors are rarely integrated into systems science analyses. Because policy plays such an important role in injury prevention,3 incorporating policy considerations into systems science analyses holds great promise as an emerging methodological approach to improve population health. This is especially true for natural disasters, such as hurricanes, floods and earthquakes, and human-caused disasters, such as terrorist...

Source: Injury Prevention - May 26, 2017 Category: Accident Prevention Authors: Rutkow, L., Mitrani-Reiser, J., Barnett, D. J. Tags: Policy forum Source Type: research