Most recently, the team published two articles, 鈥�,鈥� and 鈥�,鈥� based on their research focusing on volcanic risk assessment and emergency evacuation simulation, and visualization for the island.

Coincidently, the research is gaining attention and provides useful resources as the island鈥檚 volcano is becoming more active during the past month. On Nov. 22, the mayor of Vulcano, Marco Giorgianni,听聽of nearly 300 people and banned tourists due to increased volcanic activity and gases near the La Fossa crater.

鈥淭his island hosts a number of active volcanic systems,鈥� says Asgary, an expert in disaster, emergency and business continuity management and associate professor in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies. He explains the term 鈥榁ulcanian eruption,鈥� derived from the island of Vulcano, located in Sicily鈥檚 Aeolian archipelago, generally involves moderate explosions of gas laden with volcanic ash.

鈥淲e have been running annual emergency exercise training and field investigations on this island for more than a decade and have developed a number of risk assessment models, emergency evacuation simulations and virtual reality applications to help local and national emergency managers, and the public to better prepare for possible future eruptions,鈥� says Asgary.

The studies contain research focused on evacuation planning and management, representing a key aspect of volcanic crises. Evacuation is a very complicated decision process and operation when it comes to volcanos. Effective evacuation allows for the protection of people from hazards while minimizing potential impacts on the economy and livelihood.

One research article explains, the 鈥渁ssessment of evacuation scenarios that consider human and economic impact is best done in a pre-disaster context as it helps authorities develop evacuation plans to make informed decisions outside the highly stressful time period that characterizes crisis.鈥�

The team developed an intergrAteD VolcanIc risk asSEssment (ADVISE), focusing on two temporal dimensions that authorities must address in a volcanic context: short-term emergency management and long-term risk management.

鈥淥ur research team has done extensive analysis of hazards and vulnerability and the overall risks of volcanic activities in the island by creating various maps and models that can be used to identify high-risk areas regarding different volcanic hazards such as lava flow, ballistics, tsunami, ash accumulation, lahar, CO2 gassing and more,鈥� says Asgary.

The team鈥檚 ADVISE model addresses the potential physical, functional and systemic damage determined by combining the available information on hazard, exposed systems and vulnerability.

鈥淭hroughout this period, we have been working very closely with experts from Civil Protection Italy and the INGV (National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology) in particular. We have also worked with the local school and the community members to raise awareness,鈥� says Asgary.

The last eruption on Vulcano was more than 130 years ago and lasted from Aug. 2, 1888, to Mar. 22, 1890. Volcanic regions that represent tourist attractions and where tourists are allowed to go very close to hazardous areas are especially risky.

The island of Vulcano is home to nearly 800 permanent residents. During the midst of tourism season (April to October), the island could see up to 28,000 per month.

鈥淚t would be interesting to see which scenarios we have been examining during the past 10 years will unfold if an eruption occurs. Considering we are currently in the low season when the total population of the island is already low, and that the volcano鈥檚 activity is rising slowly, and by taking initial proactive measures, fortunately, we can minimize human impacts in case of an eruption. However, the impacts on the properties and infrastructure will remain to be seen if an eruption occurs,鈥� says Asgary.

In previous years, Asgary would invite two students from 91亚色鈥檚  program to join a group of international trainees and supervising professors to participate in a training program, to study the island and conduct field research. Students would learn about various volcanic hazards, vulnerability and risk assessment, emergency management and evacuation planning.

Asgary mentions any future visits and training on the island will depend on the type and length of the possible eruption.

By Alysia Burdi,听YFile聽communications officer

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CIFAL 91亚色 is launching its first event, a knowledge-exchange dialogue, to strengthen multilevel action for climate, nature and people. Organized for Oct. 20 and 21, this international technical expert workshop provides the knowledge base for Professor Idil Boran to convene an official side event to the UN Climate Change Conference, , to a larger audience in Glasgow, Scotland.

CIFAL centres provide innovative training throughout the world and serve as hubs for the exchange of knowledge among government officials, the private sector, academia and civil society. CIFAL 91亚色, which will eventually have its home at the Markham Campus, is led by Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies (LA&PS) Professor Ali Asgary, School of Administrative Studies, with Idil Boran, an associate professor of philosophy (LA&PS) who leads the Synergies of Planetary Health Research Initiative, an international and interdisciplinary research partnership at 91亚色鈥檚 Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research.

鈥淥ur inaugural event is synchronized with both the UN Biodiversity COP15 (Part 1), held online from Oct. 11 to 15, and the UN Climate Change COP26, held in person in Glasgow from Oct. 31 to Nov. 12, and is aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals,鈥� said Boran. Both the biodiversity and climate COPs were to be held in 2020 but had to be postponed due to the global COVID-19 pandemic.

鈥淲e are seeing heightened awareness on these planetary challenges, but the world is far behind on both crises,鈥� Boran said. 鈥淭ransformative change is needed at the level of policy, practices and mindset. Cities, regions, businesses and governments are making commitments, but what are these commitments? Are they being delivered? What are their impacts? How can they be scaled and elicit more commitments?鈥� Above all, Boran noted, commitments must respect the land rights of Indigenous Peoples. 聽

鈥淲e鈥檝e invited Canadian and international participants, both researchers and practitioners, to share knowledge and experiences and identify priorities for accelerating and strengthening multilevel joint action for nature and the climate by multiplicity of actors, while delivering the sustainable development goals,鈥� Boran said.

The event鈥檚 key message is that climate change is not a singular issue but is deeply interconnected with multiple planetary challenges.

鈥淲hen we talk about the biodiversity-climate interlinkages, we are also concerned about their impacts on human health, as well as wildlife and environmental health,鈥� Boran said. 鈥淭he climate and the biodiversity crises share root causes. Climate change worsens biodiversity loss, but protecting the ecosystem, if done right, can help respond to the effects of climate change.鈥�

The knowledge-exchange dialogue is by invitation only, although there will be a public plenary webinar at 11 a.m. on Oct. 21. The other sessions will feature panels for participants and parallel interactive discussion roundtables.

91亚色 President and Vice-Chancellor Rhonda L. Lenton will deliver the event鈥檚 opening remarks. There will be a variety of sessions, including one on Indigenous nature stewardship and others dealing with agriculture, food and healthy communities, urban nature-based initiatives, oceans and coastal zones, and methodologies for assessing progress. The workshop will set the foundation for creating a working group toward a deliverable and will kick-start a series of dialogues.

鈥淚n addition to showcasing the workshop at COP26, we hope to create a working group with the aim of connecting the work being done locally and regionally to the global process,鈥� Boran said. 鈥淥ur official event in Glasgow is an opportunity to share the first insights from this workshop.鈥�

This event is organized by CIFAL 91亚色 with the collaboration of the German Development Institute/Deutsches Institut f眉r Entwicklungspolitik (DIE), based in Bonn Germany, and the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment, Imperial College London, based in the U.K., one of the partnering institutions for the side event at COP26 in Glasgow. At 91亚色, event partners are: 91亚色 International; the Office of Research and Innovation; the UNESCO Chair in Reorienting Education towards Sustainability; the Synergies of Planetary Health Research Initiative and Lab, with the support of the Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research; LA&PS; and a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council exchange knowledge-mobilization fund.

鈥�91亚色 is pleased to support CIFAL 91亚色鈥檚 contributions towards advancing UN SDGs,鈥� said Vice-President Research and Innovation聽Amir Asif. 鈥�91亚色 researchers like professors Boran and Asgary are actively exploring planetary climatic and environmental change with particular emphasis on biodiversity, reducing Canada鈥檚 overall carbon footprint and building sustainable energy sources of the future. This knowledge-exchange dialogue and the followup official event at the UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow helps us in achieving our goal of forging a just and equitable world.鈥�

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With a scarcity of COVID-19 vaccines in many African countries and the rise of new variants of concern, 迟丑别听Africa-Canada Artificial Intelligence and Data Innovation Consortium聽(ACADIC) is playing a pivotal role in providing locally nuanced analysis of data to inform public health decision making, as well as vaccination rollout strategies.

The interdisciplinary consortium is directed by 91亚色 Professor  from the Faculty of Science. Also serving on the executive committee from 91亚色 are: Distinguished Research Professor , director of the  in the Faculty of Science and ACADIC co-president; Professor James Orbinski, director of the Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research and ACADIC executive committee member; and LA&PS Associate Professor , associate director of the  and ACADIC executive committee member. ACADIC brings together an interdisciplinary team of data scientists, epidemiologists, physicists, mathematicians and software engineers, as well as AI, disaster and emergency management, clinical public health, citizen science and community engagement experts. It is leveraging big data and AI-based techniques in nine African countries, with experts from 11 different countries 鈥� Botswana, Cameroon, Canada, Eswatini, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

These techniques help identify and analyze emergent COVID-19 hotspots and outbreaks, and develop strategic, highly targeted and staged delivery plans for vaccines to priority areas. The team is also using ongoing monitoring to enhance COVID-19 testing to ensure public health interventions are equitable and effective.

Half of the world鈥檚 doses of vaccines have been secured by a handful of economically developed countries, but most African nations have received very few and continue to prepare and test their vaccination campaigns for when sufficient vaccine doses are made available.

A defining challenge is to develop local strategies that will reduce the number of COVID-19 cases, even as variants of concern circulate amidst a dearth of vaccines.

Some areas of focus for 91亚色 researchers involved in ACADIC include:

• making big data and AI actionable for real-time delivery of reliable and comprehensive information to predict the spread and impact of an epidermic, and to guide governmental policies and best practice in an epidemic;
• the role of big data and AI in understanding and intervening in pandemics;
• big data, AI and COVID-19 in Africa;
• 迟丑别听;
• vaccine acceptance/hesitancy across Africa;
• incorporating AI and mathematical modelling for smart vaccination rollout in vaccine-limited regions;
• clinical public health practices in epidemics and pandemics;
• intervention systems in disasters and health emergencies;
• disease dynamics and modelling;
• transferring lessons learned from mass vaccination simulation to Africa;
• disease modelling and simulation in refugee camps in Africa; and
• use of AI to model economic impacts of COVID-19 in Africa.

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91亚色 professors聽听补苍诲听聽of the School of Administrative Studies (SAS) in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, in partnership with the Vaughan Fire and Rescue Service (VFRS) and along with co-researchers聽Janithra Wimaladasa,听Maryam Shafiei Sabet听补苍诲听Michael Ing, have reported the findings in 迟丑别听.

The researchers found significant decreases in the number of emergency calls during the COVID-19 pandemic, with vehicle-related incidents showing the biggest declines. Changes in daily and hourly patterns appear consistent with public health measures in place during various stages of the pandemic.

鈥淭he pattern shifts are not surprising and reflect a proportionate decline in call volumes and change in call types directly related to mandatory public health measures,鈥� says Andrew Zvanitajs, VFRS fire chief.

Temporal data analytics methods were used to investigate changes in the number and nature of emergency incidents through various stages of the pandemic and associated public health measures. The study leverages the emergency incident and response dataset of VFRS (which includes a record of every emergency incident responded to by VFRS from January 2009 onwards) by comparing incident/response data prior to the pandemic with updates following the various stages of the pandemic.

The dataset covers various incident and response attributes, including: alarm time, location, incident/response type (e.g. fires, false fire alarms, vehicle collisions, medical calls of various types etc.) and property type. In 2019, for instance, there were more than 11,300 emergency incidents recorded.

"Our research team is currently preparing a report on our ongoing spatial and spatiotemporal analyses of the emergency incidents in the city of Vaughan, involving additional COVID-19 phases beyond the six covered in the first manuscript on our temporal analyses," says Solis. "Our analyses have shown, and will likely continue to indicate, interesting patterns that may offer operational insights for the VFRS management team as phases of the pandemic and associated public health measures unfold.鈥�

The study was conducted in connection with the project "COVID-19: Building disaster preparedness and resilience via analytics of a fire department's responses to emergency incidents in a pandemic 鈥� Case of Vaughan, Ontario," which is funded under the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Partnership Engage Grants COVID-19 Special Initiative, with Solis as principal investigator and Asgary as co-investigator. The project actively involves the VFRS as partner organization.

The research work was designed to enable evidence-based planning and decision making with respect to disaster and emergency mitigation, preparedness, and response strategies and initiatives, and to help build longer-term community resilience and disaster/emergency preparedness for the city of Vaughan.

Believed to be the first to analyze emergency incident response data during the COVID-19 pandemic, says Solis, the initial study report concludes that the pandemic has had a significant impact on the demand for emergency services provided by the VFRS. The analysis may be replicated for other municipal fire and rescue services, which could generate further insights applicable to specific local conditions and stages of the pandemic.

When the study was initiated in fall 2020, Wimaladasa was a graduate student in the SAS Master of Disaster and Emergency Management (MDEM) program. She has since completed the MDEM degree, in June 2021. Sabet, who received the MDEM degree in 2019 and is currently an adjunct faculty member at Sir Sandford Fleming College of Applied Arts and Technology, is a research collaborator. Ing is assistant deputy fire chief of VFRS and is an active participant in the 91亚色-VFRS research partnership.

Asgary and Solis were previously engaged in a joint research project with VFRS called "Igniting Insight: Using GIS and Analytics in the Fire Service," which was given the 2019 Innovative Management Bronze Award from the Institute of Public Administration of Canada. In recognition of their participation in that earlier project, they were both named as 2019 91亚色 Research Leaders.

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Official estimates suggest 10,000 people have died, although the police chief of the hard-hit Miyagi prefecture said this week he expects the toll to exceed that in his region alone. Official numbers released Wednesday confirm 4,314 deaths and 8,606 still missing. The National Post鈥檚 Aileen Donnelly asked , professor in 91亚色鈥檚 Disaster & Emergency Management Program, how death tolls are estimated and recorded after a catastrophe and why the figures vary.

Q: How are death toll estimates determined?

A: Estimates come through computer models, or through expert judgment. In Japan they have a system called the National Disaster Information System that has all the information about population and infrastructure in different parts of the country. As soon as something happens, they can run the model and figure out how much damage and how many potential losses they might have鈥�. As time goes on, the model could become better by receiving actual or real information, for example, the exact magnitude of the earthquake. When [computer modelling] is not available, like in developing countries, what they do is they rely on expert judgment, [which] is not as accurate.

Q: How do experts estimate deaths without a computer model?

A: Rapid assessment is usually based on several factors: the population in the area that has been impacted and the damage or loss ratio for different earthquake magnitudes. This is a ratio they use for the number of casualties per different [earthquake] magnitudes in different physical environments. In Japan, another factor they often use is a ratio of number of fatalities to number of injured people. [The ratio there] is about 45, which means for every 45 injured people, you will have about one dead person鈥�. These are the factors experts use. These are based on past experience, the existing population number and the building type and structure they have in the area. [Experts] might not need to go into the field to figure out how many people have been killed. They usually use the knowledge that they have about the area. But, by going there, it helps to make the estimate closer to the actual number.

Q: Why do you think the Japanese government has avoided releasing estimates?

A: Having an accurate estimation of dead people is not going to do a lot at this point. And that is probably why [the government is sticking] with the actual [count of] bodies. From an emergency management point of view, we look for the survivors and find out what their needs are and how we can help them鈥�. I think people are cautious about providing numbers [now] because it鈥檚 not only an earthquake, it鈥檚 not only a tsunami, it鈥檚 a combination of different hazards hitting the country at the same time. Plus, we have the evacuation going on for the nuclear issues.

Posted by Elizabeth Monier-Williams, research communications officer, with files courtesy of YFile 鈥� 91亚色鈥檚 daily e-bulletin.

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At the Oil: Slick Suits and Sinister Scenarios symposium tomorrow, leading researchers in risk, disaster management, ethics and the environment will provide insights into the murky world of oil and the need聽to prepare聽for聽a聽potential disaster.

The symposium will take place, from noon to 2pm, in the Crowe Room, 109 Atkinson Building, Keele campus. Everyone is welcome.

91亚色 law, governance and ethics Professor Mark Schwartz (right) will discuss the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, which caused the largest off shore spill in聽the history of the United States. Schwartz will present an ethical critique of BP and speak about the importance of ethical crisis management and the lessons for Canadian oil producers.

Environmental studies Professor Gail Fraser (left) will compare the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico and its estimated impacts on marine birds to that of a much smaller spill in offshore Newfoundland.聽She will argue that cumulatively smaller, more frequent oil spills off the coast of Newfoundland have likely resulted in higher seabird mortalities compared to the very large single spill in the Gulf of Mexico, because oil breaks down more slowly in cold water and the species composition is different.

Fraser underscores the importance of having baseline data to estimate the impact of oil spills and discusses current challenges in NL regarding access to information relevant to oil spills.

Emergency management Professor Ali Asgary will examine the Canadian emergency preparedness and response capacities and gaps in dealing with large-scale oil spills. He is co-investigator of a recently completed project, 鈥淩eal-time Detection of Oil Spills鈥�, funded by the Natural Sciences & Engineering Research Council of Canada, which developed an expert system for rapid risk assessment of pipeline based oil and gas spills to be used by emergency response teams.

Right: Ali Asgary

Asgary's areas of research include disaster and emergency response, business continuity, development and applications of geographic information systems and agent-based modelling in disaster and emergency management.

Fraser鈥檚 research focuses on issues around the ecology and management of avian wildlife, and the environmental management of the extractive industries of oil and gas.

Schwartz is co-author of the textbook Business Ethics: Readings and Cases in Corporate Morality (McGraw Hill, 2000) and the author of Corporate Social Responsibility: An Ethical Approach (Broadview Press, 2011).

Joanne Jones, a professor of audit and management information systems in 91亚色鈥檚 School of Administrative Studies, will moderate the discussion.

The event is presented by the School of Administrative Studies in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies.

For more information, call ext. 20091 or e-mail tarawlo@yorku.ca. To register online, visit 91亚色鈥檚 School of Administrative Studies website.

Republished courtesy of YFile鈥� 91亚色鈥檚 daily e-bulletin.

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