From Google Scholar+ [to 21 June 2014]
Selected content from beyond the journals and sources covered above, aggregated from a range of Google Scholar monitoring algorithms and other monitoring strategies.

Earth Perspectives
2014, 1:11
doi:10.1186/2194-6434-1-11
Essay
Climate information for humanitarian agencies: some basic principles
Erin Coughlan de Perez1 and Simon J Mason2*
Author Affiliations
1 Red Cross/Red Crescent Climate Centre, PO Box 28120, 2502 The Hague, KC, Netherlands
2 International Research Institute for Climate and Society, The Earth Institute of Columbia University, PO Box 1000, Palisades, NY 10965, USA
Abstract
Since 2005, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies and the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre have had an ongoing partnership with the International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI) to connect end-users with providers of climate information. This partnership has enabled and encouraged the uptake of climate information in the humanitarian sector. From the perspective of the climate service provider, attempts to address problems of salience, credibility and legitimacy have been made by adopting the following set of principles: prioritize immediate user needs; provide only information that is relevant to the user context; provide decision support; right-scale rather than down-scale; and maintain ownership and partnership in design. Examples are presented of how these principles have been applied, highlighting not only the need to improve forecasts and their presentation, but also to address obstacles to the practical use of climate information.

Humanities
2014, 3(2), 232-243
doi:10.3390/h3020232
Article
The (de) Militarization of Humanitarian Aid: A Historical Perspective
Marc-Antoine Pérouse de Montclos
Author affiliation
Received: 11 March 2014; in revised form: 2 June 2014 / Accepted: 6 June 2014 / Published: 16 June 2014
Abstract:
Humanitarian workers often complain that international aid to victims of armed conflicts is more and more militarized because relief organizations are embedded into peacekeeping operations, used as a “force multiplier”, or manipulated as an instrument of diplomacy by proxy. Historically, however, charity has always been a military issue in times of war. We can distinguish four types of militarization of relief organizations in this regard. First is the use of charities to make “war by proxy”, as in Afghanistan or Nicaragua in the 1980s. The second pattern is “embedment”, like the Red Cross during the two world wars. The third is “self-defense”, as with the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem (now Malta) in the 12th Century. The fourth, finally, is the model of “International Brigades” alongside the Spanish Republicans in 1936 or various liberation movements in the 1970s. In comparison, humanitarian aid today appears to be much less militarized. However, this perception also depends on the various definitions of the word “humanitarian”.

American Journal of Clinical Pathology
July 2014; 142 (1)
http://ajcp.ascpjournals.org/content/current
Laboratory Turnaround Times in Response to an Abrupt Increase in Specimen Testing After a Natural Disaster
Kevin Taylor1, Peter George, MBBS1,2 and Joanne M. Deely, PhD3
Author Affiliations
1From Canterbury Health Laboratories,
2University of Otago, and
3Canterbury District Health Board, Christchurch, New Zealand.
Abstract
Objectives: Understanding how key indicators change during extreme circumstances could help laboratories maintain high standards when responding to disasters. We assessed the effects of an earthquake on turnaround times (TATs) at a hospital laboratory.
Methods: We examined TATs for 709,786 potassium tests and 196,795 urine cultures from February 2010 to January 2013. Hospital and community data were evaluated separately and compared during the transport, registration (accessioning), and analysis time phases.
Results: After the earthquake, the laboratory undertook approximately 70% of the nonacute community specimen testing. Initially, community transport times increased by 20 to 27 hours and remained 2 to 3 hours above prequake levels. Registration time increased by 10 to 20 minutes (hospital) and 30 to 45 minutes (community) for a short period. During the initial few months, community urine culture analysis time increased by more than 50 hours.
Conclusions: The increase in specimen numbers affected short- and long-duration test TATs differently. Streamlining and automating processes reduced registration and analysis times. Increased transport time was outside the control of the laboratory.

Systems and Information Engineering Design Symposium (SIEDS), 2014
25-25 April 2014; Page(s):334 – 339
Improving situational awareness for humanitarian logistics through predictive modeling
Racette, Mark P. ; Department of Systems and Information Engineering, University of Virginia ; Smith, Christopher T. ; Cunningham, Michael P. ; Heekin, Thomas A. more authors
Abstract
Humanitarian aid efforts in response to natural and man-made disasters often involve complicated logistical challenges. Problems such as communication failures, damaged infrastructure, violence, looting, and corrupt officials are examples of obstacles that aid organizations face. The inability to plan relief operations during disaster situations leads to greater human suffering and wasted resources. Our team used the Global Database of Events, Location, and Tone (GDELT), a machine-coded database of international events, for all of the models described in this paper. We produced a range of predictive models for the occurrence of violence in Sudan, including time series, general logistic regression, and random forest models using both R and Apache Mahout. We also undertook a validation of the data within GDELT to confirm the event, actor, and location fields according to specific, pre-determined criteria. Our team found that, on average, 81.2 percent of the event codes in the database accurately reflected the nature of the articles. The best regression models had a mean square error (MSE) of 316.6 and the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) was 0.868. The final random forest models had a MSE of 339.6 and AUC of 0.861. Using Mahout did not provide any significant advantages over R in the creation of these models.

Annals of Operations Research
June 2014
Modeling the impact of donor behavior on humanitarian aid operations
M. Ali Ülkü, Kathryn M. Bell, Stephanie Gray Wilson
Abstract
Whether in-kind or cash, coordinated help organizations such as the American Red Cross, count on donations to help those in need when and after disasters happen. Yet, it has been observed that the type (in-kind versus cash) and the quality of donations largely impact the success of meeting urgent demand in humanitarian operations. In particular, unsolicited items hamper the synchronization of logistical operations and hence may create more problems than solutions. This research sheds light on the behavioral and decision making aspects of a donor while developing analytical models of how that behavior can be influenced by soliciting a minimum amount of cash donation, which in turn mitigates the negative impact of unsolicited items. We investigate the literature on donor psychology and feed those extant findings to the analytical model. We provide explicit expressions for the optimal solicitation amount and the impact of that amount on maximizing the donor’s likelihood to donate cash, as opposed to in-kind items. Also provided are some execution insights through extensive sensitivity analysis.