Prevention of Hypothermia in the Aftermath of Natural Disasters in Areas at Risk of Avalanches, Earthquakes, Tsunamis and Floods

Kazue Oshiro, Yuichiro Tanioka, Jürg Schweizer, Ken Zafren, Hermann Brugger and Peter Paal
Additional contact information
Kazue Oshiro: Department of Cardiovascular Medicine and Mountain Medicine, Research, and Survey Division, Hokkaido Ohno Memorial Hospital, Sapporo 063-0052, Japan
Yuichiro Tanioka: Faculty of Science, Institute of Seismology and Volcanology, Hokkaido University, Sapporo 060-0810, Japan
Jürg Schweizer: WSL Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research SLF, 7260 Davos, Switzerland
Ken Zafren: Department of Emergency Medicine, Stanford University Medical Center, Stanford, CA 94304, USA
Hermann Brugger: Institute of Mountain Emergency Medicine, Eurac Research, 39100 Bolzano, Italy
Peter Paal: Department of Anesthesiology and Intensive Care Medicine, St. John of God Hospital, Paracelsus Medical University, 5020 Salzburg, Austria

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 3, 1-13

Abstract: Throughout history, accidental hypothermia has accompanied natural disasters in cold, temperate, and even subtropical regions. We conducted a non-systematic review of the causes and means of preventing accidental hypothermia after natural disasters caused by avalanches, earthquakes, tsunamis, and floods. Before a disaster occurs, preventive measures are required, such as accurate disaster risk analysis for given areas, hazard mapping and warning, protecting existing structures within hazard zones to the greatest extent possible, building structures outside hazard zones, and organising rapid and effective rescue. After the event, post hoc analyses of failures, and implementation of corrective actions will reduce the risk of accidental hypothermia in future disasters.

Keywords: hypothermia; accidental; avalanche; earthquake; flooding; mountain; ocean; prevention; rescue; tsunami (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/3/1098/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/3/1098/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:19:y:2022:i:3:p:1098-:d:728364

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().