ShakeAlert's big test in Santa Rosa earthquake

With wildfires becoming more and more common, Californians have become improved their evacuation procedures. Alerting residents earlier via cellphone and then ongoing door-to-door notices have made a difference, along with residents trusting the evacuation calls more than before. Notable improvements have been made in hospitals, with staff making arrangements with other hospitals as soon as they receive the evacuation notice.

A community-based, early-warning system for flooding in Durban, South Africa, gave community members an early enough evacuation order so that no lives were lost. The system uses information from Weather Service reports to know when and where to monitor real-time local conditions. When a community member or member of the disaster management unit sees the conditions are becoming dangerous, they use messaging apps to warn the community.

The University of Washington and Northwestern tribes have partnered to use their collective knowledge to create an online tool that helps regional tribes prepare for the effects of climate change. The tools uses climate forecasting that depicts how different resources in the region will be affected at a hyper-local level. The tool itself is a result of Western science, but researchers say the inputted data and information would not have been possible without the nuanced Indigenous knowledge.

To better serve the Boston community, the city launched a mobile app to address gaps in traditional 311 hotline calls. Now, "nearly 60 percent of service requests come via digital channels" and city officials are better able to "track the city’s performance against a benchmark service-level agreement."

In 1970 Cyclone Bhola hit Bangladesh. It killed up to 500,000 people. Since then, the country has revamped its emergency disaster preparedness through a multipronged process, reducing its cyclone-related deaths by 100 fold. Now, the country collects weather data from more than 50 weather stations. The data is sent to mitigation committees which dispense the info to people through various methods: radio, text messages, and even doorknocking. The country also has a volunteer program with 76,000 volunteers and increased the number of multi-purpose shelters from 44 in 1970 to 512 in 1991.

Contact tracing apps have received a lot of attention since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, but researchers caution they should be used in conjunction with other tactics and not be relied on to help on their own. However, an early study has indicated that even when only fifteen percent of the population downloads a contact tracing app, infection rates are reduced by eight percent and deaths are reduced by six percent.

South Korea has reported a reduction of new coronavirus cases thanks in part to rapid government regulations, widespread testing, and increased transparency. While other countries, such as the United States, have made a practice of only testing those showing symptoms, South Korea's success is linked to broader testing, contact tracing and alerting those who have possibly been in contact with an infected person.

Weeks before the coronavirus outbreak was declared to be a pandemic, Seoul, and other parts of South Korea set into motion a combination of "prevention and mitigation programs" that are now being touted as lessons for other countries struggling to contain the virus. Using technological advancements such as a national mobile phone alert system and mobile phone applications along with increased transparency around data collected, new reports of cases have slowed allowing the country to prepare for a potential surge later on.

South Korea has taken a softer approach to preventing and containing the coronavirus, in large part because they’ve prioritized accessible testing and have an already-existing strong and affordable healthcare system. Beyond that, the government has centered on citizen education – sending daily updates about new cases and provided a hotline for questions and concerns.

Identifying the metagenomic sequencing for new outbreaks of viruses can help to better assess how the virus is spreading, which in turn helps health officials figure out how to slow down the contagion. In the midst of a coronavirus outbreak, a tool that was first used to during the SARS outbreak is now being used to track Covid-19 in under-resourced places such as Cambodia.