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TopPre And Post Catastrophe
In this work, following Noji (1997) catastrophes will be defined as the result of an important ecological rupture of the relation between human beings and their environment, by sudden severe event (like an earthquake) or slow (like a drought) of such magnitude that the struck community will need extraordinary efforts to face it, often with external aid or international support.
The terms catastrophe and disaster, in this work, would be used as synonyms, and unless it is necessary, catastrophe will be used in general, without clarifying if they are caused by man or by nature.
Although there are other focuses (Cutter, 2003; Hsu, Wu, & Lin, 2005) a generally accepted scheme is to divide the catastrophes, whether they are of natural origin or caused by man, in three great phases: The pre-catastrophe, the catastrophe itself and the post-catastrophe.
Models, including mathematical models have been used to explain the catastrophes (Makowski, 2009; Yahaya, Ahmad, & Abdalla, 2010; Zhou et al., 2009) and to give support before, during or after them (Frysinger et al., 2007) and many of these models have been integrated to decision support systems (DSS) Hernández & García, (in press). Even though support systems to decision making could be of great use during a catastrophe (Borysiewicz, Potempski, & Galkowski, 2001; Gadomski et al., 2001; Mendonça, Beroggi, & Wallace, 2001; Sanders & Tabuchi, 2000) there is also a considerable value for them in the pre-catastrophe phase, when no event that caused an important rapture has occurred, but the population is preparing for such event, especially those that had been determined as possible shelter, as in the post-catastrophe phase, when the event has already occurred and the goal is to recover, at least, the life conditions that existed before the catastrophe.