Bibliographic details

Kapucu, N., & Özerdem, A. (2011). Managing emergencies and crises. Jones & Bartlett Publishers.

Link to book info

פרטים ביבליוגרפים

גיא מור (עורך), גבי לבל וארנון אביטל (עורכי משנה)(יוני 2018), מדריך לניהול סיכונים ברגולציה ובמדיניות ציבורית, משרד ראש הממשלה

תקציר

 ממשלות עוסקות בהגנה על הציבור מפני סיכונים. הסיכונים לציבור מגוונים: בריאותיים, חברתיים, כלכליים, בטיחותיים וסביבתיים. לכן חשוב שהממשלה תנהל סיכונים בצורה יעילה ואפקטיבית ותביא בחשבון את כל ההשלכות של המדיניות הציבורית אותה היא מנהיגה.
מדריך זה מיועד לסייע למקבלי החלטות להתמודד עם סיכונים ציבוריים. גיבוש רגולציה ומדיניות ציבורית על בסיס ניהול סיכונים מאפשר להגן טוב יותר על הציבור, לפעול בצורה יעילה יותר ולצמצם את העלויות שמוטלות על האזרחים ועל העסקים.
המטרה המרכזית של המדריך היא להבטיח קיומם של תהליכי קבלת החלטות מיטביים בנוגע להתמודדות עם סיכונים. בנוסף, המדריך מסייע להשיג יותר עקביות, אחידות ושקיפות בקבלת החלטות ממשלתיות.
השיטה המוצגת במדריך מהווה פיתוח של שיטות לניהול סיכונים של ממשלות במדינות מערביות (בראשן ארה"ב, בריטניה ואוסטרליה) ושל תורה שפותחה בארגונים בין-לאומיים כמו ה-OECD וה-EU.

הפרק הראשון של המדריך מציג את עקרונות היסוד של שיטת ניהול הסיכונים הציבוריים. הפרק השני עוסק בניהול סיכונים בקביעת רגולציה ובקביעת מדיניות ציבורית. הפרק השלישי מתמקד בניהול סיכונים לצורך פיקוח ואכיפה על ציות להוראות.

קישור למדריך: https://www.gov.il/BlobFolder/generalpage/risk_management/he/logo_Files_Guide171018-1.pdf

Bibliographic details:

Gidron, Y., Levy, E., Farchi, M., & Rapaport, C. (2021). Effects of an automatized psychological inoculation (PI) intervention on anxiety, resilience and adherence to COVID-19 recommendations. Psychology & Health, 1-14.

Abstract:

Objectives: The covid-19 pandemic calls for adherence to multiple health behaviours. While authorities mostly use health information to deal with these issues, such an approach may be insufficient. This study examined the effects of a cognitive method, namely psychological inoculation (PI) + health information (experimental) versus health information alone (control) on anxiety, resilience and adherence. Design: A randomized controlled trial was used. Participants were assigned to the experimental or control conditions, all provided on an automatized computerized system. Main outcome measures: These included anxiety, adherence to the Covid-19 Israeli health ministry’s recommendations, and mental resilience. Participants were assessed before, immediately after and a week after the interventions. Results: Controls increased only in adherence at 1 week compared to baseline. In contrast, those in the PI increased in resilience and adherence and reported lower anxiety immediately after treatment compared to baseline levels. In the PI condition, degree of refuting challenging sentences correlated with less anxiety. Conclusions: Results showed better immediate improvements in anxiety, resilience and intention to adhere in the experimental condition compare to the controls. Authorities may wish to add PI to help the public deal with the effects of such a pandemic and to increase adherence to health recommendations.

Webpage: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08870446.2021.1984485

Bibliographic details:

Ballada, C. J. A., Aruta, J. J. B. R., Callueng, C. M., Antazo, B. G., Kimhi, S., Reinert, M., ... & Verdu, F. C. Bouncing back from COVID‐19: Individual and ecological factors influence national resilience in adults from Israel, the Philippines, and Brazil. Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology.

Abstract:

One way that countries may differ in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic is how they withstand extreme adversity while maintaining their societal values and institutions. This study explored national resilience in Israel, the Philippines, and Brazil during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using Crisis in Context Theory, cross-national understanding of national resilience was examined by assessing measurement models, exploring country differences in perceptions, and determining its predictors. Data from an internationally diverse sample of 1,587 adults were collected using multiple measures and subsequently subjected to various analytical strategies. Results on the factor structure of NR-13 demonstrated acceptable fit of both first-order and higher-order models for each country, with generally high factor loadings. However, measurement invariance was only supported at the configural level for the first-order model. Among the three countries, national resilience was highest in Israel, followed by the Philippines, and lowest in Brazil. Taken collectively, both individual and ecological variables contributed a significant variance in national resilience in each country. Community resilience, quality of life, and perceived threats were consistently strong predictors of national resilience across countries. Results are discussed.

Webpage: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/casp.2569

Bibliographic details:

Orkibi, H., Ben-Eliyahu, A., Reiter-Palmon, R., Testoni, I., Biancalani, G., Murugavel, V., & Gu, F. (2021). Creative adaptability and emotional well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic: An international study. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts.

Abstract:

The putative associations between creative adaptability and the experience of emotional well-being (i.e., a positivity ratio of more positive than negative emotions) was investigated during the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak with a sample of 1,432 adults from four countries: Israel (n = 310), United States (n = 312), Italy (n = 378), and China (n = 569). Country differences and a mediation model for creative adaptability predicting emotional well-being through creative self-efficacy, resilient coping, and emotion regulation (reappraisal and suppression) were examined. The findings point to slight differences in countries, which are potentially due not only to the culture but also to the phase of the pandemic. More consistently, creative adaptability was positively associated with creative self-efficacy, resilient coping, and reappraisal emotion regulation in all countries. Regarding mediation, in the Israeli, Italian, and Chinese samples, creative adaptability was positively related to resilient coping, which was positively related to emotional well-being. Similar relations were found for creative self-efficacy as a mediator in the United States and Chinese samples. In the Chinese sample, creative adaptability was positively associated with suppression, which was negatively associated with emotional well-being. These results are suggestive of the role of creative adaptability in dealing with the emotional burden associated with the COVID-19 crisis.

Webpage: https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2021-92976-001

Bibliographic details:

Ben-Eliyahu, A. (2021). Sustainable learning in education. Sustainability, 13(8), 4250. 

Abstract:

This article presents a theoretical definition and conceptualization of sustainable learning in education (SLE). SLE is differentiated from teaching for sustainability or sustainable learning, which focuses on teaching ways to renew, rejuvenate, and reuse necessary resources, such as clean water. At its core, SLE consists of strategies and skills that enable learners to effectively renew, rebuild, reuse, inquire, be open-minded, and cope with challenging and complicated circumstances that require learning and relearning. Four aspects of SLE are described: (1) renewing and relearning; (2) independent and collaborative learning; (3) active learning; and (4) transferability. To further understand SLE, the self-regulated learning framework is used. This is an important and novel future direction for research and educational practice.

Webpage: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/8/4250

Bibliographic details
Kaplan Mintz, K, Ayalon, O., Nathan, O. and Eshet T. (2021). See or Be? Contact with nature and well-being during COVID-19 lockdown. Journal of Environmental Psychology 78 (December 2021),101714
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2021.101714

Abstract

This study investigated how contact with nature benefitted well-being during a strict lockdown. The study took place in Israel during the last week of the first COVID-19 lockdown, when citizens were restricted to remain within 100 m of home. A survey company distributed questionnaires among 776 individuals. The questionnaires included demographic variables (gender, ethnic and cultural groups, age, income loss due to the pandemic), contact with nature variables (Nature near home, Nature viewed from home windows, and being in nature on the preceding day), and well-being measures (positive affect, negative affect, vitality, happiness, and stress). Before completing the well-being questionnaire, participants took part in an experiment that tested the effect of viewing nature images or urban images on well-being measures. The results showed that nature near home and nature viewed from the windows contributed to higher levels of well-being, and that being in nature on the preceding day was associated with higher levels of positive affect. These benefits emerged even among those who had been economically harmed by the pandemic. Viewing nature images was also associated with level of well-being, mainly to reduced level of stress and negative affect. The current findings extend the understanding of the benefits of access to nature during stressful times, particularly during emergencies when accessing remote nature is impossible. Furthermore, the findings highlight the dual effect of contact with nature on well-being: enhancement of positive affect together with reduction of negative affect and stress. The findings indicate that exposure to nature is much more valuable for women than for men. These findings are highly important in view of gender differences in pandemic's impact on people's well-being.

Webpage: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272494421001675?via%3Dihub

Bibliographic details:
Zohar, M. (2021). Geolocating tweets via spatial inspection of information inferred from tweet meta-fields. International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation, 105, 102593. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jag.2021.102593

Abstract:
In the last 10, years the Twitter social network has become a robust messaging platform. To date, Twitter has more than 500 million users worldwide. A given tweet can contain the geographic location of the transmitting device if the geolocation services are activated or the IP address can be geocoded, which is applicable to only 1–3% of all tweets. Nevertheless, tweets also contain more than 40 other meta-fields, some of which are inserted by the user and may include spatial information that can be tapped to infer locations associated with the tweet. This study implemented the publicly available GeoNames and Open Street Map (OSM) datasets in conjunction with curated dataset of 2001 tweets from Israel. With both Geonames and OSM, the inference of the tweets’ geographic locations was implemented using the meta-fields of the text (resulting in 600 geolocated tweets), the user location (857 tweets), and the user description (425 tweets). The inferred locations were then spatially examined to verify if they can serve as potential proxies. It was found that the distance between the inferred locations using the text and user-location meta-fields is well correlated with the distance between their midpoint and the device location. Thus, it may indicate the actual device location as well the location of the phenomenon described in the tweet.

Link to paper: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0303243421003007

On-going research

Prof. Eran Feitelson and Yonat Rein, the Hebrew University in Jerusalem; Prof. Pnina Plaut and Smadar Amir, the Technion; Prof. Deborah Shmueli, Prof. Eli Salzberger, Dr. Alex Altshuler and Dr. Michal Ben Gal, University of Haifa

Abstract

Analyses of the effects of COVID-19 tend to focus on the health and economic implications of the pandemic.  Yet, it is clear that there are wider effects, such as effects on social relations, stress, livelihood and effects on the environment. As is increasingly recognized, the GDP per capita is an insufficient measure to assess the state of countries and citizens within them (Stiglitz et al., 2009). Hence well-being is increasingly promoted as measures to assess the state of countries and citizens, and as a basis for policy decision-making. In particular the OECD (2017) advanced a set of 39 indicators for well-being. Similarly, since 2016, the Israeli CBS (Central Bureau of Statistics) has published a yearly report of  “Quality of life, sustainability and resilience”, based on 114 criteria in 11 fields (employment, personal safety, health, housing and infrastructure, education and skills, civic engagement and governance, environment, personal and social welfare, material standard of living,  leisure, culture and community and information technologies).

This research aims to identify the well-being criteria that are influenced by and influence the Coronavirus crisis, analyze these effects in the Israeli arena, identify policy measures that may have a positive influence on well-being, and suggest “policy packages” that may reduce negative influence and enable better life with the virus.

The first part of the study was conducted in collaboration with IIASA (International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis) as part of the agreement between the Government of Israel and IIASA, in which the possible effects of aiding systems analysis were identified.