Third Time's a Charm
The third year of MICRODIS was an exciting time, as the results from surveys were starting to materialize from 6 completed and remaining 3 main studies, and smaller studies were also successfully completed.
To energetically start the year, partners came together for the Second Annual Meeting in Brussels, Belgium on February 25‐27, 2009. Survey site posters and field work experiences were shared amongst consortium members and invited guests from other integrated research projects and related research fields. Past achievements, progress reports, study planning, publications, next steps and collaboration opportunities were on top of the agenda. A Steering Committee meeting was also held.
Three main studies and three annex studies were held in the course of the third year. MICRODIS integrated questionnaires were administered and qualitative research was done for main studies in Morpeth, UK (led by UoN); and Hanoi (led by HSPH) and Quang nam, Vietnam (led by HCE). In addition to these main studies, smaller and more focused annex studies took place in India, the UK and Vietnam. UoD and VHAI focused their studies in India on the nutrition of children under five after floods in Bahraich and Orissa, respectively. HCE performed the first annex study dedicated to economic impacts after floods in their research in Quang nam, Vietnam. These annex studies had focused questionnaires along with key informant interviews and Focus Group Discussions (FGDs). UoN led additional qualitative research focusing on displaced populations, mental health professionals, children and social capital. UCL, HNI and SWECO took advisory and field work roles during these studies. Partners also performed training and awareness activities in their survey communities, along with their institutions and the wider research community.
Starting from the beginning of the third year, technical issues about the database management were entertained by the consortium, led by the coordination team at UCL. The enormous task of creating a common codebook and data shell from all the adapted protocols was achieved by UCL and UKL‐HD, with substantial efforts from each cooperating survey partner, in the attempt to standardise data and coding across all sites.
The intensive task of cleaning, validating and then later recoding the data was successfully completed by eight survey teams in December 2009. As the survey timing has been staggered through year two and three, surveyrelated deliverables and timelines needed to be adapted and deadlines closesly monitored by the coordination team. Survey reports, training briefs, preliminary analysis reports, priority policy needs outlines and the
recoded datasets were amongst these important deliverable outputs for year three by each survey partner.
(left to right) MICRODIS Family during the MMW in Depok, Jakarta; Health Working Group Meeting in Bhubaneswar, India; Social Working Group at the Annual Meeting in Brussels, Belgium.
To produce these documents, consortium members worked diligently on the analysis of their data from main and annex studies during year three. Preliminary results were presented at the Multi‐Meeting Workshop in Depok, Indonesia on October 10‐15, 2009. This meeting brought together the thematic working groups to review and modify the protocols and conceptual models for social, health and economic assessment after use in the field. Partners also discussed preliminary results from their data analysis across sites, publication interests and sources, strategies for disaster related courses in university programmes, integration methods and opportunities, data management and data sharing. Workshops were held on how to analyse the data for each thematic core, which proved to be very helpful for all partners. The complex integrated protocol document as the accumulation of each survey instrument and experience was presented to partners by HNI and later completed as an important output for year three. Finally, promotional materials were presented to partners, including the video documentary and desk‐top calendar produced by CDRC. After the consortium members had started the analysis on the data, together or joined with other partners, ideas and results for publications began to rapidly surface. Ten working scientific papers were produced, and will soon be submitted for publication to high impact journals. These include health, social and integrated impacts of disasters based on MICRODIS survey data.
During the reporting period partners actively participated in many different courses, conferences and training activities. The Assessing Public Health in Emergency Situations (APHES) summer course was againsuccessfully organized by UCL and hosted six partner institutions. Courses on disaster related topics were offered in most all academic institutions in MICRODIS. Partners also participated in international conferences such as the European Sociological Association’s 9th Annual Conference in Lisbon, Portugal; the 2nd International Workshop on Disaster Casualties, University of Cambridge, UK; IDRC Climate Change Workshop in Hanoi, Vietnam; 13th International Conference of the Pacific Basin Consortium for Environmental Health in Perth, Australia; and, the 2nd India Disaster Management congress in Delhi, India. Several papers have been presented at these conferences or have been submitted for publication. Technical trainings on statistics and softwares were also attended by MICRODIS consortium members.
CDRC led the charge on promotional materials created for the project with several eye‐catching products such as the calendar, Southeast Asian DVD documentary, and disaster preparedness day planner. Year two and three field site posters were produced and displayed at various events. The project website underwent a complete reconstruction when UCL decided to migrate to another content management system which was easier to use and provided more aesthetic benefits. Survey information and project documents were constantly added to the public part of the website, and task monitoring tables and daily updates were services included in the private network zone. UCL also worked with Research Media, UoN and UoD to produce a dissemination article on MICRODIS that was circulated to high level scientist and policy makers. VHAI has worked with partners on the detailed project brochure. These materials will be taken to all conferences, courses and activities that partners participate in to disseminate information about the project and spark interest in upcoming scientific publications, project events and future collaboration opportunities.