Dra. Bull-Torres, Maria

The authors regret due to a production error, the following article was wrongly included as part of this regular issue Volume 304C. This article is now replaced with this note and will be included in an upcoming special issue entitled [SI: Vanuatu volcanoes]. Please refer to the DOI and citation details in that version when citing the paper. The Publisher apologizes for the inconvenience. Prodigious emission rates and magma degassing budget of major, trace and radioactive volatile species from Ambrym basaltic volcano, Vanuatu island Arc; Allard et al.; Volume 304, 1 October 2015, Pages 378–402; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvolgeores.2015.08.022. The authors would like to apologise for any inconvenience caused.

All decision-making processes are complex and include a high number of variables. Particularly, decisions related to disaster risk reduction despite having an inherent uncertainty, depend on many factors associated with the inhabitants in danger, risk disaster management authorities, previous experiences, among others. Although considerable research has been carried out to understand the evacuation processes undergoing among different types of natural hazards, few of them consider psychosocial variables under a dynamic approach. This research proposes a novel way of representing decision making using the risk homeostasis theory approach. We developed a multi-method simulation model to gain an understanding of how individuals react and what are the decision-making processes undergoing a volcanic eruption. For this, we developed a system dynamics (SD) model that captures the psychosocial decision-making process of individuals facing a volcanic eruption. This theory proposes that individuals will make decisions to balance their levels of perception and acceptance of risk and that, in addition, they depend on certain motivational and cognitive variables. Once the evacuation decision making was captured by the SD model, we represented the evacuation process through agent-based simulation based on the relationship between evacuation probability and the diference between risk perception and risk acceptance levels. For experimentation and validation methods, we worked with the 2008 Chaitén (southern Chile) volcanic eruption and further population evacuation as a use case scenario.

There are many methods and scientific research approaches where modeling and understanding on how individuals evaluate natural origin risks. Despite the proficiency and depth of such studies, we evidenced a lack for a holistic approach where the most influencing factors in the individual decision-making process were covered. This research seeks to understand what those factors are, how they relate to each other, and how the behave with respect to individual perception and acceptance of risk. For this, we performed a thorough literature review covering the last decade in relation with the understanding of how these incidence factors affected the perception and acceptance of risk in the communities exposed to volcanic events under the decision-making process. Our research was able to detect how the identified variables influenced each other in this process. We analyzed different study cases found in the literature and, additionally, we propose as a further research a new theoretical approach related to decision-making modeling process under dynamic system that would be valuable as a contribution to risk management.

This research seeks to improve the service quality provided in Operating Rooms through a Key Performance Indicators (KPI) system based on the analysis of processes and resources used in three surgical units in Chile. This methodology integrates two frameworks: Lean Healthcare and Activity Based Costing. We analyzed these Operating Rooms to establish standard procedures and surgical costs. The proposed methodology includes the following four stages: (i) Identifying macro-processes in the Health Care Unit; (ii) Describing the macro-processes and their healthcare objectives; (iii) Analyzing and standardizing the described processes; and (iv) Generating indicators aimed at cost-control and indicators aimed at reducing activity-duration variability. The KPIs support the reduction of surgery variability, maintain low overhead costs, and set appropriate goals for the: (i) pre-operative; (ii) intraoperative; and (iii) postoperative stages. The implementation of Activity Based Costing, Ishikawa Diagram, and Value Stream Map allowed to identify the resources used in each activity performed, the costs of the activities, and the processes required to provide each surgery. Sample results, of the methodology and proposed application, include the identification of the three most expensive activities, which are: Provide total intravenous anesthesia, Perform postoperative nursing care and Monitor vital signs. These activities represent 29% of the total cost of an operating room. In addition, twelve process indicators were defined, such as Patient transfer time to OR and Extended use of OR. All of these indicators, processes and cost indicators, will likely improve the management of the operating rooms.

During the history of mankind, natural disasters have had severe repercussions on the different ecosystems, with volcanic eruptions being a clear example of this. This review is responsible for gathering the most important volatile hazards assessment research of the last decade with the objective of knowing the state of the art in relation to the studies of people's risk perception and acceptance in communities threatened by the danger of volcanic eruptions. In addition, this study includes the analysis of several cases across different countries. The results that this research offers serve as a frame of reference to determine and understand how resilient a community affected by the volatile hazards can be, since they are able to identify the main incident factors of risk that affect the communities to different degrees according to the context at the time of making the risk judgment. On the other hand, through this review, it is proposed as a future research topic to understand the levels of risk acceptance of individuals, due to the fact that the studies related to this subject are scarce.