This book explains in an easy-to-understand manner the "check" points to keep in mind when inspecting various social infrastructure structures. It is put together in a way that not only engineers who are on the front line of maintenance and management but also engineers who are not normally involved in maintenance and management of social infrastructures as well as general public can understand the importance of social infrastructure inspection work.

Socio-environmental crises are currently transforming the conditions for life on this planet, from climate change, to resource depletion, biodiversity loss and long-term pollutants. The vast scale of these changes, affecting land, sea and air have prompted calls for the 'ecologicalisation' of knowledge. This book adopts a much needed 'more-than-human' framework to grasp these complexities and challenges. It contains multidisciplinary insights and diverse methodological approaches to question how to revise, reshape and invent methods in order to work with non-humans in participatory ways. The book offers a framework for thinking critically about the promises and potentialities of participation from within a more-than-human paradigm, and opens up trajectories for its future development. It will be of interest to those working in the environmental humanities, animal studies, science and technology studies, ecology, and anthropology.

This open access book summarizes the findings of the VUELCO project, a multi-disciplinary and cross-boundary research funded by the European Commission's 7th framework program. It comprises four broad topics: 1. The global significance of volcanic unrest 2. Geophysical and geochemical fingerprints of unrest and precursory activity 3. Magma dynamics leading to unrest phenomena 4. Bridging the gap between science and decision-making Volcanic unrest is a complex multi-hazard phenomenon. The fact that unrest may, or may not lead to an imminent eruption contributes significant uncertainty to short-term volcanic hazard and risk assessment. Although it is reasonable to assume that all eruptions are associated with precursory activity of some sort, the understanding of the causative links between subsurface processes, resulting unrest signals and imminent eruption is incomplete. When a volcano evolves from dormancy into a phase of unrest, important scientific, political and social questions need to be addressed. This book is aimed at graduate students, researchers of volcanic phenomena, professionals in volcanic hazard and risk assessment, observatory personnel, as well as emergency managers who wish to learn about the complex nature of volcanic unrest and how to utilize new findings to deal with unrest phenomena at scientific and emergency managing levels. This book is open access under a CC BY license.

This is a study on the long-lasting consequences of a disastrous earthquake that hit the city of Messina, Sicily, in 1908. The quake killed about 86,000 people, and destroyed one of the most important portal cities of the Mediterranean. The book investigates both the forces that shaped that event and made it possible - firstly, urban speculation processes at the end of the nineteenth century - and the role of that occurrence in creating a complex event that, on the one hand, accelerated trends and tendencies that were already in motion; and, on the other, produced an entirely new social space based on social separation and the raise of a widespread marginal class. Such a class developed within urban borders and spaces that, over the decades, grew according to the same logic and directions that followed the reconstruction. Especially the shacks, still a visible presence in the city, represent the lieu of reproduction both of a class and the whole of the social relations stemming from the disaster. It shows how key-concepts in contemporary scientific analysis, such as "shock economy" and "economy of disaster," can be aptly backdated. Above all, this study broadens the normal analyses of disasters by showing the stratification of institutional techniques and economic forces that, over the decades, intervened and (re-)shaped the site of a disaster and its social structure.

This open access book originates from an international workshop organized by Turkish Natural Catastrophe Insurance Pool (TCIP) in November 2019 that gathered renown researchers from academia, representatives of leading international reinsurance and modeling companies as well as government agencies responsible of insurance pricing in Turkey. The book includes chapters related to post-earthquake damage assessment, the state-of-art and novel earthquake loss modeling, their implementation and implication in insurance pricing at national, regional and global levels, and the role of earthquake insurance in building resilient societies and fire following earthquakes. The rich context encompassed in the book makes it a valuable tool not only for professionals and researchers dealing with earthquake loss modeling but also for practitioners in the insurance and reinsurance industry.

This book presents a comprehensive approach to address the need to improve the design of tailings dams, their management and the regulation of tailings management facilities to reduce, and eventually eliminate, the risk of such facilities failing. The scope of the challenge is well documented in the report by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) and GRID Arendal entitled "Mine Tailings Storage: Safety Is No Accident," which was released in October 2017. The report recommends that "Regulators, industry and communities should adopt a shared, zero-failure objective to tailings storage facilities..." and identifies several areas where further improvements are required. In this context, the application of cutting-edge risk-assessment methodologies and risk-management practices can contribute to a significant reduction and eventual elimination of dam failures through Risk Informed Decision Making. As such, the book focuses on identifying and describing the risk-assessment approaches and risk-management practices that need to be implemented in order to develop a way forward to achieve socially acceptable levels of tailings dam risk.

This book presents a technical approach to promoting the development of disaster and climate change risk financing and transfer strategies, and discusses several practical issues, chiefly focusing on Latin America and the Caribbean. Innovative risk financing and insurance mechanisms are vital for governments around the world, in order to provide financial protection and reduce the economic costs and social and developmental impacts of natural disasters and climate change. The book's main content is complemented by a wealth of graphics, diagrams and tables that illustrate the concepts discussed and make the text accessible for practitioners and non-practitioners alike. The book offers proven, creative and innovative ideas on how to tackle risk financing and management for natural disasters and climate change. Strategic topics such as sovereign disaster risk financing, property catastrophe risk insurance, and agricultural insurance are also discussed.

This book explores the current challenges with regard to uncertainty and risk in water management, as well as the interlinkages between drought and water management. It focuses on the challenges for water management organisations, which are expected to adapt to such changes and implement adaptive water management. The book proposes a methodology for assessing organisations' adaptive capacity, named REACT, and demonstrates its application in a case study. It subsequently analyses the barriers hindering water management organisations' ability to adapt, and investigates the socio-cultural and economic barriers in water governance to applying adaptive water management (AWM) strategies. Lastly, the book describes how to enable AWM in order to face current and future drought risks by integrating it with drought risk management. Given its scope, it will appeal to scientists, pracademics and professionals from academia, the water industry and involved in policymaking.

**SUNDAY TIMES AND THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER** 'An epoch-defining book' Matt Haig 'If you read just one work of non-fiction this year, it should probably be this' David Sexton, Evening Standard Selected as a Book of the Year 2019 by the Sunday Times, Spectator and New Statesman A Waterstones Paperback of the Year and shortlisted for the Foyles Book of the Year 2019 Longlisted for the PEN / E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award It is worse, much worse, than you think. The slowness of climate change is a fairy tale, perhaps as pernicious as the one that says it isn't happening at all, and if your anxiety about it is dominated by fears of sea-level rise, you are barely scratching the surface of what terrors are possible, even within the lifetime of a teenager today. Over the past decades, the term "Anthropocene" has climbed into the popular imagination - a name given to the geologic era we live in now, one defined by human intervention in the life of the planet. But however sanguine you might be about the proposition that we have ravaged the natural world, which we surely have, it is another thing entirely to consider the possibility that we have only provoked it, engineering first in ignorance and then in denial a climate system that will now go to war with us for many centuries, perhaps until it destroys us. In the meantime, it will remake us, transforming every aspect of the way we live-the planet no longer nurturing a dream of abundance, but a living nightmare.

Solar energetic particles (SEPs) emitted from the Sun are a major space weather hazard motivating the development of predictive capabilities. This book presents the results and findings of the HESPERIA (High Energy Solar Particle Events forecasting and Analysis) project of the EU HORIZON 2020 programme. It discusses the forecasting operational tools developed within the project, and presents progress to SEP research contributed by HESPERIA both from the observational as well as the SEP modelling perspective. Using multi-frequency observational data and simulations HESPERIA investigated the chain of processes from particle acceleration in the corona, particle transport in the magnetically complex corona and interplanetary space, to the detection near 1 AU. The book also elaborates on the unique software that has been constructed for inverting observations of relativistic SEPs to physical parameters that can be compared with space-borne measurements at lower energies. Introductory and pedagogical material included in the book make it accessible to students at graduate level and will be useful as background material for Space Physics and Space Weather courses with emphasis on Solar Energetic Particle Event Forecasting and Analysis. This book is published with open access under a CC BY license.

The storm came on the night of 31 October. It was a full moon, and the tides were at their peak; the great rivers of eastern Bengal were flowing high and fast to the sea. In the early hours the inhabitants of the coast and islands were overtaken by an immense wave from the Bay of Bengal -- a wall of water that reached a height of 40 feet in some places. The wave swept away everything in its path, drowning around 215,000 people. At least another 100,000 died in the cholera epidemic and famine that followed. It was the worst calamity of its kind in recorded history. Such events are often described as 'natural disasters'. Kingsbury turns that interpretation on its head, showing that the cyclone of 1876 was not simply a 'natural' event, but one shaped by all-too-human patterns of exploitation and inequality -- by divisions within Bengali society, and the enormous disparities of political and economic power that characterised British rule on the subcontinent. With Bangladesh facing rising sea levels and stronger, more frequent storms, there is every reason to revisit this terrible calamity. An Imperial Disaster is troubling but essential reading: history for an age of climate change.

This book is the result of collaboration within the frames of the 5th International Conference "Trigger Effects in Geosystems" held in the Institute of Geosphere Dynamics of Russian Academy of Sciences, June 2019. This book aims to raise awareness about different triggering aspects in the geosphere and its effects.The conference provided a multidisciplinary platform with a focus on (i) the influence of natural and anthropogenic factors on the geosphere, geomechanical systems and anthropogenic objects found in a subcritical state and (ii) the influence of these factors on the system "atmosphere - ionosphere". The problems considered in the book may be interesting for a wide audience including students, professionals, researches, and for the industry.

This book aims to inform policy-makers, engineers and earth scientists about the current and emerging role of geophysics in addressing environmental processes, assessments, and policy directions related to new and existing dams and levees. Until now geophysics has concentrated on characterization and remediation of dams and levees, but now the field is changing our understanding on the influence of natural processes (e.g., floods, dissolution) and human activities in the design, and management of these structures. This monograph includes advances in the following fields of Dams and Levees studies: * New insights from small and mid-sized laboratory experiments* Integrated methods electromagnetic, seismic, potential methods* Inverse modeling approaches* Statistical considerations* Monitoring of processes attending aging structures * Hazard monitoring* Risk Analysis

Life today is rife with rapid-fire "high alert" responses, a proliferating trend that is especially pronounced in the United States (though most certainly felt elsewhere as well), where past catastrophes shape expanding perceptions of imminent danger. September 11, 2001 looms as an inescapable spectral presence, defining an important baseline for the ramping up of biosecurity measures. However, the contributors to this volume argue against biosecurity as the new status quo by focusing instead on the ugly underbelly. Through considering the vulnerability of individuals and groups and particularly looking at how vulnerability propagates in the shadow of biosecurity, BioInsecurity and Vulnerability challenges the acceptance of surveillance measures or security interventions as necessities of life in the new millennium.

This is the first English language book to systematically introduce basic theories, methods and applications of disaster risk science from the angle of different subjects including disaster science, emergency technology and risk management. Viewed from basic theories, disaster risk science consists of disaster system, formation mechanism and process, covering 3 chapters in this book. From the perspective of technical methods, disaster risk science includes measurement and assessment of disasters, mapping and zoning of disaster risk, covering 4 chapters in this book. From the angle of application practices, disaster risk science contains disaster management, emergency response and integrated disaster risk paradigm, covering 3 chapters in the book. The book can be a good reference for researchers, students, and practitioners in the field of disaster risk science and natural disaster risk management for more actively participating in and supporting the development of "disaster risk science".

Emergency First Aid, 3rd Edition, is a reference guide on how to recognize and respond to common medical emergencies. It will allow the user to check for vital signs and assess the severity of medical emergencies and when to call for help, how to care for victims until medical help arrives, or what to do if a situation requires immediate response (e.g., choking, emergency childbirth). In an emergency, it will quickly and simply instruct you of what you can do to help. Made in the USA.www.waterfordpress.com

This book introduces a trans-scale framework necessary for the physical understanding of breakdown behaviors and presents some new paradigm to clarify the mechanisms underlying the trans-scale processes. The book, which is based on the interaction of mechanics and statistical physics, will help to deepen the understanding of how microdamage induces disaster and benefit the forecasting of the occurrence of catastrophic rupture. It offers notes and problems in each part as interesting background and illustrative exercises. Readers of the book would be graduate students, researchers, engineers working on civil, mechanical and geo-engineering, etc. However, people with various background but interested in disaster reduction and forecasting, like applied physics, geophysics, seismology, etc., may also be interested in the book.

This book proposes a methodology for the identification of flooding in urban areas, by the denomination of 1) urban hydrographic basin; and 2) polygon of flood risk. This work will enable readers to elaborate a preventive program in Latin America and analogous regions. The authorities could use it as a basis to create urban planning strategies or preventive programs to reduce or eliminate the flooding hazard. The growth of an urban area implies that the natural terrain is covered by an asphalt folder, which results in an Urban Hydrographic Basin where rainwater drains down its streets filtering through sewers towards rainwater drains or wastewater. Initially, the drainages are calculated according to the population in a specific urban area, however, the population growth causes the growth of the urban area, where the old drainages and new roads are linked, causing their saturation and chaos. More water runs down the streets and is accumulated in the lower areas, causing flooding.

They huddle low, nostrils burning from the smoke. A wave of despair flows over Tye. Nothing will survive this firestorm. The bush and everything she loves will be lost. It's the summer holidays, and Tye is staying at her grandparents' lodge at Chancy's Point in Tasmania's beautiful Central Highlands. But her plans for fun with best friend Lily and working on her pencil pine conservation project are thwarted as fire threatens the community and the bush she loves - and when Tye discovers Bailey, a runaway boy hiding out, she is torn between secretly helping him and her loyalty to her grandparents. As the fire comes closer and evacuation warnings abound, Tye is caught up in the battle of her life. Will she and Bailey survive? What will happen to her beloved pencil pines and the wildlife at risk? Can she and her close-knit community make a difference in a world threatened by climate change?

This book is one out of six IAEG XIII Congress and AEG 61st Annual Meeting proceeding volumes, and deals with topics related to the advances made in engineering geology with emphasis on education, soil and rock properties, and modeling. The theme of the IAEG/AEG Meeting, held in San Francisco from September 17-21, 2018, is Engineering Geology for a Sustainable World. The meeting proceedings analyze the dynamic role of engineering geology in our changing world. The meeting topics and subject areas of the six volumes are: Slope Stability: Case Histories, Landslide Mapping, Emerging Technologies; Geotechnical and Environmental Site Characterization; Mining, Aggregates, Karst; Dams, Tunnels, Groundwater Resources, Climate Change; Geologic Hazards: Earthquakes, Land Subsidence, Coastal Hazards, and Emergency Response; and Advances in Engineering Geology: Education, Soil and Rock Properties, Modeling.

In 1931, China suffered a catastrophic flood that claimed millions of lives. This was neither a natural nor human-made disaster. Rather, it was created by an interaction between the environment and society. Regular inundation had long been an integral feature of the ecology and culture of the middle Yangzi, yet by the modern era floods had become humanitarian catastrophes. Courtney describes how the ecological and economic effects of the 1931 flood pulse caused widespread famine and epidemics. He takes readers into the inundated streets of Wuhan, describing the terrifying and disorientating sensory environment. He explains why locals believed that an angry Dragon King was causing the flood, and explores how Japanese invasion and war with the Communists inhibited both official relief efforts and refugee coping strategies. This innovative study offers the first in-depth analysis of the 1931 flood, and charts the evolution of one of China's most persistent environmental problems.

This book is one out of six IAEG XIII Congress and AEG 61st Annual Meeting proceeding volumes, and deals with topics related to geologic hazards, such as earthquakes, land subsidence, coastal hazards, and the emergency response. The theme of the IAEG/AEG Meeting, held in San Francisco from September 17-21, 2018, is Engineering Geology for a Sustainable World. The meeting proceedings analyze the dynamic role of engineering geology in our changing world. The meeting topics and subject areas of the six volumes are: Slope Stability: Case Histories, Landslide Mapping, Emerging Technologies; Geotechnical and Environmental Site Characterization; Mining, Aggregates, Karst; Dams, Tunnels, Groundwater Resources, Climate Change; Geologic Hazards: Earthquakes, Land Subsidence, Coastal Hazards, and Emergency Response; and Advances in Engineering Geology: Education, Soil and Rock Properties, Modeling.

This monograph presents the state of art of the geologic knowledge about the Spanish coast obtained through scientific research in the last 30 years.From a general point of view, coasts are the most quickly changing systems of the Earth. This is critical, since many human resources, such as the main part of economic and social activities, are located in the coastal areas. Especially in the case of Spain these coasts include cities, wide industrial areas (including harbor complexes), important ecologic systems, and our main economic resource: tourism. Understanding the dynamic functioning of each element of this coast is vital for correct future coastal management, so as to solve problems derived from bad plans developed in the last decades of the twentieth century. This is a valuable text for advanced graduate students and coastal researchers, which connects the specific dynamic functioning of the main Spanish coastal environments and their relationships with human activities.