Geospatial technology is a combination of state-of-the-art remote sensing and technology for geographic information systems (GIS) and global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) for the mapping and monitoring of landscapes and environment. The main thrust of using geospatial technology is to understand the causes, mechanisms, and consequences of spatial heterogeneity, while its ultimate objective is to provide a scientific basis for developing and maintaining ecologically, economically, and socially sustainable landscapes. This book presents new research on the interdisciplinary applications of geospatial technology for identification, assessment, monitoring, and modelling issues related to landscape, natural resources, and environmental management. The book specifically focuses on the creation, collection, storage, processing, modelling, interpretation, display, and dissemination of spatio-temporal data, which help to resolve environmental management issues including ecosystem change, resource utilization, land use management, and environmental pollution. The positive environmental impacts of information technology advancements with regard to global environmental and climate change are also discussed. The book addresses the interests of a wide spectrum of readers who have a common interest in geospatial science, geology, water resource management, database management, planning and policy making, and resource management.

This book presents the select proceedings of the Virtual Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction (VCDRR 2021). It provides insights on urban resilience and sustainable infrastructure. All the chapters in this volume are segregated into five clusters, e.g., Resilient infrastructure in construction, Innovative construction interventions, Waste Management and Disaster Risk Reduction, Urban Development and Sustainability, and Cross-cutting issues. Various topics covered in this book are risk assessment, prevention, mitigation, preparedness and response, renewable energy, waste management, resilient cities, and environmental management. This book is a comprehensive volume on disaster risk reduction (DRR) and its management for a sustainable built environment. This book will be useful for the students, researchers, policy makers and professionals working in the area of civil engineering, especially disaster management.

In recent years, the damage caused by natural disasters has increased worldwide; this trend will only continue with the impact of climate change. Despite this, the role for the most common mechanism for managing risk - insurance - has received little attention. This book considers the contribution that insurance arrangements can make to society's management of the risks of natural hazards in a changing climate. It also looks at the potential impacts of climate change on the insurance sector, and insurers' responses to climate change. The author combines theory with evidence from the rich experiences of the Netherlands together with examples from around the world. He recognises the role of the individual in preparing for disasters, as well as the difficulties individuals have in understanding and dealing with infrequent risks. Written in plain language, this book will appeal to researchers and policy-makers alike.

Provides an understanding of the relationship between social-ecological systems and multilevel governance so that readers can properly deal with hydrometeorological extreme events and hazards Based on field investigations from EU research projects, this book is the first to devote itself to scientific and policy-related knowledge concerning climate change-induced extreme events. It depicts national and international strategies, as well as tools used to improve multilevel governance for the management of hydrometeorological risks. It also demonstrates how these strategies play out over different scales of the decision-making processes. Facing Hydrometeorological Extreme Events: A Governance Issue offers comprehensive coverage of such events as floods, droughts, coastal storms, and wind storms. It showcases real-life success stories of multilevel governance and highlights the individuals involved and the resources mobilized in the decision-making processes. The book starts by presenting a synthesis of hydrometeorological extreme events and their impacts on society. It then demonstrates how societies are organizing themselves to face these extreme events, focusing on the strategies of integration of risk management in governance and public policy. In addition, it includes the results of several EU-funded projects such as CLIMB, STARFLOOD, and INTERREG IVB project DROP. The first book dedicated to hydrometeorological extreme events governance based on field investigations from EU research projects Offers a "multi-hazards" approach--mixing policy, governance, and field investigations' main outputs Features the results of EU-funded projects addressing hydrometeorological extreme events Part of the Hydrometeorological Extreme Events series Facing Hydrometeorological Extreme Events is an ideal book for upper-graduate students, postgraduates, researchers, scientists, and policy-makers working in the field.

Disaster policies present a new challenge to the practitioners and students of global politics; this book explains how political science enriches the contribution of the social sciences to the study of disaster relief, aid and reconstruction following the major disaster events, both natural and man-made, of recent times.

After the storm, a community comes togetherFramed by the stories of Hurricane Maria evacuees, Tossed to the Wind is the gripping account of the wreckage, despair, and displacement left in the wake of one of the deadliest natural disasters on U.S. soil. It is also a story of hope and endurance as Puerto Ricans on the island shared what little they had and the diaspora in Florida offered refuge.Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico as a high-end Category 4, and the storm surge, flash flooding, and countless landslides created widespread devastation. One hundred percent of the island lost drinking water and electricity. More than 3 million U.S. citizens lived for months without power, making it the worst blackout in American history. The slow recovery led to a mass evacuation. Thousands gathered what they had left and traveled to central Florida-already home to 1 million Puerto Ricans. In Tossed to the Wind, Maria Padilla and Nancy Rosado interview Puerto Ricans from all walks of life who now live in Orlando and Kissimmee, who fight every day to pick up the pieces of their world after Hurricane Maria. In their own words, evacuees describe families living temporarily out of motels, parents anxious about providing for their children, children starting new schools, and everyone worried about the families and friends they left behind. Told from the midst of chaos and incomprehensible loss, these are the stories-filled with pain and wisdom, sadness and laughter-that showcase the strength and resolve of Puerto Ricans.

This book aims to clarify the priorities of the Sendai Framework for the DRR 2015 - 2030, through gathering recent contributions addressing the different ways researchers define, measure, reduce, and manage risk in the challenge of the DRR. Beyond a discussion of the different definitions of disaster risk; this book provides contributions focused on optimization approaches that support the decision-making process in the challenge of managing DRR problems considering emerging disaster risks in the medium and long term, as well as national and local applications. Some of the topics covered include network flow problems, stochastic optimization, discrete optimization, multi-objective programming, approximation techniques, and heuristic approaches. The target audience of the book includes professionals who work in Linear Programming, Logistics, Optimization (Mathematical, Robust, Stochastic), Management Science, Mathematical Programming, Networks, Scheduling, Simulation, Supply Chain Management, Sustainability, and similar areas. It can be useful for researchers, academics, graduate students, and anyone else doing research in the field

The monograph covers the fundamentals and the consequences of extreme geophysical phenomena like asteroid impacts, climatic change, earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, landslides, volcanic eruptions, flooding, and space weather. This monograph also addresses their associated, local and worldwide socio-economic impacts. The understanding and modeling of these phenomena is critical to the development of timely worldwide strategies for the prediction of natural and anthropogenic extreme events, in order to mitigate their adverse consequences. This monograph is unique in as much as it is dedicated to recent theoretical, numerical and empirical developments that aim to improve: (i) the understanding, modeling and prediction of extreme events in the geosciences, and, (ii) the quantitative evaluation of their economic consequences. The emphasis is on coupled, integrative assessment of the physical phenomena and their socio-economic impacts. With its overarching theme, Extreme Events: Observations, Modeling and Economics will be relevant to and become an important tool for researchers and practitioners in the fields of hazard and risk analysis in general, as well as to those with a special interest in climate change, atmospheric and oceanic sciences, seismo-tectonics, hydrology, and space weather.

Disasters are increasing in frequency and intensity across the world, causing significant destruction to individuals and communities. Yet many social workers are ill-prepared for the demands of this field of practice. This book discusses the role of social workers in disaster work, including in disaster-preparedness, during the disaster and in post-disaster practice. It addresses the complexities of social work disaster practice, noting the need for social workers to understand the language of trauma and to respond effectively. The authors discuss disaster theory and practice, drawing out elements of practice at macro-, meso- and micro-levels and at various stages of the disaster. They examine the factors that shape vulnerability in disasters and draw out the possibility of post-traumatic growth. The final section discusses strategies for self-care in disaster practice, noting the organisational and personal strategies that can be adopted to facilitate the wellbeing of workers in the field. With real-life case studies from top scholars in the field, this book is essential reading for social work practitioners working in the field of disaster practice, as well as social work students and academics. It will also be useful to other health professionals who wish to understand this field of practice.

The diverse cultures of the Caribbean have been shaped as much by hurricanes as they have by diplomacy, commerce, or the legacy of colonial rule. In this panoramic work of social history, Stuart Schwartz examines how Caribbean societies have responded to the dangers of hurricanes, and how these destructive storms have influenced the region's history, from the rise of plantations, to slavery and its abolition, to migrations, racial conflict, and war.

Taking readers from the voyages of Columbus to the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, Schwartz looks at the ethical, political, and economic challenges that hurricanes posed to the Caribbean's indigenous populations and the different European peoples who ventured to the New World to exploit its riches. He describes how the United States provided the model for responding to environmental threats when it emerged as a major power and began to exert its influence over the Caribbean in the nineteenth century, and how the region's governments came to assume greater responsibilities for prevention and relief, efforts that by the end of the twentieth century were being questioned by free-market neoliberals. Schwartz sheds light on catastrophes like Katrina by framing them within a long and contentious history of human interaction with the natural world.

Spanning more than five centuries and drawing on extensive archival research in Europe and the Americas, "Sea of Storms" emphasizes the continuing role of race, social inequality, and economic ideology in the shaping of our responses to natural disaster.

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina and the flooding of New Orleans in 2005, this interdisciplinary book brings together five years of empirical research funded by the National Science Foundation. It explores the causes of flooding in the United States and the ways in which local communities can reduce the associated human casualties and property damage. Focussing on Texas and Florida, the authors investigate factors other than rainfall that determine the degree of flooding, and consider the key role of non-structural techniques and strategies in flood mitigation. The authors present an empirical and multi-scale assessment that underlines the critical importance of local planning and development decisions. Written for advanced students and researchers in hazard mitigation, hydrology, geography, environmental planning and public policy, this book will also provide policy makers, government employees and engineers with important insights into how to make their communities more resilient to the adverse impacts of flooding.

Fire is pivotal to the functioning of ecosystems in Australia, affecting the distribution and abundance of the continent's unique and highly diverse range of plants and animals. Conservation of this natural biodiversity therefore requires a good understanding of scientific processes involved in the action of fire on the landscape. This book provides a synthesis of current knowledge in this area and its application in contemporary land management. Central to the discussion is an exploration of the concept of the fire regime - the cumulative pattern of fires and their individual characteristics (fire type, frequency, intensity and season) - and its interactions with biodiversity. Contributions by thirty-two leading experts cover a broad sweep of topics, including prehistory, future climate change, fire behaviour, modelling of temporal and spatial patterns, plant and animal life-cycles, case studies of major ecosystems, and management policies and systems.

"Overcoming Katrina" tells the stories of 27 New Orleanians as they fought to survive Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath.""Their oral histories offer first-hand experiences: three days on a roof with Navy veteran Leonard Smith; at the convention center with waitress Eleanor Thornton; and with Willie Pitford, an elevator man, as he rescued 150 people in New Orleans East. "Overcoming" approaches the question of why New Orleans matters, from perspectives of the individuals who lived, loved, worked, and celebrated life and death there prior to being scattered across the country by Hurricane Katrina. This book's twenty-seven narrators range from Mack Slan, a conservative businessman who disparages the younger generation for not sharing his ability to make "good, rational decisions," to Kalamu ya Salaam, who was followed by the New Orleans Police Department for several years as a militant defender of Black Power in the late 1960s and '70s. These narratives are memorials to the corner stores, the Baptist churches, the community health clinics, and those streets where the aunties stood on the corner, and whose physical traces have now all been washed away. They conclude with visions of a safer, equitably rebuilt New Orleans. *Scroll down for more audio excerpts from "Overcoming Katrina"*

Many disasters are approached by researchers, managers and policymakers as if they have a clear beginning, middle and end. But often the experience of being in a disaster is not like this. This book offers non-linear, non-prescriptive ways of thinking about disasters and allows the people affected by disaster the chance to speak.

The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, which covered nearly thirty thousand square miles across seven states, was the most destructive river flood in U.S. history. Due to the speed of new media and the slow progress of the flood, this was the first environmental disaster to be experienced on a mass scale. As it moved from north to south down an environmentally and technologically altered valley, inundating plantations and displacing more than half a million people, the flood provoked an intense and lasting cultural response. The Flood Year 1927 draws from newspapers, radio broadcasts, political cartoons, vaudeville, blues songs, poetry, and fiction to show how this event took on public meanings. Americans at first seemed united in what Herbert Hoover called a "great relief machine," but deep rifts soon arose. Southerners, pointing to faulty federal levee design, decried the attack of Yankee water. The condition of African American evacuees in "concentration camps" prompted pundits like W.E.B. Du Bois and Ida B. Wells to warn of the return of slavery to Dixie. And environmentalists like Gifford Pinchot called the flood "the most colossal blunder in civilized history." Susan Scott Parrish examines how these and other key figures--from entertainers Will Rogers, Miller & Lyles, and Bessie Smith to authors Sterling Brown, William Faulkner, and Richard Wright--shaped public awareness and collective memory of the event. The crises of this period that usually dominate historical accounts are war and financial collapse, but The Flood Year 1927 enables us to assess how mediated environmental disasters became central to modern consciousness.

A richly nuanced cultural history of the Great Mississippi flood The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 was the most destructive river flood in U.S. history, drowning crops and displacing more than half a million people across seven states. It was also the first environmental disaster to be experienced virtually on a mass scale. The Flood Year 1927 draws from newspapers, radio broadcasts, political cartoons, vaudeville, blues songs, poetry, and fiction to show how this event provoked an intense and lasting cultural response. Americans at first seemed united in what Herbert Hoover called a "great relief machine," but deep rifts soon arose. Southerners, pointing to faulty federal levee design, decried the attack of Yankee water. The condition of African American evacuees prompted comparisons to slavery from pundits like W.E.B. Du Bois and Ida B. Wells. And environmentalists like Gifford Pinchot called the flood "the most colossal blunder in civilized history." Susan Scott Parrish examines how these and other key figures-from entertainers Will Rogers, Miller & Lyles, and Bessie Smith to authors Sterling Brown, William Faulkner, and Richard Wright-shaped public awareness and collective memory of the event. The crises of this period that usually dominate historical accounts are war and financial collapse, but The Flood Year 1927 allows us to assess how mediated environmental disasters became central to modern consciousness.

* Major disasters increased over 93 per cent during the 1990s, reaching 712 in 2001 * Up to 340 million people are affected by disasters every year* 'Vulnerability' is the key to understanding the causes, impacts and ways to mitigate disasters In this penetrating analysis, the authors critically examine "vulnerability" as a concept that is vital to the way we understand the impact and magnitude of disasters. This book is a counterbalance to technocratic approaches that limit themselves to simply looking at natural phenomena. Through the notion of vulnerability, the authors stress the importance of social processes and human-environmental interactions as causal agents in the making of disasters. They critically examine what renders communities unsafe, a condition they argue that depends primarily on the relative position of advantage or disadvantage that a particular group occupies within a society's social order. Bolstering their theoretical analysis with case studies drawn from Asia, Africa and Latin America, the authors also look at vulnerability in terms of its relationship to development and through its impact on policy and peoples' lives.

When a magnitude 8.8 earthquake occurred off the coast of Chile on February 27, 2010, it affected 80 percent of Chile's population. Damage to lifelines was caused by strong ground shaking, permanent ground deformation, lateral spread, and a tsunami in the coastal areas of Bio Bio and Maule. Lifeline services were significantly disrupted for the first week, at a considerable cost to Chile's economy. This TCLEE report discusses in detail the effects of the earthquake, as observed by an ASCE-TCLEE team of civil engineers in April 2010. The team examined the performance of lifeline infrastructure systems, including transportation, ports, gas and liquid fuel, electric power, telecommunications, water and wastewater, and airports. An overview of each system's performance is provided, followed by a description of the damage to specific sectors or locations. An analysis of infrastructure interdependencies and resilience in Chile is included, as well as a report on emergency response, recovery, and social impact. This monograph will be of particular interest to civil engineers, managers, planners, emergency management personnel, and government officials charged with maintaining lifeline infrastructure systems to withstand earthquakes and other natural hazards.

This resource manual for college-level science instructors reevaluates the role of testing in their curricula and describes innovative techniques pioneered by other teachers. part I examines the effects of the following on lower-division courses: changes in exam content, format, and environment; revisions in grading practices; student response; colleague reaction' the sharing of new practices with other interested professionals, and more. The book includes a comprehensive introduction, faculty-composed narratives, commentaries by well-known science educators, and a visual index to 100 more refined innovations.

Most scientists now agree that some sixty-five million years ago, an immense comet slammed into the Yucatan, detonating a blast twenty million times more powerful than the largest hydrogen bomb, punching a hole ten miles deep in the earth. Trillions of tons of rock were vaporized and launched into the atmosphere. For a thousand miles in all directions, vegetation burst into flames. There were tremendous blast waves, searing winds, showers of molten matter from the sky, earthquakes, and a terrible darkness that cut out sunlight for a year, enveloping the planet in freezing cold. Thousands of species of plants and animals were obliterated, including the dinosaurs, some of which may have become extinct in a matter of hours. In Impact, Gerrit L. Verschuur offers an eye-opening look at such catastrophic collisions with our planet. Perhaps more important, he paints an unsettling portrait of the possibility of new collisions with earth, exploring potential threats to our planet and describing what scientists are doing right now to prepare for this awful possibility.
Every day something from space hits our planet, Verschuur reveals. In fact, about 10,000 tons of space debris fall to earth every year, mostly in meteoric form. The author recounts spectacular recent sightings, such as over Allende, Mexico, in 1969, when a fireball showered the region with four tons of fragments, and the twenty-six pound meteor that went through the trunk of a red Chevy Malibu in Peekskill, New York, in 1992 (the meteor was subsequently sold for $69,000 and the car itself fetched $10,000). But meteors are not the greatest threat to life on earth, the author points out. The major threats are asteroids and comets. The reader discovers that astronomers have located some 350 NEAs ("Near Earth Asteroids"), objects whose orbits cross the orbit of the earth, the largest of which are 1627 Ivar (6 kilometers wide) and 1580 Betula (8 kilometers). Indeed, we learn that in 1989, a bus-sized asteroid called Asclepius missed our planet by 650,000 kilometers (a mere six hours), and that in 1994 a sixty-foot object passed within 180,000 kilometers, half the distance to the moon. Comets, of course, are even more deadly. Verschuur provides a gripping description of the small comet that exploded in the atmosphere above the Tunguska River valley in Siberia, in 1908, in a blinding flash visible for several thousand miles (every tree within sixty miles of ground zero was flattened). He discusses Comet Swift-Tuttle--"the most dangerous object in the solar system"--a comet far larger than the one that killed off the dinosaurs, due to pass through earth's orbit in the year 2126. And he recounts the collision of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 with Jupiter in 1994, as some twenty cometary fragments struck the giant planet over the course of several days, casting titanic plumes out into space (when Fragment G hit, it outshone the planet on the infrared band, and left a dark area at the impact site larger than the Great Red Spot). In addition, the author describes the efforts of Spacewatch and other groups to locate NEAs, and evaluates the idea that comet and asteroid impacts have been an underrated factor in the evolution of life on earth.
Astronomer Herbert Howe observed in 1897: "While there are not definite data to reason from, it is believed that an encounter with the nucleus of one of the largest comets is not to be desired." As Verschuur shows in Impact, we now have substantial data with which to support Howe's tongue-in-cheek remark. Whether discussing monumental tsunamis or the innumerable comets in the Solar System, this book will enthrall anyone curious about outer space, remarkable natural phenomenon, or the future of the planet earth.

The earthquake that struck Haiti on 12 January 2010 thrust the nation into the public consciousness as never before. There is now an unprecedented empathy for and interest in Haiti, and a related need for information on Haitian reality, beyond the cliches often associated with the nation. In particular, there is a special interest in the earthquake and the questions of Haiti's future development. Haiti Rising responds to this public interest and has three fundamental aims: to raise awareness of Haiti, its people, culture and history; to allow some who were in Haiti during the earthquake a chance to testify. The book brings together more than twenty essays written by some of the most prominent authorities on Haiti, and offers insights on the political, social and historical contexts, as well as the uniquely rich culture of the nation. The first part features survivor testimonies - moving accounts of the earthquake and its aftermath written by authors and academics, Haitian nationals and foreign visitors. The second part presents essays on economics, politics, society and culture (music, religion, visual art), and the ways in which they are interrelated in history and in contemporary life. The third section focuses on the history of Haiti from colonial times to the present and shows the ways in which history has shaped Haitian society. It shows how colonial class and colour structures have persisted, how the revolution has shaped subsequent political, cultural and social structures, and how the legacy of the Duvalier dictatorship has lingered. The final section features contributors who were not in Haiti at the time of the earthquake, but who have strong ties to Haiti. These authors write about their personal connections to Haiti, their reactions to the earthquake, and their hopes and recommendations for reconstruction.

Measured in terms of loss of life and property, hurricanes rank near the top of natural hazards. And with increasing development of coastal areas in the United States, the societal impact of these storms is likely to increase. This book, an applied climatology of North Atlantic hurricanes, is intended to serve as an intermediary between hurricane climate research and the users of hurricane information. It discusses: the climatology of tropical cyclones in general and those of the North Atlantic in particular; major North Atlantic hurricanes, focusing on US landfalling storms; prediction models used in forecasting; and societal vulnerability to hurricanes, including ideas for modelling the relationship between climatological data and decision-making in the social and economic sciences.