This book presents an in-depth ethnographic case study carried out in the years following the 2010 Haiti earthquake to present the role of faith beliefs in disaster response. The earthquake is one of the most destructive on record, and the aftermath, including a cholera epidemic and ongoing humanitarian aid, has continued for years following the catastrophe. Based on dozens of interviews, this book gives primacy to survivors' narratives. It begins by laying out the Haitian context, before presenting an account of the earthquake from survivors' perspectives. It then explores in detail how the earthquake affected the religious, mainly Christian, faith of survivors and how religious faith influenced how they responded to, and are recovering from, the experience. The account is also informed by geoscience and the accompanying "complicating factors." Finally, the Haitian experience highlights the significant role that religious faith can play alongside other learned coping strategies in disaster response and recovery globally. This book contributes an important case study to an emerging literature in which the influence of both religion and narrative is being recognised. It will be of interest to scholars of any discipline concerned with disaster response, including practical theology, anthropology, psychology, geography, Caribbean studies and earth science. It will also provide a resource for non-governmental organisations.

This book re-considers property law for a future of environmental disruption. As slogans such as "build the wall" or "stop the boats" affect public policy, there are counter-questions as to whether positivist or statist notions of property are fit for purpose in a time of human mobility and environmental disruption. State-centric property laws construct legal fictions of sovereign control over land, notwithstanding the persistent reality of informal settlements in many parts of the Global South. In a world affected by catastrophic disasters, this book develops a vision of adaptive governance for property in land based on a critical re-assessment of state-centric property law. This book will appeal to a broad readership with interests in legal theory, property law, adaptive governance, international development, refugee studies, postcolonial studies, and natural disasters.

This book examines how media can be used in facilitating crisis control following natural disasters. Set in the context of the contemporary Chinese nationalistic culture this book dissects how Chinese media enhances disaster relief by constructing the meaning of it. It takes a historical overview of the negotiations between discursive power and media coverage of natural disasters in Chinese media. It then conducts a case study of the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake to analyze how Chinese media enhance crisis control in engaging with contemporary Chinese nationalism. In examining the mediated disaster relief closely relevant to this study within a global context this book briefly analyzes the Australian media's representation of the 2013 Tasmanian Bushfire. In a penetrating investigation of the research question a systematic theoretic framework is structured consisting of the theories of representation, discourse and power, cultural identity, media framing and narratives.

This book highlights studies of differentiation problems of natural geosystems because of anthropogenic impact. The systematic methodology of comprehensive ecological assessment of anthropogenic impact on natural geosystems and their differentiations on the level of technogenic conditionality for ensuring rational environmental management and environmental protection are discussed. The practical importance of this book lies in the evidence-based recommendations and actions for conservation and quality management of the environment in order to decrease the degree of anthropogenic impact and in prevention of degradation processes. The book is useful to the researchers, industrial, scientific, and other organizations in establishing the purpose of the problem and solution to environmental protection and rational environmental management.

Originally prepared for the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, this is the first comprehensive assessment of global volcanic hazards and risk, presenting the state of the art in our understanding of global volcanic activity. It examines our assessment and management capabilities, and considers the preparedness of the global scientific community and government agencies to manage volcanic hazards and risk. Particular attention is paid to volcanic ash, the most frequent and wide-ranging volcanic hazard. Of interest to government officials, the private sector, students and researchers, this book is a key resource for the disaster risk reduction community and for those interested in volcanology and natural hazards. A non-technical summary is included for policy makers. Regional volcanic hazard profiles, with invaluable information on volcanic hazards and risk at the local, national and global scale, are provided online. This title is available as an Open Access eBook via Cambridge Books Online.

Monumental in scale and epic in development, cities have become the most visible and significant symbol of human progress. The geography on and around which they are constructed, however, has come to be viewed merely in terms of its resources and is often laid to waste once its assets have been stripped. The City in Geography is an urban exploration through this phenomenon, from settlement to city through physical geography, which reveals an incremental progression of removing terrain, topography and geography from the built environment, ushering in and advancing global destruction and instability. This book explains how the fall of geography in relationship to human survival has come through the loss of contact between urban dwellers and physical terrain, and details the radical rethinking required to remedy the separations between the city, its inhabitants and the landscape upon which it was built.

This book delves into the everyday spaces, diverse mobilities and affective potency of weather. It presents cutting-edge research into the multiplicity of weather phenomena and analyses the lived experiences of humans in conjunction with contemporary issues, notably climate change. The book considers how everyday experiences of weather in the mundane lives of people are linked to broader changes in weather patterns and climate change. Heat, dust, ice, snow, precipitation, sunlight, clouds, tides and fog are states of weather that impact on the ways in which humans become intertwined with landscapes. Our experiences with weather are diverse and ever-changing, and engaging with weather entangles humans with mobilities, materials and landscapes. This book thus explores affective and sensory resonances, drawing upon a variety of theoretical, empirical and creative material to investigate how weather is perceived in different social and cultural contexts. Key themes focus on the mobilities generated by weather, the affective and sensual potency of weather, and the diverse cultural forms and practices that exemplify how weather is historically, geographically and artistically represented. Offering a social and cultural understanding of weather events, this book contributes to a growing literature on weather across various disciplines, including human geography and cultural geography, and will thus appeal to students and scholars of geography, sociology, humanities, cultural studies and the arts.

Introduction to International Disaster Management, Fourth Edition, offers an unbiased, global perspective for students and practitioners alike. It provides a comprehensive understanding of the disaster management profession, covering the varied sources of risk and vulnerability, the systems that exist to manage hazard risk, and the many different stakeholders involved, from individuals to global organizations. This text also serves as a reference on scores of disaster management topics, including various technological and intentional hazards, on international disaster management structures and systems, on global humanitarian spending and support, and much more. Taking a real-world approach with considerable illustration through case studies and recent and historical disaster events, this book prepares students interested in joining the disaster management community to understand the work they will be doing. In addition, it assists those who already work with the disaster management community by helping them better navigate this complex environment.

Monsters, Catastrophes and the Anthropocene: A Postcolonial Critique explores European and Western imaginaries of natural disaster, mass migration and terrorism through a postcolonial inquiry into modern conceptions of monstrosity and catastrophe. This book uses established icons of popular visual culture in sci-fi, doomsday and horror films and TV series, as well as in images reproduced by the news media to help trace the genealogy of modern fears to ontologies and logics of the Anthropocene. By logics of the Anthropocene, the book refers to a set of principles based on ontologies of exploitation, extermination and natural resource exhaustion processes determining who is worthy of benefiting from value extraction and being saved from the catastrophe and who is expendable. Fears for the loss of isolation from the unworthy and the expendable are investigated here as originating anxieties against migrants' invasions, terrorist attacks and planetary catastrophes, in a thread that weaves together re-emerging 'past nightmares' and future visions. This book will be of great interest to students and academics of the Environmental Humanities, Human and Cultural Geography, Political Philosophy, Psychosocial Studies, Postcolonial Studies and Critical Race and Whiteness Studies, Gender Studies and Postcolonial Feminist Studies, Cultural Studies, Sociology, Cultural Anthropology, Cinema Studies and Visual Studies.

This book examines how states in eight countries across Asia and the Pacific address internal displacement in the context of disasters and climate change. The Asia and the Pacific region accounts for the majority of global disaster-related displacement, but the experience of the millions of individuals displaced differs according to gender, age, ethnicity, (dis)ability, caste, and so forth and is dependent on the legal, administrative, social, and economic structures and processes in place to support them. This book adopts a human rights-based approach, investigating the role of law and policy in preventing displacement, protecting people who are displaced, and engendering durable solutions across cases drawn from Thailand, Cambodia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Nepal, Bangladesh, Vanuatu, and the Solomon Islands. The specific cases in the book also reflect critically on the term 'displacement' and the wider normative framework within which this phenomenon is conceptualised and addressed. The book will be of interest to students, researchers, and practitioners working at the intersection of human rights, human mobility, development, disaster risk reduction and management, and climate change adaptation.

Crisis and Disaster Management for Sport is the first book to introduce key concepts and best practice in crisis and disaster management in sport and international sports events. The book draws from multiple disciplines to provide insight into the issues and challenges involved in planning for, and managing, crises and disasters in the context of sport. With an initial focus on sports event and venue resilience, the book also explores social, community and individual resilience within sport and examines concepts and issues such as fandom, risk perception, crowd control and management, crisis communication and reputational risk and the growing challenges posed by climate change. The book includes real-world case studies as well as disaster management-related simulation and scenario-building exercises and looks ahead to what might be the most significant threats in future to the safe and sustainable management of sport. With the devastating impacts of COVID-19 illustrating the central importance of resilience and proper preparation for crises and disasters, this book is an essential read for all researchers, students, practitioners and policy-makers working in sport, tourism, entertainment, leisure and critical event studies.

The volume explains how risk and decision-making analytics can be applied to the wicked problem of protecting infrastructure and society from extreme events. There is increasing research that takes into account the risks associated with the timing and severity of extreme events in engineering to reduce the vulnerability or increase the resiliency of infrastructure. "Engineering for extremes" is defined as measures taken to reduce the vulnerability or increase the resiliency of built infrastructure to climate change, hurricanes, storms, floods, earthquakes, heat waves, fires, and malevolent and abnormal events that include terrorism, gas explosions, vehicle impact and vehicle overload. The book introduces the key concepts needed to assess the economic and social well-being risks, costs and benefits of infrastructure to extreme events. This includes hazard modelling (likelihood and severity), infrastructure vulnerability, resilience or exposure (likelihood and extent of damage), social and economic loss models, risk reduction from protective measures, and decision theory (cost-benefit and utility analyses). Case studies authored by experts from around the world describe the practical aspects of risk assessment when deciding on the most cost-efficient measures to reduce infrastructure vulnerability to extreme events for housing, buildings, bridges, roads, tunnels, pipelines, and electricity infrastructure in the developed and developing worlds.

This book critically examines the global diffusion and local reception of resilience through the implementation of Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) programmes in Pacific and Caribbean island states. Global efforts to strengthen local disaster resilience capacities have become a staple of international development activity in recent decades, yet the successful implementation of DRR projects designed to strengthen local resilience remains elusive. While there are pockets of success, a gap remains between global expectations and local realities. Through a critical realist study of global and local worldviews of resilience in the Pacific and Caribbean islands, this book argues that the global advocacy of DRR remains inadequate because of a failure to prioritise a person-orientated ethics in its conceptualization of disaster resilience. This regional comparison provides a valuable lens to understand the underlying social structures that makes resilience possible and the extent to which local governments, communities and persons interpret and modify their behaviour on risk when faced with the global message on resilience. This book will be of much interest to students of resilience, risk management, development studies, and area studies.

This book presents new research on the geomorphological impacts of extreme precipitation events. It focuses on the extreme summer floods, which affected Central and Eastern Europe in 2010. Case studies on their consequences, including inundations, urban flooding, soil erosion, river bank retreat, alluvial fan accumulation, evolution of karst depressions, debris flows, landslides and soil saturation are presented for Poland, the Czech Republic, Ukraine, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria and Macedonia. This key applied geomorphology book is crucial for anyone interested in these processes and their consequences and also for decision makers who face these catastrophes.

This book sheds light on the management challenges of crisis and emergency response in an arctic environment. It explores how the complexity of the operational environment impacts on the risk of operations and addresses a need for tailor-made emergency response mechanisms. Through case studies of the arctic environment, the book illustrates how factors such as nature, geography, demographics and infrastructure increase the complexity of crises in the Arctic and present a significant danger to life and health, the environment and values in challenging Arctic waters. The case studies lay a special focus on contextual factors including conflicting interests and different stakeholder groups, as well as the institutional platforms influencing crisis response and emergency management. They also explore the implications for the managerial roles, the mode of operations, and the structuring of the organizations responsible for the emergency response. The necessity to facilitate cooperation across organizations and borders and a need for organizational flexibility in large scale operations are also emphasized. Written in an accessible style, this book will make for a useful resource for undergraduate and postgraduate students of disaster and emergency management, as well as for professionals involved in emergency services.

The text offers a comprehensive and unique perspective on disaster risk associated with natural hazards. It covers a wide range of topics, reflecting the most recent debates but also older and pioneering discussions in the academic field of disaster studies as well as in the policy and practical areas of disaster risk reduction (DRR). This book will be of particular interest to undergraduate students studying geography and environmental studies/science. It will also be of relevance to students/professionals from a wide range of social and physical science disciplines, including public health and public policy, sociology, anthropology, political science and geology.

This book investigates the best strategies for poverty alleviation in post-disaster urban environments, and the conditions necessary for the success and scaling up of these strategies. Using the case study of Typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan) in the Philippines, the strongest typhoon ever to make landfall, the book aims to draw out policy recommendations relevant for other middle- and lower-income countries facing similar urban environmental challenges. Humans are increasingly living in densely populated and highly vulnerable areas, often coastal. This increased density of human settlements leads to increased material damage and high death tolls, and this vulnerability is often exacerbated by climate change. This book focuses on urban population risk, vulnerability to disasters, resilience to environmental shocks, and adaptation in relation to paths in and out of poverty. Using both qualitative and quantitative methods, including primary survey data from victims and those charged with overseeing the relief effort in the Philippines, Urban Poverty in the Wake of Environmental Disaster has significant implications for disaster risk reduction as it relates to the urban poor and is highly recommended for scholars and practitioners of development studies, environment studies, and disaster relief and risk reduction.

Social Sensing and Big Data Computing for Disaster Management captures recent advancements in leveraging social sensing and big data computing for supporting disaster management. Specifically, analysed within this book are some of the promises and pitfalls of social sensing data for disaster relevant information extraction, impact area assessment, population mapping, occurrence patterns, geographical disparities in social media use, and inclusion in larger decision support systems. Traditional data collection methods such as remote sensing and field surveying often fail to offer timely information during or immediately following disaster events. Social sensing enables all citizens to become part of a large sensor network which is low cost, more comprehensive, and always broadcasting situational awareness information. However, data collected with social sensing is often massive, heterogeneous, noisy, and unreliable in some aspects. It comes in continuous streams, and often lacks geospatial reference information. Together, these issues represent a grand challenge toward fully leveraging social sensing for emergency management decision making under extreme duress. Meanwhile, big data computing methods and technologies such as high-performance computing, deep learning, and multi-source data fusion become critical components of using social sensing to understand the impact of and response to the disaster events in a timely fashion. This book was originally published as a special issue of the International Journal of Digital Earth.

From the towering pines of Shasta Trinity National Forest, to the chaparral scrub of San Diego's Mexican border, to Yosemite and the Western Sierras, trained wildland firefighter and photojournalist Stuart Palley documents California's raging wildfires and the forces behind them during the state's worst fire season in modern history. The dramatic images, a half decade in the making, capture the simultaneous beauty and destruction that wildfires bring as fire seasons get longer and more deadly, expensive, and destructive. In the wake of California's record-breaking series of wildfires in 2017, the images encompass five fire seasons and 45 fires. They are presented chronologically and culminate with the wine country fire siege that devastated Sonoma and Napa Counties in October 2017 and the Thomas Fire in Southern California, the largest in recorded state history. This timely book defines the state's drought and urban sprawl challenges, drawing a broader picture of global warming and its acute effects worldwide.

Political disillusionment is widespread in contemporary society. In Japan, the search for the 'outside' of a stagnant reality sometimes leads marginalised young people to a disastrous image of social change. The Fukushima nuclear disaster was the realisation of such an image, triggering the largest wave of activism since the 1960s. The disaster revealed the interconnected nature of contemporary society. The protesters regretted that their past indifference to politics prefigured such a catastrophe and became motivated to protest in the streets. They did not share any totalising ideology or predetermined collective identity. Instead, the activism provided a space for each body to encounter others who forced them to feel and think, which also introduced an ethical dimension to their politics. In this book, Azumi Tamura proposes a concept of politics as a series of endless experiments based on creative responses to unexpected forces. Instead of searching for a transcendental reference for politics, she investigates an immanent force within individuals that motivates them to become involved in political action. Referencing Deleuzian philosophy, Tamura provides a different epistemological and ontological approach to the social movement studies. She suggests social movements themselves generate knowledge about how one may live better in a complex society and where our lives are exposed to uncertainty. This knowledge is neither empirical knowledge, nor normative political theory of 'how we should live'. Instead, social movements bring affective knowledge into politics as they offer a space for experimenting with 'how we might live.' The encounter with such knowledge galvanizes our desire for 'how we want to live' and encourages new experiments.

This book uses narrative responses to the 2010 Haiti earthquake as a starting point for an analysis of notions of disaster, vulnerability, reconstruction and recovery. The turn to a wide range of literary works enables a composite comparative analysis, which encompasses the social, political and individual dimensions of the earthquake. This book focuses on a vision of an open-ended future, otherwise than as a threat or fear. Mika turns to concepts of hinged chronologies, slow healing and remnant dwelling. Weaving theory with attentive close-readings, the book offers an open-ended framework for conceptualising post-disaster recovery and healing. These processes happen at different times and must entail the elimination of compound vulnerabilities that created the disaster in the first place. Challenging characterisations of the region as a continuous catastrophe this book works towards a bold vision of Haiti's and the Caribbean's futures. The study shows how narratives can extend some of the key concepts within discipline-bound approaches to disasters, while making an important contribution to the interface between disaster studies, postcolonial ecocriticism and Haitian Studies.

Asian countries are among the largest contributors to climate change. China, India, Japan and South Korea are among the top ten largest carbon emitters in the world, with South Korea, Japan and Taiwan also some of the largest on a per capita basis. At the same time, many Asian countries, notably India, Taiwan, Japan, the Philippines and Thailand are among those most affected by climate change, in terms of economic losses attributed to climate-related disasters. Asia is an extremely diverse region, in terms of the political regimes of its constituent countries, and of their level of development and the nature of their civil societies. As such, its countries are producing a wide range of governance approaches to climate change. Covering the diversity of climate change governance in Asia, this book presents cosmopolitan governance from the perspective of urban and rural communities, local and central governments, state-society relations and international relations. In doing so it offers both a valuable overview of individual Asian countries' approaches to climate change governance, and a series of case studies for finding solutions to climate change challenges.

The last twenty years have seen a rapid increase in scholarly activity and publications dedicated to environmental migration and displacement, and the field has now reached a point in terms of profile, complexity, and sheer volume of reporting that a general review and assessment of existing knowledge and future research priorities is warranted. So far, such a product does not exist. The Routledge Handbook of Environmental Displacement and Migration provides a state-of-the-science review of research on how environmental variability and change influence current and future global migration patterns and, in some instances, trigger large-scale population displacements. Drawing together contributions from leading researchers in the field, this compendium will become a go-to guide for established and newly interested scholars, for government and policymaking entities, and for students and their instructors. It explains theoretical, conceptual, and empirical developments that have been made in recent years; describes their origins and connections to broader topics including migration research, development studies, and international public policy and law; and highlights emerging areas where new and/or additional research and reflection are warranted. The structure and the nature of the book allow the reader to quickly find a concise review relevant to conducting research or developing policy on particular topics, and to obtain a broad, reliable survey of what is presently known about the subject.

This book presents practical approaches for tackling the threats from climate change and disasters to urban growth in Pacific island countries and Asian nations. With chapters written by leading scholars and practitioners, Urbanisation at Risk presents research and case studies from island countries across the Pacific, Cambodia, Nepal and the Philippines. The book explores and presents the theory, policy and practice of how governments, civil society, aid organisations and people themselves prepare for, withstand and recover better from urban disasters including windstorms, floods, earthquakes and fires, and the effects of climate change. This book is written for urban policy makers, researchers, humanitarian aid and development workers, and anyone interested in urbanisation, participatory approaches, disasters, resilience and climate change adaptation.

This book considers the challenges of building disaster resilience in South Asia - a region that frequently experiences some of the most severe and devastating impacts of disasters. Despite significant work to assist affected communities, many smaller South Asian countries remain particularly vulnerable in terms of fostering disaster resilience. Drawing on examples from Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal and Sri Lanka, the book offers rich insights and narratives on disaster resilience policy and practice. It considers the possibilities for advancing community resilience and capacity building through an exploration of different aspects of governance and policy. Given the diversity of these countries and recent disasters, a variety of perspectives are considered: institutional and policy frameworks, risk management governance, recovery operations, building codes, and policy and media discourse. The book offers a collective understanding of practice, which can offer global lessons to a world increasingly beset by disasters and with uncertain environmental futures. This book will be a valuable resource for scholars, practitioners and students in the fields of disaster risk reduction and management, climate change adaptation, public policy and sustainable development.