At the present time, the deepening of our understanding about the nature of extreme and catastrophic natural and man-induced events, in particular hydrologic ones, becomes very topical. This book addresses the development of advanced methods for the prediction, the estimation of occurrence probabilities and the risk related to extreme hydrological events. Reduction of the vulnerability of social, economic, and engineering systems to extreme hydrologic events and the decrease of their effects on such systems is also being discussed in this book.

The terror attacks of 9.11 signalled that people are increasingly put at risk of not only terrorism but natural and technological disasters as well. Since 9.11 scholars have been asking new questions about catastrophe and made important and interesting innovations in methods, concepts, and theories regarding disaster and terror. This volume brings together a creative set of papers, most of which are about the 9.11 attacks. They draw from several disciplines to address key questions: what lessons does the response to the collapse of the World Trade Center have for disaster planning? what has 9.11 meant for civil liberties in the US? how will survivors react over the long run? and how do we conceptualize panic and mass response?

Just as the sinking of the Titanic is embedded in the public consciousness in the English-speaking world, so the crash of JAL flight JL123 is part of the Japanese collective memory. The 1985 crash involved the largest loss of life for any single air crash in the world. 520 people, many of whom had been returning to their ancestral home for the Obon religious festival, were killed; there were only four survivors.

This book tells the story of the crash, discusses the many controversial issues surrounding it, and considers why it has come to have such importance for many Japanese. It shows how the Japanese responded to the disaster: trying to comprehend how a faulty repair may have caused the crash, and the fact that rescue services took such a long time to reach the remote crash site; how the bereaved dealt with their loss; how the media in Japan and in the wider world reported the disaster; and how the disaster is remembered and commemorated. The book highlights the media coverage of anniversary events and the Japanese books and films about the crash; the very particular memorialization process in Japan, alongside Japanese attitudes to death and religion; it points out in what ways this crash both reflects typical Japanese behaviour and in what ways the crash is unique.

First published in 1989, Chernobyl: The Long Shadow offers a balanced review of what happened there, why and how it happened, and what the main lessons and implications of the accident are.

It looks back on events during and after the disaster, in particular reviewing how it and the radiation fallout were dealt with in different countries and looks forward to how the incident might affect the nuclear power industry around the world. The book explores the significance of the accident within the Soviet Union, considers its impact on public confidence in nuclear power, and reviews what improvements are necessary in emergency planning throughout the rest of the world.

It is written from an inter-disciplinary perspective; based on detailedscienctific research, which is described in non-specialist terms, it considers themes like attitudes to nuclear power and political reaction to the accident itself. It sets the Chernobyl accident into a proper context.

Chernobyl: The Long Shadow will appeal to students and teachers of geography, environmental science, international politics, nuclear physics, and to anyone interested in current affairs and environmental problems.

"Told through the voices of local community leaders, this book analyzes how communities respond to natural disasters and how outsiders contribute positively--or negatively--to their response, promoting debate on the role of aid and the media in times of crisis"--

Henry Giroux continues his critique of the US political and popular culture 's influence on the lives of our children.

In his controversial new book, Giroux argues that the US is at war with young people. No longer seen as the future of a democratic society, youth are now derided by politicians looking for quick-fix solutions to crime and demonized by the popular media. This perception of fear and disdain is being translated into social policy . Instead of providing a decent education to young people, we offer them the increasing potential of being incarcerated. Instead of guaranteeing them decent health care, we serve them more standardized tests. There's a war on in the US these days, and Giroux sees our youth as the target.

Landmines, cluster-bombs, chemical pollutants, and other remnants of war continue to cause death to humans and damage to the environment long after the guns have fallen silent. From the jungles of Vietnam to the arctic tundra of Russia, no region has escaped the legacy of warfare.

To understand the legacy of modern militarism, this book presents an overview of post-conflict societies, with an emphasis on the human toll exacted by modern warfare.

Since the end of the cold war, civil wars and state violence have escalated, resulting in thousands of deaths. This book provides a toolbox for donors, international agencies, and developing countries to prevent humanitarian emergencies. The emphasis is on long-term development policies rather than mediation or reconstruction after the conflict ensues. Policies include democratization, reforming institutions, strengthening civil society, improving the state's administrative capability, agrarian reform, accelerating economic growth through stabilization and adjustment, reducing inequalities, and redesigning aid to be more stable.

Climate Change: Observed Impacts on Planet Earth, Third Edition, brings together top global researchers across many disciplines to provide a comprehensive review on the complex issue of climate change and weather patterns. The third edition continues its tradition of focusing on the science and evidence on this highly politicized topic. Every chapter is updated, with this new edition featuring new chapters on topics such as glacier melt, the impacts of rising temperatures, extreme weather, modeling techniques, biodiversity, and more. This book is essential for researchers, environmental managers, engineers, and those whose work is impacted by, or tied to, climate change and global warming.

Floods are natural events, but when they impact on human environments, they turn into disasters which disrupt society. The last decades have seen an alarming increase in the number of major floods and associated damage on every continent. The impact is more severe due to population growth and settlement in flood prone areas, climate change and disrupted hydrological cycles. There is now an urgency regarding the exchange of information on developments and experiences in research, policy and management. The 3rd International Symposium on Flood Defence presented new developments in Sciences (hydrology, ecology, flood modelling and forecasting, information management and GIS-based decision support systems); Frameworks (institutional and organisational, basin-wide flood management); Policy-making and implementation (government strategies and approaches, public awareness and participation, new concepts such as risk management in relation to climate change); and Measures and solutions (structural and non-structural measures, spatial planning). Case studies illustrate specific experiences and practices in flood control situations, for example, flooding in urban areas. These Symposium Proceedings include about 165 selected papers, presentations, keynotes and theme reports as presented during the ISFD3. As a whole this publication reflects a worldwide change in strategy: from flood defence towards flood management. Floods, from Defence to Management is of special interest to researchers, scientists, consultants, managers, donor agencies and government bodies involved in policy making and flood management.

Here is a comprehensive overview of the geophysical, technological, and social aspects of natural disasters. This book systematically reviews the agents of natural catastrophes - earthquakes, volcanoes, floods, drought, hurricanes, erosion, fires, etc. - in terms of their geophysical processes and effects. The human impact and response is examined from various perspectives, including damage and the urban environment, the logistics of planning and emergency action, medical emergencies and the epidemiology of disasters, the Third World, and socio-economic consequences. The author's unique interdisciplinary perspective helps the reader to achieve a clear perspective on natural disasters and possible strategies against them.

"The sociology of hazardous waste, risk, and disasters is a relatively new discipline with an increasing volume of empirical research by scholars. Francis O. Adeola focuses this book on hazardous and toxic wastes releases, industrial toxic disasters, contamination of communities and the environment, and the subsequent adverse health effects among exposed populations. He explains the emerging sociological study of risk, natural, and technological disasters, and he reviews the accumulated body of knowledge in the field up-to-date. This groundbreaking work integrates sociological perspectives with perspectives from other disciplines in the discussion of the problems posed by technological hazards both in advanced industrialized societies and in underdeveloped world"--

This theoretical contribution argues that the domination of Western knowledge in disaster scholarship has allowed normative policies and practices of disaster risk reduction to be imposed all over the world. It takes a postcolonial approach to unpack why scholars claim that disasters are social constructs while offering little but theories, concepts and methods supposed to be universal in understanding the unique and diverse experiences of millions of people across very different cultures. It further challenges forms of governments inherited from the Enlightenment that have been rolled out as standard and ultimate solutions to reduce the risk of disaster. Ultimately, the book encourages the emergence of a more diverse set of world views/senses and ways of knowing for both studying disasters and informing policy and practice of disaster risk reduction. Such pluralism is essential to better reflect local realities of what disasters actually are around the world. This book is an essential read for scholars and postgraduate students interested in disaster studies as well as policy-makers and practitioners of disaster risk reduction.

How do cities plan for the unplanned? Do cities plan for recovery from every possible sudden shock? How does one prepare a plan for the recovery after a tragedy, like the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York? The book discovers the systematic features that contribute to the success of planning institutions. In cities filled with uncertainty and complexity, planning institutions effectively tackle unexpected and sudden change by relying on the old and the familiar, rather than the new and the innovative.
The author argues that planning programs institutions were successful because they were bureaucratic, and relied on standardized routines, rigorous sets of established regimes, familiar programs, and institutionalized hierarchies. Also contrary to popular perception, neither the leaders at the top of the institutions nor those workers at the grassroots level were the most important in the implementation of such routines. The key actors were middle managers, because they knew the institutionalstructures inside out, what the routines were and how to use them, and were successful go-betweens between national governments and grassroots community groups.
Case studies from Mexico City, Los Angeles and New York provide a deeper understanding of urban planning processes. The case studies reveal that systematic institutional analysis helps us understand what works in planning, and why. They also demonstrate the manner in which institutional routines serve as powerful and effective tools for addressing novel situations.

On April 26, 1986, at 1:24 a.m, the world's worst ever man-made disaster took place. Reactor 4 at Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station, three kilometres from Pripyat in the then Soviet Republic of Ukraine, was beset by a series of explosions that rose deep from its radioactive depths and blasted itself high into the atmosphere, eventually seeping its way into the far corners of the globe. Today the impact of Chernobyl, 21 years later, has become a half-global legend and half-forgotten horror story. The reality is still with many of the 50,000 people who on that fateful night in Pripyat were given less than an hour to gather together their possessions and escape to relative safety 70km away. They were considered the lucky ones, fortunate not to have been vaporised on the spot or to die an excruciating death soon after in the hospitals in Kiev and Moscow that some of the workers and firemen sent to fight the blaze did. Most of the inhabitants had no choice but to gradually return to the contaminated areas that they still call home, and for the past 20 years have continued to live under the shadow of the reactor. Pripyat, in the centre of the 30km wide Red Zone, is still largely a ghost town, where the paint peels in houses and schools, and the dirt settles on childrens' toys that will never be reclaimed. Meanwhile emergency orders still apply to 355 farms in Wales, 11 in Scotland and nine in England. "Chernobyl - The Hidden Legacy" shows the region over a period of three years by Pierpaolo Mittica, who returned several times to document the people and the contaminated landscape they still inhabit. Our world today demands nuclear energy as the answer to its energy crisis, and the legacy of Chernobyl remains shrouded. Time is running out, as the sarcophagus built to contain the reactor and its radioactive contents begins to crumble away. No one has the answers and no one is asking the questions - but can the world afford another Chernobyl?

In this penetrating account of the impacts of risk on everyday life, Gabe Mythen provides a theoretically informed overview of the regulation of crime and security in a globalized world. By explicating the relationships between risk and crime, security and justice, the text applies risk to specific incidents and events, scrutinizing social processes and cultural practices, and illumining some of the central social and political issues of the modern age. Extending across a range of domains - including law, the environment, media and politics - Mythen embarks on a conceptual and critical exploration of risk theory. In doing so, his incisive text presents both a critical evaluation of the efficacy of competing perspectives on risk, and an authoritative appraisal of the place of risk within the social sciences.

This book is dedicated to furthering scientific understanding of drought assessment and management and the policy issues associated with drought preparedness worldwide. The authors invited to contribute to the volume are uniquely qualified to address their respective topics. The book is divided into two parts. Part One emphasizes theoretical aspects of drought assessment, management, and preparedness; it also includes a discussion of the concept of drought. These chapters are aimed at improving the reader's understanding and awareness of drought; appropriate technologies to monitor drought's onset, development and termination; emerging methodologies to estimate impacts; adjustment strategies to alleviate drought effects; and a methodology for countries to follow in the development of a national drought policy and plan. Part One concludes with an insightful examination of how changes in climate may alter climatic variability and the frequency and intensity of extreme events, particularly drought. The successes and failures of previous assessment and response efforts are highlighted in Part Two through case studies in Israel, India, Brazil, South Africa, Australia, the United States, and China. Several of these case studies provide insight into the difficulties inherent in the provision of timely and effective drought assistance by government in both a developed and developing country setting. The lessons learned in these instances provide both an extraordinary opportunity and challenge to other drought-prone nations to learn from these experiences and avoid some of the mistakes of the past. Some of the case studies in Part Two illustrate remarkable progress in drought preparedness andare examples for other nations to follow.

The "precautionary principle" is widely seen as fundamental to successful policies for sustainability. It has been cited in international courts and trade disputes between the USA and the EU, and invoked in a growing range of political debates. Understanding what it can and cannot achieve is therefore crucial.;This volume looks back over the last century to examine the role the "principle" played or could have played, in a range of major and avoidable public disasters. From detailed investigation of how each disaster unfolded, what the impacts were and what measures were adopted, the authors draw lessons and establish criteria that could help to minimise the health and environmental risks of future technological, economic and policy innovations.;This is an informative resource for all those from lawyers and policy-makers, to researchers and students needing to understand or apply the "principle".

Floods occur in most parts of the world and range from being welcomed annual occurrences, to natural disasters which have countless physical and societal impacts.
Floods presents the most comprehensive collection to date of new research, providing a rich body of theory and experience and drawing together contributions from over fifty leading international researchers in the field. An extensive range of case-studies covering major floods and regions prone to flooding worldwide are included.

Contents:
1. The Earth and Nuclear Power 2. Sources and Resources 3. How Reactors Work 4. Cooling Reactors 5. Loss of Cooling 6. Loss of Cooling Accident: Some Examples 7. Postulated Severe Accidents 8. Cooling During Fuel Removal and Processing

When the first missiles rattled Kyiv in February 2021, Kobus Olivier was ready for it. Or so the South African thought.

He knew a war was brewing when thousands of Russian troops gathered at the border, but the locals laughed it off. Fleeing alone was never an option for Kobus.

Not without my dogs tells the remarkable story of how Kobus managed to save himself and his four-legged friends. This book is a testament of the human spirit and how even in times of war, strangers lend a hand.

This text argues that "Natural" disasters have more to do with the social, political, and economic aspects than they do with the environmental hazards that trigger them. Disasters occur at the interface of vulnerable people and hazardous environments. The author concentrates on the social aspects of disaster, focusing on the most expensive disaster to date in US history, the Northridge earthquake of 1994, to examine the facets of vulnerability and post-disaster recovery strategies. Surveying the historical and contemporary aspects of life in Southern California the author explains how vulnerability to disaster has been shaped by more than a century of immigration, urbanization, environmental transformations and economic development. Examining other recent disasters alongside Northridge, this book provides a global view of the social effects of disaster in developed and developing countries. An insight into the field, the text presents aspects of sustainable development and state policy and concludes with considerations of ways that vulnerability can be reduced in the future.

This book places Oakland's public policy response (nine major ordinances) to building damage suffered in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake in a full historical and intergovernmental context. Using a combined non-decision making and advocacy coalition approach, the book demonstrates how and why hazardous-structure abatement was kept off the local political agenda prior to the Loma Prieta disaster. The book then demonstrates how and why city government in Oakland became proactive on the problem of earthquake-damaged and, more importantly, earthquake-vulnerable buildings in general after the disaster.