Contextualizing Disaster offers a comparative analysis of six recent "highly visible" disasters and several slow-burning, "hidden," crises that include typhoons, tsunamis, earthquakes, chemical spills, and the unfolding consequences of rising seas and climate change. The book argues that, while disasters are increasingly represented by the media as unique, exceptional, newsworthy events, it is a mistake to think of disasters as isolated or discrete occurrences. Rather, building on insights developed by political ecologists, this book makes a compelling argument for understanding disasters as transnational and global phenomena.

EPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. Though a globally shared experience, the COVID-19 pandemic has affected societies across the world in radically different ways. This book examines the unique implications of the pandemic in the Global South. With international contributors from a variety of disciplines including health, economics and geography, the book investigates the pandemic's effects on development, medicine, gender (in)equality and human rights, among other issues. Its analysis illuminates further subsequent crises of interconnection, a pervasive health provision crisis and a resulting rise in socioeconomic inequality. The book's assessment offers an urgent discourse on the ways in which the impact of COVID-19 can be mitigated in some of the most challenging socioeconomic contexts in the world.

World Congress on Disaster Management (WCDM) brings researchers, policy makers and practitioners from around the world in the same platform to discuss various challenging issues of disaster risk management, enhance understanding of risks and advance actions for reducing risks and building resilience to disasters. The fifth WCDM deliberates on three critical issues that pose the most serious challenges as well as hold the best possible promise of building resilience to disasters. These are Technology, Finance, and Capacity. WCDM has emerged as the largest global conference on disaster management outside the UN system. The fifth WCDM was attended by more than 2500 scientists, professionals, policy makers, practitioners all around the world despite the prevalence of pandemic.

On the 14th June 2017, a fire engulfed a tower block in West London, seventy-two people lost their lives and hundreds of others were left displaced and traumatised. The Grenfell Tower fire is the epicentre of a long history of violence enacted by government and corporations. On its second anniversary activists, artists and academics come together to respond, remember and recover the disaster. The Grenfell Tower fire illustrates Britain's symbolic order; the continued logic of colonialism, the disposability of working class lives, the marketisation of social provision and global austerity politics, and the negligence and malfeasance of multinational contractors. Exploring these topics and more, the contributors construct critical analysis from legal, cultural, media, community and government responses to the fire, asking whether, without remedy for multifaceted power and violence, we will ever really be 'after' Grenfell? With poetry by Ben Okri and Tony Walsh, and photographs by Parveen Ali, Sam Boal and Yolanthe Fawehinmi. With contributions from Phil Scraton, Daniel Renwick, Nadine El-Enany, Sarah Keenan, Gracie Mae Bradley and The Radical Housing Network.

The spate of disaster events ranging from major to catastrophic that have occurred in recent years raises a lot of questions about where and why they happened. Understanding the history of emergency management policies and practice is important to an understanding of current and future policies and practice. Continuing in the footsteps of its popular predecessors, the new edition of Emergency Management: The American Experience provides the background to understand the key political and policy underpinnings of emergency management, exploring how major "focusing events" have shaped the field of emergency management. This edition builds on the original theoretical framework and chronological approach of previous editions, while enhancing the discussions through the addition of fresh information about the effects and outcomes of older events, such as Hurricane Katrina and the BP oil spill. The final chapters offer insightful discussion of the public administration concepts of emergency management in the U.S. and of the evolving federal role in emergency management. Like its predecessors, the third edition of Emergency Management is a trusted and required text to understand the formation and continuing improvement of the American national emergency management system.

Disaster Risk Governance offers the first extensive engagement with disaster risk governance in the Caribbean and Sub-Saharan Africa. In the last decade and a half Kenya, Jamaica, Dominica, and Zanzibar have all suffered massive destruction from disasters caused by natural hazards. Despite the tremendous investments in disaster risk reduction (DRR), disasters have wiped out the developmental gains of these countries. In this book, Denise Thompson argues that disaster risk governance (DRG) as a practical and academic matter has not been given the attention it deserves, and as a result, this neglect has undermined the time, money and resources invested in DRR in developing countries since the late 1970s and early 1980s. Thompson proposes that properly conceptualizing DRG based on context will help to address some of the deficiencies. Consequently, DRG needs to become a central focus, particularly for developing countries. Written with real-life implications for developing countries, Disaster Risk Governance is perfectly suited for practitioners and researchers in area studies, disaster risk reduction and disaster governance, as well as students of disaster studies.

The voluntary sector was central to the COVID-19 response: fulfilling basic needs, highlighting new and existing inequalities and coordinating action where the state had been slow to respond. This book curates rigorous academic, policy and practice-based research into the response and adaptation of the UK voluntary sector during the pandemic. Contributions explore the ways the sector responded to new challenges and the longer-term consequences for the sector's workforce, volunteers and beneficiaries. Written for researchers and practitioners, this book considers what the voluntary sector can learn from the pandemic to maximise its contribution in the event of future crises.

Earthquakes come without warming, and often cause massive devastation, resulting not only in the loss of property but also of lives. Many of the survivors suffer from intense and lasting psychological trauma. This book covers the experience of recent earthquakes in India, and what has been learnt (and what we have failed to learn) in the process of

Public Relations and Journalism in Times of Crisis dissects crisis communication case studies from both the journalists' and the public relations professionals' perspectives. The authors, Andrea Miller, a former journalist, and Jinx Coleman Broussard, a former public relations professional, interviewed dozens of journalists and PR professionals involved in some of the most visible crises of the last few years: Hurricane Katrina, Ebola in America, the Blue Bell Ice Cream recall, Susan G. Komen vs. Planned Parenthood, race relations in Ferguson, Missouri, and at the University of Missouri, the great flood of Baton Rouge in 2016, and the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. Hundreds of press releases and press stories were also reviewed. The authors provide practical strategies for working journalists and public relations practitioners to enhance the flow of information in a crisis so that audiences and stakeholders can make educated, rational decisions to protect their families and livelihoods. The book also acquaints professors and students of PR and journalism with the realities of covering and managing crises, including what works and why, as well as mistakes that occur that could damage their organizations. Public Relations and Journalism in Times of Crisis is unique for its analysis of the communication of cases from both perspectives. At the end of each case are takeaways for both sets of professionals, as well as industry best practice suggestions.

The collapse of the World Trade Center shattered windows across the street in Battery Park City, throwing the neighborhood into darkness and smothering homes in debris. Residents fled. In the months and years after they returned, they worked to restore their community. Until September 11, Battery Park City had been a secluded, wealthy enclave just west Wall Street, one with all the opulence of the surrounding corporate headquarters yet with a gated, suburban feel. After the towers fell it became the most visible neighborhood in New York. This ethnography of an elite planned community near the heart of New York City's financial district examines both the struggles and shortcomings of one of the city's wealthiest neighborhoods. In doing so, September 12 discovers the vibrant exclusivity that makes Battery Park City an unmatched place to live for the few who can gain entry. Focusing on both the global forces that shape local landscapes and the exclusion that segregates American urban development, Smithsimon shows the tensions at work as the neighborhood's residents mobilized to influence reconstruction plans. September 12 reveals previously unseen conflicts over the redevelopment of Lower Manhattan, providing a new understanding of the ongoing, reciprocal relationship between social conflicts and the spaces they both inhabit and create.

This book is a revision of the author's original doctoral thesis on emergency preparedness through community radio in North Indian villages into a widening array of possible reapplications in other community development fields. The author expands on the process of transforming emergency preparedness education through community media in rural North India and applies this to the development of community-prosperity, defined simply as human and planetary well-being, anywhere in the world. A new theoretical framework is presented which combines the pivotal Integral Worlds Approach developed by Lessem and Schieffer with Critical Theory, thus exploring a new way to envision and implement social change, leading to innovation and social transformation. This book introduces the term "constructive resilience," which is a type of community-building that occurs alongside dominant societal structures that are either oppressive or ineffective. An evolving field of study and practice, it is emerging from the work of academics and community-builders who are members of the Baha'i Faith. Baha'i "consultation," a process of inquiry and decision-making, is offered as a systematic and effective method of defining problems and enacting solutions and is examined in the context of emergency preparedness education and local capacity-building. With its integral development approach, its unique combination of themes and theoretical components, and integration with the Baha'i Faith, as well as its interdisciplinary nature, this book will be invaluable reading for researchers in many fields. It will be of particular interest in university-based training programs in disaster management and the various disciplines of international community development, as well as practitioners in the areas of micro enterprise, disaster management, community development, rural communications, rural economics and emergency preparedness education.

World Congress on Disaster Management (WCDM) brings researchers, policy makers and practitioners from around the world in the same platform to discuss various challenging issues of disaster risk management, enhance understanding of risks and advance actions for reducing risks and building resilience to disasters. The fifth WCDM deliberates on three critical issues that pose the most serious challenges as well as hold the best possible promise of building resilience to disasters. These are Technology, Finance, and Capacity. WCDM has emerged as the largest global conference on disaster management outside the UN system. The fifth WCDM was attended by more than 2500 scientists, professionals, policy makers, practitioners all around the world despite the prevalence of pandemic.

Household vulnerability to weather shocks and changing climatic conditions has become a major concern in developing countries. Yet the empirical evidence remains limited on the impact that changing environmental conditions have on households. This book explores climate change adaptation using a social resilience approach. The book is based on primary data from the Sundarbans, a densely populated area located across parts of Bangladesh and India (West Bengal) which is highly vulnerable to extreme weather events and climate change. The focus is on assessing how households are affected by cyclones: whether they are able to cope with, adapt to and recover from events and changes; whether they are warned ahead of time; whether they benefit from government safety nets and other social programs; and finally whether they are driven to either temporary or permanent migration. This assessment leads to a better understanding of how exposure to an area of climate change vulnerability and risk affects and shapes human responses.

This text examines actual attempts to "prepare" for catastrophes and finds that the policies adopted by corporations and government agencies are fundamentally rhetorical: the plans have no chance to succeed, yet they serve both the organizations and the public as symbols of control, order and stability. These "fantasy documents" attempt to inspire confidence in organizations, but Lee Clarke suggests that they are disturbing persuasions, soothing the perception that ultimately one cannot control technological advances. For example, Clarke studies corporations' plans for cleaning up oil spills in Prince William Sound prior to the "Exxon Valdez" debacle, and he finds that the accepted strategies were not just unrealistic but completely untenable. Although different organizations were required to have a cleanup plan for huge spills in the sound, a really massive spill was unprecedented, and the accepted policy was little more than a patchwork of guesses based on (mostly unsuccessful) cleanups after smaller accidents. Clarke points out that reassuring rhetoric (under the guise of expert prediction) may have no basis in fact or truth because no such basis is attainable. In uncovering the dangers of planning when implementation is a fantasy, Clark concludes that society would be safer, smarter, and fairer if organizations could admit their limitations.

What kind of country is America? Zachary Shore tackles this polarizing question by spotlighting some of the most morally muddled matters of WWII. Should Japanese Americans be moved from the west coast to prevent sabotage? Should the German people be made to starve as punishment for launching the war? Should America drop atomic bombs to break Japan's will to fight? Surprisingly, despite wartime anger, most Americans and key officials favored mercy over revenge, yet a minority managed to push their punitive policies through. After the war, by feeding the hungry, rebuilding Western Europe and Japan, and airlifting supplies to a blockaded Berlin, America strove to restore the country's humanity, transforming its image in the eyes of the world. A compelling story of the struggle over racism and revenge, This Is Not Who We Are asks crucial questions about the nation's most agonizing divides.

How did the events of September 11, 2001 come to be thought of as 9/11? The Shock of the News is an authoritative account of post-9/11 political and social processes, offering an in-depth analysis of the media coverage of this momentous event. Brian Monahan demonstrates how 9/11 has been transformed into a morality tale centered on patriotism, victimization, and heroes.

Introducing the idea of "public drama" as a way of making sense of how media processed and packaged the 9/11 attacks for their audiences, Monahan not only illuminates how and why the coverage took shape as it did, but also provides us with new insights into the social, cultural, and political consequences of the attacks and their aftermath. Monahan explains how and why 9/11 became such a potent symbol, exploring how meanings and symbols get created, reinforced, and disseminated in modern society. Ultimately, Monahan offers an important new understanding of this singular event of our time, and his compelling narrative brings the momentous events back into focus.

Assessments of the costs of war generally focus on the financial, political, military, and territorial risks associated with involvement in violent conflict. Often overlooked are the human costs of war, particularly their effects on population well-being. In "War and the Health of Nations," Zaryab Iqbal explores these human costs by offering the first large-scale empirical study of the relationship between armed conflict and population health. Working within the influential "human security" paradigm--which emphasizes the security of populations rather than states as the central object of global security--Iqbal analyzes the direct and indirect mechanisms through which violent conflict degrades population health. In addition to battlefield casualties, these include war's detrimental economic effects, its role in the creation of refugees and forced migration, and the destruction of societies' infrastructure. In doing so, she provides a comprehensive picture of the processes through which war and violent conflict affect public health and the well-being of societies in a cross-national context.
"War and the Health of Nations" provides a conceptual and theoretical framework for understanding the influence of violent interstate and intrastate conflict on the quality of life of populations and empirically analyzes the war-and-health relationship through statistical models using a universal sample of states. The analyses provide strong evidence for the direct as well as the indirect effects of war on public health and offer important insights into key socio-economic determinants of health achievement. The book thus demonstrates the significance of population health as an important consequence of armed conflict and highlights the role of societal vulnerabilities in studies of global security.

This book contains the proceeding of the conferences on Disasters and the Small Dwelling, held at Oxford in September 1990. The 26 papers cover recent experiences of post-disaster shelter and housing provision, review what has been achieved, what needs disseminating and implementing, and assesses what needs further development. The volume thus defines an international agenda to achieve safer low-income dwellings in the course of the 1990s, designated International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction by the UN. It will be essential reading for anyone - whether governmental or non-governmental agency officials, academic researchers, representatives of private industry or consultants - whose work involves analysis, shelter, mitigation and reconstruction programmes for low-income dwellings in disaster-prone areas.

Al Qaeda detonates a nuclear weapon in Times Square during rush hour, wiping out half of Manhattan and killing 500,000 people. A virulent strain of bird flu jumps to humans in Thailand, sweeps across Asia, and claims more than fifty million lives. A single freight car of chlorine derails on the outskirts of Los Angeles, spilling its contents and killing seven million. An asteroid ten kilometers wide slams into the Atlantic Ocean, unleashing a tsunami that renders life on the planet as we know it extinct. We consider the few who live in fear of such scenarios to be alarmist or even paranoid. But Worst Cases shows that such individuals-like Cassandra foreseeing the fall of Troy-are more reasonable and prescient than you might think. In this book, Lee Clarke surveys the full range of possible catastrophes that animate and dominate the popular imagination, from toxic spills and terrorism to plane crashes and pandemics. Along the way, he explores how the ubiquity of worst cases in everyday life has rendered them ordinary and mundane. Fear and dread, Clarke argues, have actually become too rare: only when the public has more substantial information and more credible warnings will it take worst cases as seriously as it should. A timely and necessary look into how we think about the unthinkable, Worst Cases will be must reading for anyone attuned to our current climate of threat and fear.

This comparative study at hand has been the result of a two-year research project on floods in 2014 in the Western Balkans engaging eight research teams from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Croatia. Representing quite different disciplines, the authors of this volume have analysed diverse aspects of the crisis governance and its ramifications. This publication's goals are twofold. Firstly, it pins down the characteristics of the crisis responses during the floods of 2014 in three affected countries, preconditioned by the existing institutions, crisis leadership, the role of media and the social capital as well as the foreign financial aid. On the other hand, through the lenses of the crisis governance we conclude on the state capacities and the nature of political regime of the cases under study. The flood megacrisis did not constitute a "window of opportunity" for individual or institutional learning. On the contrary, it did unveil some authoritarian tendencies in Serbia and Bosnia, and thus stalled the hitherto ongoing democratization process.

What will the ethnic, racial and cultural face of the United States look like in the upcoming decades, and how will the American population adapt to these changes? Immigration, Cultural Identity, and Mental Health: Psycho-social Implications of the Reshaping of America outlines the various psychosocial impacts of immigration on cultural identity and its impact on mainstream culture. Thoroughly researched, this book examines how cultural identity relates to individual mental health and should be taken into account in mental health treatment. In a time when globalization is decreasing the importance of national boundaries and impacting cultural identity for both minority and mainstream populations, the authors explore the multiple facets of what immigration means for culture and mental health. The authors review the concept of acculturation and examine not only how the immigrant's identity transforms through this process, but also how the immigrant transforms the host culture through inter-culturation. The authors detail the risk factors and protective factors that affect the first generation and subsequent generations of immigrants in their adaptation to American society, and also seek to dispel myths and clarify statistics of criminality among immigrant populations. Further, the book aims to elucidate the importance of ethnicity and race in the psycho-therapeutic encounter and offers treatment recommendations on how to approach and discuss issues of ethnicity and race in psychotherapy. It also presents evidence-based psychological treatment interventions for immigrants and members of minority populations and shows how psychotherapy involves the creation of new, more adaptive narratives that can provide healing, personal growth, and relevance to the immigrant experience. Throughout, the authors provide clinical case examples to illustrate the concepts presented.

This first full-length book addresses disasters in the context of vulnerability of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands that comprise 572 islands in the Bay of Bengal. It looks at the disasters that the islands have experienced in the last 200 years and analyzes major disasters since colonization by the British. Raising some critical questions, this book attempts to understand the overall profile of disasters - the facts, causes, damage, response and recovery - in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. It discusses earthquakes, cyclones, tsunami and epidemics, as well as impacts of World War II, the penal colony and the post-Independence resettlement on the tribal population. The work will serve as a rich resource with its detailed tables, figures, maps and diagrams; appendices; and database ranging from travelogues, Census of India reports and fieldwork to Right to Information (RTI) petitions that collect hitherto unknown facts. The book will be useful to students of geography, disasters and disasters management, climate and environmental studies, history, sociology, island and ocean studies, and South Asian studies.

China suffers frequently from many types of natural disasters, which have affected the lives of many millions of Chinese. The steps which the Chinese state has taken to prevent disasters, mitigate their consequences, and reconstruct in the aftermath of disasters are therefore key issues. This book examines the single metropolis of Tianjin in northern China, a city which has suffered particularly badly from natural disasters - the great famine of 1958-61, the great flood of 1963 and the great earthquake of 1976. It discusses how the city managed these disasters, what policies and measures were taken to prevent and mitigate disasters, and to promote reconstruction afterwards. It also explores who suffered from and who benefited from the disasters. Overall, the book shows how disaster management was erratic, sometimes managed highly efficiently and in other cases disappointingly delayed and inept. It concludes that, although the Maoist state possessed formidable resources, disaster management was always constrained by other political and economic considerations, and was never an automatic priority.

Hurricane Katrina is the latest in a series of major disasters that were not well managed, but it is not likely to be the last. Category 4 and category 5 hurricanes will, according to most predictions, become both more frequent and more intense in the future due to global warming and/or natural weather cycles. In addition, it is often said that another terrorist attack on the United States is inevitable; that it is a question of when, not whether. Add to that the scare over a possible avian flu pandemic. As a result, the United States should expect that disaster response--to natural and other types of disasters--will continue to be of vital concern to the American public and the policymakers and officials who deal with disaster response and relief, including the military. The U.S. disaster relief program reflects a basic division of responsibility between federal, state, and local governments that has generally stood the test of time. At the federal level, a single agency, FEMA--now under the Department of Homeland Security--has been charged with the responsibility for coordinating the activities of the various federal agencies that have a role in disaster relief. A successful disaster response requires three things: timely and effective coordination between state and federal governments; effective coordination among the federal agencies; and effective coordination between and among state and local government agencies. Miskel examines the effects that operational failures after Hurricanes Agnes, Hugo, Andrew, and Katrina have had on the organizational design and operating principles of the disaster response system program. He also discusses the impact of 9/11 and the evolving role ofthe military, and he identifies reforms that should be implemented to improve the nation's ability to respond in the future.