The methods of disaster research are indistinguishable from those used throughout the social sciences. Yet these methods must be applied under unique circumstances. Researchers new to this field need to understand how the disaster context affects the application of the methods of research. This volume, written by some of the world's leading specialists in disaster research, provides for the first time a primer on disaster research methods. Among the topics covered are qualitative field studies and survey research; underutilized approaches such as cross-national studies, simulations, and historical methods; and newer tools utilizing geographic information systems, the Internet, and economic modeling.

Hurricane Katrina blasted the Gulf Coast in 2005, leaving an unparalleled trail of physical destruction. In addition to that damage, the storm wrought massive psychological and cultural trauma on Gulf Coast residents and on America as a whole. Details of the devastation were quickly reported-and misreported-by media outlets, and a slew of articles and books followed, offering a spectrum of socio-political commentaries and analyses. But beyond the reportage and the commentary, a series of fictional and creative accounts of the Katrina-experience have emerged in various mediums: novels, plays, films, television shows, songs, graphic novels, collections of photographs, and works of creative non-fiction that blur the lines between reportage, memoir, and poetry. The creative outpouring brings to mind Salman Rushdie's observation that, "Man is the storytelling animal, the only creature on earth that tells itself stories to understand what kind of creature it is." This book accepts the urge behind Rushdie's formula: humans tell stories in order to understand ourselves, our world, and our place in it. Indeed, the creative output on Katrina represents efforts to construct a cohesive narrative out of the wreckage of a cataclysmic event. However, this book goes further than merely cataloguing the ways that Katrina narratives support Rushdie's rich claim. This collection represents a concentrated attempt to chart the effects of Katrina on our cultural identity; it seeks to not merely catalogue the trauma of the event but to explore the ways that such an event functions in and on the literature that represents it. The body of work that sprung out of Katrina offers a unique critical opportunity to better understand the genres that structure our stories and the ways stories reflect and produce culture and identity. These essays raise new questions about the representative genres themselves. The stories are efforts to represent and understand the human condition, but so are the organizing principles that communicate the stories. That is, Katrina-narratives present an opportunity to interrogate the ways that specific narrative structures inform our understanding and develop our cultural identity. This book offers a critical processing of the newly emerging and diverse canon of Katrina texts.

Think about where you are right now. How well would you and your family fare if today, right now, you were suddenly faced with an enormous disaster-a massive earthquake, a sudden flood, a horrific hurricane, tornado, super storm, or other catastrophic event? If you and your family are not fully prepared to face the events after a disaster and you want to learn how to prepare for and survive when a disaster strikes, this book could save your life ... and the lives of your family. This book details lifesaving information and illustrations for you and your family, to help ensure your survival in the event of a disaster.

In late medieval and early modern Europe, textual and visual records of disaster and mass death allow us to encounter the intense emotions generated through the religious, providential and apocalyptic frameworks that provided these events with meaning. This collection brings together historians, art historians, and literary specialists in a cross-disciplinary collection shaped by new developments in the history of emotions. It offers a rich range of analytical frameworks and case studies, from the emotional language of divine providence to individual and communal experiences of disaster. Geographically wide-ranging, the collection also analyses many different sorts of media: from letters and diaries to broadsheets and paintings. Through these and other historical records, the contributors examine how communities and individuals experienced, responded to, recorded and managed the emotional dynamics and trauma created by dramatic events like massacres, floods, fires, earthquakes and plagues.

In the Aftermath of the Pandemic is an accessible treatment manual enabling psychotherapists to use Interpersonal Psychotherapy (IPT) to address the psychological consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic and other large-scale disasters. Well-studied and time-limited, IPT has demonstrated efficacy in treating mood disorders, anxiety disorders, and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). IPT helps people to mobilize social support, to process and take control of environmental stressors, relieving symptoms. As such it appears an excellent intervention for the wave of psychiatric problems accompanying the COVID-19 pandemic. The book describes IPT techniques and focuses on treating the disaster's major outcomes-depression, PTSD, and anxiety-illustrating their treatment with multiple detailed case examples drawn from actual clinical presentations from the pandemic. The book also addresses the sudden shift from in-person to remote tele-therapy, and includes a novel COVID Behavioral Checklist of psychological risk factors. Dr. John Markowitz, a leading IPT expert, explains the psychological impacts of disasters like COVID-19 and the particular usefulness of IPT in addressing them, making this a crucial text for clinicians looking to address the psychiatric crisis the pandemic has wrought.

This collection explores the ways in which traumatic experience becomes a part of public memory. It explores the premise that traumatic events are realities; they happen in the world, not in the fantasy life of individuals or in the narrative frames of our televisions and cinemas.

Industrial Disasters, Toxic Waste, and Community Impact focuses on hazardous and toxic wastes releases, industrial disasters, the consequent contamination of communities and the environment, and the subsequent social impacts, including adverse health effects, deaths and property destruction, psychosocial problems, and community disruption. This book explains the emergence of a sociological study of risk and of natural, technological, and hybrid disasters, along with a review of the accumulated body of knowledge in the field. It is unique in its integration of sociological perspectives with perspectives from other disciplines when discussing the problems posed by technological hazards both in advanced industrialized societies and in the underdeveloped world. Francis O. Adeola extends the field through an innovative presentation of topics which up to now have had sparse treatment in sociology texts. This book starts by presenting the sociology of hazardous waste, risk, and disasters as a relatively new development, engendering both a growing passion and an increasing volume of empirical research among scholars. Next, it describes how hazardous and toxic wastes disposal, exposure, remediation, and proximate adverse health consequences have risen to the level of endemic social problem both in the United States and around the world. After discussing these cases in relation to contemporary theories of industrial and organizational disasters, Adeola delves into classifying of hazardous wastes, indicating the characteristics of each type of waste, and identifying what makes them especially dangerous to people and the environment. Other major topics addressed in the rest of the book include electronic waste (e-waste) as a new species of trouble in terms of the volume and toxicity of global e-waste generation and management, the environmental and health risks of Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs), case studies of contaminated communities within the United States and across the globe, the international flows of toxic waste, analysis of risk and environmental contamination by race and ethnicity in the United States, and the juxtaposition of the issues of environmental justice and human rights. With its many contributions to environmental sociology, Industrial Disasters, Toxic Waste, and Community Impact will be a valuable addition to the libraries of students, scholars, and practitioners interested in the intersection of toxic waste releases, human exposure to contaminants, and public health.

This is the first English language book that systematically introduces the spatial and temporal patterns of major natural disasters in China from 1949 to 2014. It also reveals natural disaster formation mechanisms and processes, quantifies vulnerability to these disasters, evaluates disaster risks, summarizes the key strategies of integrated disaster risk governance, and analyzes large-scale disaster response cases in recent years in China. The book can be a good reference for researchers, students, and practitioners in the field of natural disaster risk management and risk governance for improving the understanding of natural disasters in China.

This book covers several dimensions of disaster studies as an emerging discipline. It is the inaugural book in the series 'Disaster Studies and Management' and deals with questions such as "Is disaster management a field of practice, a profession, or simply a new area of study?" Exploring intersectionalities, the book also examines areas of research that could help enhance the discourse on disaster management from policy and practice perspectives, revisiting conventional event-centric approaches, which are the basis for most writings on the subject. Several case studies and comparative analyses reflect a critical reading of research and practice concerning disasters and their management. The book offers valuable insights into various subjects including the challenge of establishing inter- and multi-disciplinary teams within the academia involved in disaster studies, and sociological and anthropological readings of post-disaster memoryscapes. Each of the contributors has an enduring interest in disaster studies, thus enriching the book immensely. This book will be of interest to all the students and scholars of disaster studies and disaster management, as well as to practitioners and policymakers.

The First 72 Hours is the seminal anthology of the perspectives of public and private sector leaders who came together after September 11, 2001 to design more disaster-resilient communities. Under the umbrella of the Suburban Emergency Management Project, these leaders learned from national experts and one another that all disasters are intensely local at first and that most communities are on their own immediately following disaster impact--often for as long as 72 hours. This new awareness mandated updating strategies to improve disaster preparedness, particularly in light of the threat of terrorism. A wide gamut of perspectives are laid out in the book, including those of doctors and hospitals, city managers, police officers, firefighters, paramedics, American Red Cross volunteers, hospital accreditors, the media, business managers, utility companies, emergency managers, public health officials, academics, and elected public officials. to map the myriad organizations involved in local disaster preparedness and response; analyzing, refining and rehearsing local disaster roles; and getting to know individual personalities when in specific roles. The First 72 Hours is an essential resource for professionals and private citizens alike who want to know what kinds of questions must be asked and answered to better prepare their communities to survive future disaster. There's a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all.--Hamlet V, II, William Shakespear

As a practical reference for anyone entrusted with the lives and property of others, Emergency Planning helps its readers prepare for a variety of situations--from bomb threats to fires to nuclear disasters. The authors of this book recognize the need for updated emergency planning. The "blueprints" in the appendices are useful plans for dealing with such specific emergencies as labor strikes, hurricanes, and terrorist actions.

While most large governmental entities are prepared to deal with nearly all types of contingencies and emergencies, many communities and companies have few plans detailing how to respond to and recover from such events. The purpose of this book is to stimulate thought on the part of the reader, provide some practical solutions to problems that could be encountered, and offer a number of considerations for formulating emergency plans. The authors have combined their years of knowledge and experience to create some sample plans for the reader to use as models for developing site-specific plans.

Whether a natural event turns into a disaster depends on the severity of the hazard as well as the condition of the social sphere of its potential victims, i.e., vulnerability. We focus on regional vulnerability considering the fact that regional socioeconomic conditions determine the aspects of the damage and thus the risk management policy. This book provides the theory and methodology to understand and cope with regional vulnerability through an interdisciplinary approach. The fields mainly included in this work are welfare and environmental economics, the planning and management area of civil engineering, and risk management. In particular, we focus on hazard and vulnerability surrounding water issues and provide readers with knowledge of how the regional analysis is incorporated into the vulnerability analysis. Also considered is what risk management should be when the diversified regional background of the vulnerability is taken into account. A feature of this book is that it provides contrastive regional coverage: the vulnerability of a developed country-urban and regional areas of Japan-and that of a developing country, Bangladesh. The contents consist of three parts: (1) Socioeconomic Vulnerability in a Regional Perspective, (2) Evaluation of Regional Vulnerability, and (3) Coping with Regional Vulnerability. This book is highly recommended to researchers who need an up-to-date and interdisciplinary approach to deal with risk management where regional vulnerability plays an important role.

Scholars who have studied rural people and places often have focused on a snapshot in time as they attempt to understand how human beings are impacted by change at the local community level. Community once was declared dead as a unit of analysis for social science scholars, yet the citizens who live in these places find that their attachments to place and to other people in these places are crucial to their lives. Too often those who study such phenomena fail to examine the longterm impacts of shocks to place and people. This methodological failing often leads to exaggerated estimations of the impacts of disasters on communities and their residents. Human beings and the social structures they create are resilient. In this book, the author fills some of the gaps in our knowledge when he returns repeatedly to Buffalo Creek for several years, long after the flash flood departed in 1972. It is not often that a scholar with empathy for rural citizens returns to a place for many years to understand the longer term implications of disasters for individual well-being. This book provides a view of a place long after the tragedy has taken place. It illustrates how community residents struggle to re-create community and well-being after a serious ecological shock. The resilience of the human character and the adaptability of community structures form the core of this book. Taking us through the days before the flash flood at Buffalo Creek, the author paints a portrait of human failings and of growing environmental danger. He draws on the voices that were there on the scene. He also gives us a detailed review of newspaper accounts, government documents, and research studies, including Kai Erikson's classic disaster study, Everything in Its Path. From these many sources, we get a multi-faceted account of how the disaster occurred and how dozens of local, state, and federal agencies responded to it. After the Disaster provides detailed discussions with local residents, survey data, and a gift for integration that allows the reader to gain an understanding of how disasters impact communities in the short term and in the long term. The latter is one of the most important contributions of this book.

Hurricanes Katrina and Rita devastated the Gulf Coast in 2005. Commentary and analysis typically focused on what went wrong in the post-disaster emergency response. This forward-looking book, however, presents a more cautiously optimistic view about the region's ability to bounce back after multiple disasters.

Catastrophes come in different forms --hurricanes, recessions, and oil spills, to name a few. It is imperative that we learn how best to rebuild in the wake of disasters and what capacities and conditions are needed to improve future resilience. Since the devastating summer of 2005, leaders have made important inroads to restoring communities in more prosperous ways. "Resilience and Opportunity" is an important contribution to our collective learning from a teachable moment.

Contributors: Ivye Allen, Foundation for the Mid South; Lance Buhl, Duke University; Ann Carpenter, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta; Robert A. Collins, Dillard University; Mark S. Davis, Tulane University Law School; Breonne DeDecker, Brandeis University; Karen B. DeSalvo, Tulane University School of Medicine; Kathryn A. Foster, University at Buffalo Regional Institute, SUNY; Linetta Gilbert, The Declaration Initiative; Ambassador James Joseph, Duke University; Mukesh Kumar, Jackson State University; Luceia LeDoux, Baptist Communities Ministries; Silas Lee III, Xavier University of Louisiana; David A. Marcello, Tulane University; Richard McCline, Southern University; Nancy T. Montoya, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta; Reilly Morse, Mississippi Center for Justice; Elaine Ortiz, Greater New Orleans Community Data Center; Andre Perry, Loyola University, New Orleans; John L. Renne, University of New Orleans; Kalima Rose, PolicyLink; Michael Schwam-Baird, Tulane University; Jasmine M. Waddell, Brandeis University; Nadiene Van Dyke, New Orleans Police and Justice Foundation; Alandra Washington, W. K. Kellogg Foundation; Frederick Weil, Louisiana State University; Leslie Willams, LeaderShift Consulting; Jon Wool, Vera Institute of Justice.

Civil society organizations (CSOs) have played important roles over the years in the disaster field. Starting from the traditional approach of response and relief, the emphasis has gradually shifted to disaster risk reduction. From international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to national and local NGOs, all stakeholders have recognized the significance of and need for community-based risk reduction. In their different capacities they have endeavored to establish links to the policy options at the local and national levels. There still are many issues that remain untouched by CSOs, however, and local CSOs face special challenges in resources in terms of human, financial, and technical issues. Drawing examples from Asia, this book is structured on the roles of CSOs according to the Hyogo Framework for Action priority areas: policy making, risk assessment, education and training, underlying risk factors, and response-recovery. The primary target groups for this book are students and researchers in the fields of environment, disaster risk reduction, and climate change studies. The book provides a clear view of the current trends of research in the field and furnishes basic knowledge on these important topics. Another target group comprises practitioners and policy makers, who will be able to apply the knowledge collected here to policy and decision making.

This analysis of the aftermath of earthquakes in Japan, Turkey and India reveals important insights into how the outcome of each was affected by the different styles of state-society relationships. Using a comparative approach the book also seeks to draw out patterns and lessons that can be applied more generally to societies in the aftermath of such events. The result is a groundbreaking work that will be of major importance to all those whose work involves them in dealing with the aftermath of disasters and major conflict

Andrea Simonelli provides the first in-depth evaluation of climate displacement in the field of political science, specifically global governance. She evaluates four intergovernmental organizations (UNHCR, IOM, OCHA and the UNFCCC), and the structural and political constraints regarding their potential expansion to govern this new issue area.

This book is a pioneering regional work and provides a balanced approach of theory and practice in disaster risk reduction (DRR) in Pakistan. The book analytically discusses the status of DRR and draws examples and lessons from national and community-level programs and projects and events in the country. The book covers different types of disasters facing Pakistan, including geo-physical and hydro-meteorological hazards. This work incorporates and draws some of the key lessons learned from the pre-disaster and disaster phases to the post-disaster phase, providing an effective framework in the form of those lessons. The rich content is based on a selection of available documents, a consultative workshop with academicians from different universities undertaking DRR higher education programs, and the editors' own knowledge and experience in the field. Special emphasis is given to analyzing field experiences from academic perspectives, and pinpointing key issues and the policy relevance of DRR. Disaster Risk Reduction Approaches in Pakistan is organized into three sections with a total of 20 chapters. Section one provides the outline and basics of DRR strategies applied at the national level with supporting examples from a global review. Section two specifically highlights the wide ranges of hazards experienced in Pakistan and presents examples, policy options, institutional set-ups, risk reduction strategies, and key lessons learned. The third section of the book is given to approaches and issues of DRR practices with examples of disaster responses.

Responding to Catastrophic Events brings together the leading scholars and practitioners of consequence management to instruct a new generation in how to respond to both natural disasters and manmade events. Focusing on the relationship of disaster management to national security and the Department of Defense, the contributors cover a range of potential scenarios and address the distinct responsibilities of first responders, the Departments of Homeland Security, Defense, and State, and the military. They also point to the importance of having a plan for the media and knowing the legal obstacles and issues that may arise in a disaster situation. Using recent case studies to provide lessons learned for future responses to disasters, Responding to Catastrophic Events is a comprehensive and vital reader for any scholar of public policy, emergency management, or strategic studies.

This book addresses two common problems encountered by emergency services personnel: the design and implementation of evacuation warning systems to ensure citizen compliance with the directives of authorities and the permanent relocation of families threatened by hazards. The authors pay particular attention to the problems of constructing warning messages; to the citizen's interpretation of message content; the techniques of delivering warning messages; and the management of citizen movements out of threatened areas. Administrative issues related to variations in compliance among ethnic groups are also noted. In the second section, the authors explore the social psychological impact and the logistical, administrative, public policy, and political aspects of relocation. They elaborate a series of principles of positive relocation general enough to apply to a variety of relocation situations.

This volume brings together international scholars reflecting on the theory and practice of international security, human security, natural resources and environmental change. It contributes by 'centring the margins' and privileging alternative conceptions and understandings of environmental (in)security.