Natural hazards such as earthquakes, landslides, floods, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, and hurricanes cause environmental, economic as well as sociological problems worldwide. In recent years, greater availability of information and sensational media reports of natural hazard occurrence -and in particular in terms of property damage or loss oflife caused by these hazards -resulted in an increase of hazard awareness at a societal level. This increase in public awareness has often been misconstrued as an indication that natural hazards have been occurring more frequently with higher magnitudes in recent years/decades, thus causing more damage than in the past. It is still under debate, however, to which extent recent increases in damage can be related to changing frequencies of natural processes, or whether catastrophic events occur at similar rates as they always had. If the latter is the case, the reason for a greater damage can be related to dramatic population growth over the last century, with a substantial augmentation of population density in some regions. Indeed, the implications are more server in underdeveloped and developing countries, where urbanisation has increasingly occurred in hazard prone areas such as coastal zones, alluvial river plains and steep slopes, thus causing an increase in the exposure to natural hazards. Some groups of society in wealthy countries accept higher risks in order to live directly on top of a cliff or on a steep slope to enjoy panoramic views of the landscape.

This volume is dedicated to the memory of Barclay G. Jones, Professor of City and Regional Planning and Regional Science at Cornell University. Over a decade ago, Barclay took on a fledgling area of study - economic modeling of disasters - and nurtured its early development. He served as the social science program director at the National Center for Earthquake Engineering Research (NCEER), a university consortium sponsored by the National Science Foundation and the Federal Emergency Management Agency of the United States. In this capacity, Barclay shepherded and attracted a number of regional scientists to the study of disasters. He organized a conference, held in the ill-fated World Trade Center in September 1995, on "The Economic Consequences of Earthquakes: Preparing for the Unexpected. " He persistently advocated the importance of social science research in an establishment dominated by less-than-sympathetic natural scientists and engineers. In 1993, Barclay organized the first of a series of sessions on "Measuring Regional Economic Effects of Unscheduled Events" at the North American Meetings of the Regional Science Association International (RSAI). This unusual nomenclature brought attention to the challenge that disasters -largely unanticipated, often sudden, and always disorderly - pose to the regional science modeling tradition. The sessions provided an annual forum for a growing coalition of researchers, where previously the literature had been fragmentary, scattered, and episodic. Since Barclay's unexpected passing in 1997, we have continued this effort in his tradition.

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 IGO licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. WIDER The World Institute for Development Economics Research, established in 1984, started work in Helsinki in 1985, with the financial support of the Government of Finland. The principal purpose of the Institute is to help identify and meet the need for policy-oriented socio-economic research on pressing global and development problems and their inter-relationships. WIDER's research projects are grouped into three main themes: hunger and poverty; money, finance, and trade; and development and technological transformation. Volume II deals with famine prevention, paying particular attention to sub-Saharan Africa. The topics covered include: the problems of early warning and early action; the politics of famine prevention; the influence of market responses; the role of cash support and employment provision in protecting threatened food entitlements; and long-term issues of reduction of famine vulnerability. In addition to general analyses, the book contains a number of case studies of failures and successes in famine prevention, both in South Asia and in sub-Saharan Africa.

Earth feels unwell so she goes to the doctor. What the doctor prescribes seems impossible to Earth until she wakes the next day to surprising change. The gentle, timeless story can be enjoyed by everyone. It has the bonus of being a clever tool to help children process aspects of lockdown without any explicit reference to the pandemic as well as subtly prompting discussion around environmental issues.

Disasters are part of the modern condition, a source of physical anxiety and existential angst, and they are increasing in frequency, cost and severity. Drawing on both disaster research and social theory, this book offers a critical examination of their causes, consequences and future avoidance.

This study explores the role of refugees in international relations by looking at the largest involuntary migration of Ukrainians in history. Using both Western and newly-available Soviet sources it sheds light on Grand Alliance policies towards World War II Ukrainian refugees. It demonstrates how the activities of this particular group of refugees had an impact on international refugee policy and provides insight into the origins of the Cold War.

With one million dead, and just as many forced to emigrate, the Irish Famine (1845-52) is among the worst health calamities in history. In 2006, archaeologists discovered a mass burial containing the remains of nearly 1,000 Kilkenny Union workhouse inmates. In the first bioarchaeological study of Great Famine victims, Jonny Geber uses skeletal analysis to tell the story of how and why the Irish Famine decimated the lowest levels of nineteenth century society. By examining the physical conditions of the inmates that might have contributed to their institutionalization, as well as to the resulting health consequences, Geber sheds new and unprecedented light on Ireland's Great Hunger.

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.

This is the first book to examine the linkages among natural and organizational accidents and disasters in the modern era and clarifies the mechanisms involved and the significance of emerging problems, from the aging of vital infrastructure for the supply of water, gas, oil, and electricity to the breakdown of pensions, healthcare, and other social systems. The book demonstrates how we might check the underlying civilizational collapse and then explore translational systems approaches toward resilient management and policy for sustainability. In Unsafety, the author focuses on the kinds of unnatural disasters and organizational accidents that arise as repercussions of natural hazards. Japan serves as an example, where earthquakes, tsunamis, and typhoons are common, with the Fukushima nuclear disaster as an outstanding case of this link between natural disasters and organizational accidents. Natural and human-made disasters happen worldwide and cause misery through loss of life; destruction of livelihoods as in agriculture, fisheries, and the manufacturing industry; and interruption of urban life. Unsafety from a disaster in one place increases uncertainty elsewhere, presenting urgent issues in all nations for individuals, organizations, regions, and the state. The author explains that one factor in the Fukushima catastrophe, which followed in the wake of the earthquake and tsunami in 2011, was the latent deterioration and aging of systems at all levels from the physical to the social, leading through a chain reaction to unsought and unforeseen consequences. Here, the aging of the nuclear reactor system, the breakdown of safety management, and inappropriate instructions from the regulatory authorities combined to create the three-fold disaster, in which technological, organizational, and governmental dysfunction have been diagnosed as reflecting a "systems pathology" infecting all levels.

In 1997 disastrous flooding running through the Czech Republic, Poland, Germany took the lives of a great number of people and caused economic damage estimated in tens of billions of dollars. Flooding of the Yangtze river in 1998 killed more than 3000 people, dislocated 230 million souls, and caused direct damage of more than $ 45 billion. Both the general public and the experts are asking what we can learn from these recent events to reduce loss of life and flood damage. The 1997 floods were dealt with by experts from the Czech Republic, Poland and Germany, who presented timely reports on combatting floods, both success stories and shortcomings. This experience is further extended by reports from experts drawn from 13 other countries, developing a broad overview of flood risk management, covering the ecosystem approach to flood management, including socioeconomic issues, flood impacts on water quality, human health, and natural ecosystems.

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.

Dr. Peter Hotez discusses how an antivaccine movement became a dangerous political campaign promoted by elected officials and amplified by news media, causing thousands of American deaths.

During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, one renowned scientist, in his famous bowtie, appeared daily on major news networks such as MSNBC, NPR, the BBC, and others. Dr. Peter J. Hotez often went without sleep, working around the clock to develop a nonprofit COVID-19 vaccine and to keep the public informed. During that time, he was one of the most trusted voices on the pandemic and was even nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for his selfless work. He also became one of the main targets of anti-science rhetoric that gained traction through conservative news media.

In this eyewitness story of how the anti-vaccine movement grew into a dangerous and prominent anti-science element in American politics, Hotez describes the devastating impacts it has had on Americans' health and lives. As a scientist who has endured antagonism from anti-vaxxers and been at the forefront of both essential scientific discovery and advocacy, Hotez is uniquely qualified to tell this story. By weaving his personal experiences together with information on how the anti-vaccine movement became a tool of far-right political figures around the world, Hotez opens readers' eyes to the dangers of anti-science. He explains how anti-science became a major societal and lethal force: in the first years of the pandemic, more than 200,000 unvaccinated Americans needlessly died despite the widespread availability of COVID-19 vaccines. Even as he paints a picture of the world under a shadow of aggressive ignorance, Hotez demonstrates his innate optimism, offering solutions for how to combat science denial and save lives in the process.

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"--

This book examines the impact of coal mining on the lives of former-labour tenant and rural communities in post-apartheid South Africa.

No Last Place to Rest: Coal Mining and Dispossession in South Africa is an exploration of the ongoing struggles faced by families in the Mpumalanga and KwaZulu-Natal provinces of South Africa whose lives have been upended by the relentless expansion of coal mining operations. These regions, burdened with the task of fulfilling the nation's energy needs and boosting the country’s economy, witness daily the harsh realities of dispossession that extend far beyond the mere loss of property.

Dineo Skosana presents a compelling argument that dispossession remains a present-day reality and crisis, contradicting the notion that it is merely a relic of the past in the post-apartheid landscape. It challenges the narrow perspective that equates land loss in material and economic terms only. Skosana considers the impact of grave relocations―a common occurrence in these mining-dominated locales― and the profound spiritual anguish and dehumanisation communities endure as their lands are excavated. In African societies, connections to the land extend beyond the material; land has a sacred and ancestral value. Grave relocations disrupt this connection families have with their ancestors. In dispossessing not only the living but also the dead from their lands, the author argues that the act wounds the collective soul of a people, eroding their cultural heritage, and collective identity and belonging.

This book offers a rich ethnographic account of the experiences, struggles and resistance of the affected communities as well as a critical analysis of the legal and policy frameworks that enable their exploitation. In relation to the ‘land question’ in South Africa, No Last Place to Rest presents deep insights for communities, activists and government sectors acting in support of social justice and redress.

The proceedings of the Development Studies Association conference held in Dublin on the 150th anniversary of the Great Irish Famine examine the historical background and the reasons why the spectre of famine continues to haunt much of the developing world today. Set in the context of the concepts of food security and insecurity it emphasises our moral responsibility to act collectively and to tackle less dramatic problems of food insecurity.

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.

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.

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.

Surgical care is increasingly recognized as a critical component of global health, and strong surgical skills, teamwork, and poise under pressure become even more imperative during conflict or disaster. When faced with hospital bombings or devastating earthquakes, healthcare personnel must develop special techniques and abilities to ably care for patients despite limited resources and a disrupted health system. In Operation Crisis, Dr. Adam L. Kushner brings together 22 medical experts from around the world to recount their experiences in the field when disaster struck. These candid firsthand accounts from both local and international aid surgeons provide clinicians and public health practitioners with insightful lessons for effectively treating surgical patients under the most grueling of circumstances. Moving from conflict settings that include war zones in Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Syria, and South Sudan, Operation Crisis also touches on post-earthquake Haiti and Nepal and post-tsunami Indonesia. Individual themed chapters cover mass casualty training, burn care, obstetric care, sexual violence, and landmine injuries. Combining personal stories with lessons learned and possible interventions, these vivid and affecting essays detail the immediate aftermath of conflict and disaster while pointing the way to improving care for future victims of crisis. Intended to spark further discussion and function as an advocacy tool while highlighting situations where surgical care can save lives and reduce disability, this book is a valuable resource for medical professionals, students, policy makers, international aid organizations, and philanthropic donors. Contributors: Kapendra Shekhar Amatya, Samer Attar, Jeffrey A. Bailey, Lucas C. Carlson, James C. Cobey, Dattesh R. Dave, Dan L. Deckelbaum, Richard A. Gosselin, Shailvi Gupta, Edna Adan Ismail, Thaim B. Kamara, T. Peter Kingham, Adam L. Kushner, Judy M. Lee, Maria "Tane" Pilar Luna, Brijesh Mishra, Kyle N. Remick, Lauri J. Romanzi, Michael Sinclair, Barclay T. Stewart, Marten van Wijhe, Evan G. Wong

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.