Evaluating the myriad dimensions of how disasters can affect economic activity and decision-making, this cutting-edge Handbook presents a timely analysis of the conditions that reduce or exacerbate disaster impacts. Addressing developments in research on disaster economics, internationally recognized scholars explore the role of both the private and public sectors in managing and mitigating disasters. Chapters discuss important theoretical considerations in the evaluation of the impacts of disasters on economic activity, including the behavioral consequences, biases and heuristics, and risk preferences. Delving deeper into disaster economics, the Handbook then presents empirical methods and applications used in modelling disaster impact evaluation, with research focusing on impacts on economic growth, government fiscal and social conditions, well-being, and migration. Informed by the latest research on the economics of pandemics, the Handbook concludes by presenting novel approaches to evaluating and improving risk management, resilience, recovery and adaptability in the face of disasters. A valuable resource for conducting research, this Handbook will prove vital to students and scholars of developmental and environmental economics. Providing a broad range of guidance from disaster response experts, it will also prove useful to practitioners and policymakers concerned with the economics of disasters.

Poverty remains a problem in Europe, raising the need for new solutions. In this thought-provoking book the contributors delve deeply into the everyday lives of poor households to see which practices and resources they apply to improve their situations. One of the key findings is that social resilience requires a functioning welfare state operating as a warrantor of common and public goods, on which poor households can build up resilient practices. This insightful book illustrates that in addition to sufficient welfare transfers, there is a need for low-commodified common goods, including public health services, access to housing, education infrastructures and public space. These need to be made available not only for the registered poor but all low-income households. Drawing on over 400 interviews with families and experts across Europe, the chapters demonstrate the need for social policy to become more tolerant towards various forms of small additional income generation and non-commodified values and lifestyles. Poverty, Crisis and Resilience will be a key resource for students and scholars of social policy, poverty research and sociology, while also being of value to social policy practitioners within the charity sector, welfare state administration, social work, politics and counselling.

A brilliantly original exploration of our obsession with the end of the world, from Mary Shelley’s The Last Man to the Manic Street Preachers’ Everything Must Go.

For two millennia, Christians have anticipated the end of the world, haunted by the apocalyptic visions of the Book of Revelation. But over the past two centuries, these dark fantasies have given way to secular stories of how the world, our planet, or our species (or all of the above) might be annihilated.

In Everything Must Go – a cultural history of the modern world that weaves together politics, history, science, high and popular culture – Dorian Lynskey explores the endings that we have read, listened to, or watched, while perched on the edge of our seats with eyes wide, (mostly) loving every moment.

Whether with visions of destruction by nuclear holocaust or a mighty collision with a meteor, a devastating epidemic or a violent takeover by robots, why do we like to scare ourselves, and why do we keep coming back for more?

Deeply illuminating about our past, our present and – given the revelation that the end of the world has seemingly always been nigh – hopeful about our future, Everything Must Go will grip you from beginning to, well, end.

More than fifteen years later, Hurricane Katrina maintains a strong grip on the American imagination. The reason is not simply that Katrina was an event of enormous scale, although it certainly was by any measure one of the most damaging storms in American history. But, quite apart from its lethality and destructiveness, Katrina retains a place in living memory because it is one of the most telling disasters in our recent national experience, revealing important truths about our society and ourselves. The final volume in the award-winning Katrina Bookshelf series Higher Ground reflects upon what we have learned about Katrina and about America. Kai Erikson and Lori Peek expand our view of the disaster by assessing its ongoing impact on individual lives and across the wide-ranging geographies where displaced New Orleanians landed after the storm. Such an expanded view, the authors argue, is critical for understanding the human costs of catastrophe across time and space. Concluding with a broader examination of disasters in the years since Katrina-including COVID-19-The Continuing Storm is a sobering meditation on the duration of a catastrophe that continues to exact steep costs in human suffering.

Elgar Advanced Introductions are stimulating and thoughtful introductions to major fields in the social sciences, business and law, expertly written by the world's leading scholars. Designed to be accessible yet rigorous, they offer concise and lucid surveys of the substantive and policy issues associated with discrete subject areas. With disasters increasing in both frequency and intensity, this timely Advanced Introduction provides a fresh perspective on how the concepts established in the Sendai Framework can be put into practice to reduce disaster risk, improve preparedness in cost-effective ways, and develop whole-of-society approaches to increasing resilience. Key Features: Provides evidence-informed coverage of the core areas of disaster risk reduction Identifies the implementation issues and challenges to anticipation, preparedness, evaluation and governance and the strategies that can be used to facilitate it Discusses individual and collective ways to manage recovery and to learn from disaster experiences and programmes such as Build Back Better to prepare people to deal with disasters more effectively in the future Incorporating research on preparedness modelling, evaluation strategies, adaptive governance, and transformative learning, this Advanced Introduction will be invaluable to students and scholars of environmental management, governance and regulation interested in disaster risk reduction. It will also be a vital resource to policymakers looking to strengthen their disaster preparedness and recovery measures.

On 24 February 2022, the first day of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, armoured vehicles approached the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in northern Ukraine. It was the most direct way for them to reach the capital - and an extraordinarily reckless plan after the disaster that had taken place there three decades earlier. Russian occupation of the plant had begun. It would last thirty-five days.

Closely reported and narrated from multiple perspectives, this is the story of the Ukrainians who were held hostage and worked shifts for weeks instead of days to spare the world a new nuclear accident. We meet Valentyn Heiko, the foreman who had also been there for the clean-up of the Chernobyl accident in 1986 and turned sixty during the occupation; plant workers who found a way to celebrate International Women’s Day despite all odds; Russian officers who had no knowledge of nuclear reactors; and four stalkers who were caught in the middle and stood in for the overworked cook.

Gripping and unforgettable, Chernobyl Roulette sounds the alarm about the dangers of nuclear sites in an unprecedented time, when plant workers are left to fight on their own while the world holds its breath. In a book that reads like a thriller, Serhii Plokhy tells a remarkable story about human nature, uncertainty and courage.

Utilizing extensive research in economics, psychology, political science, neuroscience and evolutionary theory, Ananish Chaudhuri provides a critical perspective on the role of cognitive biases in decision-making during the Covid-19 pandemic. The extensive use of, and support for, stringent social distancing measures in particular is explored in depth. Nudged into Lockdown? provides clear explanations of complex scientific information regarding Covid-19, vaccines, and policy responses, to highlight issues at the center of policy-making during the pandemic. With a comprehensive overview of the policy debates around Covid-19, the book offers an alternative thought-provoking perspective on the topic, as well as suggestions for policy-making during future pandemics and other crises. It further highlights applications of a range of concepts from heuristics and biases literature, including priming, framing, anchoring, Prospect Theory, and loss aversion. Providing directions for future research in the area, this book will be an invigorating read for established academics, as well as postgraduate students looking to undertake research in Covid-19 related decision-making. It will also be a critical read for economics, political science, and public policy scholars seeking a deeper understanding of the topic.

In this synthetic, interdisciplinary work, Neil Brenner develops a new interpretation of the transformation of statehood under contemporary globalizing capitalism. Whereas most analysts of the emergent, post-Westphalian world order have focused on supranational and national institutional realignments, 'New State Spaces' shows that strategic subnational spaces, such as cities and city-regions, represent essential arenas in which states are being transformed. Brenner traces the transformation of urban governance in western Europe during the last four decades and, on this basis, argues that inherited geographies of state power are being fundamentally rescaled. Through a combination of theory construction, historical analysis and cross-national case studies of urban policy change, 'New State Spaces' provides an innovative analysis of the new formations of state power that are currently emerging. This is a mature and sophisticated analysis by a major young scholar

This comprehensive Handbook assesses the escalation of global natural disasters as a result of climate change. Examining the complex interplay of human and natural activities, it highlights the growing vulnerability of people and communities in developing countries to floods, landslides, cyclones, heat waves and wildfires. The Handbook opens with a global framework analysis, outlining the implications of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, the Paris Agreement and the Sendai Framework for disaster risk reduction. International contributors address the roles of stakeholders in mitigating climate hazards, as well as offer detailed analysis of cross-cutting issues, including poverty, health, education and gender. Concluding chapters address the future of climate change mitigation and disaster protection, exploring the growing role of emerging technologies in disaster resilience and sustainable development. Bringing together cutting-edge research from renowned global scholars and professionals, this Handbook offers key insights for researchers and students of environmental studies and development studies, particularly those focusing on natural disasters and climate technologies. The empirical data and case analysis will also benefit practitioners, professionals and policymakers working in climate risk relief.

Elgar Advanced Introductions are stimulating and thoughtful introductions to major fields in the social sciences, business and law, expertly written by the world's leading scholars. Designed to be accessible yet rigorous, they offer concise and lucid surveys of the substantive and policy issues associated with discrete subject areas. With disasters increasing in both frequency and intensity, this timely Advanced Introduction provides a fresh perspective on how the concepts established in the Sendai Framework can be put into practice to reduce disaster risk, improve preparedness in cost-effective ways, and develop whole-of-society approaches to increasing resilience. Key Features: Provides evidence-informed coverage of the core areas of disaster risk reduction Identifies the implementation issues and challenges to anticipation, preparedness, evaluation and governance and the strategies that can be used to facilitate it Discusses individual and collective ways to manage recovery and to learn from disaster experiences and programmes such as Build Back Better to prepare people to deal with disasters more effectively in the future Incorporating research on preparedness modelling, evaluation strategies, adaptive governance, and transformative learning, this Advanced Introduction will be invaluable to students and scholars of environmental management, governance and regulation interested in disaster risk reduction. It will also be a vital resource to policymakers looking to strengthen their disaster preparedness and recovery measures.

A richly imagined new view on the great human tradition of apocalypse, from the rise of Homo sapiens to the climate instability of our present, that defies conventional wisdom and long-held stories about our deep past to reveal how cataclysmic events are not irrevocable endings, but transformations.

A drought lasts for decades, a disease rips through a city, a civilization collapses. When we finally uncover the ruins, we ask: What happened? The good news is, we’ve been here before. History is long, and people have already confronted just about every apocalypse we’re facing today. But these days, archaeologists are getting better at seeing stories of survival, transformation, and even progress hidden within those histories of collapse and destruction. Perhaps, we begin to see, apocalypses do not destroy worlds, but create them anew.

Apocalypse offers a new way of understanding human history, reframing it as a series of crises and cataclysms that we survived, moments of choice in an evolution of humanity that has never been predetermined or even linear. Here Lizzie Wade asks us to reckon with our long-held narratives of these events, from the end of Old Kingdom Egypt, the collapse of the Classic Maya, to the Black Death, and shows us how people lived through and beyond them—and even considered what a new world could look like in their wake.

The more we learn about apocalypses past, the more hope we have that we will survive our own. It won’t be pleasant. It won’t be fair. The world will be different on the other side, and our cultures and communities—perhaps even our species—will be different too.

This timely book unpacks the idea of 'disaster' from a variety of approaches, broadening understanding and improving the usability of this complex and often contested concept. Including multidisciplinary perspectives from leading and emerging scholars, it offers reflections on how the concept of disaster has been shaped by and within various fields of research, providing complementary and thought-provoking comparisons across many domains. Functioning as an important point of reference between and across disciplines, chapters explore the forces and building blocks of disaster and how these are interpreted, providing opportunities for dialogue between multiple points of view. The book concludes with a broader, integrated discussion of the aspects of disaster research covered, putting forward suggestions for further cooperation between disciplines and a future research agenda. Defining Disaster will be a fascinating read for disaster researchers in disciplines including law, sociology, and social and public policy who wish to improve their understanding of how their work maps onto the wider field. It will also be beneficial for policy makers and practitioners in this area looking for a rounded view of contemporary cross-disciplinary research on the subject.

Providing an integrated and multi-level analysis of the impacts of COVID-19 on people, place, economies and policies, across the globe, this timely book explores how the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic combines failure with success. It focuses on exploring rapid adaptation and improvisation by individuals, organisations and governments as they attempted to minimise and mitigate the socio-economic and health impacts of the pandemic. Interdisciplinary chapters written by social policy, geography, planning, policy, sociology and public health experts explore the broader impacts of COVID-19, positioning the pandemic in the context of wider trends and risks including climate change. Chapters highlight the importance of place and local contexts in understanding its impacts in different settings including Europe, Canada, North America, South Korea, South Africa and Lebanon. In doing so, the book develops a pandemic preparedness, responsiveness and recovery research framework and intends to inform post-pandemic policy development and research. This is an important book for geography, social policy, politics, urban studies, planning and business and management researchers and students, particularly those focusing on crisis management and risk and resilience. With key case studies from across the globe, it will help elucidate key issues for policy makers and practitioners across a range of sectors including strategic management, social policy, public health and the built environment.

This book addresses unexpected disasters and shocks in cities and urban systems by providing quantitative and qualitative tools for impact analysis and disaster management. Including environmental catastrophes, political turbulence and economic shocks, Resilience and Urban Disasters explores a large range of tumultuous events and key case studies to thoroughly cover these core areas. Chapters explore novel contributions on urban evolution and adjustment patterns based on studies from across the globe. Both causal mechanisms and policy responses to the high social costs of urban disasters are addressed. In particular, the book explores the socio-economic impacts on urban systems that are subject to disasters, including migration due to large earthquakes in Japan, the economic impact of terrorist attacks in Istanbul and labour market changes as a result of natural disasters in Italy. Urban planning and urban economics scholars will greatly benefit from the multidisciplinary analyses of a variety of case studies in the book. City planners and urban administrators will also find the exploration of potential paths of resilience for cities to be an invaluable tool for future planning. Contributors include: K. Borsekova, M. Dobrik, K. Fabian, R. Fabling, D.l. Felsenstein, R. Goncharov, A. Grimes, A.Y. Grinberger, T. Inal-Cekic, Y. Ishikawa, M. Morisugi, K. Nakajima, P. Nijkamp, M.D. OEzugul, F. Pagliacci, M. Russo, L. Rysova, N. Sakamoto, E. Seckin, M. Taheri Tafti, L. Timar, N. Zamyatina