The Elkhorn River originates in north-central Nebraska and empties into the Platte River just west of Omaha. One of the first written records of the Elkhorn describes a flood. A flood hindered travel up the river by the valley's first non-Indian settlers. Decade after decade, floods have swept away mill dams, destroyed crops, drowned stock, soaked inventories, filled basements, undercut roads, washed out railroads and bridges, turned unfortunate riverside homesaEURO"even a dance hallaEURO"into unwieldy watercraft, and killed people. Everyone in the Elkhorn Valley agreed the Flood of 1944 was the worst in history. Until the deadly Flood of 2010 took the title. From a perspective unusual on the Great PlainsaEURO"the problem of too much wateraEURO" Flood on the Tracks offers an intimate portrait of life in the Elkhorn River Basin of northeast Nebraska. In a region often defined by aridity, rivers and their basins have provided sustenance, shelter, fertile soil, and overland highways. In many ways Plains rivers organize human lives. When they overflow, which they can be counted on to do, they disorganize them. Using Plains Indian winter counts, postcards, photographs, newspaper accounts, government records, and more, Flood on the Tracks chronicles the river's natural and human history from the Plains Indians into the twenty-first century. The Elkhorn's floods show us how the nature of disaster has changed and how Plainsfolk liveaEURO"and dieaEURO"with a river.

Leading experts address questions of public and private roles in assessing, managing, and mitigating major risks to public health and safety in light of the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina. "This volume provides important insights from the nation's leading experts on how we, as a community and nation, should be rethinking disaster assessment, prevention, and mitigation. Policymakers, legislators, business leaders, and scholars: this is a must-read."--Jon Huntsman, Jr., Governor of Utah "An indispensable resource for all who seek to learn from the unprecedented devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina. I commend the authors for recording the valuable lessons learned. Their work will assuredly help our communities be better prepared for the next catastrophe."--James Lee Witt, former Director, Federal Emergency Management Agency "An enormously important volume that comes at just the right time. In the wake of Katrina, new thinking is urgently needed on how to manage catastrophic risk most effectively--especially regarding prevention and recovery. This precious volume offers insights on both fronts, with contributions from many of the nation's leading authorities on risk and disaster. It is a must-read for scholars and policymakers alike."--David A. Moss, Harvard Business School Hurricane Katrina not only devastated a large area of the nation's Gulf coast, it also raised fundamental questions about ways the nation can, and should, deal with the inevitable problems of economic risk and social responsibility. This volume gathers leading experts to examine lessons that Hurricane Katrina teaches us about better assessing, perceiving, and managing risks from future disasters. The 20 contributors to this volume address questions of public and private roles in assessing, managing, and dealing with risk in American society and suggest strategies for moving ahead in rebuilding the Gulf coast. Contributors: Matthew Adler, Vicki Bier, Baruch Fischhoff, Kenneth R. Foster, Robert Giegengack, Peter Gosselin, Scott E. Harrington, Carolyn Kousky, Robert Meyer, Harvey G. Ryland, Brian L. Strom, Kathleen Tierney, Michael J. Trebilcock, Detlof von Winterfeldt, Jonathan Walters, Richard J. Zeckhauser. Ronald J. Daniels is Provost and Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania. He has published widely, including Rethinking the Welfare State: The Prospects for Government by Voucher (with Michael Trebilcock) and The Security of Freedom: Essays on Canada's Anti-Terrorism Bill (coedited with Patrick Macklem and Kent Roach). Donald F. Kettl, Professor of Political Science and Director of the Fels Institute of Government at the University of Pennsylvania, has written or edited "System under Stress: Homeland Security and American Politics," "The Global Public Management Revolution," "The Politics of the Administrative Process" (with James W. Fesler), "The Transformation of Governance: Public Administration for the 21st Century," among many other books. Howard Kunreuther is Professor and Codirector of the Risk Management and Decision Processes Center at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. His has written or coedited a number of books, including "Catastrophe Modeling: A New Approach to Managing Risk" (with Patricia Grossi) and "Wharton on Making Decisions" (with Stephen Hoch). Amy Gutmann is the eighth President of the University of Pennsylvania and the author of "Why Deliberative Democracy?" (with Dennis Thompson), "Identity in Democracy, Democratic Education, Democracy and Disagreement" (with Dennis Thompson), and "Color Conscious" (with K. Anthony Appiah). Her reviews have appeared in the "New York Times Book Review," "Times Literary Supplement," "Washington Post," and other general publications.

Disaster management aims to reduce human suffering and economic losses caused by disasters. The book deals with monitoring, control, planning and training for disasters, their prevention, and emergency control and planning.

This is the first book to look at gender issues in disasters in the context of South Asia, where disasters have a crucial impact on the development process. It shows how exploring the specific capacities and vulnerabilities of men and women in disaster situations, and taking account of them, will improve the chance of success in development projects. The book also includes two sets of guidelines, for policy makers and for practitioners, to help them address these issues in planning and implementing development and disaster management programmes.

Why do we have the constant feeling that disaster is looming? Beyond the images of atomic apocalypse that have haunted us for decades, we are dazzled now by an array of possible catastrophe scenarios: climate change, financial crises, environmental disasters, technological meltdowns-perennial subjects of literature, film, popular culture, and political debate. Is this preoccupation with catastrophe questionable alarmism or complacent passivity? Or are there certain truths that can be revealed only in apocalypse? In The Future as Catastrophe, Eva Horn offers a novel critique of the modern fascination with disaster, which she treats as a symptom of our relationship to the future. Analyzing the catastrophic imaginary from its cultural and historical roots in Romanticism and the figure of the Last Man, through the narratives of climatic cataclysm and the Cold War's apocalyptic sublime, to the contemporary popularity of disaster fiction and end-of-the-world blockbusters, Horn argues that apocalypse always haunts the modern idea of a future that can be anticipated and planned. Considering works by Lord Byron, J. G. Ballard, and Cormac McCarthy and films such as 12 Monkeys and Minority Report alongside scientific scenarios and political metaphors, she analyzes catastrophic thought experiments and the question of survival, the choices legitimized by imagined states of exception, and the contradictions inherent in preventative measures taken in the name of technical safety or political security. What makes today's obsession different from previous epochs' is the sense of a "catastrophe without event," a stealthily creeping process of disintegration. Ultimately, Horn argues, imagined catastrophes offer us intellectual tools that can render a future shadowed with apocalyptic possibilities affectively, epistemologically, and politically accessible.

Provides a comprehensive analysis of macroeconomic issues in developing Asia, including economic growth projections and prospects by country and region. This year's theme chapter explores how to strengthen disaster resilience.

Memories of catastrophes - those which occur naturally and those which are consequences of human actions - loom large in the modern consciousness. This volume draws on the latest scholarship to investigate this phenomenon in both contemporary and historical contexts. collective memory and the relationships between them. Arguing that a pervasive catastrophic memory may be as disabling as it is instructive, Gray and Oliver stress the necessity of rendering the phenomenon subject to secular critical inquiry. The value of such an approach is then demonstrated in a series of case studies. These range across period, place and methodological approach, from longitudinal studies of the memory of the English Civil War and Irish Famine, to oral-history analysis of the legacy of Indian partition, and participant-observation of more recent events in Croatia. Several studies concentrate on the moulding of memories by hegemonic or demotic languages and institutions; others focus on the mutability and ambiguities of memory as expressed in a variety of forms. They exemplify the diversity of memorial languages and responses to catastrophic events. Yet they also speak to each other in their central concerns: the dynamics of memory and erasure, rupture and recovery, uniqueness and universality, exploitation and authenticity, power and resistance, the personal and the social. the field. It should be of value to all with an interest in the subject of memory and its relationship with the cataclysms of the past.

This is the first systematic study of famine in all parts of Europe from the Middle Ages until the present. In case studies ranging from Scandinavia and Italy to Ireland and Russia, leading scholars compare the characteristics, consequences and causes of famine. The famines they describe differ greatly in size, duration and context; in many cases the damage wrought by poor harvests was confounded by war. The roles of human action, malfunctioning markets and poor relief are a recurring theme. The chapters also take full account of demographic, institutional, economic, social and cultural aspects, providing a wealth of new information which is organized and analyzed within a comparative framework. Famine in European History represents a significant new contribution to demographic history, and will be of interest to all those who want to discover more about famines - truly horrific events which, for centuries, have been a recurring curse for the Europeans.

"This is not a book I ever intended to write. It emerged as I worked to understand the events of September 11, 2001. It is my effort to make sense of my life and my profession during a difficult time. My aim is to suggest that understanding information technology requires an understanding of society and its people and organizations, especially as we look out over the wreckage of the high-tech industry and the contradictory aims of government to protect and control us."-Richard Cox In this series of four essays, Richard J. Cox explores the social and professional ramifications of 9/11 on our information landscape. "Musing," written on the first anniversary of the terrorist attacks, looks back at a year of change and commemoration. "Reacting" examines the impact of 9/11 on a department of information sciences. "Preparing" is a cogent argument for the need to rethink current disaster and contingency planning practices. "Teaching" focuses on the author's experiences developing and teaching a doctoral seminar on the role of the information professional in a post 9/11 world. Miss Manners assures us that a floral arrangement is always appropriate, no matter how much time has passed since the event. Neither a cautionary tale nor practical advice, Flowers After the Funeral is one such bouquet, its simplicity and thoughtfulness are certain to provide both comfort and inspiration to its recipients.

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?

* Major disasters increased over 93 per cent during the 1990s, reaching 712 in 2001 * Up to 340 million people are affected by disasters every year* 'Vulnerability' is the key to understanding the causes, impacts and ways to mitigate disasters In this penetrating analysis, the authors critically examine "vulnerability" as a concept that is vital to the way we understand the impact and magnitude of disasters. This book is a counterbalance to technocratic approaches that limit themselves to simply looking at natural phenomena. Through the notion of vulnerability, the authors stress the importance of social processes and human-environmental interactions as causal agents in the making of disasters. They critically examine what renders communities unsafe, a condition they argue that depends primarily on the relative position of advantage or disadvantage that a particular group occupies within a society's social order. Bolstering their theoretical analysis with case studies drawn from Asia, Africa and Latin America, the authors also look at vulnerability in terms of its relationship to development and through its impact on policy and peoples' lives.

The essays in this book examine the arguments and rhetoric used by the United States and the USSR following two catastrophes that impacted both countries, as blame is cast and consequences are debated. In this environment, it was perhaps inevitable that conspiracy theories would arise, especially about the downing of Korean Air Lines Flight 007 over the Sea of Japan. Those theories are examined, resulting in at least one method for addressing conspiracy arguments. In the case of Chernobyl, the disaster ruptured the "social compact" between the Soviet government and the people; efforts to overcome the resulting disillusionment quickly became the focus of state efforts.

"This book will have significant impact in film and media studies because Kaplan so skillfully 'translates' the most interesting work done in trauma studies and takes it in new and original directions. It is illuminating, lucid, and persuasive." --Patrice Petro, author of Aftershocks of the New: Feminism and Film History "This book is an engaging read--a real page turner--not only because of its conversational style and beautiful prose but also because it addresses some of the most complex psychological issues facing our culture today." --Kelly Oliver, W. Alton Jones Professor, Vanderbilt University It may be said that every trauma is two traumas or ten thousand--depending on the number of people involved. How one experiences and reacts to an event is unique and depends largely on one's direct or indirect positioning, personal and psychic history, and individual memories. But equally important to the experience of trauma are the broader political and cultural contexts within which a catastrophe takes place and how it is "managed" by institutional forces, including the media. In Trauma Culture, E. Ann Kaplan explores the relationship between the impact of trauma on individuals and on entire cultures and nations. Arguing that humans possess a compelling need to draw meaning from personal experience and to communicate what happens to others, she examines the artistic, literary, and cinematic forms that are often used to bridge the individual and collective experiences. Case studies, including Sigmund Freud's Moses and Monotheism, Marguerite Duras's La Douleur, Sarah Kofman's Rue Ordener, Rue Labat, Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound, and Tracey Moffatt's Night Cries, reveal how empathy can be fostered without the sensationalistic element that typifies the media. From World War II to 9/11, this passionate study eloquently navigates the contentious debates surrounding trauma theory and persuasively advocates the responsible sharing and translating of catastrophe. E. Ann Kaplan is a professor of English at SUNY-Stony Brook, where she founded and directs the Humanities Instiute. She was recently the president of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies.

A free open access ebook is available upon publication. Learn more at www.luminosoa.org. Almost 68.5 million refugees in the world today live in a protection gap, the chasm between protections stipulated in the Geneva Convention and the abrogation of those responsibilities by states and aid agencies. With dwindling humanitarian aid, how do refugee communities solve collective dilemmas, like raising funds for funeral services, or securing other critical goods and services? In Networked Refugees, Nadya Hajj finds that Palestinian refugees utilize Information Communication Technology platforms to motivate reciprocity-a cooperative action marked by the mutual exchange of favors and services-and informally seek aid and connection with their transnational diaspora community. Using surveys conducted with Palestinians throughout the diaspora, interviews with those inside the Nahr al Bared Refugee camp in Lebanon, and data pulled from online community spaces, these findings push back against the cynical idea that online organizing is fruitless, emphasizing instead the productivity of these digital networks.

This work addresses the long-overdue imbalance in disaster management: an over-emphasis on post-disaster assistance and a lack of attention to vulnerability reduction. It seeks to answer the fundamental question in this debate: how can we mould pre-disaster development initiatives to become the most appropriate means for vulnerability reduction?;The book reasserts and reapplies some of the basic concepts and issues which emerged in the 1960s and 1970s, with the message that development is a prime medium both of vulnerability and its reduction.;The author examines requirements for long-term change so that conditions which have become the context for catastrophe can be modified. Bu focusing on longer-term policies and activities now, emergency relief efforts will have a positive context within which to contribute to development and the likelihood of recurrence will be reduced.;The volume contains case studies from Sri Lanka, the Caribbean and the South Pacific and focuses on hazards of all kinds, setting out to redress the balance between large-scale disasters of global significance and small-scale disasters that are a matter of everyday existence.

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is an infectious disease caused by SARS-CoV-2. It was first identified in December 2019 in Wuhan, Hubei, China, and has resulted in an ongoing pandemic. As of July 2020, more than 13.8 million cases have been reported across 188 countries and territories, resulting in more than 590,000 deaths. COVID 19: Tackling Global Pandemics through Scientific and Social Tools, is an amalgamation of scientific and social perspective. The book provides a selection of handpicked themes and topics relevant to COVID 19 pandemic across various disciplines delivered by experts in the domain. The Opinion section is a unique component of this book discussing important issues concerning the COVID 19. COVID 19: Tackling Global Pandemics through Scientific and Social Tools serves as single source of information ranging from clinical research to social science and even biotechnology to engineering in a single platform. But there is scarcity of a quality document that summarizes various aspects of a single event. Therefore, the purpose of this book is to provide scientific and social information on COVID 19 to all sectors of readers i.e. from students to researchers and even policy makers Divided into 13 chapters, the book begins with an in-depth introduction to the highly infectious disease COVID19. Followed by chapters on interventions, vaccine development, prevention and control COVID 19: Tackling Global Pandemics through Scientific and Social Tools also provides insights to current global situation, mathematical models and social factors like distancing and hand-washing. The book closes with a review on the use of artificial intelligence and engineered intervention. All are presented in a practical short format, making this volume a valuable resource for very broad academic audience.

2017 Alf Andrew Heggoy Book Prize Winner Over a span of thirty years in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the French Caribbean islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe endured natural catastrophes from all the elements-earth, wind, fire, and water-as well as a collapsing sugar industry, civil unrest, and political intrigue. These disasters thrust a long history of societal and economic inequities into the public sphere as officials and citizens weighed the importance of social welfare, exploitative economic practices, citizenship rights, racism, and governmental responsibility. Paradise Destroyed explores the impact of natural and man-made disasters in the turn-of-the-century French Caribbean, examining the social, economic, and political implications of shared citizenship in times of civil unrest. French nationalists projected a fantasy of assimilation onto the Caribbean, where the predominately nonwhite population received full French citizenship and governmental representation. When disaster struck in the faraway French West Indies-whether the whirlwinds of a hurricane or a vast workers' strike-France faced a tempest at home as politicians, journalists, and economists, along with the general population, debated the role of the French state not only in the Antilles but in their own lives as well. Environmental disasters brought to the fore existing racial and social tensions and severely tested France's ideological convictions of assimilation and citizenship. Christopher M. Church shows how France's "old colonies" subscribed to a definition of tropical French-ness amid the sociopolitical and cultural struggles of a fin de siecle France riddled with social unrest and political divisions.

Recent years have witnessed considerable speculation about the potential of open data to bring about wide-scale transformation. The bulk of existing evidence about the impact of open data, however, focuses on high-income countries. Much less is known about open data’s role and value in low- and middle-income countries, and more generally about its possible contributions to economic and social development. Open Data for Developing Economies features in-depth case studies on how open data is having an impact across the developing world-from an agriculture initiative in Colombia to data-driven healthcare projects in Uganda and South Africa to crisis response in Nepal. The analysis built on these case studies aims to create actionable intelligence regarding: (a) the conditions under which open data is most (and least) effective in development, presented in the form of a Periodic Table of Open Data; (b) strategies to maximize the positive contributions of open data to development; and (c) the means for limiting open data’s harms on developing countries.

This volume places the Flint, Michigan, water contamination disaster in the context of a broader crisis created by neoliberal governance in the United States. Authors from a range of disciplines (including sociology, criminal justice, anthropology, history, communications, and jurisprudence) examine the failures in Flint, with an emphasis on comparison. Their analysis calls attention to similar trajectories for cities like Detroit and Pontiac, in Michigan, and Stockton, in California. While the studies collected here emphasize policy failures, class conflict, and racial oppression, they also attend to the resistance undertaken by Flint residents, Michiganders, and U.S. activists, as they fought for environmental and social justice. Contributors include: Terressa A. Benz, Jon Carroll, Graham Cassano, Daniel J. Clark, Katrinell M. Davis, Michael Doan, David Fasenfest, A.E. Garrison, Peter J. Hammer, Ami Harbin, Shea Howell, Jacob Lederman, Raoul S. Lievanos, Benjamin J. Pauli, and Julie Sze.

An energizing case for hope about the climate, from Rebecca Solnit ("the voice of the resistance"-New York Times), climate activist Thelma Young Lutunatabua, and a chorus of voices calling on us to rise to the moment. Not Too Late is the book for anyone who is despondent, defeatist, or unsure about climate change and seeking answers. As the contributors to this volume make clear, the future will be decided by whether we act in the present-and we must act to counter institutional inertia, fossil fuel interests, and political obduracy. These dispatches from the climate movement around the world feature the voices of organizers like Guam-based lawyer and writer Julian Aguon; climate scientists like Dr. Jacquelyn Gill and Dr. Edward Carr; poets like Marshall Islands activist Kathy Jetnil-Kijner; and longtime organizers like The Tyranny of Oil author Antonia Juhasz. Guided by Rebecca Solnit's typical clear-eyed wisdom and enriched by photographs and quotes, Not Too Late leads readers from discouragement to possibilities, from climate despair to climate hope.

No place is perfectly safe, but some places are more dangerous than others. Whether we live on a floodplain or in "Tornado Alley," near a nuclear facility or in a neighborhood poorly lit at night, we all co-exist uneasily with natural and man-made hazards. As Mark Monmonier shows in this entertaining and immensely informative book, maps can tell us a lot about where we can anticipate certain hazards, but they can also be dangerously misleading.
California, for example, takes earthquakes seriously, with a comprehensive program of seismic mapping, whereas Washington has been comparatively lax about earthquakes in Puget Sound. But as the Northridge earthquake in January 1994 demonstrated all too clearly to Californians, even reliable seismic-hazard maps can deceive anyone who misinterprets "known fault-lines" as the only places vulnerable to earthquakes.
Important as it is to predict and prepare for catastrophic natural hazards, more subtle and persistent phenomena such as pollution and crime also pose serious dangers that we have to cope with on a daily basis. Hazard-zone maps highlight these more insidious hazards and raise awareness about them among planners, local officials, and the public.
With the help of many maps illustrating examples from all corners of the United States, Monmonier demonstrates how hazard mapping reflects not just scientific understanding of hazards but also perceptions of risk and how risk can be reduced. Whether you live on a faultline or a coastline, near a toxic waste dump or an EMF-generating power line, you ignore this book's plain-language advice on geographic hazards and how to avoid them at your own peril.
"No one should buy a home, rentan apartment, or even drink the local water without having read this fascinating cartographic alert on the dangers that lurk in our everyday lives. . . . Who has not asked where it is safe to live? "Cartographies of Danger" provides the answer."--H. J. de Blij, "NBC News"
"Even if you're not interested in maps, you're almost certainly interested in hazards. And this book is one of the best places I've seen to learn about them in a highly entertaining and informative fashion."--John Casti, "New Scientist"