Decision-Making in Emergency Management examines decisions the authors have made over their careers based on their combined training, experience and instinct. Through a broad range of case studies, readers discover how experience impacts decision-making in conjunction with research and tools available. While the use of science, data and industry standards are always the best option when it comes to handling emergency situations, not all emergency situations fit one known solution. This book comprehensively explores the question "Is 'instinct' a viable factor when faced with a challenging situation and how close does it match up with the best science available?"

Why was the UK so unprepared for the pandemic, suffering one of the highest death rates and worst economic contractions of the major world economies in 2020? Hilary Cooper and Simon Szreter reveal the deep roots of our vulnerability and set out a powerful manifesto for change post-Covid-19. They argue that our commitment to a flawed neoliberal model and the associated disinvestment in our social fabric left the UK dangerously exposed and unable to mount an effective response. This is not at all what made Britain great. The long history of the highly innovative universal welfare system established by Elizabeth I facilitated both the industrial revolution and, when revived after 1945, the postwar Golden Age of rising prosperity. Only by learning from that past can we create the fairer, nurturing and empowering society necessary to tackle the global challenges that lie ahead - climate change, biodiversity collapse and global inequality.

This book is for a broad audience of practitioners, policymakers, scholars, and anyone interested in scenarios, simulations, and disaster planning. Readers are led through several different planning scenarios that have been developed over several years under the auspices of the US Department of Energy, the US Air Force, and continued work at GlobalInt LLC. These scenarios present different security challenges and their potential cascading impacts on global systems - from the melting of glaciers in the Andes, to hurricanes in New York and Hawaii, and on to hybrid disasters, cyberoperations and geoengineering. The book provides a concise and up-to-date overview of the 'lessons learned', with a focus on innovative solutions to the world's pressing energy and environmental security challenges.

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.

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.

Every day across the nation, emergencies occur that threaten our lives, well-being, property, peace, and security. Every day, we rely upon our local police officers, firefighters, emergency medical technicians, public health professionals, and others to arrive quickly and do what needs to be done to restore the safety, the security, the peace, and the routine to our lives. These emergency responders are trained to handle such emergencies that occur day by day in our cities, towns, villages, and countrysides. On rare occasions, emergencies occur that are so large in scale and so severe that local responders may not have the resources-people, equipment, expertise, funds-to effectively and safely respond. Even in such cases, local responders do not hesitate to do what they have been trained to do-go to the site prepared to save lives, protect property, and remove the threat. When a disaster, whether natural or manmade, overwhelms the resources and capabilities of local organizations, responders come in from other cities, counties, and states-jurisdictions near and far-as well as from federal agencies, to assist those with local responsibility. Skilled support workers are engaged for specialized activities, such as removing debris and restoring utilities and transportation. Neighbors and other volunteers may travel to the disaster site to try to do their part. Other concerned individuals and organizations send food, supplies, and equipment. Journalists press in to the closest possible vantage points to get the pictures and stories. Public officials arrive to examine the damage and consult with the responders. One characteristic of these large, rare, dynamic events is the rapidly evolving complexity that faces individuals trying to effectively manage all of the organizations and people, operations and tasks, equipment and supplies, communications, and the safety and health of all involved. Another characteristic is that all disasters present risks to emergency response workers-risks that may be familiar or unfamiliar, and that may vary widely depending on the nature of the event or the phase of the response. This report addresses the protection of emergency responders against injury, illness, and death on just such rare occasions, when emergencies become disasters. It builds on a broad base of National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health programs and RAND Corporation research on protecting emergency responders. This report focuses on preparedness (especially planning and training) and management as means of controlling and reducing the hazards emergency responders face. It provides a set of recommendations on how disaster site safety and health management might be improved. Much of the information contained herein is based upon the firsthand experience and suggestions of emergency responders who were there at the World Trade Center and at the Pentagon on and after September 11, as well as those who responded to the Northridge earthquake (in California) and Hurricane Andrew (in Florida). This report builds on systems and practices currently in use and was developed primarily for use by local emergency responders, those individuals and organizations who have been tasked with disaster site safety and health responsibilities. Additionally, the report should prove useful to legislators and other federal, state, county, and municipal officials; trade union officials; industry executives; safety and health professionals; and researchers who are engaged in and committed to efforts to make our nation more secure, to respond effectively and safely to disaster, and to protect a critically important resource-the community of emergency responders.

* 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.

Given its size, strength, location and the enormity of its impact, Hurricane Sandy was a storm of historic proportions and importance. The damage inflicted by this huge storm rivalled the damages of the Gulf Coast storms during the summer of 2005, particularly due to the population density and overall development of the areas that received the brunt of the storm's impact. As with other major natural disaster events, members of Congress responded to Hurricane Sandy by holding a series of hearings, visiting the affected region, and introducing and acting on legislation. This book examines the potential effects of the Sandy Recovery Improvement Act of 2013 on disaster assistance procedures and programs. Part of the legislative intent of the Sandy Recovery Improvement Act is to streamline administrative procedures and improve the effectiveness of several disaster assistance programs authorised by the Stafford Act.

Mass starvation's causes may seem simple and immediate: crop failure, poverty, outbreaks of violence, and poor governance. But famines are complex, and scholars cannot fully understand what causes them unless they look at their numerous social and environmental precursors over long arcs of history, and over long distances. Famine in the Remaking examines the relationship between the reorganisation of food systems and large-scale food crises through a comparative historical analysis of three famines: Hawaii in the 1820s, Madagascar in the 1920s, and Cambodia in the 1970s. This examination identifies the structural transformations - that is, changes to the relationships between producers and consumers - that make food systems more vulnerable to failure. Moving beyond the economic and political explanations for food crisis that have dominated the literature, Stian Rice emphasises important socioecological interactions, developing a framework for crisis evolution that identifies two distinct temporal phases and five different types of causal mechanisms involved in food systems failure. His framework contributes to current work in famine prevention and, animated by a commitment to social justice, offers the potential for early intervention in emerging food crises.

This manual is intended to provide guidance for engineers, architects, building officials, and property owners to design shelters and safe rooms in buildings. It presents information about the design and construction of shelters in the work place, home, or community building that will provide protection in response to manmade hazards. The information contained herein will assist in the planning and design of shelters that may be constructed outside or within dwellings or public buildings. These safe rooms will protect occupants from a variety of hazards, including debris impact, accidental or intentional explosive detonation, and the accidental or intentional release of a toxic substance into the air. Safe rooms may also be designed to protect individuals from assaults and attempted kidnapping, which requires design features to resist forced entry and ballistic impact. This covers a range of protective options, from low-cost expedient protection (what is commonly referred to as sheltering-in-place) to safe rooms ventilated and pressurized with air purified by ultra-high-efficiency filters. These safe rooms protect against toxic gases, vapors, and aerosols. The contents of this manual supplement the information provided in FEMA 361, Design and Construction Guidance for Community Shelters and FEMA 320, Taking Shelter From the Storm: Building a Safe Room Inside Your House. In conjunction with FEMA 361 and FEMA 320, this publication can be used for the protection of shelters against natural disasters. This guidance focuses on safe rooms as standby systems, ones that do not provide protection on a continuous basis. To employ a standby system requires warning based on knowledge that a hazardous condition exists or is imminent. Protection is initiated as a result of warnings from civil authorities about a release of hazardous materials, visible or audible indications of a release (e.g., explosion or fire), the odor of a chemical agent, or observed symptoms of exposure in people. Although there are automatic detectors for chemical agents, such detectors are expensive and limited in the number of agents that can be reliably detected. Furthermore, at this point in time, these detectors take too long to identify the agent to be useful in making decisions in response to an attack. Similarly, an explosive vehicle or suicide bomber attack rarely provides advance warning; therefore, the shelter is most likely to be used after the fact to protect occupants until it is safe to evacuate the building. Two different types of shelters may be considered for emergency use, standalone shelters and internal shelters. A standalone shelter is a separate building (i.e., not within or attached to any other building) that is designed and constructed to withstand the range of natural and manmade hazards. An internal shelter is a specially designed and constructed room or area within or attached to a larger building that is structurally independent of the larger building and is able to withstand the range of natural and manmade hazards. Both standalone and internal shelters are intended to provide emergency refuge for occupants of commercial office buildings, school buildings, hospitals, apartment buildings, and private homes from the hazards resulting from a wide variety of extreme events. The shelters may be used during natural disasters following the warning that an explosive device may be activated, the discovery of an explosive device, or until safe evacuation is established following the detonation of an explosive device or the release of a toxic substance via an intentional aerosol attack or an industrial accident. Standalone community shelters may be constructed in neighborhoods where existing homes lack shelters. Community shelters may be intended for use by the occupants of buildings they are constructed within or near, or they may be intended for use by the residents of surrounding or nearby neighborhoods or designated areas.

The 2011 Coastal Construction Manual, Fourth Edition (FEMA P-55), is a two-volume publication that provides a comprehensive approach to planning, siting, designing, constructing, and maintaining homes in the coastal environment. Volume I provides information about hazard identification, siting decisions, regulatory requirements, economic implications, and risk management. The primary audience for Volume I is design professionals, officials, and those involved in the decision-making process. Volume II contains in-depth descriptions of design, construction, and maintenance practices that, when followed, will increase the durability of residential buildings in the harsh coastal environment and reduce economic losses associated with coastal natural disasters. The primary audience for Volume II is the design professional who is familiar with building codes and standards and has a basic understanding of engineering principles.

The 2011 Coastal Construction Manual, Fourth Edition (FEMA P-55), is a two-volume publication that provides a comprehensive approach to planning, siting, designing, constructing, and maintaining homes in the coastal environment. Volume I of the Coastal Construction Manual provides information about hazard identification, siting decisions, regulatory requirements, economic implications, and risk management. The primary audience for Volume I is design professionals, officials, and those involved in the decision-making process. Volume II contains in-depth descriptions of design, construction, and maintenance practices that, when followed, will increase the durability of residential buildings in the harsh coastal environment and reduce economic losses associated with coastal natural disasters. The primary audience for Volume II is the design professional who is familiar with building codes and standards and has a basic understanding of engineering principles. Volume II is not a standalone reference for designing homes in the coastal environment. The designer should have access to and be familiar with the building codes and standards that are discussed in Volume II and listed in the reference section at the end of each chapter. The designer should also have access to the building codes and standards that have been adopted by the local jurisdiction if they differ from the standards and codes that are cited in Volume II. If the local jurisdiction having authority has not adopted a building code, the most recent code should be used. Engineering judgment is sometimes necessary, but designers should not make decisions that will result in a design that does not meet locally adopted building codes. The topics that are covered in Volume II are as follows: Chapter 7 - Introduction to the design process, minimum design requirements, losses from natural hazards in coastal areas, cost and insurance implications of design and construction decisions, sustainable design, and inspections; Chapter 8 - Site-specific loads, including from snow, flooding, tsunamis, high winds, tornadoes, seismic events, and combinations of loads. Example problems are provided to illustrate the application of design load provisions of ASCE 7-10, Minimum Design Loads for Buildings and Other Structures; Chapter 9 - Load paths, structural connections, structural failure modes, breakaway walls, building materials, and appurtenances; Chapter 10 - Foundations, including design criteria, requirements and recommendations, style selection (e.g., open, closed), pile capacity in soil, and installation; Chapter 11 - Building envelope, including floors in elevated buildings, exterior doors, windows and skylights, non-loading-bearing walls, exterior wall coverings, soffits, roof systems, and attic vents. Chapter 12 - Installing mechanical equipment and utilities; Chapter 13 - Construction, including the foundation, structural frame, and building envelope. Common construction mistakes, material selection and durability, and techniques for improving resistance to decay and corrosion are also discussed; Chapter 14 - Maintenance of new and existing buildings, including preventing damage from corrosion, moisture, weathering, and termites; building elements that require frequent maintenance; and hazard-specific maintenance techniques; Chapter 15 - Evaluating existing buildings for the need for and feasibility of retrofitting for wildfire, seismic, flood, and wind hazards and implementing the retrofitting. Wind retrofit packages that can be implemented during routine maintenance are also discussed (e.g., replacing roof shingles.

A NO-NONSENSE EASY-TO-UNDERSTAND GUIDE ON HOW TO PREPARE FOR, AND SURVIVE, AN URBAN DISASTER. We live in a very dangerous and unpredictable world. All it takes is one natural or manmade crisis to seriously disrupt the fragile infrastructure that supports our modern way-of-life. Whether it's a storm, a terrorist attack, an economic meltdown, or a pandemic, you need to be prepared. During any major crisis there will be two groups of people, the prepared, and the unprepared. After a few days without food, water, medical attention, or vital public services the world around you will begin to look dramatically different than anything you could ever have imagined. Staying safe and avoiding the chaos will require thoughtful preparations and advance planning. In this book, you get: A Step-by-step guide to help you prepare to survive an urban disaster. A simple and easy-to-understand approach to help you plan for a potential crisis. Strategies to help you secure the core survival elements - food, water, first aid, security and sanitation. Tips on when to stay put, and when to get out. Tactics to keep you and your family stay safe during a crisis. Extensive shopping lists for survival products and supplies. When the moment comes you will either be prepared, or you won't; the choice is yours.

Control and Resistance reveals the various ways in which food writing of the early Franco era was a potent political tool, producing ways of eating and thinking about food that privileged patriotism over personal desire. The author examines a diverse range of official and non-official food texts to highlight how discourse helped construct and contest identities in line with the three ideological pillars of the regime: autarky, prescriptive gender roles, and monolithic nationalism. Official food discourse produced an audience with a taste for local foodstuffs, and also created a unified gastronomic space in which regional cuisines were co-opted for the purposes of culinary nationalism. The author discusses a genre of official texts directed solely at women, which demanded women's compliance and exclusive dedication to domesticity. Alongside such examples, Control and Resistance includes texts that offered resistance to the Franco hegemony. Food texts have traditionally been viewed as apolitical because of their connections with domesticity, so they were not subject to the same degree of censorship as other published works. Accordingly, food writing was at times more capable of offering disruptive or resistant textual spaces than other forms of discourse.

This two-volume work examines the causes of civil war and consequent humanitarian emergencies in developing countries. Twenty-three international experts explain why wars start and how to prevent them--offering a less costly alternative to the present reactive strategy of the world community to provide mediation, relief, and rehabilitation after the conflict occurs. The volumes provide a general framework which is applied to such recent conflicts as those in Rwanda, Burundi, Somalia, the Congo, Afghanistan, and the Caucasus.

Earthquakes are a huge global threat. In thirty-six countries, severe seismic risks threaten populations and their increasingly interdependent systems of transportation, communication, energy, and finance. In this important book, Louise Comfort provides an unprecedented examination of how twelve communities in nine countries responded to destructive earthquakes between 1999 and 2015. And many of the book's lessons can also be applied to other large-scale risks. The Dynamics of Risk sets the global problem of seismic risk in the framework of complex adaptive systems to explore how the consequences of such events ripple across jurisdictions, communities, and organizations in complex societies, triggering unexpected alliances but also exposing social, economic, and legal gaps. The book assesses how the networks of organizations involved in response and recovery adapted and acted collectively after the twelve earthquakes it examines. It describes how advances in information technology enabled some communities to anticipate seismic risk better and to manage response and recovery operations more effectively, decreasing losses. Finally, the book shows why investing substantively in global information infrastructure would create shared awareness of seismic risk and make postdisaster relief more effective and less expensive. The result is a landmark study of how to improve the way we prepare for and respond to earthquakes and other disasters in our ever-more-complex world.

***A GUARDIAN BOOK TO LOOK OUT FOR THIS AUTUMN*** A brilliantly warm, witty and moving portrait of our pandemic lives, told in ten heart-rending short stories Love and marriage. Children and family. Death and grief. Life touches everyone the same. But living under lockdown, it changes us alone. In these ten, beautifully moving short stories mostly written over the last year, Booker Prize winner Roddy Doyle paints a collective portrait of our strange times. A man abroad wanders the stag-and-hen-strewn streets of Newcastle, as news of the virus at home asks him to question his next move. An exhausted nurse struggles to let go, having lost a much-loved patient in isolation. A middle-aged son, barred from his mother's funeral, wakes to an oncoming hangover of regret. Told with Doyle's signature warmth, wit and extraordinary eye for the richness that underpins the quiet of our lives, Life Without Children cuts to the heart of how we are all navigating loss, loneliness, and the shifting of history underneath our feet. 'A quietly devastating collection of short stories that brilliantly portrays the pervasive sense of hopelessness that immobilised us during the dog days of Covid' Sunday Times

This book presents current research in the study of the devastating earthquake which occurred in Haiti in 2010. Topics discussed include the crisis and response as a result of the Haiti earthquake; charitable contributions for Haiti's earthquake victims; the Haitian economy and HOPE Act; FY2010 supplemental for disaster assistance and Haiti relief and the U.S. immigration policy on Haitian migrants.

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.

WARNING SIRENS ARE BLARING. YOU HAVE 15 MINUTES TO EVACUATE. WHAT WILL YOU DO? Cataclysmic events strike sleepy towns and major cities every year. Residents face escaping quickly or perishing in rising waters, raging fires or other life-threatening conditions. By the time the evacuation starts, it's already too late. Being prepared makes the difference between survival and disaster. Guiding you step by step, Bug Out shows you how to be ready at a second's notice. * Create an escape plan for where to go and how to get there. * Pack the perfect bug-out bag for the first 72 hours. * Find food, water and other necessities outside of civilization. Floods. Hurricanes. Pandemics. Earthquakes. Blizzards. Tsunamis. Wildfires. Riots. Bug Out includes detailed information on the best escape locations everywhere in the U.S.: * The Pacific Coast * The Rocky Mountains * The Desert Southwest * The Heartland * The Lakes and Big Woods of the North * The Gulf Coast * The Appalachians * The Atlantic Coast

Peace For Your Home offers a fresh eyes approach for emergency preparedness and offers a guide you can follow along with as you begin or continue in your efforts to live a more stress-free life. By preparing you will be less stressed about the future. The book covers where to start, identifying your needs, meal planning, food substitutions, and provides many miscellaneous tips to help prepare spiritually, mentally, and physically for emergencies.