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In the wake of severe climatic events and terrorist acts and the emergence of dangerous technologies, communities, nations, and global organizations have diligently sought to create strategies to prepare for such events. Designing Resilience presents case studies of extreme events and analyzes the ability of affected individuals, institutions, governments, and technological systems to cope with disaster. This volume defines resilience as it relates to disaster management at specific stages: mitigation, prevention, preparation, and response and recovery. The book illustrates models by which to evaluate resilience at levels ranging from individuals to NGOs to governmental jurisdictions and exa...
"Through a comprehensive analysis of earthquake case studies, Louise Comfort shows how communities and organizations cope with dynamic and unpredicted events. Drawing upon the concept of shared risk, she examines the self-organizing processes by which communities act in their own interest to mitigate and reduce risk. Placing shared risk within a theoretical framework consistent with disaster situations, Professor Comfort presents policy-relevant analysis of disaster response systems.
In this book, the editors, with 25 notable contributors, expand the knowledge of crisis management, focusing on case studies of high-profile events that have occurred in recent history. Part One of the text aims at theoretical development through empirical case studies and also postulates a crisis typology and charts specific theoretical and administrative challenges. The 'case bank,' which comprises the bulk of the book, is presented in four additional sections. The first deals with the development of crises and compares the infamous Watts riots with the 1992 L.A. riots. It also analyzes the fragmented and complex international environment that allowed the 'safe area' in Bosnia to be overru...
The rise and spread of Covid-19 in the beginning of 2020 presents a once-in-a-century challenge and opportunity for decision makers, managers, scholars, and citizens to understand the risks, mitigate its impact and prepare for future crises. Drawing on a global network of scholars, this book presents a comparative analysis of ten nations’ response to a global pandemic, while operating nominally under the framework of the World Health Organization. The book introduces the concept of ‘collective cognition’ as an analytic lens for examining the nations’ response to Covid-19 during the first six months of the emerging pandemic (January – June 2020) and draws out insights for improving ...
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 societie...
We live in turbulent times with continents and nations facing ever-heightening risks such as natural disasters, intense and protracted conflicts, terrorism, corporate crises, cyber threats to infrastructures and mega-events. We are witnessing the rise of mega-crises and a new class of adversity with many unknowns. The prospect of mega-crises presents professionals and students in the field of crisis management with four major tasks. First, they should engage in “deep thinking” about the causes of the increasing occurrence of mega-crises. Second, they should identify and work through the dominant trends which complicate contemporary crisis management. Third, they should upgrade institutio...
This book is a joint endeavour of the three partner universities to develop a book with in-depth and state-of-art analysis for the academic community of East Asia and the world. Past disasters, like the 2008 Great Sichuan Earthquake in China and the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, saw good efforts of East Asian countries in helping each other. Such a trend has been further strengthened in these countries’ recent cooperation and mutual support in their fight against Covid-19 pandemic. While China, Japan, and South Korea are geographically and culturally contiguous and hence may share some characteristics in their risk management principles and practices, there may also be many significant differences due to their different socioeconomic and political systems. The commonalities and variances in East Asia risk management systems are also reflected by their recent responses to the Covid-19 challenges. While all three countries demonstrated overall success in controlling the epidemic, the measures taken by them were different. This research will be of interest to policymakers, scholars and economists.
This book studies the variety of organizational strategies selected to cope with critical uncertainties during crises. This research formulates and applies an institutional sense-making model to explain the selection of strategies for coping with uncertainties during crises to answer the question why some organizations select a rule-based strategy to cope with uncertainties, whereas others pursue a more ad hoc-based strategy. It finds that the level of institutionalization does not affect strategy selection in the initial phase of responding to crises; that three rigidity effects can be identified in the selection of sense-making strategies once organizations have faced the failure of their ...
The author of the “masterfully plotted, compulsive page-turner” (The Guardian) Our House takes you on a haunting and nail-biting journey of tragedy and revenge. The Heights is a tall, slender apartment building among warehouses in London. Its roof terrace is so discreet, you wouldn’t know it existed if you weren’t standing at the window of the flat directly opposite. But you are. And that’s when you see a man up there—a man you’d recognize anywhere. He may be older now, but it’s definitely him. But that can’t be because he’s been dead for over two years. You know this for a fact. Because you’re the one who killed him. With Louise Candlish’s signature dark and twisty prose, The Heights shows “the ferocity of maternal love” (Hannah Beckerman, author of If Only I Could Tell You). It is an unputdownable thriller that will keep you guessing until the final page.
Rilke, an auctioneer, comes upon a hidden collection of violent erotic photographs. He feels compelled to unearth more about the deceased owner who coveted them. What follows is a journey of discovery, decadence and deviousness, steered in part by Rilke's gay promiscuity and inquisitive nature.