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The term 'natural disaster' is often used to refer to natural events such as earthquakes, hurricanes or floods. However, the phrase 'natural disaster' suggests an uncritical acceptance of a deeply engrained ideological and cultural myth. At Risk questions this myth and argues that extreme natural events are not disasters until a vulnerable group of people is exposed. The updated new edition confronts a further ten years of ever more expensive and deadly disasters and discusses disaster not as an aberration, but as a signal failure of mainstream 'development'. Two analytical models are provided as tools for understanding vulnerability. One links remote and distant 'root causes' to 'unsafe conditions' in a 'progression of vulnerability'. The other uses the concepts of 'access' and 'livelihood' to understand why some households are more vulnerable than others. Examining key natural events and incorporating strategies to create a safer world, this revised edition is an important resource for those involved in the fields of environment and development studies.
This book contains the proceeding of the conferences on Disasters and the Small Dwelling, held at Oxford in September 1990. The 26 papers cover recent experiences of post-disaster shelter and housing provision, review what has been achieved, what needs disseminating and implementing, and assesses what needs further development. The volume thus defines an international agenda to achieve safer low-income dwellings in the course of the 1990s, designated International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction by the UN. It will be essential reading for anyone - whether governmental or non-governmental agency officials, academic researchers, representatives of private industry or consultants - whose work involves analysis, shelter, mitigation and reconstruction programmes for low-income dwellings in disaster-prone areas.
Originally published in 1990, as part of the Ethnoscapes: Current Challenges in the Environmental Social Sciences series, reissued now with a new series introduction, Vernacular Architecture: Paradigms of Environmental Response was not meant to be collection to represent one view or approach. The only unifying element among the essays is the subject matter. It is clear that there are not only disagreements over the interpretation of objective facts, but more essentially there is a fundamental difference in the pursuit of scientific knowledge. However, regardless of these differences, if the present volume as an attempt to create a theoretical construct called into question the ideographic approaches which do not penetrate the surface, which persistently deal with formal qualities, and which are content with only simple deterministic relations, then it satisfies the major criterion that this collection of essays set for itself, namely to broaden the scope of discussion.
This book uses two international frameworks—the Millennium Development Goals and the Hyogo Framework for Action, a program focused on disaster risk management—to study the key trends in the region in terms of disaster incidence, sources of vulnerability and social and economic challenges. As both frameworks draw to a close, international debate is taking place during the period 2012–2015 on their current progress. This book seeks to help readers understand the process better. The chapters are written by eight independent internationally based authors. Collectively, they have extensive regional experience in the areas of disaster risk management and climate change as well as working in academia, research, consultancy, the UN and international agencies, government and the NGO sector. The analysis presented benefits from their varied backgrounds in medicine, architecture, economics, engineering, planning, social studies, development studies and political science. Throughout the book, relevant examples, drawn from the region, are included to ‘earth’ the project in the harsh realities of risk and disaster impact.
Disasters can dominate newspaper headlines and fill our TV screens with relief appeals, but the complex long-term challenge of recovery—providing shelter, rebuilding safe dwellings, restoring livelihoods and shattered lives—generally fails to attract the attention of the public and most agencies. On average 650 disasters occur each year. They affect more than 200 million people and cause $166 trillion of damage. Climate change, population growth and urbanisation are likely to intensify further the impact of natural disasters and add to reconstruction needs. Recovery from Disaster explores the field and provides a concise, comprehensive source of knowledge for academics, planners, archite...
Since the publication of the successful first edition of Earthquake Protection there have been 110 lethal earthquakes, killing 130 000 people; there have also been significant developments in the field of earthquake risk management, particularly in the modelling and analysis of risk for insurance and financial services. Furthermore, major earthquake disasters, such as the 1994 Northridge earthquake in California, the 1995 Kobe earthquake in Japan and the 1999 Kocaeli earthquake in Turkey have occurred. The experience and knowledge gained through these events have improved our understanding of how to manage, mitigate and work towards the prevention of similar catastrophes. The 1990s were in f...
Well-considered answers to the many questions raised by the situation in Iraq, past and present, are rare. This first comprehensive, thematically organised, bibliography devoted to Iraq is based on the full Index Islamicus database and is drawn from a wide variety of European-language journals and books. Featuring an extensive introduction to the subject and its literature by Peter Sluglett, this bibliography will help readers to find their way through the massive secondary literature now available. Following the pattern established by the Index Islamicus, both journal articles and book publications are included, as well as important internet resources. The editors have taken care to add much new material to bring its coverage up to date, and supplement the previously published volumes, while the most important and/or influential publications are conveniently highlighted in the introduction. An indispensable gateway for all those with a more than superficial interest in what is, and what has been, happening in this nation so much the focus of attention today.
Dramatic scenes of devastation and suffering caused by disasters such as the 2011 Japanese earthquake and tsunami, are viewed with shock and horror by millions of us across the world. What we rarely see, however, are the international politics of disaster aid, mitigation and prevention that condition the collective response to natural catastrophes around the world. In this book, respected Canadian environmental sociologist John Hannigan argues that the global community of nations has failed time and again in establishing an effective and binding multilateral mechanism for coping with disasters, especially in the more vulnerable countries of the South. Written in an accessible and even-handed...
Disaster response has been described as the last resort of the amateur: an unkind assessment but not without a grain of truth. Disaster generates an emotional response, and new disaster organisations are born with each new disaster. Lessons of the past on disaster management have to be learned anew. The need to increase the professionalism of disaster response is evident. All the more so as, in disaster terms, the world is getting worse, not better. Disasters become more complex, frequently involving the interaction of a disaster event, politics and technology. The last few years have also seen a growth in research into the area of disaster response. Too often, however, disaster researchers ...