Rethinking American Disasters

Rethinking American Disasters PDF Author: Cynthia A. Kierner
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807179841
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
Rethinking American Disasters is a pathbreaking collection of essays on hurricanes, earthquakes, fires, and other calamities in the United States and British colonial America over four centuries. Proceeding from the premise that there is no such thing as a “natural” disaster, the collection invites readers to consider disasters and their aftermaths as artifacts of and vantage points onto their historical contexts.

Rethinking American Disasters

Rethinking American Disasters PDF Author: Cynthia A. Kierner
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807179841
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
Rethinking American Disasters is a pathbreaking collection of essays on hurricanes, earthquakes, fires, and other calamities in the United States and British colonial America over four centuries. Proceeding from the premise that there is no such thing as a “natural” disaster, the collection invites readers to consider disasters and their aftermaths as artifacts of and vantage points onto their historical contexts.

Rethinking Readiness

Rethinking Readiness PDF Author: Jeff Schlegelmilch
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231548877
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 91

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Book Description
As human society continues to develop, we have increased the risk of large-scale disasters. From health care to infrastructure to national security, systems designed to keep us safe have also heightened the potential for catastrophe. The constant pressure of climate change, geopolitical conflict, and our tendency to ignore what is hard to grasp exacerbates potential dangers. How can we prepare for and prevent the twenty-first-century disasters on the horizon? Rethinking Readiness offers an expert introduction to human-made threats and vulnerabilities, with a focus on opportunities to reimagine how we approach disaster preparedness. Jeff Schlegelmilch identifies and explores the most critical threats facing the world today, detailing the dangers of pandemics, climate change, infrastructure collapse, cyberattacks, and nuclear conflict. Drawing on the latest research from leading experts, he provides an accessible overview of the causes and potential effects of these looming megadisasters. The book highlights the potential for building resilient, adaptable, and sustainable systems so that we can be better prepared to respond to and recover from future crises. Thoroughly grounded in scientific and policy expertise, Rethinking Readiness is an essential guide to this century’s biggest challenges in disaster management.

The Social Roots of Risk

The Social Roots of Risk PDF Author: Kathleen Tierney
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804791406
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 318

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Book Description
“This book about risk and disaster—and how they get amplified—is fascinating and hugely important as we face an ever-more-turbulent world.” —Rebecca Solnit, award-winning author of A Field Guide to Getting Lost The first decade of the twenty-first century saw a remarkable number of large-scale disasters. Earthquakes in Haiti and Sumatra underscored the serious economic consequences that catastrophic events can have on developing countries, while 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina showed that first world nations remain vulnerable. The Social Roots of Risk argues against the widespread notion that cataclysmic occurrences are singular events, driven by forces beyond our control. Instead, Kathleen Tierney contends that disasters of all types—be they natural, technological, or economic—are rooted in common social and institutional sources. Put another way, risks and disasters are produced by the social order itself—by governing bodies, organizations, and groups that push for economic growth, oppose risk-reducing regulation, and escape responsibility for tremendous losses when they occur. Considering a wide range of historical and looming events—from a potential mega-earthquake in Tokyo that would cause devastation far greater than what we saw in 2011, to BP’s accident history prior to the 2010 blowout—Tierney illustrates trends in our behavior, connecting what seem like one-off events to illuminate historical patterns. Like risk, human resilience also emerges from the social order, and this book makes a powerful case that we already have a significant capacity to reduce the losses that disasters produce. A provocative rethinking of the way that we approach and remedy disasters, The Social Roots of Risk leaves readers with a better understanding of how our own actions make us vulnerable to the next big crisis—and what we can do to prevent it. “Brilliant . . . Drawing on a trove of timely case studies, Tierney analyses how factors such as speculative finance and rampant development allow natural and economic blips to tip more easily into catastrophe.” —Nature

Rethinking Post-disaster Recovery

Rethinking Post-disaster Recovery PDF Author: Laura Centemeri
Publisher: Routledge New Security Studies
ISBN: 9781032027159
Category : Disaster relief
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This book presents an original interdisciplinary approach to the study of the so-called 'recovery phase' in disaster management, centred on the notion of repairing. The volume advances thinking on disaster recovery that goes beyond institutional and managerial challenges, descriptions and analyses. It encourages socially, politically and ethically engaged questioning of what it means to recover after disaster. At the centre of this analysis, contributions examine the diversity of processes of repairing through which recovery can take place, and the varied meanings actors attribute to repair at different times and scales of such processes. It also analyses the multiple arenas (juridical, expert, political) in which actors struggle to make sense of the "what-ness" of a disaster and the paths for recovery. These struggles are interlinked with interest-based and power-based struggles which maintain structural inequality and exploitation, existing social hierarchies and established forms of marginality. The work uses case studies from all over the world, cutting-edge theoretical discussions and original empirical research to put critical and interpretative approaches in social sciences into dialogue, opening the venue for innovative approaches in the study of environmental disasters. This book will be of much interest to students of disaster management, sociology, anthropology, law and philosophy.

Rethinking Urban Risk and Resettlement in the Global South

Rethinking Urban Risk and Resettlement in the Global South PDF Author: Garima Jain
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781787358294
Category : City planning
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
A study on urban risk and resettlement programs in the Global South in the era of climate change. Environmental changes impact everyone, but the burden is especially heavy upon the lives and livelihoods of the urban poor and those living in informal settlements. In an effort to reduce urban residents' exposure to climate change and natural disasters, resettlement programs are becoming widespread across the Global South. Yet, while resettlement may reduce a region's future climate-related disaster risk, it can also often increase poverty and vulnerability. This volume collates the findings from a research project that examined urban areas across the globe, including case studies from India, Uganda, Peru, Colombia, Mexico, Cambodia, and the Philippines. The book offers a unique approach to resettlement, providing an opportunity for urban planners to re-think how disaster risk management can better address the accumulation of urban risks in the era of climate change.

Disasters in Paradise

Disasters in Paradise PDF Author: Amanda D. Concha-Holmes
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 0739177389
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 269

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Book Description
Long considered ground zero for global climate change in the United States, Florida presents the perfect case study for disaster risk and prevention. Building on the idea that disasters are produced by historical and contemporary social processes as well as natural phenomena, Amanda D. Concha-Holmes and Anthony Oliver-Smith present a collection of ethnographic case studies that examine the social and environmental effects of Florida’s public and private sector development policies. Contributors to Disasters in Paradise explore how these practices have increased the vulnerability of Floridians to hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, droughts, frosts, and forest fires.

Unnatural Disasters

Unnatural Disasters PDF Author: Gonzalo Lizarralde
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231552505
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 482

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Book Description
Storms, floods, fires, tsunamis, earthquakes, tornadoes, and other disasters seem not only more frequent but also closer to home. As the world faces this onslaught, we have placed our faith in “sustainable development,” which promises that we can survive and even thrive in the face of climate change and other risks. Yet while claiming to “go green,” we have instead created new risks, continued to degrade nature, and failed to halt global warming. Unnatural Disasters offers a new perspective on our most pressing environmental and social challenges, revealing the gaps between abstract concepts like sustainability, resilience, and innovation and the real-world experiences of people living at risk. Gonzalo Lizarralde explains how the causes of disasters are not natural but all too human: inequality, segregation, marginalization, colonialism, neoliberalism, racism, and unrestrained capitalism. He tells the stories of Latin American migrants, Haitian earthquake survivors, Canadian climate activists, African slum dwellers, and other people resisting social and environmental injustices around the world. Lizarralde shows that most reconstruction and risk-reduction efforts exacerbate social inequalities. Some responses do produce meaningful changes, but they are rarely the ones powerful leaders have in mind. This book reveals how disasters have become both the causes and consequences of today’s most urgent challenges and proposes achievable solutions to save a planet at risk, emphasizing the power citizens hold to change the current state of affairs.

Disaster Hits Home

Disaster Hits Home PDF Author: Mary C. Comerio
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 052091872X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
Whenever a major earthquake strikes or a hurricane unleashes its fury, the devastating results fill our television screens and newspapers. Mary C. Comerio is interested in what happens in the weeks and months after such disasters, particularly in the recovery of damaged housing. Through case studies of six recent urban disasters—Hurricane Hugo in South Carolina, Hurricane Andrew in Florida, the Loma Prieta and Northridge earthquakes in California, as well as earthquakes in Mexico City and Kobe, Japan—Comerio demonstrates that several fundamental factors have changed in contemporary urban disasters. The foremost change is in scale, and as more Americans move to the two coasts, future losses will continue to be formidable because of increased development in these high-hazard areas. Moreover, the visibility of disasters in the news media will assure that response efforts remain highly politicized. And finally, the federal government is now expected to be on the scene with personnel, programs, and financial assistance even as private insurance companies are withdrawing disaster coverage from homeowners in earthquake- and hurricane-prone regions. Demonstrating ways that existing recovery systems are inadequate, Comerio proposes a rethinking of what recovery means, a comprehensive revision of the government's role, and more equitable programs for construction financing. She offers new criteria for a housing recovery policy as well as real financial incentives for preparedness, for limiting damage before disasters occur, and for providing a climate where private insurance can work. Her careful analysis makes this book important reading for policymakers, property owners, and anyone involved in disaster mitigation.

Disaster Resiliency

Disaster Resiliency PDF Author: Naim Kapucu
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136239952
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 438

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Book Description
Natural disasters in recent years have brought the study of disaster resiliency to the forefront. The importance of community preparedness and sustainability has been underscored by such calamities as Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the Japanese tsunami in 2011. Natural disasters will inevitably continue to occur, but by understanding the concept of resiliency as well as the factors that lead to it, communities can minimize their vulnerabilities and increase their resilience. In this volume, editors Naim Kapucu, Christopher V. Hawkins, and Fernando I. Rivera gather an impressive array of scholars to provide a much needed re-think to the topic disaster resiliency. Previous research on the subject has mainly focused on case studies, but this book offers a more systematic and empirical assessment of resiliency, while at the same time delving into new areas of exploration, including vulnerabilities of mobile home parks, the importance of asset mapping, and the differences between rural and urban locations. Employing a variety of statistical techniques and applying these to disasters in the United States and worldwide, this book examines resiliency through comparative methods which examine public management and policy, community planning and development, and, on the individual level, the ways in which culture, socio-economic status, and social networks contribute to resiliency. The analyses drawn will lead to the development of strategies for community preparation, response, and recovery to natural disasters. Combining the concept of resiliency, the factors that most account for the resiliency of communities, and the various policies and government operations that can be developed to increase the sustainability of communities in face of disasters, the editors and contributors have assembled an essential resource to scholars in emergency planning, management, and policy, as well as upper-level students studying disaster management and policy.

Natural Disasters in the Ottoman Empire

Natural Disasters in the Ottoman Empire PDF Author: Yaron Ayalon
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107072972
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
Yaron Ayalon explores the Ottoman Empire's history of natural disasters and its responses on a state, communal, and individual level.