A comprehensive overview of the concepts of vulnerability and resilience for natural hazards research for both physical and social scientists.

This monograph provides valuable lessons in building disaster resilience for rural communities and beyond. With a focus on Florida, the authors present a comprehensive review of the current debates surrounding the study of resilience, from federal frameworks, state plans and local initiatives. They also review evaluation tools and feature first-hand accounts of county emergency managers as well as non-profit and community groups on key issues, including perspectives on vulnerable groups such as the elderly, children and farm workers. Readers will find insightful answers to such questions as: How can the concept of resilience be used as a framework to investigate the conditions that lead to stronger, more sustainable communities? What factors account for the variation across jurisdictions and geographic units in the ability to respond to and recover from a disaster? How does the recovery process impact the social, political and economic institutions of the stricken communities? How do communities, especially rural ones, collaborate with multiple stakeholders (local, regional, state, national) during the transition from recovery to resilience? Can the collaborative nature of disaster recovery help build resilient communities? The primary audiences of this book are scholars in emergency and crisis management, planning and policy, disaster response and recovery, disaster sociology and environmental management and policy. This book can also be used as a textbook in graduate and advanced undergraduate programs / courses on disaster management, disaster studies, emergency and crisis management, environmental policy and management and public policy and administration.

Measuring Vulnerability to Natural Hazards presents a broad range of current approaches to measuring vulnerability. It provides a comprehensive overview of different concepts at the global, regional, national, and local levels, and explores various schools of thought. More than 40 distinguished academics and practitioners analyse quantitative and qualitative approaches, and examine their strengths and limitations. This book contains concrete experiences and examples from Africa, Asia, the Americas and Europe to illustrate the theoretical analyses.The authors provide answers to some of the key questions on how to measure vulnerability and they draw attention to issues with insufficient coverage, such as the environmental and institutional dimensions of vulnerability and methods to combine different methodologies.This book is a unique compilation of state-of-the-art vulnerability assessment and is essential reading for academics, students, policy makers, practitioners, and anybody else interested in understanding the fundamentals of measuring vulnerability. It is a critical review that provides important conclusions which can serve as an orientation for future research towards more disaster resilient communities.

Emerging Voices in Natural Hazards Research provides a synthesis of the most pressing issues in natural hazards research by new professionals. The book begins with an overview of emerging research on natural hazards, such as hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, wildfires, sea-level rise, global warming, climate change, and tornadoes, among others. Remaining sections include topics such as socially vulnerable populations and the cycles of emergency management. Emerging Voices in Natural Hazards Research is intended to serve as a consolidated resource for academics, students, and researchers to learn about the most pressing issues in natural hazard research today. - Provides a platform for readers to keep up-to-date with the interdisciplinary research that new professionals are producing - Covers the multidisciplinary perspectives of the hazards and disasters field - Includes international perspectives from new professionals around the world, including developing countries

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.

'Economic losses from natural disasters totaled $92 billion in 2015.' Such statements, all too commonplace, assess the severity of disasters by no other measure than the damage inflicted on buildings, infrastructure, and agricultural production. But $1 in losses does not mean the same thing to a rich person that it does to a poor person; the gravity of a $92 billion loss depends on who experiences it. By focusing on aggregate losses—the traditional approach to disaster risk—we restrict our consideration to how disasters affect those wealthy enough to have assets to lose in the first place, and largely ignore the plight of poor people. This report moves beyond asset and production losses and shifts its attention to how natural disasters affect people’s well-being. Disasters are far greater threats to well-being than traditional estimates suggest. This approach provides a more nuanced view of natural disasters than usual reporting, and a perspective that takes fuller account of poor people’s vulnerabilities. Poor people suffer only a fraction of economic losses caused by disasters, but they bear the brunt of their consequences. Understanding the disproportionate vulnerability of poor people also makes the case for setting new intervention priorities to lessen the impact of natural disasters on the world’s poor, such as expanding financial inclusion, disaster risk and health insurance, social protection and adaptive safety nets, contingent finance and reserve funds, and universal access to early warning systems. Efforts to reduce disaster risk and poverty go hand in hand. Because disasters impoverish so many, disaster risk management is inseparable from poverty reduction policy, and vice versa. As climate change magnifies natural hazards, and because protection infrastructure alone cannot eliminate risk, a more resilient population has never been more critical to breaking the cycle of disaster-induced poverty.

Disasters and History offers the first comprehensive historical overview of hazards and disasters. Drawing on a range of case studies, including the Black Death, the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 and the Fukushima disaster, the authors examine how societies dealt with shocks and hazards and their potentially disastrous outcomes. They reveal the ways in which the consequences and outcomes of these disasters varied widely not only between societies but also within the same societies according to social groups, ethnicity and gender. They also demonstrate how studying past disasters, including earthquakes, droughts, floods and epidemics, can provide a lens through which to understand the social, economic and political functioning of past societies and reveal features of a society which may otherwise remain hidden from view. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

When disaster strikes in cities the effects can be catastrophic compared to other environments. But what factors actually determine the vulnerability or resilience of cities? The Vulnerability of Cities fills a vital gap in disaster studies by examining the too-often overlooked impact of disasters on cities, the conditions leading to high losses from urban disasters and why some households and communities withstand disaster more effectively than others. Mark Pelling takes a fresh look at the literature on disasters and urbanization in light of recent catastrophes. He presents three detailed studies of cities in the global South, drawn from countries with contrasting political and developmental contexts: Bridgetown, Barbados - a liberal democracy; Georgetown, Guyana - a post socialist-state; and Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic - an authoritarian state in democratic transition. This book demonstrates that strengthening local capacity - through appropriate housing, disaster-preparedness, infrastructure and livelihoods - is crucial to improving civic resilience to disasters. Equally important are strong partnerships between local community-based organizations, external non-governmental and governmental organizations, public and private sectors and between city and national government. The author highlights and discusses these best practices for handling urban disasters. With rapid urbanization across the globe, this book is a must-read for professionals, policy-makers, students and researchers in disaster management, urban development and planning, transport planning, architecture, social studies and earth sciences.

With chapters that incorporate additional perspectives on social vulnerability, this second edition focuses on the social construction of disasters, demonstrating how the characteristics of an event are not the only reason that tragedies unfurl. It incorporates disaster case studies to illustrate concepts, relevant and seminal literature, and the most recent data available. In addition to highlighting the U.S. context, it integrates a global approach and includes numerous international case studies. The book highlights recent policy changes and current disaster management approaches and infuses the concept of community resilience and building capacity throughout the text.

Assessment of Vulnerability to Natural Hazards covers the vulnerability of human and environmental systems to climate change and eight natural hazards: earthquakes, floods, landslides, avalanches, forest fires, drought, coastal erosion, and heat waves. This book is an important contribution to the field, clarifying terms and investigating the nature of vulnerability to hazards in general and in various specific European contexts. In addition, this book helps improve understanding of vulnerability and gives thorough methodologies for investigating situations in which people and their environments are vulnerable to hazards. With case studies taken from across Europe, the underlying theoretical frame is transferrable to other geographical contexts, making the content relevant worldwide. - Provides a framework of theory and methodology designed to help researchers and practitioners understand the phenomenon of vulnerability to natural hazards and disasters and to climate change - Contains case studies that illustrate how to apply the methodology in different ways to diverse hazards in varied settings (rural, urban, coastal, mountain, and more) - Describes how to validate the results of methodology application in different situations and how to respond to the needs of diverse groups of stakeholders represented by the public and private sectors, civil society, researchers, and academics