Furthermore, given the necessary link between the social science disaster research community and practitioners in the field, it is appropriate that several practicing professionals are among the book's authors. With contributions from leading scientists and professionals and edited by three of the most prominent leaders in the field, this book is an important addition to the literature on social science hazards and disaster research and applications.
Editors’ Introduction
It is useful to comment on some of the ways in which these initial recommendations have been implemented. Many of the choices center on the central problem-solving unit - the community, which is a universal social form across culture.
Acknowledgments
Finally, we would also like to thank Teresa Krauss and other Springer staff who were very supportive and provided the necessary assistance to enable us to do this work and complete The Handbook of Disaster Research.
Contributors
Professional interests include emergency planning, fire service management, and theory construction for disaster research. Professional interests include organizational improvisation, transnational disasters, and community-based approaches to disaster mitigation, response, and recovery.
Contents
What Is a Disaster?
It is through these features of the social system that we find vulnerability to the specific resource. In fact, this view of the field is reflected in most of the definitions discussed here.
A Heuristic Approach to Future Disasters and Crises: New, Old, and
In-Between Types
Instead, those who focus on the social in the broad sense of the word should study social phenomena. There is no such thing as the 'public' in the sense of some homogeneous entity (Blumer, 1948).
The Crisis Approach
As the crisis process begins to unfold, politicians often see nothing out of the ordinary. So do the journalists who produce the stories that help shape the crisis in the public's mind. In this culture of fear - sometimes referred to as the "risk society" - the role of the modern mass media is crucial (Beck, 1992).
This is often discussed in field reports, but the details of the decision-making process that leads to arriving at the scene as soon as possible are usually implicit. One of the earliest studies conducted by the Disaster Research Center (DRC) in its early years at Ohio State University was on Ohio River flooding in Cincinnati (Anderson, 1965). The second paragraph describes estimates of the human dimensions of this disaster: "thousands".
Note that this is always a relative decision—the nature of the disaster, especially its scale, relative to the resources required to study it. More generally, each successive phase of the disaster process seems to bring about a change in the relationship between researchers and subjects. Much of the conventional wisdom about human behavior in disasters had been dispelled, at least in the research literature, by the early 1970s.
The issue of timing plays out differently in the case of documents used in each of the three different types of research—the exploratory field study, the explanatory quantitative analysis, and historical research.
The Role of Geographic Information Systems/Remote
Examples of GIS use in disaster management range from relatively simple local-scale hazard mapping to interactive SDSS. As with other topics, a thorough discussion of the use of geographic technologies for monitoring and detection, detailing. Still, this important area should be mentioned because of the foundation these data collection processes provide for almost every phase of disaster management.
The use of GIS after September 11, 2001 in New York City highlights some of the ways in which spatial technologies support decision making after a terrorist event (Thomas, Cutter, Hodgson, Gutekunst, & Jones, 2003). Ideally, a disaster SDSS should include all elements of disaster management and include all hazards. Developing a disaster SDSS requires that much of the functionality not be technically difficult for the end user.
Furthermore, a lack of effective communication between different actors will cause the disaster management process to fail. A system must also meet the needs of the organization and the end user/calamity manager.
Morbidity and Mortality Associated with Disasters 1
Indirectly related deaths are those caused by unsafe or unhealthy conditions that arise because of the anticipation or actual occurrence of the disaster” (p. 1125). Although tornadoes occur in other parts of the world, information on morbidity and mortality associated with tornadoes comes exclusively from North America, primarily the United States. Injuries that occur during the earthquake, such as falls, are direct effects of the physical force of the earthquake.
Earthquakes in other areas of the world have resulted in many more casualties and other devastating health effects. 88 percent of the people who were in the building at the time of the explosion were injured. In the years since 9/11, several articles have reported on attempts to monitor the long-term health effects of the World Trade Center attack on the population of New York City.
A study of rescue and relief workers, including volunteers, from the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center found that 13% met criteria for PTSD, a rate about four times what would be expected in the general population (CDC, 2004a). Female survivors of the Oklahoma City bombing were twice as likely as males to meet criteria for PTSD, depression, and generalized anxiety disorder (North et al., 1999).
Race, Class, Ethnicity, and Disaster Vulnerability
In the first, I provide an overview of some recent theoretical debates around four key concepts: vulnerability, race, class and ethnicity. My goal in the final section is to review elements of the environmental justice literature to illustrate race and class issues in the allocation of environmental risks, an emphasis that is largely missing in the U.S. Race (and racism) exists at the level of social structure in the sense that we cannot avoid the effects of racial categories.
As illustrated below, the historical and cultural complexities of race and ethnicity are typically not explored in depth in the disaster literature (see Fothergill et al., 1999). Disaster research as an academic specialization was first developed in the United States in the aftermath of World War II. Disaster recovery studies began to examine racial, class, and ethnic differences in the 1970s, marking a new direction in research (Haas, Kates, & Bowden, 1977).
In this concluding section, I highlight some salient features of the environmental justice literature to suggest ways in which its general approach can be used to strengthen disaster research in the areas of race, class, and ethnic inequalities. The environmental justice literature examines inequalities by race and class in the exposure to technological hazards across a range of spatial and temporal scales.
Gender and Disaster: Foundations and Directions
This perspective shifts the field from a beneficiary or victim model to one based on barriers to the attainment of 'women and girls'. The impact of disasters on women's paid and unpaid work is well documented, and livelihood protection is the main focus of gender and disaster relief projects in the world's poorest countries. For example, women's groups are often actively involved in the crisis period by delivering food and other necessities.
Research on women's roles in disaster management in the Caribbean found that women were involved in the implementation of relief activities, but not in the decision-making and planning process (Noel, 1998). When it comes to accessing aid, women's short-term needs and long-term interests are often neglected. Other factors are the research agendas of international women's organizations and movements and the particular development of disaster sociology in the United States.
Women (UNIFEM), the International Labor Organization (ILO) and other international governmental organizations (IGOs) and international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) took a keen interest in the survival needs of women and children. Sexual differences require more analysis of women's and men's reproductive health needs and in particular maternal health.
Globalization and Localization
An Economic Approach
M. Albala-Bertrand
Under what circumstances would an economy be more likely to survive a natural hazard? From a national point of view, the disaster would be local if the macro economy could isolate itself from the indirect effects originating in the disaster area. In autarky they would be irrelevant and in diversified societies they would be quickly compensated and compensated even in the disaster area itself.
In the above context, even if the capital lost due to the disaster was not fully replaced, it would be unlikely to affect the economy in the short and medium term, let alone the long term. This will usually be limited to the first 2 or 3 years after the disaster, especially but not only in the case of earthquake disasters (Albala-Bertrand, 1993; Charveriat, 2000). This means that even in the worst cases, the negative effects of the disaster on the economy were short-lived and later more than offset. 3.
In the case of natural disasters, this interference is mostly an accidental effect of the impact and the response to a disaster situation. But if the impact of the disaster itself cannot be fully prevented, how will globalization fare in the area of actual disaster response.
Local Emergency Management Organizations
First, it must be acknowledged that there are several problems with the term "emergency management" (McEntire, 2004a). The concept of emergency management is similarly questionable because emergency managers have less control over the development of emergency events than they would like to admit. Additionally, the content of these academic emergency management programs is slowly but surely changing.
Certain municipalities may not be involved in emergency management as the county takes a more proactive stance towards disasters. The emergency management position may also be part of one of many joint organizational arrangements (Kreps, 1991). In other words, the art of the profession is as important as the science of emergency management.
Finally, it should be noted that the name of the emergency department also varies dramatically in different cities. Indianapolis, Indiana, brands it as the Emergency Management Agency of the Department of Public Safety.
