Environmental Hazards and Disasters: Contexts, Perspectives and Management
Bimal Kanti Paul
Language: English
Pages: 334
ISBN: 0470660015
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Environmental Hazards and Disasters: Contexts, Perspectives and Management focuses on manifested threats to humans and their welfare as a result of natural disasters. The book uses an integrative approach to address socio-cultural, political and physical components of the disaster process. Human and social vulnerability as well as risk to environmental hazards are explored within the comprehensive context of diverse natural hazards and disasters.
In addition to scientific explanations of disastrous occurrences, people and governments of hazard-prone countries often have their own interpretations for why natural disasters occur. In such interpretations they often either blame others, in order to conceal their inability to protect themselves, or they blame themselves, attributing the events to either real or imagined misdeeds. The book contains a chapter devoted to the neglected topic of such reactions and explanations. Includes chapters on key topics such as the application of GIS in hazard studies; resiliency; disasters and poverty; climate change and sustainability and development.
This book is designed as a primary text for an interdisciplinary course on hazards for upper-level undergraduate and Graduate students. Although not targeted for an introductory hazards course, students in such a course may find it very useful as well. Additionally, emergency managers, planners, and both public and private organizations involved in disaster response, and mitigation could benefit from this book along with hazard researchers. It not only includes traditional and popular hazard topics (e.g., disaster cycles, disaster relief, and risk and vulnerability), it also includes neglected topics, such as the positive impacts of disasters, disaster myths and different accounts of disasters, and disasters and gender.
several characteristics determines the impact of a particular hazard or disaster. For example, P1: OTA/XYZ JWST090-01 P2: ABC JWST090-Paul July 28, 2011 1:34 Printer Name: Yet to Come REFERENCES 33 the risk of death from a flood is influenced by several physical parameters of the event, such as its magnitude (depth), scale (spatial extent), duration, and frequency (Tobin and Montz, 1997). The number of deaths is thought to increase with increasing flood frequency, magnitude, and
not equally vulnerable to disasters. For example, Asian Indian immigrants in the United States are generally more affluent and well-educated than many other US immigrant groups. Asian Indians in the US have a median annual income at least US$15 000 higher than the household median income of these groups. Following the logic, it can be assumed that all elderly people are not equally vulnerable to natural hazards. For example an elderly person of a poor family has higher vulnerability than an
Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) at the Catholic University of Louvain in Brussels, Belgium, has developed the Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT), starting in 1988. EM-DAT organizes and counts disaster events by country. Thus disasters affecting many nations generate multiple registrations. It is the goal of EM-DAT to systematically define and routinely report disasters in a timely manner with high fidelity and consistency worldwide. However, CRED defines a natural disaster as “a situation or
Protection Agency (HPA) states that infection from flooding is rare in the UK as pathogens get diluted and provide low risk. There was no evidence of increased outbreaks of illness following the 2007 floods in the United Kingdom (HPA, 2008). Illnesses are also caused by other indirect impacts of natural disasters such as damaged infrastructure, population displacement, and reduced food production as well as the release of contaminants (e.g., from storage and waster disposal P1: OTA/XYZ
caused by the 1993 Midwest floods. There are many other political and institutional implications of natural disasters, some of which are mentioned in the subsequent chapters, including environmental impacts. Natural disasters often become a root cause for political disintegration. For example, the November 1970 cyclone totally devastated the life and living of the coastal region of East Pakistan, which was at that time one of two provinces of Pakistan. The response of the Central Government of