Featured eBooks: Disaster studies

Environmental hazards: Assessing risk and reducing disaster. The much expanded sixth edition of Environmental Hazards provides a fully up-to-date overview of all the extreme events that threaten people and what they value in the 21st century. It integrates cutting-edge material from the physical and social sciences to illustrate how natural and human systems interact to place communities of all sizes, and at all stages of economic development, at risk. It also explains in detail the various measures available to reduce the ongoing losses to life and property.








Managing the risks of extreme events and disasters to advance climate change adaptation. This report explores the challenge of understanding and managing the risks of climate extremes to advance climate change adaptation. Extreme weather and climate events, interacting with exposed and vulnerable human and natural systems, can lead to disasters. Changes in the frequency and severity of the physical events affect disaster risk, but so do the spatially diverse and temporally dynamic patterns of exposure and vulnerability. Some types of extreme weather and climate events have increased in frequency or magnitude, but populations and assets at risk have also increased, with consequences for disaster risk. Opportunities for managing risks of weather- and climate-related disasters exist or can be developed at any scale, local to international. This report offers an invaluable assessment for anyone interested in climate extremes, environmental disasters and adaptation to climate change, including policymakers, the private sector and academic researchers.








The politics and policies of relief, aid and reconstruction: Contrasting approaches to disasters and emergencies. This book advances the political analysis of international disaster policies which have been mostly in the domain of other social sciences. Exploring the formation of this field of study, this collection analyses the most recent disaster events including the Haiti earthquake, the tsunami in the Pacific Ocean and the genocide in Rwanda and Former Yugoslavia. Broadly linked to constructivism and neo-institutionalism, this book also looks at the impact of these cooperation policies on the governance of the present global system.










Psychosocial capacity building in response to disasters. Disaster responders treat more than just the immediate emotional and psychological trauma of victims: they empower individuals and families to heal themselves long into a disaster's aftermath. This requires rebuilding the ability of survivors to meet their emotional and psychological needs, not only for themselves but also for others, and necessitates a careful consideration of survivors' social, economic, and political realities so healing and recovery can outlast the reverberations of disaster.

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