Practical Lessons from the Loma Prieta Earthquake PDF Download

Author: Institute of Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309316227
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 532

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Book Description
In the devastation that follows a major disaster, there is a need for multiple sectors to unite and devote new resources to support the rebuilding of infrastructure, the provision of health and social services, the restoration of care delivery systems, and other critical recovery needs. In some cases, billions of dollars from public, private and charitable sources are invested to help communities recover. National rhetoric often characterizes these efforts as a "return to normal." But for many American communities, pre-disaster conditions are far from optimal. Large segments of the U.S. population suffer from preventable health problems, experience inequitable access to services, and rely on overburdened health systems. A return to pre-event conditions in such cases may be short-sighted given the high costs - both economic and social - of poor health. Instead, it is important to understand that the disaster recovery process offers a series of unique and valuable opportunities to improve on the status quo. Capitalizing on these opportunities can advance the long-term health, resilience, and sustainability of communities - thereby better preparing them for future challenges. Healthy, Resilient, and Sustainable Communities After Disasters identifies and recommends recovery practices and novel programs most likely to impact overall community public health and contribute to resiliency for future incidents. This book makes the case that disaster recovery should be guided by a healthy community vision, where health considerations are integrated into all aspects of recovery planning before and after a disaster, and funding streams are leveraged in a coordinated manner and applied to health improvement priorities in order to meet human recovery needs and create healthy built and natural environments. The conceptual framework presented in Healthy, Resilient, and Sustainable Communities After Disasters lays the groundwork to achieve this goal and provides operational guidance for multiple sectors involved in community planning and disaster recovery. Healthy, Resilient, and Sustainable Communities After Disasters calls for actions at multiple levels to facilitate recovery strategies that optimize community health. With a shared healthy community vision, strategic planning that prioritizes health, and coordinated implementation, disaster recovery can result in a communities that are healthier, more livable places for current and future generations to grow and thrive - communities that are better prepared for future adversities.

Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309101786
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 409

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Book Description
Social science research conducted since the late 1970's has contributed greatly to society's ability to mitigate and adapt to natural, technological, and willful disasters. However, as evidenced by Hurricane Katrina, the Indian Ocean tsunami, the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, and other recent events, hazards and disaster research and its application could be improved greatly. In particular, more studies should be pursued that compare how the characteristics of different types of events-including predictability, forewarning, magnitude, and duration of impact-affect societal vulnerability and response. This book includes more than thirty recommendations for the hazards and disaster community.

Author: National Academies
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309261503
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
No person or place is immune from disasters or disaster-related losses. Infectious disease outbreaks, acts of terrorism, social unrest, or financial disasters in addition to natural hazards can all lead to large-scale consequences for the nation and its communities. Communities and the nation thus face difficult fiscal, social, cultural, and environmental choices about the best ways to ensure basic security and quality of life against hazards, deliberate attacks, and disasters. Beyond the unquantifiable costs of injury and loss of life from disasters, statistics for 2011 alone indicate economic damages from natural disasters in the United States exceeded $55 billion, with 14 events costing more than a billion dollars in damages each. One way to reduce the impacts of disasters on the nation and its communities is to invest in enhancing resilience-the ability to prepare and plan for, absorb, recover from and more successfully adapt to adverse events. Disaster Resilience: A National Imperative addresses the broad issue of increasing the nation's resilience to disasters. This book defines "national resilience", describes the state of knowledge about resilience to hazards and disasters, and frames the main issues related to increasing resilience in the United States. It also provide goals, baseline conditions, or performance metrics for national resilience and outlines additional information, data, gaps, and/or obstacles that need to be addressed to increase the nation's resilience to disasters. Additionally, the book's authoring committee makes recommendations about the necessary approaches to elevate national resilience to disasters in the United States. Enhanced resilience allows better anticipation of disasters and better planning to reduce disaster losses-rather than waiting for an event to occur and paying for it afterward. Disaster Resilience confronts the topic of how to increase the nation's resilience to disasters through a vision of the characteristics of a resilient nation in the year 2030. Increasing disaster resilience is an imperative that requires the collective will of the nation and its communities. Although disasters will continue to occur, actions that move the nation from reactive approaches to disasters to a proactive stance where communities actively engage in enhancing resilience will reduce many of the broad societal and economic burdens that disasters can cause.

Author: Edward H. Powley
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN: 1788112210
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 375

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Book Description
This Research Handbook identifies how resilience has evolved as a critical theoretical concept in the organizational sciences. International resilience scholars conceptualize and explore the various ways resilience can be embedded in theory and practice, offering new and updated perspectives on the importance of resilience in multiple contexts.

Author: David A. McEntire
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 1000890287
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 374

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Book Description
The Distributed Functions of Emergency Management and Homeland Security outlines the roles and responsibilities of various individuals and agencies involved in homeland security and all aspects of emergency management. Each chapter focuses on the practical and applied aspects of a range of public servants in various departments and the organizations that they represent. Rather than presenting a theoretical exploration alone, the book examines the practical knowledge and hands-on skills related to various functions and how their decisions and actions play into the larger framework of safety and security —in the public, private and nonprofit sectors. Every professional has a unique and integral part to play in fulfilling their roles and obligations, whether it be in relation to prevention, mitigation, preparedness, response or recovery operations. Personnel that frequently come to mind in such scenarios include emergency managers, geographers and land-use planners, EMTs and paramedics, fire fighters, police officers, public health officials, nurses, public administrators, and public information officers. And while these individuals are integral to homeland security and emergency management, there are other professionals that also perform essential duties that—while they aren’t first-to-mind—are vital to efforts relating to terrorism and disasters; this includes pilots in the aviation sector, the military, attorneys, psychologists, and forensic professionals serving in pathology, DNA, and dentistry roles. Chapters provide a holistic rendering of the homeland security and emergency management landscape to present all these various professional capabilities and contributions. This includes how current functions are coordinated as well as how future efforts might change relative to a more proactive, all-hazards and holistic approach. As such, the book will be a useful resource for students and practitioners to understand the dynamic professions—and various disciplines and fields—that impact disaster and terrorism preparedness and response capabilities.

Author: Stefanie Haeffele
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030393127
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 160

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Book Description
Crises occur in all societies across world, and can be natural (such as hurricanes, flooding, and earthquakes), man-made (such as wars and economic downturns), or, often, a combination of both (such as famines, the flooding of New Orleans in 2005 after Hurricane Katrina and subsequent levy failures, and the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster in Japan in 2011). Crises cause fatalities, injuries, and property damages as well as introduce uncertainty and challenges for individuals, societies, and polities. Yet, we see individuals and communities rebounding effectively from crises all the time. How do communities go about returning to normalcy and beginning again the mundane life of every day affairs? This edited volume looks at bottom-up responses to crises. The chapters in this volume will highlight the ingenuity and persistence of individuals and private organizations as well as discuss the possibilities, limitations, and adaptability of bottom-up responses. It argues that there are many ways that local leaders, entrepreneurs, and community members can play a role in their own recovery by examining the capabilities, feedback mechanisms, and network effects of decentralized crisis response and recovery efforts. Chapters will focus on the role of local emergency managers in the disaster management process and offer suggestions for reform and the role of businesses, citizens, and children in providing crisis response and recovery. This book will also consider theories of self-governance and nonviolent action in encouraging and sustaining bottom-up recovery.

Author: David H. McElreath
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 0429959478
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 473

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Book Description
Introduction to Homeland Security, Third Edition provides the latest developments in the policy and operations of domestic security efforts of the agencies under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. This includes the FBI, Secret Service, FEMA, the Coast Guard, TSA and numerous other federal agencies responsible for critical intelligence, emergency response, and the safety and security of U.S. citizens at home and abroad. Changes in DHS and domestic security are presented from pre-September 11, 2001 days, to include the formation of DHS under President George W. Bush, all the way through to the current administration. Through this, the many transformative events are looked at through the lens of DHS’s original establishment, and the frequent changes to the various agencies, organization, reporting structure, funding, and policies that have occurred since. This new edition is completely updated and includes coverage of topics relevant to homeland security operations not covered in any other text currently available. This includes highlighting the geopolitical context and the nature of global terrorism—and their implications—specifically as they relate to threats to the United States. Partnerships and collaboration with global allies are highlighted in the context of their relevance to international trade, domestic policies, training, and security. The book ends with a look at emerging threats and potential new, creative solutions—and initiatives in-process within the government—to respond to and address such threats. Key Features: Explores the history and formation of the Department of Homeland Security, recent developments, as well as the role and core missions of core agencies within DHS Outlines man-made threats, intelligence challenges, and intra-agency communication, planning, and operations Looks critically at the role of geopolitical dynamics, key international allies, and their influence on domestic policy and decision-making Covers the latest developments in programs, legislation, and policy relative to all transportation and border security issues Examines current issues and emerging global threats associated with extremism and terrorism Addresses natural and man-made disasters and the emergency management cycle in preparing for, mitigating against, responding to, and recovering from such events Introduction to Homeland Security, Third Edition remains the premier textbook for criminal justice, homeland security, national security, and intelligence programs in universities and an ideal reference for professionals as well as policy and research institutes.

Author: Shruti Tripathi
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 1000421511
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 237

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Book Description
Quality of Life: An Interdisciplinary Perspective presents the Quality of Life using a contemporary and interdisciplinary approach. Various socio-cultural, spiritual, technological, and human factors aspects, which have an immense bearing on our lives, are an integral part of this book. This book highlights cultural differences in terms of Quality of Life. It recognizes the presence of cultural differences resulting from the social status attributed to an individual’s age, gender, class, race, and ethnicity. It can be used as a guide in the field of global well-being and for future research. It presents clues to complex problems and empirical materials, and attempts to bring out a more comprehensive picture of global and contemporary Quality of Life and well-being. This book can also fill a gap in teaching and research. Those who will find this book useful are researchers, academicians, practitioners, and students of management, behavioral science, human factors, psychology, health economics, sociology, public health, and politics.

Author: Michel Rademaker
Publisher: The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 86

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Book Description
In the face of a rapidly-changing geopolitical landscape, contemporary perspectives on security have drastically changed in reaction to new conflict factors that have arisen out of, and are related to, unpredictable patterns of climate change. Already, in both the short and long term future, it is increasingly likely that conflict will result from a multitude of such stress factors. Environmental stress, stress caused by climate change in particular, is only one of these factors. Nonetheless, in light of its diverse and multiplier impacts, it remains an important one. This report, intended for policy makers and business professionals, examines the economic aspects of the relatively under-explored concept of planetary security. Planetary security refers to the role of the environment in geopolitical risks and conflicts. The report evaluates the vulnerabilities and resilience of countries to environmentally induced conflict. It first discusses the concept of planetary security and the role of economics therein, and then builds a quantitative framework and monitor capturing the vulnerabilities and resilience of different countries. The monitor is innovative in its inclusion of a variety of security risks related to the transition to a low carbon economy: Conflict Vulnerability, Climate Change Vulnerability, Low Carbon Risk and Economic Resilience. These layers are combined to create a Consolidated Risk Layer and a Consolidated Resilience Layer, in order to provide insight into how resilience to the above vulnerabilities could be bolstered. The monitor and accompanying report, have been produced by The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies (HCSS) and Clingendael Institute as a key input to the Planetary Security Initiative conference, which took place in The Hague, the Netherlands on December 5 and 6, supported by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Author: Mrs.Kerstin Gerling
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
ISBN: 1484328671
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 32

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Book Description
Weather-related natural disasters and climate change pose interrelated macro-fiscal challenges. Using panel-VARX studies for a sample of 19 countries in Developing Asia during 1970 to 2015, this paper contributes new empirical evidence on the dynamic adjustment path of growth and key fiscal variables after severe weather-related disasters. It does not only show that output loss can be permanent, but even twice as large for cases of severe casualties or material damages than people affected. Meanwhile, key fiscal aggregates remain surprisingly stable. Event and case studies suggest that this can reflect both a deliberate policy choice or binding constraints. The latter can make governments respond through mitigating fiscal policy efforts such as ad hoc fiscal rebalancing and reprioritization. The findings help better customize disaster preparedness and mitigation efforts to countries’ risk exposure along a particular loss dimension.