William L. Waugh Jr. is Professor Emeritus in the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at Georgia State University and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Emergency Management. Dr. Waugh is the author of International Terrorism (1982); Terrorism and Emergency Management (1990); and Living with Hazards, Dealing with Disasters (2000); and the coeditor of Handbook of Emergency Management (1990); Cities and Disasters (1990); Disaster Management in the U.S. and Canada (1996); and Emergency Management: Principles and Practice for Local Government, 2nd Ed. (2007); and, as well as over 200 articles, chapters, essays, and reports published in the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Asia. His current research focuses on collaboration in Disaster Management and capacity-building for community resilience. Dr Ziqiang Han is an Associate Professor at the Institute for Disaster Management and Reconstruction, Sichuan University-The Hong Kong Polytechnic University in China. He is also a joint researcher at the Center for Crisis Management Research, Tsinghua University. His research interests are disaster recovery and sustainable development, multi-organizational cooperation in emergency management, risk perception and decision making, institutional disaster preparedness, and disaster education. Dr.Han has published a number of papers on Natural Hazards, Risk, and Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy in the International Journal of Disaster Risk Science, China Emergency Management Journal, Journal of Risk, and the Disaster & Crisis Research.

Sociologists and specialists in technical and policy aspects of disaster planning and response present case studies to illustrate particularly Asian approaches to recovering from catastrophe. Their topics include social capital and changes in post-disaster recovery process: observations from China after the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake, the restoration of communities following the Great East Japan Disaster: the transformation of mutual help networks through the eyes of the victims, lessons from disaster recovery in Japan through case studies of four earthquakes, disaster exceptionalism in India: the view from below, and international humanitarian assistance and disaster recovery in Asia.

• Chapter 1, Disaster Recovery in Asia: An Introduction; Ziqiang Han and William L. Waugh, Jr. Chapter 2, Social Capital and Changes in Post-Disaster Recovery Process: Observations from China after the 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake; Ziqiang Han Chapter 3, Recovering from Prolonged Negative Destination Images in Post-Disaster Northern Japan; David N. Nguyen and Fumihiko Imamura Chapter 4, Restoration of Communities Following the Great East Japan Disaster: the Transformation of Mutual Help Networks through the Eyes of the Victims; Morio Onda Chapter 5, Lessons from Disaster Recovery in Japan through Case Studies of Four Earthquakes; Yingying SunChapter 6, Citizen Participation in the Disaster Reconstruction Process: Lessons from the Great East Japan Earthquake; Takashi Tsuji Chapter 7, Social Vulnerability in Disasters: Immigrant and Refugee Experiences in Canterbury and Tohoku; Shinya Uekusa Chapter 8, Disaster Exceptionalism in India: The View From Below; José Manuel Mendes Chapter 9, The 2015 Nepal Earthquake: From Rescue to Reconstruction; Chandra Lal Pandey Chapter 10, International Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Recovery in Asia; William L. Waugh, Jr.