Havidan Rodriguez – författare

Recent disasters, such as the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, bomb explosions in London, Hurricane Katrina, the Pakistan Earthquake, floods in Central America, and landslides in Indonesia, among many others, have resulted in an extensive loss of life, social disruption, significant economic impacts to local and national economies, and have made headline news in countries throughout the world. Thus the Handbook of Disaster Research is a timely and much needed contribution to the field of disasters. The editors of this Handbook have brought together a comprehensive and interdisciplinary volume with a diverse and international group of contributors.

The Handbook is based on the principle that disasters are social constructions and focuses on social science disaster research. Attention is given to conceptual issues dealing with the concept "disaster" and to methodological issues relating to research on disasters, including Geographic Information Systems as a useful research tool andits implications for future research; how disaster research is increasingly being used in the emergency management curriculum; and how research is useful in dealing with emergency operations. The Handbook also includes a number of essays focusing on various types of vulnerabilities. In addition, there are discussions on community processes that are evoked by disasters, including warnings, search and rescue, coordination, and organizational adaptation, as well as, dealing with death and injury, and recovery, and the role of the media in disasters; special attention is given to emergency systems in several nation states. The Handbook also includes contributions focusing on the relationship between disaster and development, the popular culture of disasters, new dimensions of disaster research, as well as projections of disasters into the future.

Disasters allow the opportunity for social scientists to study human behavior in which adaptation, resilience and innovation are often more clearly revealed than in “normal” and stable times. The Handbook of Disaster Research provides an interdisciplinary and international approach to disasters with theoretical, methodological, and practical applications.

This book offers a comprehensive description and analysis of natural hazard warnings, drawing on perspectives from the social sciences, physical sciences, and interdisciplinary fields such as disaster studies to articulate a distinction between traditional warnings and what might be called interdisciplinary warnings. Traditional warnings approach warning technology, design, and application from a principally scientific and technical perspective. Human factors, while considered, often are of secondary concern. Interdisciplinary warnings, on the other hand, maintain a critical emphasis on the technical merits of warning systems, but also ask, “Will psychological and community factors such as culture and structure shape how the system is used, and, if so, can this information be incorporated into system design preemptively to make it more effective?” Given the absence of systematic work on interdisciplinary warnings, a book-length monograph discussing and synthesizing knowledge from the various fields focused on warnings and warning response is of critical importance to both academics and practitioners. Broadly conceived, the book presents readers with an in-depth overview of warnings, interdisciplinary research, and interdisciplinary collaboration.

The book holds appeal for a very broad audience: scholars; practitioners; and academic, vocational, and technical instructors both in University and non-University settings. It is of interest to academic scholars due to the interdisciplinary treatment of warnings as well as the general presentation of up-to-date scholarship on warning theory. Additionally, scholars interested in interdisciplinary work in general and those focusing on disaster warnings find within the volume a framework for developing collaborative research partnerships with those from other disciplines. As well, the book offers practitioners --emergency managers, mitigation specialists, planners, etc. --a more comprehensive perspective on emergency response in practice, allowing for better development and application of warning policy. Finally, the book appeals to instructors both inside and outside the academy. The authors envision the book useful to professors teaching both graduate and undergraduate-level courses in Sociology of Disaster, Emergency Management Planning, Homeland Security, Disaster Response, Disaster Mitigation, and Business Continuity and Crisis Management. A robust market also exists among professional organizations, perhaps most notably FEMA, which offers countless online and in-person training courses via the National Training Program, Emergency Management Institute (EMI), and other venues.

This second edition of the Handbook reflects some of the foundational topics for disaster studies; current substantive, methodological or theoretical topics of interest; as well as new and emerging topics in the field. While highlighting some of the iconic themes of the 1st Edition, including what is a disaster; morbidity and mortality associated with disasters; gender and disasters; and race, class, ethnicity, and disasters, the 2nd Edition also brings to the forefront new and emerging research themes in the field of disaster studies, including climate change; children and disasters; technological and natech disasters; as well as the news media and disasters, among others. The 2nd Edition of the Handbook will continue to inform the field of disaster studies for years to come; it will expand our knowledge in this important field of inquiry, but will also generate new questions and research ideas; will continue to positively impact the growth, development, and  expansion of thisfield and our growing community; and will continue to raise awareness regarding the onset and impact of these events in societies throughout the world, and, in turn, will have significant and positive impacts on disaster mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery.