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Natural Disaster Analysis After Hurricane Katrina: Risk Assessment, Economic Impacts and Social Implications Harry W. Richardson, Peter Gordon, James E. Moore, II 0 Resenhas Edward Elgar Pub, 2009 - 320 páginas Hurricane Katrina was a pivotal event in the history of disaster mismanagement. Its impact will be felt well into the future and its lessons will be applied around the world. This influential volume explores key policy implications arising from the storm and its aftermath. Leading scholars from fields as diverse as decision analysis, risk management, economics engineering, transportation, urban planning and sociology investigate the policy issues associated with insurance, flood control and the rebuilding of levees, housing, tourism, utility lifelines recovery and resilience, evacuation, relocation and racial implications. By assessing the disruption of life in New Orleans, as well as the inter-regional economic impacts of the disaster, the authors suggest steps that can be taken to minimize future risks, not only in New Orleans but also in all locations threatened by natural disasters. It then goes beyond Katrina to explore experiences and responses to similar events in other parts of the world. Another important feature is a discussion of the overlap between terrorist-initiated disasters and natural disasters. The issues raised by Katrina are very complex and teasing out successful policy implications is far from easy. This book is a major advance towards that goal. Academics interested in the economics, policy, and planning aspects of natural and man-made disasters, specialists in emergency management and policymakers will find the insights and prescriptions offered here invaluable.

Natural Hazards Center Publications Descriptions and links to publications of the Natural Hazards Center are provided below. In most cases, downloadable versions of the publications are available, along with archives of past publications. An updated PDF file listing all of the Natural Hazards Center Publications is available. For information on ordering hard copies of any publications, visit our publications purchasing page. Natural Hazards Observer The Natural Hazards Observer is the bimonthly periodical of the Natural Hazards Center. It covers current disaster issues; new international, national, and local disaster management, mitigation, and education programs; hazards research; political and policy developments; new information sources and Web sites; upcoming conferences; and recent publications. Disaster Research Disaster Research (DR) is a biweekly e-newsletter that includes some news items that also appear in the Natural Hazards Observer as well as other timely articles about new developments, policies, conference announcements, job vacancies, Web resources, and information sources in the field of hazards management. Quick Response Reports With funds contributed by the National Science Foundation, the Natural Hazards Center Quick Response program offers social scientists small grants to travel to the site of a disaster soon after it occurs to gather valuable information concerning immediate impact and response. Scholars participating in the program submit reports, which the Center makes available for free online. Research Digest Research Digest is a quarterly online publication that compiles recent research into an easily accessible format for the hazards and disasters community. It provides complete references and abstracts (when available) for current research in the field. The issues include more than 35 peer reviewed publications. Natural Hazards Review The Natural Hazards Review is a joint publication of the Natural Hazards Center and the American Societ

10 MAY 2010: ANALYSIS The Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill: An Accident Waiting to Happen The oil slick spreading across the Gulf of Mexico has shattered the notion that offshore drilling had become safe. A close look at the accident shows that lax federal oversight, complacency by BP and the other companies involved, and the complexities of drilling a mile deep all combined to create the perfect environmental storm. by john mcquaid It's hard to believe now, as oil from the wrecked Deepwater Horizon well encroaches on the Louisiana marshes. But it was only six weeks ago that President Obama announced a major push to expand offshore oil and gas drilling. Obama's commitment to lift a moratorium on offshore drilling reflected the widely-held belief that offshore oil operations, once perceived as dirty and dangerous, were now so safe and technologically advanced that the risks of a major disaster were infinitesimal, and managing them a matter of technocratic skill. But in the space of two weeks, both the politics and the practice of offshore drilling have been turned upside down. Today, the notion that offshore drilling is safe seems absurd. The Gulf spill harks back to drilling disasters from decades past - including one off the coast of Santa Barbara, Calif. in 1969 that dumped three million gallons into coastal waters and led to the current moratorium. The Deepwater Horizon disaster is a classic "low probability, high impact event" - the kind we've seen more than our share of recently, including space shuttle disasters, 9/11, and Hurricane Katrina. And if there's a single lesson from those disparate catastrophes, it's that pre-disaster assumptions tend to be dramatically off-base, and the worst-case scenarios downplayed or ignored. The Gulf spill is no exception. Getty Images/U.S. Coast Guard Fire boats battle the fire on the oil rig Deepwater Horizon after the April 21 explosion. The post-mortems are only beginning, so the precise causes of the initial

Robert R. M. Verchick.  Facing Catastrophe: Environmental Action fora Post-Katrina World.  Cambridge  Harvard University Press, 2010.  x+ 322 pp.  $45.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-674-04791-4. Reviewed by Thomas A. Birkland (North Carolina State University)Published on H-Environment (November, 2010)Commissioned by David T. Benac Environmental Policy, Ecosystem Function, and Disaster Mitigation:Lessons from Hurricane Katrina

Broadmoor Project: New OrleansThe Broadmoor Project: New Orleans Recovery is an effort initiated in 2006 to assist residents of New Orleans' hard-hit Broadmoor neighborhood in designing and implementing a strategy for post-Katrina neighborhood recovery. Launched and hosted by the Belfer Center, the project enables Kennedy School students to put their governance skills into action to help bring back one of America's great cities. The collaboration also creates the opportunity for local New Orleans leaders to build their leadership skills through intensive leadership courses at the Kennedy School. 

Las perforaciones en la Plataforma Continental Exterior (OCS) amenazan a nuestras playas, océanos, comunidades costeras y vida marina El Presidente Bush y algunos miembros del Congreso están presionando para abrir áreas que han sido protegidas de la perforación petrolera por muchos años, incluyendo las costa este y oeste, y Florida. Pero según la propia Administración de Información de Energía de la administración Bush, el efecto de permitir las perforaciones en esas áreas sería "insignificante". Y los costos ambientales y económicos serían inmensos.   La infraestructura petrolera y de gas en tierra daña los terrenos, las economías y las comunidades costeras Las explotaciones petroleras y de gas en ultramar requieren caminos costeros, tanques de almacenado, tuberías, plantas de procesamiento y otras instalaciones industriales. Todo eso puede dañar playas, humedales y hábitat de la costa, con consecuencias para las economías costeras que dependen del turismo, la recreación y la pesca.   Un peligro para la salud del océano Las perforaciones y la producción en ultramar crean inmensas cantidades de desechos que contienen contaminantes tóxicos y radioactivos que pueden contaminar a los peces y a las especies marinas que consumen los seres humanos. Los desechos de la perforación contienen metales tóxicos, incluso mercurio, plomo y cadmio. Cada pozo crea decenas de miles de galones de estos desechos y la mayoría se tira en las aguas circundantes.  Cada pozo también descarga cientos de miles de galones de "agua producida", que contiene contaminantes tóxicos que incluyen benceno, arsénico, plomo, radio, naftalina, zinc y tolueno, además de hidrocarburos de petróleo.   Contaminación del aire y emisión de gases de efecto invernadero Los pozos en ultramar emiten contaminantes del aire que son carcinógenos conocidos, causan problemas respiratorios y son gases de efecto invernadero. Las emisiones de la perforación de un pozo de e

The next catastrophe: reducing our vulnerabilities to natural, industrial, and terrorist disasters Charles Perrow 3 Resenhas Princeton University Press, 2007 - 377 páginas Charles Perrow is famous worldwide for his ideas about normal accidents, the notion that multiple and unexpected failures--catastrophes waiting to happen--are built into our society's complex systems. InThe Next Catastrophe, he offers crucial insights into how to make us safer, proposing a bold new way of thinking about disaster preparedness. Perrow argues that rather than laying exclusive emphasis on protecting targets, we should reduce their size to minimize damage and diminish their attractiveness to terrorists. He focuses on three causes of disaster--natural, organizational, and deliberate--and shows that our best hope lies in the deconcentration of high-risk populations, corporate power, and critical infrastructures such as electric energy, computer systems, and the chemical and food industries. Perrow reveals how the threat of catastrophe is on the rise, whether from terrorism, natural disasters, or industrial accidents. Along the way, he gives us the first comprehensive history of FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security and examines why these agencies are so ill equipped to protect us. The Next Catastropheis a penetrating reassessment of the very real dangers we face today and what we must do to confront them. Written in a highly accessible style by a renowned systems-behavior expert, this book is essential reading for the twenty-first century. The events of September 11 and Hurricane Katrina--and the devastating human toll they wrought--were only the beginning. When the next big disaster comes, will we be ready?

From the oil spill to the financial crisis, why we don't plan for the worst Network News X PROFILE View More Activity TOOLBOX Resize Print E-mail Yahoo! Buzz Reprints   COMMENT 50 Comments  |  View All »  COMMENTS ARE CLOSED WHO'S BLOGGING » Links to this article By Richard A. Posner Sunday, June 6, 2010 The BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is the latest of several recent disastrous events for which the country, or the world, was unprepared. Setting aside terrorist attacks, where the element of surprise is part of the plan, that still leaves the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004, Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the global economic crisis that began in 2008 (and was aggravated by Greece's recent financial collapse) and the earthquake in Haiti in January. THIS STORY If it seems unthinkable, plan for it Why is BP's CEO still on the job? In all these cases, observers recognized the existence of catastrophic risk but deemed it to be small. Many other risks like this are lying in wait, whether a lethal flu epidemic, widespread extinctions, nuclear accidents, abrupt global warming that causes a sudden and catastrophic rise in sea levels, or a collision with an asteroid. Why are we so ill prepared for these disasters? It helps to consider an almost-forgotten case in which risks were identified, planned for and averted: the Y2K threat (or "millennium bug") of 1999. As the turn of the century approached, many feared that computers throughout the world would fail when the two-digit dates in their operating systems suddenly flipped from 99 to 00. The risk of disaster probably was quite small, but the fact that it had a specific and known date made it irrational to postpone any remedies -- it was act now or not at all. Such certainty about timing is rare; indeed, a key obstacle to taking preventive measures against unlikely disasters is precisely that they are unlikely to occur in the near future. Of course, if the consequences of the disaster would be very grave, t

he United States and other nations are facing large-scale risks at an accelerating pace. In 2005, three major hurricanes-Katrina, Rita, and Wilma-made landfall along the U.S. Gulf Coast within an eight-week period. The damage caused by these storms led to insurance reimbursements and federal disaster relief of more than $180 billion-a record sum. Today we are more vulnerable to catastrophic losses because of the increasing concentration of population and activities in high-risk coastal regions of the country. The question is not whether but when future catastrophes will strike. Who should pay the costs associated with catastrophic losses suffered by homeowners in hazard-prone areas? In At War with the Weather, Howard Kunreuther and Erwann Michel-Kerjan and their colleagues deliver a groundbreaking analysis of how we currently mitigate, insure against, and finance recovery from natural disasters in the United States. They offer innovative, long-term solutions for reducing losses and providing financial support for disaster victims that define a coherent strategy to assure sustainable recovery from future large-scale disasters. The amount of data collected and analyzed and innovations proposed make this the most comprehensive book written on these critical issues in the past thirty years.

Keywords: Goals, Institutions and Governance - the US Experience;Dealing with Floods - From Colonies to Katrina;National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP);Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM);Translating Policies into Action;Learning from the US Experience;Association of State Floodplain Managers Foundation (ASFPMF)

A Social Vulnerability Index for Disaster Management Barry E. Flanagan, CDC/ATSDR Edward W. Gregory, CDC/ATSDR Elaine J. Hallisey, CDC/ATSDR Janet L. Heitgerd, CDC/NCHHSTP Brian Lewis, CDC/ATSDR Abstract Social vulnerability refers to the socioeconomic and demographic factors that affect the resilience of communities. Studies have shown that in disaster events the socially vulnerable are more likely to be adversely affected, i.e. they are less likely to recover and more likely to die. Effectively addressing social vulnerability decreases both human suffering and the economic loss related to providing social services and public assistance after a disaster. This paper describes the development of a social vulnerability index (SVI), from 15 census variables at the census tract level, for use in emergency management. It also examines the potential value of the SVI by exploring the impact of Hurricane Katrina on local populations. Recommended Citation Flanagan, Barry E.; Gregory, Edward W.; Hallisey, Elaine J.; Heitgerd, Janet L.; and Lewis, Brian (2011) "A Social Vulnerability Index for Disaster Management," Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management: Vol. 8 : Iss. 1, Article 3. DOI: 10.2202/1547-7355.1792 Available at: http://www.bepress.com/jhsem/vol8/iss1/3

Disaster Recovery Brenda Phillips 0 Resenhas CRC Press, 2009 - 546 páginas Disaster recovery is often unplanned for in the emergency management life cycle. Yet recovery is the key stage where funds, programs, professional expertise, and volunteer efforts are applied to affected cities, states, and regions to get them up and running again. Providing a unique perspective on a highly focused area, Disaster Recovery is the first core text that tackles the myriad recovery issues faced by federal, state, and local emergency managers, public officials, and voluntary organizations in a long-term disaster recovery situation.

Response to disaster: fact versus fiction & its perpetuation : the sociology of disaster Henry W. Fischer

American hazardscapes: the regionalization of hazards and disasters Susan L. Cutter 0 Resenhas Joseph Henry Press, 2001 - 211 páginas