Introduction to International Disaster Management

by Damon P. Coppola

Written from a global perspective on risk, hazards, and disasters, Introduction to International Disaster Management provides practitioners, educators and students with a comprehensive overview of the players, processes and special issues involved in the management of large-scale natural and technological disasters. The book discusses special issues encountered in the management of international disasters, and explains the various private, non-governmental, national, and international agencies that assist in preparedness, mitigation, response and recovery during national and regional events. Concentrating on the four major phases of emergency management – mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery – Introduction to International Disaster Management deals with such timely topics as Hurricane Katrina, the 2004 Asian tsunami, and SARS. It also serves as a reference to governmental and other agencies involved in international disaster management activities. This book is the first of its kind to take a global approach to the topic of international disaster management.

* Serves as the first comprehensive resource dealing with the issues of international disaster management* Contains numerous case studies, examples of Best Practices in international disaster management, and a contact list of the governmental and nongovernmental agencies involved in international disaster management* Provides a global perspective on risk, hazards, and disasters that is written both for students within disaster management programs and for professionals entering the field

Genres: Nonfiction

576 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 2006

Reviews

[Judd Street · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm always a little skeptical of hefty textbooks. It's not that there's any lack of concepts to learn in emergency management. Indeed, there's plenty of material that needs to be covered. But, it's all to rare to meet a textbook that's long because it /productively/ uses that space... and, unfortunately, IIDM doesn't buck that trend.

The Coppola volume is a wide ranging and encompassing tour of a variety of issues in emergency management. The organizational structure kind of follows the conventional approach (separating out emergency management into phases of mitigation, preparedness, recovery, and response), although it tacks on a whole series of chapters at the end that would likely be better integrated (e.g., role of government, role of non-governmental actors, etc.) directly into the body text.

The biggest challenge I have with the volume, frankly, is the haphazard organization and approach to inclusion of content. For instance, the incident command system - the backbone of most response organizations - is accorded a couple of pages; the same length that is given to discussion of debris management in Japan post Fukushima, and barely more than is given to a checklist of how to assess dams after a generic/unspecified disaster. And, for no clear reason, a full seven pages have been dedicated to listing, country by country, different emergency numbers (e.g., 911, 112) around the globe. Examples like these just left me scratching my head at how the contents had been determined.

Of course, there are the typical textbook problems too. Some are vaguely understandable (e.g., the Canadian International Development Agency no longer exists, a shift that happened two years before the volume was published), while others are just odd (e.g., the Canadian "placement of emergency management functions" is listed as the Department of Defence, which is... just plain wrong). Emphases are sometimes really striking: in a rather long section on barriers to risk communication, there's a litany of (what I would argue as somewhat overplayed) features like language barriers and lack of educational materials, with not a mention at all of psychological and cognitive dimensions. And, scattered throughout what is marketed as an academic volume are all sorts of claims (e.g., "no system has proved more effective than the news media in alerting... [about disasters]") that are accompanied by no evidence other than the overconfident assertion itself.

I probably should admit a bias: I don't like textbooks in general. They're too expensive, they're often out-of-date by the time they're published, and they rarely manage to blend the functions of providing training for beginners while still being useful long-term resources. There are exceptions, of course (Bernard; Jensen & Laurie), but, unfortunately, this one is not to be found within that category. This is a hefty book, but I emerged from reading it fatigued from the relentless barrage of text rather than equipped through careful and concise curation.

Overall, I struggled with this volume. While it covers a lot of important ground, I wouldn't assign it in an EM class for precisely that reason. Students need a map that helps them to locate important features of the landscape, not a life-size replica of the terrain they're trying to learn (complete with a seven page list of emergency numbers). They need a guide that remains relevant after they've taken the course, that can continue to be a useful reference and contains material they can't find more quickly via Google. The volume here is overwhelming, when what was actually needed was a clearer, more concise, more judicious, more audience-oriented restructuring.

[Rebekka · Rating 3 out of 5]

Essentielle begreber og definitioner. Fine eksempler, men utrolig megen overflødig tekst.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

DEMN 502 course text. Easy to read and well laid out. Not as theoretical as I hoped and because of this the course supplemented with individual articles and the Handbook of Disaster Research by Rodriguez

[JAVED · Rating 4 out of 5]

i find much interest to read this book than others