The Next Catastrophe

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The Next Catastrophe

Author : Charles Perrow
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 9781400838516
Total Pages : 432 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (385 download)

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Book Synopsis The Next Catastrophe by : Charles Perrow

Download or read book The Next Catastrophe written by Charles Perrow and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2011-02-07 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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. In The 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 Catastrophe is 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? In a new preface to the paperback edition, Perrow examines the recent (and ongoing) catastrophes of the financial crisis, the BP oil spill, and global warming.

The COVID-19 Catastrophe

Author : Richard Horton
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
ISBN 13 : 1509546456
Total Pages : 143 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (95 download)

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Book Synopsis The COVID-19 Catastrophe by : Richard Horton

Download or read book The COVID-19 Catastrophe written by Richard Horton and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2020-07-13 with total page 143 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The global response to the COVID-19 pandemic is the greatest science policy failure in a generation. We knew this was coming. Warnings about the threat of a new pandemic have been made repeatedly since the 1980s and it was clear in January that a dangerous new virus was causing a devastating human tragedy in China. And yet the world ignored the warnings. Why? In this short and hard-hitting book, Richard Horton, editor of the medical journal The Lancet, scrutinizes the actions that governments around the world took – and failed to take – as the virus spread from its origins in Wuhan to the global pandemic that it is today. He shows that many Western governments and their scientific advisors made assumptions about the virus and its lethality that turned out to be mistaken. Valuable time was lost while the virus spread unchecked, leaving health systems unprepared for the avalanche of infections that followed. Drawing on his own scientific and medical expertise, Horton outlines the measures that need to be put in place, at both national and international levels, to prevent this kind of catastrophe from happening again. Were supposed to be living in an era where human beings have become the dominant influence on the environment, but COVID-19 has revealed the fragility of our societies and the speed with which our systems can come crashing down. We need to learn the lessons of this pandemic and we need to learn them fast because the next pandemic may arrive sooner than we think.

Global Catastrophes and Trends

Author : Vaclav Smil
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262291622
Total Pages : 323 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (622 download)

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Book Synopsis Global Catastrophes and Trends by : Vaclav Smil

Download or read book Global Catastrophes and Trends written by Vaclav Smil and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2012-09-21 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A wide-ranging, interdisciplinary look at global changes that may occur over the next fifty years—whether sudden and cataclysmic world-changing events or gradually unfolding trends. Fundamental change occurs most often in one of two ways: as a “fatal discontinuity,” a sudden catastrophic event that is potentially world changing, or as a persistent, gradual trend. Global catastrophes include volcanic eruptions, viral pandemics, wars, and large-scale terrorist attacks; trends are demographic, environmental, economic, and political shifts that unfold over time. In this provocative book, scientist Vaclav Smil takes a wide-ranging, interdisciplinary look at the catastrophes and trends the next fifty years may bring. Smil first looks at rare but cataclysmic events, both natural and human-produced, then at trends of global importance, including the transition from fossil fuels to other energy sources and growing economic and social inequality. He also considers environmental change—in some ways an amalgam of sudden discontinuities and gradual change—and assesses the often misunderstood complexities of global warming. Global Catastrophes and Trends does not come down on the side of either doom-and-gloom scenarios or techno-euphoria. Instead, Smil argues that understanding change will help us reverse negative trends and minimize the risk of catastrophe.

Megadisasters

Author : Florin Diacu
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691133506
Total Pages : 214 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (911 download)

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Book Synopsis Megadisasters by : Florin Diacu

Download or read book Megadisasters written by Florin Diacu and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The history and science behind efforts to predict major disasters, from tsunamis to stock market crashes Can we predict cataclysmic disasters such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, or stock market crashes? The Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004 claimed more than 200,000 lives. Hurricane Katrina killed over 1,800 people and devastated the city of New Orleans. The recent global financial crisis has cost corporations and ordinary people around the world billions of dollars. Megadisasters is a book that asks why catastrophes such as these catch us by surprise, and reveals the history and groundbreaking science behind efforts to forecast major disasters and minimize their destruction. Each chapter of this exciting and eye-opening book explores a particular type of cataclysmic event and the research surrounding it, including earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, hurricanes, rapid climate change, collisions with asteroids or comets, pandemics, and financial crashes. Florin Diacu tells the harrowing true stories of people impacted by these terrible events, and of the scientists racing against time to predict when the next big disaster will strike. He describes the mathematical models that are so critical to understanding the laws of nature and foretelling potentially lethal phenomena, the history of modeling and its prospects for success in the future, and the enormous challenges to scientific prediction posed by the chaos phenomenon, which is the high instability that underlies many processes around us. Yielding new insights into the perils that can touch every one of us, Megadisasters shows how the science of predicting disasters holds the promise of a safer and brighter tomorrow.

Catastrophe

Author : Richard A. Posner
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780195346398
Total Pages : 336 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (463 download)

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Book Synopsis Catastrophe by : Richard A. Posner

Download or read book Catastrophe written by Richard A. Posner and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2004-11-11 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Catastrophic risks are much greater than is commonly appreciated. Collision with an asteroid, runaway global warming, voraciously replicating nanomachines, a pandemic of gene-spliced smallpox launched by bioterrorists, and a world-ending accident in a high-energy particle accelerator, are among the possible extinction events that are sufficiently likely to warrant careful study. How should we respond to events that, for a variety of psychological and cultural reasons, we find it hard to wrap our minds around? Posner argues that realism about science and scientists, innovative applications of cost-benefit analysis, a scientifically literate legal profession, unprecedented international cooperation, and a pragmatic attitude toward civil liberties are among the keys to coping effectively with the catastrophic risks.

Doom

Author : Niall Ferguson
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 0593297385
Total Pages : 497 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (932 download)

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Book Synopsis Doom by : Niall Ferguson

Download or read book Doom written by Niall Ferguson and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2021-05-04 with total page 497 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "All disasters are in some sense man-made." Setting the annus horribilis of 2020 in historical perspective, Niall Ferguson explains why we are getting worse, not better, at handling disasters. Disasters are inherently hard to predict. Pandemics, like earthquakes, wildfires, financial crises. and wars, are not normally distributed; there is no cycle of history to help us anticipate the next catastrophe. But when disaster strikes, we ought to be better prepared than the Romans were when Vesuvius erupted, or medieval Italians when the Black Death struck. We have science on our side, after all. Yet in 2020 the responses of many developed countries, including the United States, to a new virus from China were badly bungled. Why? Why did only a few Asian countries learn the right lessons from SARS and MERS? While populist leaders certainly performed poorly in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, Niall Ferguson argues that more profound pathologies were at work--pathologies already visible in our responses to earlier disasters. In books going back nearly twenty years, including Colossus, The Great Degeneration, and The Square and the Tower, Ferguson has studied the foibles of modern America, from imperial hubris to bureaucratic sclerosis and online fragmentation. Drawing from multiple disciplines, including economics, cliodynamics, and network science, Doom offers not just a history but a general theory of disasters, showing why our ever more bureaucratic and complex systems are getting worse at handling them. Doom is the lesson of history that this country--indeed the West as a whole--urgently needs to learn, if we want to handle the next crisis better, and to avoid the ultimate doom of irreversible decline.

The Cure for Catastrophe

Author : Robert Muir-Wood
Publisher : Basic Books
ISBN 13 : 0465096476
Total Pages : 368 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (65 download)

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Book Synopsis The Cure for Catastrophe by : Robert Muir-Wood

Download or read book The Cure for Catastrophe written by Robert Muir-Wood and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2016-09-06 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We can't stop natural disasters but we can stop them being disastrous. One of the world's foremost risk experts tells us how. Year after year, floods wreck people's homes and livelihoods, earthquakes tear communities apart, and tornadoes uproot whole towns. Natural disasters cause destruction and despair. But does it have to be this way? In The Cure for Catastrophe, global risk expert Robert Muir-Wood argues that our natural disasters are in fact human ones: We build in the wrong places and in the wrong way, putting brick buildings in earthquake country, timber ones in fire zones, and coastal cities in the paths of hurricanes. We then blindly trust our flood walls and disaster preparations, and when they fail, catastrophes become even more deadly. No society is immune to the twin dangers of complacency and heedless development. Recognizing how disasters are manufactured gives us the power to act. From the Great Lisbon Earthquake of 1755 to Hurricane Katrina, The Cure for Catastrophe recounts the ingenious ways in which people have fought back against disaster. Muir-Wood shows the power and promise of new predictive technologies, and envisions a future where information and action come together to end the pain and destruction wrought by natural catastrophes. The decisions we make now can save millions of lives in the future. Buzzing with political plots, newfound technologies, and stories of surprising resilience, The Cure for Catastrophe will revolutionize the way we conceive of catastrophes: though natural disasters are inevitable, the death and destruction are optional. As we brace ourselves for deadlier cataclysms, the cure for catastrophe is in our hands.

Global Catastrophic Risks

Author : Nick Bostrom
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199606501
Total Pages : 577 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (996 download)

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Book Synopsis Global Catastrophic Risks by : Nick Bostrom

Download or read book Global Catastrophic Risks written by Nick Bostrom and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-09-29 with total page 577 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Global Catastrophic Risk is one that has the potential to inflict serious damage to human well-being on a global scale. This book focuses on such risks arising from natural catastrophes (Earth-based or beyond), nuclear war, terrorism, biological weapons, totalitarianism, advanced nanotechnology, artificial intelligence and social collapse.

The Financing of Catastrophe Risk

Author : Kenneth A. Froot
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 0226266257
Total Pages : 490 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (262 download)

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Book Synopsis The Financing of Catastrophe Risk by : Kenneth A. Froot

Download or read book The Financing of Catastrophe Risk written by Kenneth A. Froot and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2007-12-01 with total page 490 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is it possible that the insurance and reinsurance industries cannot handle a major catastrophe? Ten years ago, the notion that the overall cost of a single catastrophic event might exceed $10 billion was unthinkable. With ever increasing property-casualty risks and unabated growth in hazard-prone areas, insurers and reinsurers now envision the possibility of disaster losses of $50 to $100 billion in the United States. Against this backdrop, the capitalization of the insurance and reinsurance industries has become a crucial concern. While it remains unlikely that a single event might entirely bankrupt these industries, a big catastrophe could place firms under severe stress, jeopardizing both policy holders and investors and causing profound ripple effects throughout the U.S. economy. The Financing of Catastrophe Risk assembles an impressive roster of experts from academia and industry to explore the disturbing yet realistic assumption that a large catastrophic event is inevitable. The essays offer tangible means of both reassessing and raising the level of preparedness throughout the insurance and reinsurance industries.

Global Crisis

Author : Geoffrey Parker
Publisher : Yale University Press
ISBN 13 : 0300189192
Total Pages : 944 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (1 download)

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Book Synopsis Global Crisis by : Geoffrey Parker

Download or read book Global Crisis written by Geoffrey Parker and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2013-03-15 with total page 944 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The acclaimed historian demonstrates a link between climate change and social unrest across the globe during the mid-17th century. Revolutions, droughts, famines, invasions, wars, regicides, government collapses—the calamities of the mid-seventeenth century were unprecedented in both frequency and severity. The effects of what historians call the "General Crisis" extended from England to Japan and from the Russian Empire to sub-Saharan Africa and the Americas. In this meticulously researched volume, historian Geoffrey Parker presents the firsthand testimony of men and women who experienced the many political, economic, and social crises that occurred between 1618 to the late 1680s. He also incorporates the scientific evidence of climate change during this period into the narrative, offering a strikingly new understanding of the General Crisis. Changes in weather patterns, especially longer winters and cooler and wetter summers, disrupted growing seasons and destroyed harvests. This in turn brought hunger, malnutrition, and disease; and as material conditions worsened, wars, rebellions, and revolutions rocked the world.

Apocalypse Next

Author : Stephen Davies
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780255368216
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (682 download)

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Book Synopsis Apocalypse Next by : Stephen Davies

Download or read book Apocalypse Next written by Stephen Davies and published by . This book was released on 2024-01-29 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

How to Avoid a Climate Disaster

Author : Bill Gates
Publisher : Vintage
ISBN 13 : 0385546149
Total Pages : 201 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (855 download)

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Book Synopsis How to Avoid a Climate Disaster by : Bill Gates

Download or read book How to Avoid a Climate Disaster written by Bill Gates and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2021-02-16 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • In this urgent, authoritative book, Bill Gates sets out a wide-ranging, practical—and accessible—plan for how the world can get to zero greenhouse gas emissions in time to avoid a climate catastrophe. Bill Gates has spent a decade investigating the causes and effects of climate change. With the help of experts in the fields of physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, political science, and finance, he has focused on what must be done in order to stop the planet's slide to certain environmental disaster. In this book, he not only explains why we need to work toward net-zero emissions of greenhouse gases, but also details what we need to do to achieve this profoundly important goal. He gives us a clear-eyed description of the challenges we face. Drawing on his understanding of innovation and what it takes to get new ideas into the market, he describes the areas in which technology is already helping to reduce emissions, where and how the current technology can be made to function more effectively, where breakthrough technologies are needed, and who is working on these essential innovations. Finally, he lays out a concrete, practical plan for achieving the goal of zero emissions—suggesting not only policies that governments should adopt, but what we as individuals can do to keep our government, our employers, and ourselves accountable in this crucial enterprise. As Bill Gates makes clear, achieving zero emissions will not be simple or easy to do, but if we follow the plan he sets out here, it is a goal firmly within our reach.

Catastrophe

Author : David Keys
Publisher : Ballantine Books
ISBN 13 : 0345444361
Total Pages : 441 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (454 download)

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Book Synopsis Catastrophe by : David Keys

Download or read book Catastrophe written by David Keys and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2000-10-02 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It was a catastrophe without precedent in recorded history: for months on end, starting in A.D. 535, a strange, dusky haze robbed much of the earth of normal sunlight. Crops failed in Asia and the Middle East as global weather patterns radically altered. Bubonic plague, exploding out of Africa, wiped out entire populations in Europe. Flood and drought brought ancient cultures to the brink of collapse. In a matter of decades, the old order died and a new world—essentially the modern world as we know it today—began to emerge. In this fascinating, groundbreaking, totally accessible book, archaeological journalist David Keys dramatically reconstructs the global chain of revolutions that began in the catastrophe of A.D. 535, then offers a definitive explanation of how and why this cataclysm occurred on that momentous day centuries ago. The Roman Empire, the greatest power in Europe and the Middle East for centuries, lost half its territory in the century following the catastrophe. During the exact same period, the ancient southern Chinese state, weakened by economic turmoil, succumbed to invaders from the north, and a single unified China was born. Meanwhile, as restless tribes swept down from the central Asian steppes, a new religion known as Islam spread through the Middle East. As Keys demonstrates with compelling originality and authoritative research, these were not isolated upheavals but linked events arising from the same cause and rippling around the world like an enormous tidal wave. Keys's narrative circles the globe as he identifies the eerie fallout from the months of darkness: unprecedented drought in Central America, a strange yellow dust drifting like snow over eastern Asia, prolonged famine, and the hideous pandemic of the bubonic plague. With a superb command of ancient literatures and historical records, Keys makes hitherto unrecognized connections between the "wasteland" that overspread the British countryside and the fall of the great pyramid-building Teotihuacan civilization in Mexico, between a little-known "Jewish empire" in Eastern Europe and the rise of the Japanese nation-state, between storms in France and pestilence in Ireland. In the book's final chapters, Keys delves into the mystery at the heart of this global catastrophe: Why did it happen? The answer, at once surprising and definitive, holds chilling implications for our own precarious geopolitical future. Wide-ranging in its scholarship, written with flair and passion, filled with original insights, Catastrophe is a superb synthesis of history, science, and cultural interpretation.

U.S. Emergency Management in the 21st Century

Author : Claire B. Rubin
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 0429755708
Total Pages : 169 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (297 download)

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Book Synopsis U.S. Emergency Management in the 21st Century by : Claire B. Rubin

Download or read book U.S. Emergency Management in the 21st Century written by Claire B. Rubin and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-12-06 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: U.S. Emergency Management in the 21st Century: From Disaster to Catastrophe explores a critical issue in American public policy: Are the current public sector emergency management systems sufficient to handle future disasters given the environmental and social changes underway? In this timely book, Claire B. Rubin and Susan L. Cutter focus on disaster recovery efforts, community resilience, and public policy issues of related to recent disasters and what they portend for the future. Beginning with the external societal forces influencing shifts in policy and practice, the next six chapters provide in-depth accounts of recent disasters— the Joplin, Tuscaloosa-Birmingham, and Moore tornadoes, Hurricanes Sandy, Harvey, Irma, Maria, and the California wildfires. The book concludes with a chapter on loss accounting and a summary chapter on what has gone right, what has gone wrong, and why the federal government may no longer be a reliable partner in emergency management. Accessible and clearly written by authorities in a wide-range of related fields with local experiences, this book offers a rich array of case studies and describes their significance in shifting emergency management policy and practice, in the United States during the past decade. Through a careful blending of contextual analysis and practical information, this book is essential reading for students, an interested public, and professionals alike.

A Safer Future

Author : National Research Council
Publisher : National Academies Press
ISBN 13 : 0309045460
Total Pages : 85 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (9 download)

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Book Synopsis A Safer Future by : National Research Council

Download or read book A Safer Future written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 1991-02-01 with total page 85 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Initial priorities for U.S. participation in the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction, declared by the United Nations, are contained in this volume. It focuses on seven issues: hazard and risk assessment; awareness and education; mitigation; preparedness for emergency response; recovery and reconstruction; prediction and warning; learning from disasters; and U.S. participation internationally. The committee presents its philosophy of calls for broad public and private participation to reduce the toll of disasters.

Facing Catastrophe

Author : Robert R. M. Verchick
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674047915
Total Pages : 335 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (74 download)

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Book Synopsis Facing Catastrophe by : Robert R. M. Verchick

Download or read book Facing Catastrophe written by Robert R. M. Verchick and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2010-06-15 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author argues for a new perspective on disaster law that is based on the principles of environmental protection. His prescription boils down to three simple commands: Go green, be fair, and keep safe. He argues that government must assume a stronger regulatory role in managing natural infrastructure, distributional fairness, and public risk.--[book cover].

The Full Catastrophe

Author : James Angelos
Publisher : Crown
ISBN 13 : 0385346492
Total Pages : 320 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (853 download)

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Book Synopsis The Full Catastrophe by : James Angelos

Download or read book The Full Catastrophe written by James Angelos and published by Crown. This book was released on 2015-06-02 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A transporting, good-humored, and revealing account of Greece’s dire troubles, reported from the mountain villages, idyllic islands, and hardscrabble streets that define the country today In recent years, small Greece, often associated with ancient philosophers and marble ruins, whitewashed villages and cerulean seas, has been at the center of a debt crisis that has sown economic and social ruin, spurred panic in international markets, and tested Europe’s decades-old project of forging a closer union. In The Full Catastrophe, James Angelos makes sense of contrasting images of Greece, a nation both romanticized for its classical past and castigated for its dysfunctional present. With vivid character-driven narratives and engaging reporting that offers an immersive sense of place, he brings to life some of the causes of the country’s financial collapse, and examines the changes, some hopeful and others deeply worrisome, emerging in its aftermath. A small rebellion against tax authorities breaks out on a normally serene Aegean island. A mayor from a bucolic, northern Greek village is gunned down by the municipal treasurer. An aging, leftist hero of the Second World War fights to win compensation from Germany for the wartime occupation. A once marginal group of neo-Nazis rises to political prominence out of a ramshackle Athens neighborhood. The Full Catastrophe goes beyond the transient coverage in the daily headlines to deliver an enduring and absorbing portrait of modern Greece.