This book includes selected papers presented at the international expert forum on “Mainstreaming Resilience and Disaster Risk Reduction in Education,” held at the Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand on 1–2 December 2017. The journey towards disaster risk reduction and resilience requires the participation of a wide array of stakeholders ranging from academics to policymakers, to disaster managers. Given the multifaceted and interdependent nature of disasters, disaster risk reduction and resilience require a multidisciplinary problem-solving approach and evidence-based techniques from the natural, social, engineering, and other relevant sciences. Traditionally, hazard and disaster-related studies have been dominated by the engineering and social science fields. In this regard, the main purpose of this book is to capture the multidisciplinary and multisectoral nature of disaster risk reduction, and to gather existing data, research, conceptual work, and practical cases regarding risk reduction and its ties to sustainable development under a single “umbrella.” Along with the sustainability aspect, the book also links disaster risk reduction with development, technology, governance, education, and climate change, and includes discussions on challenges, solutions, and best practices in the mainstreaming of disaster risk reduction.

Disasters undermine societal well-being, causing loss of lives and damage to social and economic infrastructures. Disaster resilience is central to achieving the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, especially in regions where extreme inequality combines with the increasing frequency and intensity of natural disasters. Disaster risk reduction and resilience requires participation of wide array of stakeholders ranging from academicians to policy makers to disaster managers. Disaster Resilient Cities: Adaptation for Sustainable Development offers evidence-based, problem-solving techniques from social, natural, engineering and other disciplinary perspectives. It connects data, research, conceptual work with practical cases on disaster risk management, capturing the multi-sectoral aspects of disaster resilience, adaptation strategy and sustainability. The book links disaster risk management with sustainable development under a common umbrella, showing that effective disaster resilience strategies and practices lead to achieving broader sustainable development goals. - Provides foundational knowledge on integrated disaster risk reduction and management to show how resilience and its associated concept such as adaptive and transformative strategies can foster sustainable development - Brings together disaster risk reduction and resilience scientists, policy-makers and practitioners from different disciplines - Case studies on disaster risk management from natural science, social science, engineering and other relevant disciplinary perspectives

Covering disaster scenarios, and the causes and consequences of disaster displacement, Disaster, Displacement and Resilient Livelihoods: Perspectives from South Asia focuses on the South Asian context, generating new insights and considering the policy implications of strategies for building resilient livelihoods.

This book aims to establish a community with attention to land use to achieve sustainable development and meet the needs of today’s society. Urban planning depends on engineering, architectural, social and political pillars. It pursues this by proposing solutions, regulating environmental pollution and non-sustainable use of available resources. It showcases and even triggers further debate about connections between sustainable development, urban planning and technology in hopes of achieving sustainable development models that sustain urban expansion and shape cities that improve the overall quality of life. It views urban planning and development as vital fields that ensure the application of revolutionary approaches with new materials and processes incorporated in the most efficient manner.

Overuse of natural resources results in environmental deterioration, lowering the effectiveness of important ecosystem services, such as the mitigation of floods and landslides. This leads to a greater risk of disaster and, in turn, natural hazards that can further deteriorate the environment. The deterioration of the capacity of the environment to meet social and ecological aims and demands is described as environmental degradation. This degradation and the concomitant reduction of ecosystems and their irreplaceable services (the benefits humans gain) are driving disaster risk. Changes to the environment can alter the frequency and intensity of risks, as well as our exposure and sensitivity to these hazards. Addressing these issues requires improvement of the capacity to perform short and medium-term operations in disaster management based on long-term environmental considerations. At the local level, minimizing environmental degradation and ecosystem loss involves awareness of the links between unsustainable development and poverty. Communities are often driven to ruin their natural environment as a short-term coping mechanism for dealing with immediate issues; for instance, surviving a bad harvest by selling wood. Strategies for decreasing poverty by investing in environment-sensitive development should therefore support initiatives to minimize disaster risk and build resilience. There are common aspects in successful policies throughout various regions at the policy level, which extends to controlling climate change. Tools such as integrated water resources and coastal zone management, the removal of environmentally harmful subsidies, especially on fossil fuels and/or carbon taxes, renewable energy, marine protected areas, and cross-boundary biodiversity conservation, are all examples of policies used in more than one region but customized to each context. This scoping study finds and assesses available materials that relate environmental challenges and management with catastrophes and risk reduction activities in the Asia-Pacific area. This volume's analysis relies on case studies, examples, and the results of questionnaires and interviews of practitioners and organizations operating in the environment, disaster, and development domains.

Disaster Pedagogy for Higher Education serves as an all-purpose, contextually grounded, and multi-modal introduction to teaching in higher education during times of crisis and disaster. The text covers a wide variety of topics such as classroom pedagogy, emergency management, and study abroad, from a variety of contributors including professors, administrators, adjunct faculty, and students. It is organized into the three sections: Research and Criticism, which contains three essays that highlight original research and scholarly critique of topics related to higher education during disaster; Explorations and Examinations, consisting of five essays that focus on best practices of a specific aspect of higher education during disaster; and Personal and Professional Reflections, made up of six essays that provide a more personal look into how disasters have impacted faculty, administration, and students in the academy.

No person or place is immune from disasters or disaster-related losses. Infectious disease outbreaks, acts of terrorism, social unrest, or financial disasters in addition to natural hazards can all lead to large-scale consequences for the nation and its communities. Communities and the nation thus face difficult fiscal, social, cultural, and environmental choices about the best ways to ensure basic security and quality of life against hazards, deliberate attacks, and disasters. Beyond the unquantifiable costs of injury and loss of life from disasters, statistics for 2011 alone indicate economic damages from natural disasters in the United States exceeded $55 billion, with 14 events costing more than a billion dollars in damages each. One way to reduce the impacts of disasters on the nation and its communities is to invest in enhancing resilience-the ability to prepare and plan for, absorb, recover from and more successfully adapt to adverse events. Disaster Resilience: A National Imperative addresses the broad issue of increasing the nation's resilience to disasters. This book defines "national resilience", describes the state of knowledge about resilience to hazards and disasters, and frames the main issues related to increasing resilience in the United States. It also provide goals, baseline conditions, or performance metrics for national resilience and outlines additional information, data, gaps, and/or obstacles that need to be addressed to increase the nation's resilience to disasters. Additionally, the book's authoring committee makes recommendations about the necessary approaches to elevate national resilience to disasters in the United States. Enhanced resilience allows better anticipation of disasters and better planning to reduce disaster losses-rather than waiting for an event to occur and paying for it afterward. Disaster Resilience confronts the topic of how to increase the nation's resilience to disasters through a vision of the characteristics of a resilient nation in the year 2030. Increasing disaster resilience is an imperative that requires the collective will of the nation and its communities. Although disasters will continue to occur, actions that move the nation from reactive approaches to disasters to a proactive stance where communities actively engage in enhancing resilience will reduce many of the broad societal and economic burdens that disasters can cause.