Title: Regions of risk : a geographical introduction to disasters /
Authors: Hewitt, Kenneth.
Publisher: Longman,
Year: 1997
Subjects: Hazardous geographic environments.; Disasters Social aspects.
Abstract: Regions at Risk provides an introduction to hazards, human vulnerability and disaster, paying particular attention to the more severe or novel risks and disaster that affect the general public. The book is split into two parts, the first of which gives an overview of the field of risk and disaster in terms of three perspectives: hazards perspective; vulnerability perspective and the active perspective. The second part illustrates and develops these ideas in relation to some of the more severe dangers and disasters of the twentienth century, for example, earthquake risk, cities at risk and the civil disasters of war. It provides essential reading for senior undergraduates of hazard, disaster and risk courses, as part of geography, environmental science, resource management or development studies degree. It also provides valuable reading for those concerned with issues of public safety, services, insurable environmental risks and disaster relief.
Contents: Introduction: Danger and modernity -- pt. 1. Approaches to risk and disaster. Ch. 1. Risk and damaging events. Ch. 2. The 'geographicalness' of disaster. Ch. 3. Natural hazards. Ch. 4. Technological hazards. Ch. 5. Social hazards: violence and the disasters of war. Ch. 6. Vulnerability perspectives: the human ecology of endangerment. Ch. 7. Active perspectives: responses to disaster and adjustments to risk -- pt. 2. Communities at risk, places of disaster. Ch. 8. 'Unnatural' disasters: the case of earthquake hazards. Ch. 9. Contexts of risk: mountain land hazards and vulnerabilities. Ch. 10. Risk in the city. Ch. 11. Place annihilation: air war and the vulnerability of cities. Ch. 12. The Holocaust: genocide and geographical calamity -- Concluding remarks: The perspective of ideas.