"The Ostrich Paradox boldly addresses a key question of our time: Why are we humans so poor at dealing with disastrous risks, and what can we humans do about it? It is a must-read for everyone who cares about risk." —Daniel Kahneman, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics and author of Thinking, Fast and Slow We fail to evacuate when advised. We rebuild in flood zones. We don't wear helmets. We fail to purchase insurance. We would rather avoid the risk of "crying wolf" than sound an alarm. Our ability to foresee and protect against natural catastrophes has never been greater; yet, we consistently fail to heed the warnings and protect ourselves and our communities, with devastating consequences. What explains this contradiction? In The Ostrich Paradox, Wharton professors Robert Meyer and Howard Kunreuther draw on years of teaching and research to explain why disaster preparedness efforts consistently fall short. Filled with heartbreaking stories of loss and resilience, the book addresses: •How people make decisions when confronted with high-consequence, low-probability events—and how these decisions can go awry •The 6 biases that lead individuals, communities, and institutions to make grave errors that cost lives •The Behavioral Risk Audit, a systematic approach for improving preparedness by recognizing these biases and designing strategies that anticipate them •Why, if we are to be better prepared for disasters, we need to learn to be more like ostriches, not less Fast-reading and critically important, The Ostrich Paradox is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand why we consistently underprepare for disasters, as well as private and public leaders, planners, and policy-makers who want to build more prepared communities.

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.

The Oklahoma City bombing, intentional crashing of airliners on September 11, 2001, and anthrax attacks in the fall of 2001 have made Americans acutely aware of the impacts of terrorism. These events and continued threats of terrorism have raised questions about the impact on the psychological health of the nation and how well the public health infrastructure is able to meet the psychological needs that will likely result. Preparing for the Psychological Consequences of Terrorism highlights some of the critical issues in responding to the psychological needs that result from terrorism and provides possible options for intervention. The committee offers an example for a public health strategy that may serve as a base from which plans to prevent and respond to the psychological consequences of a variety of terrorism events can be formulated. The report includes recommendations for the training and education of service providers, ensuring appropriate guidelines for the protection of service providers, and developing public health surveillance for preevent, event, and postevent factors related to psychological consequences.

Disasters and History offers the first comprehensive historical overview of hazards and disasters. Drawing on a range of case studies, including the Black Death, the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 and the Fukushima disaster, the authors examine how societies dealt with shocks and hazards and their potentially disastrous outcomes. They reveal the ways in which the consequences and outcomes of these disasters varied widely not only between societies but also within the same societies according to social groups, ethnicity and gender. They also demonstrate how studying past disasters, including earthquakes, droughts, floods and epidemics, can provide a lens through which to understand the social, economic and political functioning of past societies and reveal features of a society which may otherwise remain hidden from view. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

A new approach to understanding voter choice with important implications. There is a substantial class of voters who would like to do good but ignore important consequences of their attempts to do sonave altruists. The book both shows why such a class exists and tests the implications of that groups behavior in a setting where other voters are self-interested, others are traditionalists, and imitation plays a big role in voter choice. The book also looks at the policy implications of such behavior accepting as desirable, but not fully achievable, the democratic ideal in which sufficiently informed citizens are given equal weight in political choices. Nave altruists ignore the anti-growth consequences of redistribution from the rich as a class to the poor as a class. That ignorance produces too much of that redistribution in terms of the democratic ideal.

Disaster management is a vibrant and growing field, driven by government spending in the wake of terrorist attacks and environmental debacles, as well as private-sector hiring of risk managers and emergency planners. An ever-increasing number of practicing professionals needs a reference that can provide a solid foundation in ALL major phases of supervision – mitigation, preparedness, response, communications, and recovery. As climate change leads to further costly catastrophes and as countries around the world continue to struggle with terrorism, the demand for solutions will only grow. This revised edition of Coppola’s revered resource meets said demand head-on with more focused, current, thoughtfully analyzed, and effective approaches to disaster relief. Expanded coverage of global approaches to disaster management with enhanced data and research on disasters around the world, including Cyclone Nargis, the H1N1 pandemic, and the tsunami in American Samoa More material on risk management, mitigation, myths that affect behavior during crises, and post-disaster evaluation of the response Up-to-date information on the role of aid organizations and international financial institutions like the World Bank in disaster response, as well as commentary on the latest research in disaster management and policy studies