Community Disaster Recovery and Resiliency ─ Exploring Global Opportunities and Challenges

Once again nature’s fury has taken a toll in pain, suffering, and lives lost. In recognition of the need for a rapid and appropriate response, CRC Press will donate $5 to the American Red Cross for every copy of Community Disaster Recovery and Resiliency: Exploring Global Opportunities and Challenges sold.

In the past, societies would learn from disasters and move the location of their urban development to safer areas, allowing naturally occurring ecosystems to maintain themselves and for societies to exist symbiotically with the environment. These days, however, it seems that society no longer takes cues from the environment but rather relies on technical advancement to attempt to control and overcome the environment, sometimes with wholly unsuccessful and even catastrophic results.

Emphasizing non-traditional approaches to disaster recovery and rebuilding communities, Community Disaster Recovery and Resiliency: Exploring Global Opportunities and Challenges brings together leading research from top academics and scholars on the different ways various societies have experienced disasters, learned from them, and revised their thinking about building community preparedness and resiliency pre- and post-disaster.

• Provides a clear, concise, and up-to-date understanding of best practices for rebuilding community institutions and community development after a disaster
• Focuses on integrated solutions for ecological restoration and community development in disaster recovery planning and implementation
• Compares and contrasts community rebuilding between different nations at different stages of development, economic power, and stability
• Includes case studies that illustrate best practices, integrating the concept of community and community rebuilding for local, national, and international stakeholders

All chapters offer diverse community examples that form a framework for comparing best practices. They focus on integrated solutions for ecological restoration and community development and explain how communities can reduce their vulnerability to disasters and reduce recovery time following a disaster. The book indentifies the opportunities and challenges communities are most likely to face on the road to recovery and supplies the interdisciplinary, social scientific understanding required to effectively address those challenges.

DeMond Shondell Miller is a Professor of Sociology and Director of the Liberal Arts and Sciences Institute for Research and Community Service at Rowan University (Glassboro, New Jersey). He has worked as principal investigator to facilitate research projects involving natural and human-induced ecological disasters, environmental issues, and community satisfaction. His primary area of specialization is environmental sociology (disaster studies and the study of the social construction of place), community development and community organizing, and social impact assessment. Dr. Miller has presented and published several professional papers; recent examples of such work can be found in Space and Culture: An International Journal of Social Spaces, International Journal of the Humanities, Journal of Black Studies, The Journal of Public Management and Social Policy, Sociological Spectrum, and The International Journal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research. Recently, he has contributed to several edited volumes including Through the Eye of Katrina: Social Justice in the United States and The Sociology of Katrina: Perspectives on a Modern Catastrophe; he is the co-author of Hurricane Katrina and the Redefinition of Landscape with Jason D. Rivera (Lexington Press) and coeditor of African American and Community Engagement in Higher Education: Community Service, Service Learning and Community-Based Research with S. Evans, C. Taylor, and M. Dunlap (State University of New York Press).

Jason David Rivera is a Research Associate in the William J. Hughes Center for Public Policy at The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey. His research focuses on social vulnerability to natural and manmade disasters with an emphasis on minority experiences. Additionally, his research highlights institutional structures that have historically perpetuated social vulnerability within minority and low-income communities. These research findings have been incorporated into policy recommendations that make mitigation, response, and recovery more efficient. Examples of his work can be found in the Journal of Black Studies, Journal of Applied Security Research: Prevention and Response in Asset Protection, Terrorism and Violence, the Journal of Public Management and Social Policy, Sociological Spectrum, The Journal for the Study of Radicalism, Space and Culture, The Sociology of Katrina: Perspectives on a Modern Catastrophe, Through the Eye of the Storm: Social Justice in the United States, and Dangers in the Incommensurability of Globalization: Socio-Political Volatilities. He is coauthor of Hurricane Katrina and the Redefinition of Landscape, with DeMond S. Miller (Lexington Press).