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Introduction to International Disaster Management
"Introduction to International Disaster Management, Second Edition" continues to serve as the sole comprehensive overview of global emergency management. This second edition contains updated information on disaster trends as well as on management structures and advancements around the world.
Coppola includes changes that reflect the dual theme of the book: universal principles of global emergency management practice and advances in the field worldwide, and lessons from disasters and other watershed events that have occurred since the first edition was published. This text includes new case studies and updated disaster, risk, and vulnerability data, as well as insightful discussions of recent national and international initiatives, and of progress towards improving non-governmental organization (NGO) and private sector cooperation and professionalism. This text approaches the practice of emergency management from a global perspective, making it the only introductory book without bias towards the emergency management system or history of a single country or region.
* Data, discussions, and outcomes for recent major and catastrophic disasters including Cyclone Nargis, earthquakes in Yogyakarta, China, Pakistan, and Chile, the H1N1 pandemic, and the tsunami in American Samoa * Added material on hazards, catastrophic risk management, mitigation, and disaster myths * Expanded sections on public disaster preparedness and disaster recovery best practices * Commentary on the latest research in disaster management and policy studies
Coppola includes changes that reflect the dual theme of the book: universal principles of global emergency management practice and advances in the field worldwide, and lessons from disasters and other watershed events that have occurred since the first edition was published. This text includes new case studies and updated disaster, risk, and vulnerability data, as well as insightful discussions of recent national and international initiatives, and of progress towards improving non-governmental organization (NGO) and private sector cooperation and professionalism. This text approaches the practice of emergency management from a global perspective, making it the only introductory book without bias towards the emergency management system or history of a single country or region.
* Data, discussions, and outcomes for recent major and catastrophic disasters including Cyclone Nargis, earthquakes in Yogyakarta, China, Pakistan, and Chile, the H1N1 pandemic, and the tsunami in American Samoa * Added material on hazards, catastrophic risk management, mitigation, and disaster myths * Expanded sections on public disaster preparedness and disaster recovery best practices * Commentary on the latest research in disaster management and policy studies
- GenresNonfiction
704 pages, Hardcover
First published September 1, 2006
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
April 23, 2020
I'm always a little skeptical of hefty textbooks. It's not that there's any lack of concepts to learn in emergency management. Indeed, there's plenty of material that needs to be covered. But, it's all to rare to meet a textbook that's long because it /productively/ uses that space... and, unfortunately, IIDM doesn't buck that trend.
The Coppola volume is a wide ranging and encompassing tour of a variety of issues in emergency management. The organizational structure kind of follows the conventional approach (separating out emergency management into phases of mitigation, preparedness, recovery, and response), although it tacks on a whole series of chapters at the end that would likely be better integrated (e.g., role of government, role of non-governmental actors, etc.) directly into the body text.
The biggest challenge I have with the volume, frankly, is the haphazard organization and approach to inclusion of content. For instance, the incident command system - the backbone of most response organizations - is accorded a couple of pages; the same length that is given to discussion of debris management in Japan post Fukushima, and barely more than is given to a checklist of how to assess dams after a generic/unspecified disaster. And, for no clear reason, a full seven pages have been dedicated to listing, country by country, different emergency numbers (e.g., 911, 112) around the globe. Examples like these just left me scratching my head at how the contents had been determined.
Of course, there are the typical textbook problems too. Some are vaguely understandable (e.g., the Canadian International Development Agency no longer exists, a shift that happened two years before the volume was published), while others are just odd (e.g., the Canadian "placement of emergency management functions" is listed as the Department of Defence, which is... just plain wrong). Emphases are sometimes really striking: in a rather long section on barriers to risk communication, there's a litany of (what I would argue as somewhat overplayed) features like language barriers and lack of educational materials, with not a mention at all of psychological and cognitive dimensions. And, scattered throughout what is marketed as an academic volume are all sorts of claims (e.g., "no system has proved more effective than the news media in alerting... [about disasters]") that are accompanied by no evidence other than the overconfident assertion itself.
I probably should admit a bias: I don't like textbooks in general. They're too expensive, they're often out-of-date by the time they're published, and they rarely manage to blend the functions of providing training for beginners while still being useful long-term resources. There are exceptions, of course (Bernard; Jensen & Laurie), but, unfortunately, this one is not to be found within that category. This is a hefty book, but I emerged from reading it fatigued from the relentless barrage of text rather than equipped through careful and concise curation.
Overall, I struggled with this volume. While it covers a lot of important ground, I wouldn't assign it in an EM class for precisely that reason. Students need a map that helps them to locate important features of the landscape, not a life-size replica of the terrain they're trying to learn (complete with a seven page list of emergency numbers). They need a guide that remains relevant after they've taken the course, that can continue to be a useful reference and contains material they can't find more quickly via Google. The volume here is overwhelming, when what was actually needed was a clearer, more concise, more judicious, more audience-oriented restructuring.
The Coppola volume is a wide ranging and encompassing tour of a variety of issues in emergency management. The organizational structure kind of follows the conventional approach (separating out emergency management into phases of mitigation, preparedness, recovery, and response), although it tacks on a whole series of chapters at the end that would likely be better integrated (e.g., role of government, role of non-governmental actors, etc.) directly into the body text.
The biggest challenge I have with the volume, frankly, is the haphazard organization and approach to inclusion of content. For instance, the incident command system - the backbone of most response organizations - is accorded a couple of pages; the same length that is given to discussion of debris management in Japan post Fukushima, and barely more than is given to a checklist of how to assess dams after a generic/unspecified disaster. And, for no clear reason, a full seven pages have been dedicated to listing, country by country, different emergency numbers (e.g., 911, 112) around the globe. Examples like these just left me scratching my head at how the contents had been determined.
Of course, there are the typical textbook problems too. Some are vaguely understandable (e.g., the Canadian International Development Agency no longer exists, a shift that happened two years before the volume was published), while others are just odd (e.g., the Canadian "placement of emergency management functions" is listed as the Department of Defence, which is... just plain wrong). Emphases are sometimes really striking: in a rather long section on barriers to risk communication, there's a litany of (what I would argue as somewhat overplayed) features like language barriers and lack of educational materials, with not a mention at all of psychological and cognitive dimensions. And, scattered throughout what is marketed as an academic volume are all sorts of claims (e.g., "no system has proved more effective than the news media in alerting... [about disasters]") that are accompanied by no evidence other than the overconfident assertion itself.
I probably should admit a bias: I don't like textbooks in general. They're too expensive, they're often out-of-date by the time they're published, and they rarely manage to blend the functions of providing training for beginners while still being useful long-term resources. There are exceptions, of course (Bernard; Jensen & Laurie), but, unfortunately, this one is not to be found within that category. This is a hefty book, but I emerged from reading it fatigued from the relentless barrage of text rather than equipped through careful and concise curation.
Overall, I struggled with this volume. While it covers a lot of important ground, I wouldn't assign it in an EM class for precisely that reason. Students need a map that helps them to locate important features of the landscape, not a life-size replica of the terrain they're trying to learn (complete with a seven page list of emergency numbers). They need a guide that remains relevant after they've taken the course, that can continue to be a useful reference and contains material they can't find more quickly via Google. The volume here is overwhelming, when what was actually needed was a clearer, more concise, more judicious, more audience-oriented restructuring.
April 25, 2022
Essentielle begreber og definitioner. Fine eksempler, men utrolig megen overflødig tekst.
October 29, 2014
DEMN 502 course text. Easy to read and well laid out. Not as theoretical as I hoped and because of this the course supplemented with individual articles and the Handbook of Disaster Research by Rodriguez
October 21, 2016
i find much interest to read this book than others
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews