Natural Disasters Floods

From flash floods to storm surges to rivers overflowing their banks, floods can devastate an area in a matter of moments! These waters can damage structures and strand survivors. This title introduces readers to different types of floods, how they form, and how to stay safe. Features such as a map, a flood profile, and a severity chart prove the power of these natural disasters!

Different people handle risk in different ways. The current lack of understanding about this heterogeneity in risk behaviour makes it difficult to intervene effectively in risk-prone communities. Natural Hazards, Risk and Vulnerability offers a unique insight in the everyday life of a group of riverbank settlers in Jakarta - one of the most vulnerable areas worldwide in terms of exposure to natural hazards. Based on long-term fieldwork, the book portrays the often creative and innovative ways in which slum dwellers cope with recurrent floods. The book shows that behaviour that is often described as irrational or ineffective by outside experts can be highly pragmatic and often effective. This book argues that human risk behaviour cannot be explained by the risk itself, but instead by seemingly unrelated factors such as trust in authorities and aid-institutions and unequal power structures. By considering a risk as a lens that exposes these factors, a completely new type of analysis is proposed that offers useful insights for everyone concerned about how people cope with the currently increasing amount of natural hazard. This is a valuable resource for academics, researchers and policy makers in the areas of risk studies, disaster and natural hazard, urban studies, anthropology, development, Southeast Asian studies and Indonesia studies.

Flooding is one of the most devastating natural hazards in the world. Available records suggest that both flood frequency and severity are on the rise and this is likely to worsen in the context of climate change. As population, infrastructure and poverty grow rapidly in developing countries, particularly in urban agglomerations of 10 million people or more, floods could cause widespread devastation, economic damage and loss of life. Assessment of vulnerability and risk from naturally occurring phenomena is therefore imperative in order to achieve urban sustainability. This book uses geospatial techniques to evaluate hazards, risk and vulnerability at a metropolitan scale in a data-scarce country. An empirical study was performed using remote sensing, GIS and census data. This research offers a new approach to mapping population, infrastructures and communities at risk which can greatly contribute to the deeper understanding of flood disasters in a rapidly expanding megacity. Examples shown in this book are from Dhaka Megacity, however, the techniques and methods can easily be implemented in medium to large cities of similar characteristics. The book is essential reading for hazard researchers, geospatial scientists, disaster management professionals, geographers, urban planners, and social scientists. Ashraf M. Dewan is currently a Lecturer in the Department of Spatial Sciences at Curtin University, Western Australia (on leave from his substantive position as Associate Professor in the Geography & Environment Department at the University of Dhaka, Bangladesh).

This book examines how to ensure that the preventive measures are worthwhile and effective, and how people can make decisions individually and collectively at different levels of government.

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.

Surviving Floods will look at children who experienced floods around the world, through history and up to the present day.

From the flood that remade the earth in the Old Testament to the 1931 China floods that killed almost four million people, from the broken levees in New Orleans to the almost yearly rising waters of rivers like the Mississippi, floods have many causes: rain, melting ice, storms, tsunamis, failures of dams and levees, acts of vengeful gods. They have been used as deliberate acts of war to cause thousands of casualties. Flooding kills far more people than any other natural disaster. In this cultural and natural history of floods, John Withington tells stories of the deadliest floods the world has seen while also exploring the role of the deluge in religion, mythology, literature, and art. Withington describes how aspects of floods—the power of nature, human drama, changed landscapes—have fascinated artists, novelists, and filmmakers. He examines the ancient, catastrophic flood that appears in many religions and cultures and considers how the symbol of the flood has become a key icon in world literatures and a component of the contemporary disaster movie. Withington also depicts how humans try to defend themselves against these merciless encroaching waters and discusses the increasing danger floods pose in a future beset by climate change. Filled with illustrations, Flood offers a fascinating overview of our relationship with one of humanity’s oldest and deadliest foes.