Customer Reviews

Disaster Resilience: An Integrated Approach

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This is an edited compilation of chapters by a wide range of professionals and academic specialist, principally from Australia and New Zealand, and thus representing lessons learned from diasters of the Pacific Basin (tzunami, tropical cyclones, but also earthquake and floods experience in New Zealand). The tone and style of the text is academic, with extensive citations. Like many edited compilations, there is some unevenness in topics and style between authors and chapters. The emphasis is on management and preparedness strategies. Given its broad brush, there is lack of specific "on the ground" preparedness recommendations found elsewhere. There are some unique contributions such as a chapter by Li-Ju Jan and W. Lamendola on "The Hakka Spirit as a Predictor of Resilience," important in describing personal and cultural practices that help people and communities endure disaster experiences (in this case Taiwan). Other chapters also touch on the personal attributes of people and communities in disaster situations and thus is perhaps this book's special contribution. The introductory and ending chapters by the volume's editors do not, in this reviewer's opinion, go far enough in extracting a coherent summary of lessons learned to take elsewhere. What is proposed will be familiar to readers of the literature in disaster preparedness (e.g. United Nations publications, others from Canada and United States). I am a tough reviewer and thus give the book an "average" rating not because of quality of what is here but because of its limited scope and application.