Natural Disasters

A disaster can be a natural or a man-made hazard that results in large scale physical destruction, human suffering and loss of life. It can be a tragic event resulting from events such as tsunami, earthquakes, floods, catastrophic accidents, fires, explosions, etc. In general, developing countries suffer the most when a disaster hits,primarily because of the lack of management and unpreparedness to meet such eventualities as compared to the developed countries. The capabilities for risk assessment, forecasting, monitoring and early warning system, emergency management, prevention strategies, improving awareness, political will and a need to involve the professionals, scientific bodies and public-private partnerships are some of the key elements that need urgent attention particularly in the context of the developing countries. In this direction, the strategic thinking is required to unfold scenarios before they really occur so that road map to human safety could be updated, game plan could be revised and strategic sense could be sharpened to fight natural disasters. It is essential to build joint programmes and win-win partnerships on natural disasters management among the developing countries to prevent human sufferings and the loss of life, to the maximum extent. The present publication is a follow up of the international roundtable on 'Lessons from Natural Disasters, Policy Issues and Mitigation Strategies' organised at Vellore, India during 8-12 January, 2007 by the NAM S&T Centre and the Centre for Disaster Mitigation and Management (CDMM) of the VIT University. It includes 16 research papers including country status reports from 12 developing countries of Asian, African and Latin American regions. The book presents significant insights on various kinds of natural disasters and concerned management strategies for the developing countries and is expected to be of great value for the researchers and professional engaged with the disaster management issues.