With disasters increasing in both frequency and intensity, this timely Advanced Introduction provides a fresh perspective on how the concepts established in the Sendai Framework can be put into practice to reduce disaster risk, improve preparedness in cost-effective ways, and develop whole-of-society approaches to increasing resilience.
This book encompasses discussions between Kathryn Gow and Douglas Paton, both psychologists who have researched stress, burnout, trauma, and recovery in natural disasters. They suggest that few books have been written for health professionals, and persons directly involved with leading and managing emergency teams on what constitutes resilience in individuals and groups in communities, and how they differ in response and recovery. The outcome is a three part book with contributors from the field, research institutions, emergency service sectors, support agencies and the media. Its main purpose is to focus on the resilience of people and communities following NDs and to educate the sectors already involved in natural disasters.
Wildfires represent a growing threat to environments, to people, communities, and to societies worldwide, particularly in the United States, Southern Europe, and Australia. Recognition of this growing risk has highlighted a need to develop people's capacity to adapt to annually occurring events that could increase in frequency and severity over the coming years and decades. The goal of ensuring sustained levels of protective measures in communities susceptible to wildfire hazard consequences has proved to be elusive. This book examines why this is so and identifies ways in which sustained levels of preparedness can be facilitated. Major topics include: wildfire preparedness and resiliency in community contexts; socially disastrous landscape fires in southeastern Australia; landscape typology of residential wildfire risk; proactive human response to wildfires outbreak; forest fires in wildland-urban interface, wildfire risk management; “stay or go” policy in the line of fire; social dimensions of forest fire; the influence of community diversity; evaluating a community engagement initiative; response to fire threats; social media and resiliency; and building on lessons learned. Additional information includes the landscape fires in southeastern Australia, wildfire risk management in Portugal; fire preparedness in Greece, Cyprus, and the Pine Barrens in the northeastern United States. The findings of research programs being conducted in the United States, Australia, Europe, India and South America are presented. The book includes case studies on the analysis and proposed actions of the wildland-urban interface being faced by Central Chile and South America. This book will provide a comprehensive and systematic review of the wildfire preparedness research and its application to the development of risk communications and public education programs.
Despite the evident advantages that being prepared for natural life-threatening events confers on people and communities, research has consistently found that individual, community, and business preparedness levels are low. This book examines why this is so and identifies what can be done to expedite the development of sustained preparedness, at household, community, and societal levels. The text emphasizes the need for this aspect of social risk management to be based on engagement principles: how people engage with their natural environment, how they engage with each other, and how people and agencies and businesses engage with each other. Following a discussion of how people relate to the environmental hazards they need to prepare for, the book introduces the areas of comprehensive preparedness. Major topics include: Coexisting with a Hazardous Environment; People, Hazards, and Hazard Mitigation; Hazard Readiness and Preparedness; People’s Beliefs and Hazard Preparedness; Predicting Hazard Preparedness and Social Cognitive Influences; Social Influences on Hazard Beliefs; Hazard Preparedness and Community Engagement and Empowerment; Cross-cultural Perspectives; Business Preparedness; and Future Issues with Engaging People, Science, and Practice. This unique text will provide practitioners and academics with a comprehensive account of what can currently be done to increase the capacity of people, communities, societies, and businesses to anticipate what hazard consequences they may have to contend with, cope with, adapt to, and recover from, and also to learn from experiences in ways that contribute to the development of future societal resilience and adaptive capacity.
The police fight a different kind of war, and the enemy is the police officer's own civilian population: those who engage in crime, social indignity, and inhumane treatment of others. The result for the police officer is both physical and psychological battering, occasionally culminating in the officer sacrificing his or her life to protect others. This book focuses on the psychological impact of police civilian combat. During a police career, the men and women of police agencies are exposed to distressing events that go far beyond the experience of the ordinary citizen, and there is an increased need today to help police officers deal with these traumatic experiences. As police work becomes increasingly complex, this need will grow. Mental health and other professionals need to be made aware of the conditions and precipitants of trauma stress among the police. The goal of this book is to provide that important information. The book's perspective is based on the idea that trauma stress is a product of complex interaction of person, place, situation, support mechanisms, and interventions. To effectively communicate this to the reader, new conceptual and methodological considerations, essays on special groups in policing, and innovative ideas on recovery and treatment of trauma are presented. This information can be used to prevent or minimize trauma stress and to help in establishing improved support and therapeutic measures for police officers. Contributions in the book are from professionals who work with police officers, and in some cases those who are or have been police officers, to provide the reader with different perspectives. Chapters are grouped into three sections: conceptual and methodological issues, special police groups, and recovery and treatment. The book concludes with a discussion of issues and identifies future directions for conceptualization, assessment, intervention, and effective treatment of psychological trauma in policing.
The objective of this book is to demonstrate how adopting a career perspective can provide a more comprehensive conceptualization of traumatic stress processes as they apply to police officers and agencies and provide a framework that can be used to guide research and intervention agenda in ways that reflect the changes that can occur over the course of a police career that can span decades. The book examines the nature and effectiveness of the police role in dealing with adverse events as they unfold within a career perspective. It begins with pre-employment experiences and their implications for operational well-being and concludes with a discussion of the implications of a police career for disengagement or retirement from this role. It draws upon empirical research to provide an evidence-based approach to traumatic stress risk management and well-being in contemporary policing. Based on state-of-the-art research, the book provides a framework that police agencies can use to develop their officers and their organizations in ways that enhance their capability to confront an increasingly uncertain future in ways that maximize the interests of front-line policing. Areas of discussion include incorporation of police trauma into a life-career course perspective; changing context and nature of police work; recruitment, selection, and socialization in the context of critical incident and terrorist work; changing gender balance; training in uncertain times; managing risk and vulnerability; organizational context; family dynamics; inter and intraorganizational teams; health and mental health; consequences of long-term exposure to hazards; and disengagement and retirement. The text will be of significant interest to police organizations and agencies whose officers face a high risk of experiencing disaster and traumatic stress, law enforcement managerial and supervisory personnel, human resource and health and safety professionals, and mental health professionals and consultants. The text will also be relevant to those researching traumatic stress, disaster stress, and emergency management as well as other protective services.
This book provides a systematic review of the variables and mechanisms that underpin resilience and growth in professions who face a high risk of regular and repetitive exposure to adverse or hazardous events. Given the inevitability of this exposure, promoting the acceptance and practice of this paradigm is essential for facilitating the capability of emergency responders to adapt to, and if possible to grow from, adverse and hazardous experience. By identifying salient dispositional, cognitive, group, organizational, and environmental predictors of resilience and articulating the mechanisms that link them to adaptive and growth outcomes, emergency organizations will have the capacity to intervene prior to exposure to adverse events, rather than waiting until after the event, as is currently the norm. This book thus adopts an approach that is fundamentally preventative in nature and offers practical suggestions to support the development of resilient capabilities. By describing influences on this capability that cover the person, the organization, and factors external to the workplace, it offers a more ecologically comprehensive approach to those working in this area. In addition, it offers a more comprehensive framework for this work by drawing on constructs (e.g. trust, empowerment) that would ordinarily lie outside mainstream traumatic stress research. The contents of this book provide a theoretically and empirically rigorous knowledge base and intervention framework capable of mitigating negative reactions, facilitating adaptation in the face of adversity, and enhancing the likelihood that adverse and traumatic work experiences will enrich the personal and professional lives of those who dedicate themselves to protecting and safeguarding others. It will be of interest to emergency worker counselors, police counselors, disaster workers, mental health professionals, and individuals that work with people exposed to trauma.
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