Environmental Hazards: Assessing Risk and Reducing Disaster

The seventh edition of Environmental Hazards provides a much expanded and fully up-to-date overview of all the extreme environmental events that threaten people and what they value in the 21st century globally. It integrates cutting-edge materials to provide an interdisciplinary approach to environmental hazards and their management, illustrating how natural and human systems interact to place communities of all sizes, and at all stages of economic development, at risk. Part 1 defines basic concepts of hazard, risk, vulnerability and disaster and explores the evolution of hazards theory. Part 2 employs a consistent chapter structure to demonstrate how individual hazards occur, their impacts and how the risks can be assessed and managed.

This extensively revised edition includes:

• Fresh perspectives on the reliability of disaster data, disaster risk reduction, risk and disaster perception and communication, and new technologies available to assist with environmental hazard management
• The addition of several new environmental hazards including landslide and avalanches, cryospheric hazards, karst and subsidence hazards, and hazards of the Anthropocene
• More boxed sections with a focus on both generic issues and the lessons to be learned from a carefully selected range of up-to-date extreme events
• An annotated list of key resources, including further reading and relevant websites, for all chapters
• More colour diagrams and photographs, and more than 1,000 references to some of the most significant and recent published material
• New exercises to assist teaching in the classroom, or self-learning

This carefully structured and balanced textbook captures the complexity and dynamism of environmental hazards and is essential reading for students across many disciplines including geography, environmental science, environmental studies and natural resources.

Keith Smith was Emeritus Professor at the University of Stirling, UK.

Carina J. Fearnley is Professor in Science Communication and Warning Research at University College London in the Department of Science and Technology Studies.

Deborah Dixon is Professor of Geography in the School of Geographical & Earth Sciences at the University of Glasgow, UK.

Deanne K. Bird is Adjunct Research Fellow at the Monash University Disaster Resilience Initiative, Australia, and a Research Specialist with the Nordic Centre of Excellence on Resilience and Societal Security (NORDRESS), University of Iceland.

Ilan Kelman is Professor of Disasters and Health in the Institute for Risk and Disaster Reduction and Institute for Global Health at the University College London, UK and Professor II at the University of Agder, Norway.