Local Disaster Management

Local Disaster Management explores what resilience means for local communities and local governments on the front line of responding to disasters and emergencies.

Disaster management is often seen as a major international issue undertaken by global actors such as the UN, Red Cross and Red Crescent. Yet fundamentally, all disasters are local. Every disaster, regardless of its type, affects individuals, families and communities before they escalate to encompassing one or many communities or nations. This volume therefore explores fundamental issues of disaster and emergency management at the local level. What is resilience? What does resilience mean for a local government seeking to lessen the impact of disasters on their community? How do local governments adapt through their experiences of disasters and how do they recover from catastrophic experiences? This book explores these issues with chapters from top scholars in the field, draws out lessons for local government officials and disaster managers seeking to build community resilience, prepare their communities for a changing environment, and facilitate recovery after disasters strike.

Local Disaster Management provides invaluable insight for local governments charged with managing the inescapable effects of climate change and the increasing frequency and severity of disasters, as well as for scholars of local governance, disaster resilience, government policy, and disaster management. The chapters were originally published as a special issue in Local Government Studies.

Gina Yannitell Reinhardt is an Associate Professor in the Department of Government at the University of Essex, where she leads the ARISE Initiative to help local authorities evaluate resilience-building programmes and their impact, and researches resilience, foreign aid, climate change and environmental policy, and political trust.

Lex Drennan is an adjunct research fellow at the Policy Innovation Hub, Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia, where she carries out research in the field of disaster resilience, government policy, and disaster management.