This edited book investigates the interrelations of disaster impacts, resilience and security in an urban context. Urban as a term captures megacities, cities, and generally, human settlements, that are characterised by concentration of quantifiable and non-quantifiable subjects, objects and value attributions to them. The scope is to narrow down resilience from an all-encompassing concept to applied ways of scientifically attempting to ‚measure’ this type of disaster related resilience. 28 chapters in this book reflect opportunities and doubts of the disaster risk science community regarding this ‚measurability’. Therefore, examples utilising both quantitative and qualitative approaches are juxtaposed. This book concentrates on features that are distinct characteristics of resilience, how they can be measured and in what sense they are different to vulnerability and risk parameters. Case studies in 11 countries either use a hypothetical pre-event estimation of resilience or are addressing a ‘revealed resilience’ evident and documented after an event. Such information can be helpful to identify benchmarks or margins of impact magnitudes and related recovery times, volumes and qualities of affected populations and infrastructure.
Dr. Alexander Fekete is Professor of Risk and Crisis Management at the Institute for Rescue Engineering and Security (IRG) at the Cologne University of Applied Sciences. His present research focuses on studying the systemic interrelations of natural, technical and man-made hazards with social vulnerabilities and critical infrastructures. Interdisciplinary disaster risk management, risk governance, urban resilience, risk and crisis communication, and target levels of safety and security are recent research and educational activities.
Prof. Frank Fiedrich studied Industrial Engineering and received his Ph.D. from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany, where he worked on Decision Support Systems and Agent-based Simulation for disaster response. From 2005 to 2009, he was Assistant Professor at the Institute for Crisis, Disaster, and Risk Management ICDRM at the George Washington University, Washington DC. Since 2009, he is chairing the Institutefor Public Safety and Emergency Management at the University of Wuppertal. His research interests include the use of information and communication technology for disaster and crisis management, societal, organisational and urban resilience, interorganizational decision-making, critical infrastructure protection and societal aspects of safety and security technologies. Additionally, Professor Fiedrich is honorary member of the International Association for Information Systems in Crisis Response and Management (ISCRAM).
