Avoidable Deaths

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xxvi

   PDF

2. Avoidable Deaths in Disasters

   • Nibedita S. Ray-Bennett

   Pages 1-20

3. Systems Failure in Disasters

   • Nibedita S. Ray-Bennett

   Pages 21-47

4. Super-Cyclone in 1999

   • Nibedita S. Ray-Bennett

   Pages 49-60

5. Cycolne Phailin in 2013

   • Nibedita S. Ray-Bennett

   Pages 61-78

6. Systems Failure Revisited

   • Nibedita S. Ray-Bennett

   Pages 79-107

7. Back Matter

   Pages 109-112

   PDF

This book addresses one of the most fundamental questions of the 21st century: why deaths continue to occur in natural disasters despite the tremendous advancements in disaster management science and weather forecasting systems, increased sophistication of human-built environments and ongoing economic and policy development worldwide. By presenting an interdisciplinary tool for analysing ‘systems failure’, the book provides concrete suggestions on how deaths may be reduced in resource-poor contexts. It goes beyond traditional risk and vulnerability perspectives and demonstrates that deaths in disasters are complex problems that can be solved by adopting a socio-technical perspective to improve current disaster management systems in the developing world. 

The book is a timely contribution, as it directly addresses Global Target One of the UN’s ‘Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction’, which has urged 185 UN Member States to reduce disaster mortality by 2030. Further, it offers a valuable resource for students, researchers, policy-makers and practitioners interested in disaster risk reduction, human rights, gender, sociology of risk, crisis and disasters, environmental science, organisation and management studies.

• Socio-technical Disaster Management System
• Disaster Risk Reduction
• Disaster Climate
• Gender Disaggregated Mortality Data
• Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction
• Disaster Mortality
• Systems Alignment
• Cyclone Hazard
• Cyclone Phailin
• Odisha

• University of Leicester, Leicester, United Kingdom

  Nibedita S. Ray-Bennett

Funded by Ford Foundation’s International Fellowship Programme, Dr. Nibedita S. Ray-Bennett completed her PhD in Sociology from Warwick University. Currently, Nibedita is Lecturer in Risk Management in the School of Business’s Civil Safety and Security Unit, University of Leicester. She is the author of Caste, Class and Gender in Multiple Disasters (VDM Verlag, 2009). Nibedita is a Research Affiliate at: Northumbria University’s Disaster and Development Network (formerly known as Disaster and Development Centre); the National Centre for Earth Observation; University of Leicester’s Centre for Climate Change and Landscape Research; and University College London’s ESRC funded RELIEF Centre Global Associates International Network (GAIN). Nibedita is a Fellow at the Higher Education Academy in the UK. 

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