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Community Disaster Vulnerability Theory, Research, and Practice

The publisher regrets that in the online and print versions of this book the Acknowledgements text was omitted from the front matter. This text should read as follows:

This book integrates vulnerability and resiliency theories as a means of reducing losses from disasters. Vulnerability theory offers practical guidance toward reducing the rising human and financial costs stemming from disaster. National problems can quickly become international in scope. For example, the United States suffered its worst drought in over a quarter century in 2012, resulting in greatly reduced output of corn and soy beans. Because the U.S. is a major exporter of these crops, the drought in the U.S. is resulting in world-wide food shortages. It may take years to fully recover from this disaster. Reducing human vulnerability to extreme events is a world-wide mandate.

Elsewhere, on the international stage, flooding in Pakistan in 2010 and 2011 killed over 500 people and affected 5 million more. The 2010 flood in the People’s Republic of China, affecting Fujian, Sichuan, and Guangxi provinces, affected 134 million people and cost 18 billion (US) dollars. The combination of earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear plant disasters in Japan in 2010 killed nearly 20 thousand people, and left large tracts of land either devastated or uninhabitable for decades. Like the drought in the United States, the effects from these disasters spread out around the world. It is critical that human safety become a primary goal of sustainable development.

We applaud the Katherine A. Kendall Institute for International Social Work Education, the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE), and the International Association of Schools of Social Work for sponsoring their 2007 conference on disasters. The Disaster Planning, Management and Relief conference was organized partly in recognition of the increasing costs from disasters occurring world-wide, including the 2004 tsunami and Hurricane Katrina in 2005. An important focus of this conference was the role of the social work profession in disaster preparedness, response, and recovery. Many of the ideas in this book were first presented at this conference. Subsequently, conference presenters contributed to a book edited by David Gillespie and Kofi Danso (2010), Disaster Concepts and Issues, published by CSWE Press. The first three chapters of the edited book, all of which explore aspects of disaster vulnerability, inspired our current book.

We thank Edward F. Lawlor, Dean of the Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri for the one semester sabbatical given to David Gillespie to work on this book. The additional time and opportunity to concentrate on the writing were essential to completing the book. Also essential was the support and encouragement given by David’s wife Susan J. Gillespie. Susan was especially gracious in accepting the time in isolation needed to complete a project of this magnitude within a constrained timeframe.

We thank Jennifer Hadley, Editor for the Social and Behavior Sciences at Springer, for her invaluable support throughout the writing and production process for this book. We also wish to thank scholars who reviewed our book proposal and draft chapters. Finally, we thank Charles Swager, Le Thi Minh Hieu, and James David Mark, who, during their graduate study at West Virginia University School of Social Work, helped greatly with editorial tasks associated with writing this book.