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Community Innovation and Disasters

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Handbook of Disaster Research

Abstract

In this chapter, we examine community innovation. We begin first by conceptualizing community and innovation as they relate to hazard and disaster. We identify the difficulties inherent in the terms community, innovation, and community innovation, presenting some working concepts that seem to align best with overall disaster research experience. We examine the characteristics of communities that make innovation both necessary and difficult, using examples of innovations drawn from the United States and internationally. This discussion will point toward some directions for future research, including an understanding of community that might be suitable for newer, complex, and diffuse hazards – such as bioterrorism, cyberterrorism, and slow onset hazards related to climate change. The discussion will also point to some needed reorientations in policy that might proceed from either subsequent or existing research.

I’ll be happy to give you innovative thinking. What are the guidelines?

Cullum (2005)

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Wachtendorf, T., Kendra, J.M., DeYoung, S.E. (2018). Community Innovation and Disasters. In: Rodríguez, H., Donner, W., Trainor, J. (eds) Handbook of Disaster Research. Handbooks of Sociology and Social Research. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63254-4_19

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