Architects of Disaster
Architects of Disaster

Author: Peter Hoekstra

Publisher:

Published: 2015-10-02

Total Pages: 178

ISBN-13: 9780692438954

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Pete Hoekstra, the former chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, tells the real story behind the tragic events in Benghazi and the Obama Administration's disastrous foreign policy catastrophe in Libya. ARCHITECTS OF DISASTER documents the role played by an inexperienced president and a politicized US State Department under Hillary Clinton in turning a stable North African country into a failed jihadist state spreading terrorism throughout the Middle East and releasing a flood of fearful immigrants onto the Mediterranean and into Europe. "In his new book, Pete Hoekstra cuts to the core in identifying how a radical Islamist agenda left to its own devices cannot reconcile with Western ideals of tolerance and acceptance. Architects of Disaster creates the necessary framework in which future administrations can apply lessons learned to better inform critical foreign policy decisions." - Mitt Romney, former Governor of Massachusetts and 2012 Republican Presidential nominee "A graphic autopsy of what went wrong in Libya and why." - James Jay Carafano, Heritage Foundation "Pete Hoekstra's thorough examination of how the Obama Administration's misguided policies contributed in the past few years to Libya's disintegration is must reading. This insightful history and analysis is worth careful study, especially as America's citizens debate what policies should come next after President Obama leaves office." - John Bolton, former US Ambassador to the UN

Humanitarian Architecture
Humanitarian Architecture

Author: Esther Charlesworth

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-06-27

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13: 1317690796

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Never has the demand been so urgent for architects to respond to the design and planning challenges of rebuilding post-disaster sites and cities. In 2011, more people were displaced by natural disasters (42 million) than by wars and armed conflicts. And yet the number of architects equipped to deal with rebuilding the aftermath of these floods, fires, earthquake, typhoons and tsunamis is chronically short. This book documents and analyses the expanding role for architects in designing projects for communities after the event of a natural disaster. The fifteen case studies featured in the body of the book illustrate how architects can use spatial sensibility and integrated problem-solving skills to help alleviate both human and natural disasters. The cases include: Lizzie Babister - Department of International Development, UK. Shigeru Ban - Winner of The Pritzker Architecture Prize 2014, Shigeru Ban Architects and Voluntary Architects’ Network, Japan. Eric Cesal – Disaster Reconstruction and Resiliency Studio and Architecture for Humanity, Japan. Hsieh Ying Chun – Atelier 3, Taiwan. Nathaniel Corum - Education Outreach and Architecture for Humanity, USA. Sandra D’Urzo - Shelter and Settlements and International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, Switzerland. Brett Moore - World Vision International, Australia. Michael Murphy - MASS Design Group, USA. David Perkes - Gulf Coast Community Design Studio, USA. Paul Pholeros - Healthabitat, Australia. Patama Roonrakwit - Community Architects for Shelter and Environment, Thailand. Graham Saunders - International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, Switzerland. Kirtee Shah - Ahmedabad Study Action Group, India. Maggie Stephenson - UN-HABITAT, Haiti. Anna Wachtmeister - Catholic Organisation for Relief and Redevelopment Aid, the Netherlands. The interviews and supporting essays show built environment professionals collaborating with post-disaster communities as facilitators, collaborators and negotiators of land, space and shelter, rather than as ‘save the world’ modernists, as often portrayed in the design media. The goal is social and physical reconstruction, as a collaborative process involving a damaged community and its local culture, environment and economy; not just shelter ‘projects’ that ‘build’ houses but leave no economic footprint or longer-term community infrastructure. What defines and unites the architects interviewed for Humanitarian Architecture is their collective belief that through a consultative process of spatial problem solving, the design profession can contribute in a significant way to the complex post-disaster challenge of rebuilding a city and its community.

Bracing for Disaster
Bracing for Disaster

Author: Stephen Tobriner

Publisher: Heyday.ORIM

Published: 2015-05-01

Total Pages: 608

ISBN-13: 1597143286

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“The first history of seismic engineering in San Francisco . . . spiced with survivor and eyewitness accounts. ”—Midwest Book Review For the past one hundred and fifty years, architects and engineers have quietly been learning from each quake and designing newer earthquake-resistant building techniques and applying them in an ongoing effort to save San Francisco. Bracing for Disaster is a fresh appraisal of a city responding to repeated devastation. In the language of a skilled teacher, Tobriner examines what really happened during the city’s earthquakes—which buildings were damaged, which survived, and who were the unsung heroes. Filled with more than two hundred photographs, diagrams, and illustrations, this is a revealing look at the history of buildings by a true expert, and it offers lessons not just for San Francisco but for any city beset by natural disasters. “The real saga is how a fast-growing city grapples with the reality that it has more to worry about than fires and fog. The core of the story is fairly technical, rooted in the crude intuitive ways in which builders reacted to a seismic threat they could neither measure nor define. But Tobriner crafts the story well.”—SFGate

Enhancing Disaster Preparedness
Enhancing Disaster Preparedness

Author: A. Nuno Martins

Publisher: Elsevier

Published: 2020-10-07

Total Pages: 298

ISBN-13: 0128190795

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Enhancing Disaster Preparedness: From Humanitarian Architecture to Community Resilience relates to the fourth priority of the UNDRR’s Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030. Taking a wide understanding of disaster preparedness, the book deals with resilient responses and building capacities related to hazardous events, bringing some practical experiences and theoretical insights in this regard. Mostly based on field research conducted in the Global South by architects and other built-environment professionals, the book covers both post-disaster interventions (rebuilding and recovery) and development-related processes.Its three parts address the interlinkages between humanitarian design, community resilience, and inclusive governance, which are crucial for fostering effective disaster preparedness. Part I discusses the changing roles of architects and urban designers involved in the humanitarian sphere. Part II concentrates on resilience as a socioecological capacity to enhance preparedness within community-based spatial processes. Focused on global dynamics, Part III covers topics emphasizing the link between the management of crises, whether political or economic, at different levels of governance, and the vulnerability of communities and structures on the national and local scales. As such, the book approaches rising global priorities and brings timely lessons to support building a more equitable, safe, and resilient environment in a rapidly urbanized world. Explores Sendai’s fourth priority through a spatial lens Examines the role of humanitarian design in building resilience Critically revisits concepts such as incremental housing and building back better Provides examples of methodological tools for community engagement in resilience-building processes

Designing for Disaster
Designing for Disaster

Author: Boyce Thompson

Publisher: Schiffer Publishing

Published: 2019-09-28

Total Pages: 176

ISBN-13: 9780764357848

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The climate is changing, and so must domestic architecture. Premium materials--brick, stone, wood--and timeless design used to be the key to building homes that would last for generations. But a warming planet, coupled with severe weather events, has changed the equation and raised the stakes, sometimes literally. Aimed at homeowners, architects, and builders, this book presents sixteen innovative homes that represent the best of resilient-home practices in four categories--earth, wind, fire, and water--plus a list of resources from organizations such as FEMA and the National Fire Protection Agency. Few local building codes provide adequate protection from the forces of global warming, which will proliferate in this century. These examples illustrate the importance of next-level home design to help resist climate change--the most urgent issue of our time.

Social Media in Disaster Response
Social Media in Disaster Response

Author: Liza Potts

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-10-30

Total Pages: 171

ISBN-13: 1134063148

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Social Media in Disaster Response focuses on how emerging social web tools provide researchers and practitioners with new opportunities to address disaster communication and information design for participatory cultures. Both groups, however, currently lack research toolkits for tracing participant networks across systems; there is little understanding of how to design not just for individual social web sites, but how to design across multiple systems. Given the volatile political and ecological climate we are currently living in, the practicality of understanding how people communicate during disasters is important both for those researching solutions and for those putting that research into practice. Social Media in Disaster Response addresses this situation by presenting the results of a large-scale sociotechnical usability study on crisis communication in the vernacular related to recent natural and human-made crisis; this is an analysis of the way social web applications are transformed, by participants, into a critical information infrastructure in moments of crisis. This book provides researchers with methods, tools, and examples for researching and analyzing these communication systems while providing practitioners with design methods and information about these participatory communities to assist them in influencing the design and structure of these communication systems.

Recovery from Disaster
Recovery from Disaster

Author: Ian Davis

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-08-20

Total Pages: 390

ISBN-13: 131739528X

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Disasters can dominate newspaper headlines and fill our TV screens with relief appeals, but the complex long-term challenge of recovery—providing shelter, rebuilding safe dwellings, restoring livelihoods and shattered lives—generally fails to attract the attention of the public and most agencies. On average 650 disasters occur each year. They affect more than 200 million people and cause $166 trillion of damage. Climate change, population growth and urbanisation are likely to intensify further the impact of natural disasters and add to reconstruction needs. Recovery from Disaster explores the field and provides a concise, comprehensive source of knowledge for academics, planners, architects, engineers, construction managers, relief and development officials and reconstruction planners involved with all sectors of recovery, including shelter and rebuilding. With almost 80 years of first-hand experience of disaster recovery between them, Ian Davis (an architect) and David Alexander (a geographer) draw substantially from first-hand experiences in a variety of recovery situations in China, Haiti, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Pakistan, the Philippines and the USA. The volume is further enriched by two important and unique features: 21 models of disaster recovery are presented, seven of which were specifically developed for the book. The second feature is a survey of expert opinion about the nature of effective disaster recovery—the first of its kind. More than 50 responses are provided in full, along with an analysis that integrates them with the theories that underpin them. By providing a framework and models for future study and applications, Davis and Alexander seek both to advance the field and to provide a much-needed reference work for decision makers. With a broad perspective derived from the authors' roles held as university professors, researchers, trainers, consultants, NGO directors and advisors to governments and UN agencies, this comprehensive guide will be invaluable for practitioners and students of disaster management.

Earthquake Architecture
Earthquake Architecture

Author: Belén García

Publisher: Harper Design

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 216

ISBN-13:

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Many sizes of buildings are viewed, from very small projects, like a house by Shigeru Ban designed for the homeless after the Kobe disaster of 1995, to huge buildings such as the San Francisco Main Library by I.M. Pei. Categories of construction are wide-ranging: residential, commercial, religious, medical, and cultural facilities are all considered in this comprehensive report on life-saving construction strategies."--BOOK JACKET.

Urgent Architecture
Urgent Architecture

Author: Bridgette Meinhold

Publisher: National Geographic Books

Published: 2013-03-12

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 0393733580

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Disaster-proof, environmentally friendly housing solutions for a changing climate. How can we adequately provide housing when disaster strikes, whether that disaster is weather related, like hurricanes, floods, and droughts, happens in a matter of minutes from an earthquake or tsunami, through a slow process like rising sea levels, or is the result of civil disorder or poverty? There is an urgent need for safe, sustainable housing designs that are cheap to build, environmentally friendly, and hardy enough to withstand severe environmental conditions. Not only is there climate change to contend with, but there are millions of people, right now, who do not have safe or adequate housing. In Urgent Architecture Bridgette Meinhold showcases 40 successful emergency and long-term housing projects—from repurposed shipping containers to sandbag homes. She surveys successful structures as well as highlighting promising projects that are still being developed. Every one is quickly deployable, affordable, and sustainable. This book is an essential resource for those who are interested in green building, sustainable design, eco-friendly materials, affordable housing, material reuse, and humanitarian relief.

Urban Disaster Resilience
Urban Disaster Resilience

Author: David Sanderson

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-04-14

Total Pages: 251

ISBN-13: 131753395X

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Accelerating urbanization worldwide means more urban-centered disasters. Floods, earthquakes, storms and conflicts affecting densely populated areas produce significant losses in lives, livelihoods and the built environment, especially in comparison to rural areas. Poor urban dwellers, almost always the most vulnerable, too often bear the brunt. Aid agencies and urban professionals have been slowly adapting to these new conditions, but older models and practices hinder the most effective engagements. Drawing directly from the experiences of urban disasters in the Philippines, Chile, India, Thailand, Iraq, Haiti and Nepal, among other countries, Urban Disaster Resilience brings to light new collaborations and techniques for addressing the challenges of urban disasters in the coming years. Chapters range from country-specific case studies to more synthetic frameworks in order to promote innovative thinking and practical solutions. Edited by David Sanderson, Jerold S. Kayden and Julia Leis, this book is a crucial read for humanitarian and disaster specialists, urban planners and designers, architects, landscape architects, housing and economic development professionals, real estate developers, private business managers and students interested in the subject, whether based in non-governmental organizations, local, state or national governments, international agencies, private firms, or the academy.