Studying Future Disasters and Crises: 4 A Heuristic Approach · 2019-09-16 · transboundary crises...

4Studying Future Disasters and Crises:A Heuristic Approach

E.L. Quarantelli, Arjen Boin and Patrick Lagadec

Contents

4.1 Introduction.................................................... 614.2 Classic Phenomena ........................................ 614.3 Societal Interpretations and Responses....... 62

4.3.1 Societal Responses ............................. 634.4 Systematic Studies of Disruptive Events ..... 65

4.4.1 Different Conceptions of Disastersand Crises ........................................... 65

4.4.2 New Kinds of Disasters and Crises ... 674.4.3 Characteristics of Transboundary

Crises and Disasters ........................... 684.5 Transboundary Scenarios ............................. 694.6 Increased Vulnerability and Changing

Social Settings ................................................ 714.7 The Social Amplification of Disasters

and Crises ....................................................... 734.8 Traditional Disasters and Crises Remain

Dominant ........................................................ 744.9 Implications .................................................... 764.10 Looking at the Future ................................... 77References .................................................................. 79

4.1 Introduction

Disasters and crises are as old as when humanbeings started to live in groups. Through thecenturies, new types have emerged. For instance,the development of synthetic chemicals in the19th Century and nuclear power in the 20thCentury created the possibility of toxic chemicaldisasters and crises from radioactive fallouts.Older crisis types did not disappear: ancienttypes such as floods and earthquakes remain withus. The newer disasters and crises are additionsto older forms; they recombine elements of oldthreats and new vulnerabilities.

The literature on crisis and disaster researchsuggests that we are at another important his-torical juncture with the emergence of a newdistinctive class of disasters and crises not oftenseen before (Ansell, Boin, & Keller, 2010; Hel-sloot, Boin, Jacobs, & Comfort, 2012; Tierney,2014). In this chapter, we discuss the rise oftransboundary crises and disasters. We seek tooffer a heuristic approach to studying these newcrises and disasters.

We offer a heuristic approach to understand-ing the disasters and crises of the future. It ispresented primarily as an aid or guide to lookingfurther into the matter, hopefully stimulatingmore investigation on conceptions of disastersand crises in the past, the present, and the future.Unlike in some areas of scientific inquiry, whereseemingly final conclusions can be reached (e.g.,

This is a modestly updated version of the originalchapter published in the predecessor of this Handbook.Henry Quarantelli was and remains the source of mostideas appearing in this chapter. All updates and editorialchanges were done by the co-authors.

E.L. QuarantelliDisaster Research Center, University of Delaware,Newark, USA

A. Boin (&)Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlandse-mail: [email protected]

P. LagadecEcole Polytechnique, Paris, France

© Springer International Publishing AG 2018H. Rodríguez et al. (eds.), Handbook of Disaster Research, Handbooks of Sociologyand Social Research, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63254-4_4

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about the speed of light), the basic nature of thephenomenon we are discussing is of a dynamicnature and subject to change through time. Theanswer to the question of what is a disaster orcrisis has evolved and will continue to do so (seePerry’s chapter in this handbook).

4.2 Classic Phenomena

Human societies have always been faced withrisks and hazards. Earthquakes, hostile inter- andintra-group relationships, massive floods, suddenepidemics, threats to take multiple hostages ormassacre large number of persons, avalanches,fires and tsunamis have marked human history forcenturies if not eons. Disasters and crises requiringa group reaction are as old as when human beingsstarted to live in stable communities.1

The earliest happenings are attested to inlegends and myths, oral traditions and folk songs,religious accounts and archeological evidencefrom many different cultures and subculturesaround the world. For example, a “great flood”story has long existed in many places (Lang,1985). As human societies evolved, new threatsand hazards emerged.

To the old there have been added new dangersand perils that increasingly have become poten-tially dangerous to human groups. Risky tech-nological agents have been added to naturalhazards. These involve chemical, nuclear andbiological threats that can accidentally material-ize as disasters. Intentional conflict situationshave become more damaging at least in the senseof involving more and more victims. The last90 years have seen two World Wars, massive airand missile attacks by the military on civiliansdistant from battle areas, many terrorist attacks,and widespread ethnic strife. Genocide killed onemillion persons in Rwanda; millions have

become refugees and tens of thousands have diedin Darfur in the Sudan in Africa. While terrorismis not a new phenomenon, its targets have con-siderably expanded.

Some scholars and academics have arguedthat the very attempt to cope with increasingrisks, especially of a technological nature, isindirectly generating new hazards. As the humanrace has increasingly been able to cope with suchbasic needs as food and shelter, some of the verycoping mechanisms involved (such as the doubleedged consequences of agricultural pesticides),have generated new risks for human societies(Beck, 1999; Perrow, 1999). For example, in2004, toxic chemicals were successfully used toeradicate massive locust infestations affecting tenWestern and Northern African countries. Thosevery chemicals had other widespread negativeeffects on humans, animals and crops (IRIN,2004). Implicit in this line of thinking is theargument that double-edged consequences fromnew innovations (such as the use of chemicals,nuclear power and genetic engineering) willcontinue to appear (Tenner, 1996).

We cannot say that the future will bring moredisasters, as we have no reliable statistics onprior happenings as a base line to use in counting(Quarantelli, 2001). At present, it would seemsafer to argue that some future events are quali-tatively different, and not necessarily that therewill be more of them in total (although we wouldargue the last is a viable hypothesis that requiresa good statistical analysis).

4.3 Societal Interpretationsand Responses

Societies for the most part have not been passivein the face of these dangers to human life andwell-being. This is somewhat contrary to what isimplicit in much of the social science literatureespecially about disasters. In fact, some of thesewritings directly or indirectly state that a fatalisticattitude prevailed in the early stages of societaldevelopment (e.g., Quarantelli, 2000). This wasthought because religious beliefs attributed neg-ative societal happenings to punishments or tests

1This seems to have occurred about five to six thousandyears ago (see Lenski, Lenski, & Nolan, 1991). However,recent archeological studies suggest that humans started toabandon nomadic wanderings and settled into permanentsites around 9,500 years ago (Balter, 2005) so communityrecognized disasters and crises might have an even longerhistory.

62 E.L. Quarantelli et al.

by supernatural entities (the “Acts of God”notion, although this particular phrase became acommon usage mostly because it served theinterests of insurance companies). But prayers,offerings and rituals are widely seen as means toinfluence the supernatural. So passivity is not anautomatic response to disasters and crises evenby religious believers, an observation sometimesunnoticed by secular researchers.

In fact, historical studies strongly indicate thatsocietal interpretations have been more differen-tiated than once believed and have shiftedthrough the centuries, at least in the Westernworld. In ancient Greece, Aristotle categorizeddisasters as the result of natural phenomena andnot manifestations of supernatural interventions(Aristotle, 1952). The spread of Christianityabout 2,000 years ago helped foster the beliefthat disasters were “special providences sentdirectly” from “God to punish sinners” (Mulc-ahy, 2002, p. 110). In the Middle Ages, evenscholars and educated elites “no longer ques-tioned the holy origins of natural disasters”(Massard-Guilbaud, Platt, & Schott, 2002, p. 19).Starting in the 17th century, however, explana-tions started to be replaced by “ones that vieweddisasters as accidental or natural events” (Mulc-ahy, 2002, p. 110). This, of course, also reflecteda strong secularization trend in Western societies.Perhaps this reached a climax with the 1755Lisbon earthquake which Dynes notes can beseen as the “first modern disaster” (2000, p. 10).

So far our discussion has been mostly fromthe perspective of the educated elites in Westernsocieties. Little scholarly attention seems to havebeen given to what developed in non-Westernsocial systems. One passing observation aboutthe Ottoman Empire and fire disasters suggeststhat the pattern just discussed might not be uni-versal. Thus, while fire prevention measures wereencouraged in cities, they were not mandated“since calamities were considered” as expres-sions of the will of God (Yerolympos, 2002,p. 224). Even as late as 1826 an Ottoman urbanbuilding code stated that according to religiouswriting “the will of the Almighty will be done”and nothing can and should be done about that.At the same time, this code advances the idea

that nevertheless there were protective measuresthat could be taken against fires that are “the willof Allah” (quoted in Yerolympos, 2002, p. 226).Of course, incompatibility between natural andsupernatural views about the world are notunique to disaster and crisis phenomena, but thatstill leaves the distinction important.2

Even recently, an Australian disasterresearcher asserted that in the 2004 SouthwesternAsian tsunami most of the population seemed tobelieve that the disaster was “sent either as a testof faith or punishment” (McAneney, 2005, p. 3).Or as another writer noted, following the tsu-nami, religiously oriented views surfaced. Somewere by: “fundamentalist Christians” who tend toview all disasters “as a harbinger of the apoca-lypse”. Others were by “radical Islamists” whoare inclined to see any disaster that “washes thebeaches clear of half-nude tourists to be divine”(Neiman, 2005, p. 16). After Hurricane Katrina,some leaders of evangelical groups spoke of thedisaster as punishment imposed by God for“national sins” (Cooperman, 2005).

In the absence of systematic studies, probablythe best hypothesis that should be researched isthat at present religious interpretations aboutdisasters and crisis still appear to be widely held,but relative to the past probably have erodedamong people in general. The orientation isalmost certainly affected by sharp cross-societaldifference in the importance attributed to religionas can be noted in the religious belief systemsand practices as currently exist in the UnitedStates and many Islamic countries, compared toJapan or a highly secular Western Europe.

4.3.1 Societal Responses

Apart from the varying interpretations of thephenomena, how have societies behaviorallyreacted to existing and ever-changing threats andrisks? As a whole, human groups have evolved a

2For an interesting attempt to deal with these twoperspectives see the paper entitled Disaster: a reality ora construct? Perspective from the East, written by Jigyasu(2005) an Indian scholar.

4 Studying Future Disasters and Crises: A Heuristic Approach 63

variety of formal and informal mechanisms toprevent and to deal with crises and disasters. Butsocieties have followed different directionsdepending on the perceived sources of disastersand crises. Responses tend to differ with theperception of the primary origin (the supernatu-ral, the natural or the human sphere).

For example, floods were seen long ago as acontinuing problem that required a collectiveresponse involving engineering measures. Storiesthat a Chinese Emperor, 23 centuries beforeChrist, deepened the ever-flooding Yellow Riverby massive dredging and the building of diver-sion canals may be more legend than fact(Waterbury, 1979, p. 35). However, there is clearevidence that in Egypt in the 20th Century BC,the 12th Dynasty Pharaoh, Amenemher II com-pleted southwest of Cairo what was probablyhistory’s first substantial river control project (anirrigation canal and dam with sluice gates). Otherdocumentary evidence indicates that dams forflood control purposes were built as far back as1260 B C in Greece (Schnitter, 1994, p. 1, 8–9).Such mitigatory efforts indicate both the beliefthat there was a long-term natural risk as well asone that could be coped with by physicallyaltering structural dimensions.

Later, particular in Europe, there were manyrecurrent efforts to institute mitigation measures.For example, earthquake resistant building tech-niques were developed in ancient Rome,although “they had been forgotten by the middleages” (Massard-Guilbaud et al., 2002, p. 31). Thethreats from floods and fires spurred mitigationefforts in Greece. Starting in the 15th Century,developing urban areas devised many safeguardsagainst fires, varying from regulations regardinginflammable items to storage of water for fire-fighting purposes. In many towns in medievalPoland, dams, dikes and piles along riverbankswere built (Sowina, 2002). Of course, actionstaken were not always successful. But, if nothingelse, these examples show that organized miti-gation efforts have been undertaken for a longtime in human history.

There have been two other major behavioraltrends of long duration that are really preventive

in intent if not always in reality. One has been theroutinization of responses by emergency orientedgroups so as to prevent emergencies from esca-lating into disasters or crises. For example, inancient Rome, the first groups informally set upto fight fires were composed of untrained slaves.But when a fire in 6 A.D. burned almost a quarterof Rome, a Corps of Vigiles was created that hadfull-time personnel and specialized equipment. Inmore recent times, there are good examples ofthis routinization in the planning of public utili-ties that have standardized operating proceduresto deal with everyday emergencies so as to pre-vent them from materializing into disasters. Inthe conflict area, there are various UN and otherinternational organizations, such as the Interna-tional Atomic Energy Agency and the EuropeanUnion (EU), that also try to head off the devel-opment of crises. In short, societies have con-tinually evolved groups and procedures to try toprevent old and new risks and threats fromescalating into disasters and crises.

A second more recent major trend has beenthe development of specific organizations to dealfirst with wartime crises and then with peacetimedisasters. Societies for about a century have beencreating specific organizations to deal first withnew risks for civilians created by changes inwarfare, and then improving on these new groupsas they have been extended to peacetime situa-tions. Rooted in civil defense groups created forair raid situations, there has since been theevolvement of civilian emergency managementagencies (Blanchard, 2004). Accompanying thishas been the start of the professionalization ofdisaster planners and crisis managers. There hasbeen a notable shift from the involvement ofamateurs to educated professionals.

Human societies adjusted not only to the earlyrisks and hazards, but also to the newer ones thatappeared up to the last century. The very existenceof the human race is testimony to the social copingmechanisms of humans as they face such threats.Here and there a few communities and groups havenot been able to cope with the manifestations ofcontemporary risks and hazards (Diamond, 2005).But these have been very rare cases.


Neither disasters nor crises involving conflicthave had that much effect on the continuing exis-tence of cities anywhere in the world. Throughouthistory, many cities have been destroyed. Theyhave been: “sacked, shaken, burned, bombed,flooded, starved, irradiated and poisoned”, but inalmost every case they have phoenix-like beenreestablished (Vale & Campanella, 2004, p. 1).Around the world, from the 12th to the 19thCentury, only 42 cities were “permanently aban-doned following destruction” (Vale & Cam-panella, 2004, p. 1). The same analysis notes thatlarge cities such as Baghdad, Moscow, Aleppo,Mexico City, Budapest, Dresden, Tokyo, Hir-oshima andNagasaki all sufferedmassive physicaldestruction and lost huge numbers of their popu-lations due to disasters and wartime attacks. Allwere rebuilt and rebounded. At the start of the 19thCentury, “such resilience became a nearly uni-versal fact” about urban settlements around theworld (Vale & Campanella, 2004, p. 1). Lookingat these cities today as well as Warsaw, Berlin,Hamburg and New Orleans, it seems this recu-perative tendency is very strong (see also Sch-neider & Susser, 2003).

In the Hiroshima museum that now exists atthe exact point where the bomb fell, there is a360-degree photograph of the zone around thatpoint, taken a few days after the attack. Exceptfor a few piles of ruins, there is nothing butrubble as far as the eye can see in every direction.There were statements made that this would bethe scene at that location for decades. But avisitor to the museum today can see in the win-dows behind the circular photograph, many signsof a bustling city and its population (for adescription of the museum see Webb, 2006).Hiroshima did receive much help and aid torebuild. But the city came back in ways thatobservers at the time of impact did not foresee.

4.4 Systematic Studiesof Disruptive Events

Early efforts to understand and to cope withdisasters and crises were generally of an ad hocnature. With the strong development of science

in the 19th Century, there was the start ofunderstanding the physical aspects of naturaldisasters, and these had some influence onstructural mitigation measures that were under-taken. However, the systematic social sciencestudy of crises and disasters is about ahalf-century-old (Fritz, 1961; Kreps, 1984;Quarantelli, 1988, 2000; Schorr, 1987; Wright &Rossi, 1981).

In short, there is currently a solid body ofresearch-generated knowledge developed overthe last half century of continuing and everincreasing studies around the world in differentsocial science disciplines. To be sure, suchaccounts and reports are somewhat selective andnot complete. There are now case studies andanalytical reports on natural and technologicaldisaster (and to some extent on other crises)numbering in the four figures. In addition, thereare numerous impressions of specific behavioraldimensions that have been derived from fieldresearch (for summaries and inventories seeAlexander, 2000; Cutter, 1994; Dynes,DeMarchi, & Pelanda, 1987; Dynes & Tierney,1994; Farazmand, 2001; Helsloot, Boin, Jacobs,& Comfort, 2012; Mileti, 1999; Oliver-Smith,1999; Perry, Lindell, & Prater, 2005; Rosenthal,Boin, & Comfort, 2001; Rosenthal, Charles, & ‘tHart, 1989; Tierney, Lindell, & Perry, 2001;Turner, 1978).

What are the distinctive aspects of the newerdisasters and crises that are not seen in traditionalones? To answer this question, we consideredwhat social science studies and reports had foundabout behavior in disasters and crises up to thepresent time. We then implicitly compared thoseobservations and findings with the distinctivebehavioral aspects of the newer disasters andcrises.

4.4.1 Different Conceptionsof Disasters and Crises

One issue that has always interested researchersand scholars is how to conceptualize disastersand crises. There is far from full agreement thatall disasters and crises can be categorized


together as being relatively homogeneous phe-nomena (Quarantelli, 1998; Perry & Quarantelli,2005). This is despite the fact that there havebeen a number of attempts to distinguishbetween, among and within different kinds ofdisasters and crises. However, no one overallview has won anywhere near general acceptanceamong self-designated disaster and crisisresearchers. To illustrate we will briefly notesome of the major formulations advanced.

For example, one attempt has been to distin-guish between natural and technological disasters(Erikson, 1994; Picou & Gill, 1996). The basicassumption was that the inherent nature of theagent involved made a difference. Implicit wasthe idea that technological dangers or threatspresent a different and more varying kind ofchallenge to human societies than do naturalhazards or risks. Most researchers have sincedropped the distinction as hazards have come tobe seen as less important than the social setting inwhich they appear. In recent major volumes onwhat is a disaster (Quarantelli, 1998; Perry &Quarantelli, 2005), the distinction was not evenmentioned by most of the two dozen scholarswho addressed the basic question.

Other scholars have struggled with the notionthat there may be some important differencesbetween what can be called “disasters” and“crises”. The assumption here is that differentcommunity level social phenomena are involved,depending on the referent. Thus, some scholarsdistinguish between consensus and conflict typesof crises (Stallings, 1988 tries to reconcile thetwo perspectives). In some research circles,almost all natural and most technological disas-ters are viewed as consensus types of crises(Quarantelli, 1998). These are contrasted withcrises involving conflict such as are exemplifiedby riots, terrorist attacks, and ethnic cleansingsand intergroup clashes. In the latter type, at leastone major party is either trying to make it worseor to extend the duration of the crisis. In naturaland technological disasters, no one deliberatelywants to make the situation worse or create moredamage or fatalities.

Now, there can be disputes or serious dis-agreements in natural or technological disasters.

It is almost inevitable that there will be somepersonal, organizational and community conflictsas, for example, in the recovery phase of disas-ters, where scapegoating is common (Bucher,1957; Drabek & Quarantelli, 1967, 1969; cf.Boin, McConnell, & ‘t Hart, 2008). In somecrises, the overall intent of major social actors isto deliberately attempt to generate conflict. Incontrast to the unfolding sequential process ofnatural disasters, terrorist groups or protestingrioters not only intentionally seek to disruptsocial life, they modify or delay their attacksdepending on perceived countermeasures.

Apart from a simple observable logical dis-tinction between consensus and conflict types ofcrises, empirical studies have also establishedbehavioral differences. For example, lootingbehavior is distinctively different in the twotypes. In the typical disaster in Western societies,almost always looting is rare, covert and sociallycondemned, done by individuals, and involvestargets of opportunity. In contrast, in manyconflict crises looting is very common, overt andsocially supported, undertaken by establishedgroups of relatives or friends, and involvesdeliberately targeted locations (Quarantelli &Dynes, 1969). Likewise, there are major differ-ences in hospital activities in the two kinds ofcrises, with more variation in conflict situations.There are differences also in the extent to whichboth organizational and community-level chan-ges occur as a result of consensus and conflictcrises, with more changes resulting from conflictoccasions (Quarantelli, 1993). Finally, it hasbeen suggested that the mass media systemoperates differently in terrorism situations and innatural and technological disasters (Project forExcellence in Journalism, 1999, 2001).3

Both the Oklahoma City bombing and the9-11 World Trade Center attack led to sharpclashes between different groups of initial orga-nizational responders. There were those who sawthese happenings primarily as criminal attacksnecessitating closure of the location as a crime

3For a contrary view that sees terrorist occasions as moreor less being the same as what behaviorally appears innatural and technological disasters (Fischer, 2003).


scene, and those who saw them primarily assituations where priority ought to be on rescuingsurvivors. In the 9-11 situation, the clash con-tinued later into the issues of the handling ofdead bodies and debris clearance.

All this goes to show that crises and disastersare socially constructed. Whether it is by theo-rists, researchers, operational personnel, politi-cians or citizens, any designation comes from theconstruction process and is not inherent in thephenomena itself. This is well illustrated in anarticle by Cunningham (2005) where he showsthat a major cyanide spill into the Danube Riverwas differently defined as an incident, an acci-dent, or a catastrophe, depending on how cul-pability was perceived and who was doing thedefining.

Still other distinctions have been made. Someadvocate “crisis” as the central concept indescription and analysis (see the chapter of Boin,Kuipers and ‘t Hart in this handbook). In this lineof thinking, a crisis involves an urgent threat tothe core functions of a social system. A disasteris seen as “a crisis with a bad ending” (Boin,2005). This is consistent with the earlierexpressed idea that while there are many hazardsand risks, only a few actually manifest them-selves. But the crisis idea does not differentiateamong the manifestations themselves as theconsensus and conflict distinction does.

This is not the place to try and settle con-ceptual disagreements and we will not attempt todo so. Anyone in these areas of study shouldacknowledge that there are different views anddifferent proponents should try to make theirpositions as explicit as possible so people do notcontinue to talk past one another. It is perhapsnot amiss here to note that the very words orterms used to designate the core nature of thephenomena are etymologically very complexwith major shifts in meaning through time.4 We

are far from having standardized terms andsimilar connotations and denotations for them.

4.4.2 New Kinds of Disastersand Crises

A conceptual question that has come increasinglyto the fore in the last decade or so is the question:Have new kinds of crises and disasters began toappear? We think it is fair to say that there arenew types of risks and hazards. There are alsostructural changes in social settings. Together,they raise the prospect of new types of disastersand crises.

For example, we have seen the breakdown ofmodern transportation systems (think of thevolcanic ash crisis that paralyzed air traffic in2010; Kuipers & Boin, 2015). There have beenmassive information system failures eitherthrough sabotage or as a result of technicalbreakdowns in linked systems. There have beenterrorist attacks of a magnitude and scale not seenbefore. We are living with the prospect ofwidespread illnesses and health-related difficul-ties that appear to be qualitatively different fromtraditional medical problems. We have just livedthrough financial and economic collapses that cutacross different social systems around the world.

Many of these “new” disruptions have bothtraditional and non-traditional features: think ofthe heat waves in Paris (Lagadec, 2004) andChicago (Klinenberg, 2002), the ice storms inCanada (Scanlon, 1998), but also thegenocide-like violence in Africa and the formerYugoslavia.

The Chernobyl radiation fallout (1986) ledsome scholars and researchers to start asking ifthere was not something distinctively new aboutthat disaster. The fallout was first openly mea-sured in Sweden. Officials were mystified in thatthey could not locate any possible radiationsource in their own country. Later radiationeffects on vegetation eaten by reindeer past theArctic Circle in northern Sweden were linked tothe nuclear plant accident in the Soviet Union.The mysterious origins, crossing of nationalboundaries, and the emergent involvement of

4See Safire (2005) who struggles with past and presentetymological meanings of “disaster”, “catastrophe”,“calamity” and “cataclysm”; also see Murria (2004)who looking outside the English language found abewildering set of words used, many of which had noequivalent meanings in other languages.


many European and transnational groups was notsomething researchers had typically seen toge-ther in other prior disasters.

Looking back, it is clear that certain otherdisasters also should have alerted all of us to theprobability that new forms of adversity wereemerging. In November 1986, water used to putout fire in a plant involving agricultural chemi-cals spilled into the river Rhine. The highlypolluted river went through Switzerland, Ger-many, France, Luxembourg and the Netherlands.A series of massive fire smog episodes plaguedIndonesia in 1997 and 1998. Land speculationsled to fire-clearing efforts that, partly because ofdrought conditions, resulted in forest fires thatproduced thick smog hazes that spread overmuch of Southeast Asia (Barber & Schweithelm,2000). These disrupted travel, which in turnaffected tourism as well as creating respiratoryhealth problems, and led to political criticism ofIndonesia by other countries as multi-nationefforts to cope with the problem were not verysuccessful. Both of these occasions had charac-teristics that were not typically seen in traditionaldisasters.

4.4.3 Characteristicsof Transboundary Crisesand Disasters

In the original version of this chapter, we spokeabout “trans-system social ruptures”. This termwas an extension of the earlier label of “socialruptures” advanced by Lagadec (2000, 2004).The term “transboundary” has since become themore conventional way to describe crises anddisasters that jump across different societalboundaries disrupting the social fabric of differ-ent social systems (Ansell et al., 2010).

The two prime and initial examples we usedin the original chapter were the Severe AcuteRespiratory Syndrome (SARS) and the SoBigcomputer F virus spread, both of which appearedin 2003. The first involved a “natural” phe-nomenon, whereas the second was intentionallycreated. Since there is much descriptive literature

available on both, we here provide only verybrief statements about these phenomena.

The new infectious disease SARS appeared inthe winter of 2003. Apparently jumping fromanimals to humans it originated in southern ruralChina, near the city of Guangzhou. From there itmoved through Hong Kong and Southeast Asia.It spread quickly around the world becauseinternational plane flights were shorter than itsincubation period. At least 774 infected personsdied. It hit Canada with outbreaks in Vancouverin the West and Toronto far away in the East. Intime, 44 persons died of the several hundred thatgot ill, and thousands of others were quarantined.The city’s healthcare system virtually closeddown except for the most urgent of cases withcountless procedures being delayed or cancelled.The result was that there was widespread anxietyin the area resulting in the closing of schools, thecancellation of many meetings and, becausevisitors and tourists stayed away, a considerablenegative effect on the economy (CommissionReport, 2004, p. 28). The Commission Reportnotes a lack of coordination among the multitudeof private and public sector organizationsinvolved, a lack of consistent information onwhat was really happening, and jurisdictionalsquabbling on who should be doing what.Although SARS vanished worldwide after June2003, to this day it is still not clear why it becameso virulent in the initial outbreak and why it hasdisappeared (Yardley, 2005).

The SoBig computer F virus spread in August2003 (Schwartz, 2003). It affected many com-puter systems and threatened almost all com-puters connected to the internet. The damage wasvery costly. A variety of organizations around theworld, public and private, attempted to deal withthe problem. Initially uncoordinated, thereeventually emerged in an informal way a degreeof informational networking on how to cope withwhat was happening (Koerner, 2003).5

What can we generalize from not only thesetwo cases, but also others that we looked at later

5In May 2017, the so-called WannaCry virus affectedmillions of computers across the world with ransomware.Many hospitals were affected.


(Ansell et al., 2010)? The characteristics wedepict are stated in ideal-typical terms; that is,from a social science perspective, what the phe-nomena would be if they existed in pure orperfect form.

First, the threat jumps across many interna-tional and national/political governmentalboundaries. It crosses functional boundaries,jumping from one sector to another, and crossingfrom the private into public sectors (and some-times back). There was, for example, the hugespatial leap of SARS from a rural area in Chinato metropolitan Toronto, Canada.

Second, a transboundary threat can spreadvery fast. Cases of SARS went around the worldin less than 24 hours with a person who had beenin China flying to Canada quickly infectingpersons in Toronto. The spread of the SoBig Fvirus was called the fastest ever (Thompson,2004). This quick spread is accompanied by avery quick if not almost simultaneous globalawareness of the risk because of mass mediaattention.

Third, there is no known central or clear pointof origin, at least initially, along with the fact thatthe possible negative effects at first are far fromclear. This stood out when SARS first appearedin Canada. There is much ambiguity as to whatmight happen. Ambiguity is of course a majorhallmark of disasters and crises (Turner, 1978). Itis more pervasive in transboundary crises asinformation about causes, characteristics andconsequences is distributed across the system.

Fourth, there are potentially if not actual largenumber of victims, directly or indirectly. TheSoBig computer virus infected 30% of emailusers in China, that is about 20 million peopleand about three fourths of email messages aroundthe world were infected by this virus (Koerner,2003). In contrast to the geographic limits ofmost past disasters, the potential number of vic-tims is often open ended in disruptions that spanacross boundaries.

Fifth, traditional “solutions” or approaches –

embedded in local and/or professional institutions– will not always work. This is rather contrary tothe current emphasis in emergency managementphilosophy. The prime and first locus of planning

and managing cannot be the local community as itis presently understood. International andtransnational organizations must typically beinvolved very early in the initial response (Boin,Ekengren, & Rhinard, 2013). The nation statemay not even be a prime actor in the situation.

Sixth, although responding organizations andgroups are major players, there is an exceptionalamount of emergent behavior and the develop-ment of many informal ephemeral linkages. Insome respects, the informal social networksgenerated, involving much information net-working, are not always easily identifiable fromthe outside, even though they are often the cru-cial actors at the height of the crisis.

4.5 Transboundary Scenarios

In this section, we sketch several future scenariosthat most likely would create transboundarydisasters. Even though some of the scenariosdiscussed might seem to be science fiction innature, the possibilities we discuss are wellwithin the realm of realistic scientificpossibilities.

The most obvious scenario revolves aroundasteroids or comets hitting planet Earth (Di Justo,2005). This has, of course, happened in the past,but even more recent impacts found no or rela-tively few human beings around. There are twomajor possibilities with respect to impact(McGuire, 2000; Wisner, 2004). A landing in theocean would trigger a tsunami-like impact incoastal areas. Just the thinking of the possibilityof how, when and where ahead of time coastalpopulation evacuations might have to be under-taken, is a daunting thought. Statistically lesslikely is a landing in a heavily populated area.But a terrestrial impact anywhere on land wouldgenerate very high quantities of dust in theatmosphere, which will affect food production aswell as creating economic disruption. This wouldbe akin to the Tambora volcanic eruption in1813, which led to very cold summers and cropfailures (Post, 1977). The planning and man-agement problems for handling something likethis would be enormous.


The explosion of space shuttle Columbiascattered debris over a large part of the UnitedStates. This relatively small disaster – comparedto a comet or asteroid impact – involved massivecrossing of boundaries, a large number ofpotential victims, and could not be managed bylocal community institutions. The responserequired that an unplanned effort coordinatingorganizations that had not previously workedwith one another and other unfamiliar groups,public and private (ranging from the US ForestService to local Red Cross volunteers to regionalmedical groups), be informally instituted over agreat part of the United States (Beck & Plowman,2013; Donahue, 2003).

A second scenario is the inadvertent ordeliberate creation of biotechnological disasters.Genetic engineering of humans or food productsis currently in its infancy. The possible goodoutcomes and products from such activity aretremendous (Morton, 2005) and are spreadingaround the world (Pollack, 2005). But thedouble-edged possibilities mentioned earlier arealso present. There is dispute over geneticallymodified crops, with many European countriesresisting and preventing their use and spread intheir countries. While no major disaster or crisisfrom this biotechnology has yet occurred, therehave been many accidents and incidents thatsuggest that this will be only a matter of time.For example, in 2000, StarLink corn, approvedonly for animal feed is found in the food supply,such as taco shells and other groceries. The sameyear farmers in Europe learned that that they hadunknowingly been growing modified canolausing mixed seed from Canada. In 2001, modi-fied corn was found in Mexico even though itwas illegal to plant in that country. That sameyear, experimental corn that had been engineeredto produce a pharmaceutical that was found insoybeans in the state of Nebraska. In severalplaces, organic farmers found that it wasimpossible for them to keep their fields uncon-taminated (for further details about all theseincidents and other examples, see Pollack, 2004).Noticeable is the leaping of boundaries anduncertainty about the route of spreading. It doesnot take much imagination to see that a modified

gene intended for restricted use, could escape andcreate a contamination that could wreak ecolog-ical and other havoc.

Perhaps even more disturbing to some isgenetic engineering involving human beings.The worldwide dispute over cloning, while cur-rently perhaps more a philosophical and moralissue, does also partly involve the concern overcreating flawed human-like creatures. It is pos-sible to visualize not far-fetched worst-case sce-narios that could be rather disastrous.

It should be noted that even when there issome prior knowledge of a very serious potentialthreat, what might happen is still likely to be asambiguous and complex as when SARS firstsurfaced. This can be seen in the continuingmajor concern expressed in 2004 to mid-2005about the possible pandemic spread of avianinfluenza, the so called “bird flu” (Nuzzo, 2004;Thorson & Ekdahl, 2005). Knowledge of theevolution and spread of new pandemics, theireffects and whether presently available protectivemeasures would work, may well be very limited.Knowledge that it might occur provides verylittle guidance on what might actually happen.

It is possible to imagine the destruction of allfood supplies for human beings either throughthe inadvertent or deliberate proliferation of verytoxic biotechnological innovations for which noknown barriers to spreading exists. Thesepotential kinds of global disasters are of rela-tively recent origins and we may expect moresuch possibilities in the future. The human race isopening up potentially very catastrophic possi-bilities by innovations in nanotechnology,genetic engineering and robotics (Barrat, 2013;Joy, 2000; Makridakis, 2017). A potential is notan actuality. But it would be foolish from both aresearch as well as a planning and managingviewpoint to simply ignore these and otherdoomsday possibilities.

The question might be asked if there is abuilt-in professional bias among disaster andcrisis researchers and emergency planners to lookfor and to expect the worst (see Mueller, 2004 fornumerous examples).

In the disaster and crisis area, this orientationis reinforced by the strong tendency of social


critics and intellectuals to stress the negative.6 Itwould pay to look at the past, see what wasprojected at a particular time, and then to look atwhat actually happened. The worldwide expec-tations about what would happen at the turn ofthe century to computers are now simplyremembered as the Y2K fiasco. It would be aworthy study to take projections by researchersabout the future of ongoing crises and disasters,and then to look at what actually happened.

In the 1960s, in the United States, scholarsmade rough analyses about the immediate futurecourse of racial and university riots in thecountry. Their initial appearances had not beenforecasted. Moreover, there was a dismal recordin predicting how such events would unfold (noone seemed to have foreseen that the riots wouldgo from ghetto areas to university campuses), aswell as that they rather abruptly stopped. Weshould be able to do a better job than we have sofar in making projections about the future. Butperhaps that is asking more of disaster and crisisresearchers than is reasonable. After all, socialscientists with expertise in certain areas, to takerecent examples, failed completely to predict orforecast the non-violent demise of the SovietUnion, the peaceful transition in South Africa, orthe development of a market economy in com-munist China (cf. Tetlock, 2005).

4.6 Increased Vulnerabilityand Changing Social Settings

A disaster or crisis always occurs in some kind ofsocial setting. By social setting we mean socialsystems. These systems can and do differ insocial structures and cultural frameworks.

There has been a bias in disaster and crisisresearch towards focusing on specific agents andspecific events. Thus, there is the inclination ofsocial science researchers to say they studied thisor that earthquake, flood, explosion and/orradioactive fallout. At one level that is

nonsense. These terms refer to geophysical, cli-matological or physical happenings, which arehardly the province of social scientists. Instead,those focused on the social in the broad sense ofthe term should be studying social phenomena.Our view is that what should be looked at more isnot the possible agent that might be involved, butthe social setting of the happening. This becomesobvious when researchers have to look at suchhappenings as the 2004 Southeast Asia tsunamior locust infestations in Africa. Both of theseoccasions impacted a variety of social systems aswell as involving social actors from outside thosesystems. This led in the tsunami disaster to sharpcultural clashes regarding on how to handle thedead between Western European organizationswho came into look mostly for bodies of theirtourist citizens, and local groups who had dif-ferent beliefs and values with respect to deadbodies (Scanlon, personal communication withfirst author).

The residents of the Andaman Islands lived ata level many would consider “primitive”. At thetime of the 2004 tsunami in Southeast Asia, theyhad no access to modern warning systems. Butprior to the tsunami, members of the tribalcommunities saw signs of disturbed marine lifeand heard unusual agitated cries of sea birds.This was interpreted as a sign of impendingdanger, so that part of the population got off thebeaches and retreated inland to the woods andsurvived intact (ICPAC Report, 2006).

There is a need to look at both the currentsocial settings as well as certain social trends thatinfluence disasters and crises. In no way are wegoing to address all aspects of social systems andcultural frameworks or their social evolution,either past or prospective. Instead, we willselectively discuss and illustrate a few dimen-sions that would seem to be particularly impor-tant with respect to crises and disasters.

What might these be? Let us first look atexisting social structures around the world. Whatdifferences are there in authority relationships,social institutions and social diversity? Asexamples, we might note that Australia and theUnited States are far more governmentallydecentralized than France or Japan (Bosner,

6For example, Rees (2004), a cosmologist at CambridgeUniversity, gives civilization as we know it only a 50-50chance of surviving the 21st Century.


2002; Schoff, 2004). This affects what might ormight not happen at times of disasters (it is oftenaccepted that top-down systems have moreproblems in responding to crises and disasters).But what does it mean for the management oftransboundary disruptions, which requireincreased cooperation between and across sys-tems? Will decentralized systems be able toproduce “emergent” transboundary cooperation?

As another example, mass media systemsoperate in rather different ways in China com-pared with Western Europe. This is importantbecause to a considerable extent the mass com-munication system (including social media) is byfar the major source of “information” about adisaster or a crisis. They play a major role in thesocial construction of disasters and crises. For along time in the former Soviet Union, even majordisasters and overt internal conflicts by way ofriots were simply not openly reported (Berg,1988). And only late in 2005 did Chineseauthorities announce that henceforth death tollsin natural disasters would be made public, butnot for other kinds of crises (Kahn, 2005).

Another social structural dimension has to dowith the range of social diversity in differentsystems (Bolin & Stanford, 2006). Socialgroupings and categories can be markedly dif-ferent in their homogeneity or heterogeneity. Thevariation, for instance, can be in terms of lifestyles, class differences or demographic compo-sition. The aging population in Western Europeand Japan is in sharp contrast to the very youngpopulations in most developing countries. This isimportant because the very young and the veryold incur disproportionately the greatest numberof fatalities in disasters.

Human societies also differ in terms of theircultural frameworks. As anthropologists havepointed out, they can have very different patternsof beliefs, norms, and values. As one example,there can be widely held different conceptions ofwhat occasions disasters and crises. The sourcecan be attributed to supernatural, natural, orhuman factors as indicated earlier. This canmarkedly affect everything from what mitigationmeasures might be considered to how recoveryand reconstruction will be undertaken.

Norms indicating what course of action shouldbe followed in different situations can varytremendously. For example, the norm of helpingothers outside of one’s own immediate group attimes of disasters and crises ranges from full helpto none. Thus, although the Kobe earthquake wasan exception, any extensive volunteering in dis-asters was very rare in Japan (for a comparison ofthe US and Japan, see Hayashi, 2004). In societieswith extreme cross-cultural ethnic or racial dif-ferences, volunteering to help others outside ofone’s own group at times of disasters or crisis isalmost unknown.

Social structures and cultural frameworks ofcourse are always changing. To understandfuture disasters and crises, it is necessary toidentify and understand trends that may beoperative with respect to both social structuresand cultural frameworks. In particular, for ourpurposes, it is important to note trends that mightbe cutting across structural and culturalboundaries.

Globalization has been an ongoing force.Leaving aside the substantive disputes about themeaning of the term, what is involved is at leastthe increasing appearance of new social actors atthe global level. With respect to disaster reliefand recovery, there is the continuing rise oftransnational or international organizations suchas UN entities, the European Union, religiouslyoriented groupings, and the World Bank (Boinet al., 2013). With the decline of the importanceof the nation state (Guéhenno, 1995; Mann,1997), more and new social actors, especially ofan NGO nature, are to be anticipated.

The rise of the information society hasenabled the development of informal social net-works that globally cut across political bound-aries. This trend will likely increase in the future.Such networks are creating social capital (in thesocial science sense) that will be increasinglyimportant in dealing with disasters and crises.

At the cultural level, we can note the greaterinsistence of citizens that they ought to beactively protected against disasters and crises(Beck, 1999). This is part of a democratic ide-ology that has spread around the world. Thatsame ideology carries an inherent paradox: the


global citizen may not appreciate governmentinterference in everyday life, but expects gov-ernment to show up immediately when acuteadversity hits.

Finally, there has been the impact of the 9/11attacks especially on official thinking not just inthe United States but elsewhere also. This hap-pening has clearly been a “focusing event” (asBirkland, 1997 uses the term) and changed alongsome lines, certain values, beliefs and norms(Smelser, 2004; Tierney, 2005). There is a ten-dency, at least in the US after 9/11, to think thatall future crises and disasters will be new formsof terrorism. One can see this in the creation ofthe US Department of Homeland Security, whichrepeated errors in approach and thinking thatover 50 years of research have shown to beincorrect (e.g., an imposition of a command andcontrol model, assuming that citizens will reactinappropriately to warnings, seeing organiza-tional improvisation as bad managing, seeDynes, 2003). These changes were accompaniedby the downgrading of FEMA and its emphasison mitigation (Cohn, 2005). Valid or not, suchideas influence thinking about transboundarydisasters and crises (and not just in the UnitedStates).

The ideas expressed above and the examplesused were intended to make several simplepoints. They suggest, for instance, that anearthquake of the same magnitude in France toone in Iran will probably be reacted to differ-ently. A riot in Sweden will be a different phe-nomenon than one in Myanmar. To understandand analyze such happenings requires taking intoaccount the aspects just discussed. It is hard tobelieve that countries that currently have nofunctioning national government, such asSomalia and the Democratic Republic of theCongo or marginally operatives ones such asAfghanistan, will have the same reaction to dis-asters and crises as societies with fully functionalnational governments. Different kinds of disas-ters and crises will occur in rather different socialsettings. In fact, events that today are considereddisasters or crises were not necessarily so viewedin the past.

In noting these cross-societal andcross-cultural differences, we are not saying thatthere are no universal principles of disaster andcrisis behavior. There is considerable researchevidence supportive of this notion. We wouldargue, for example, that many aspects of effectivewarning systems, problems of bureaucracies inresponding, the crucial importance of thefamily/household unit are roughly the same in allsocieties. To suggest the importance ofcross-societal and cross-cultural differences issimply to suggest that good social scienceresearch needs to take differences into accountwhile at the same time searching for universalprinciples about disasters and crises. This isconsistent with those disaster researchers andscholars (e.g., Oliver-Smith, 1994) who haveargued that studies in these areas have badlyneglected the historical context of such happen-ings. Of course, this neglect of the larger andparticularly historical context has characterizedmuch social science research of any kind(Wallerstein, 1995); it is not peculiar to disasterand crisis studies.

4.7 The Social Amplificationof Disasters and Crises

One trend that affects the character of moderncrises and disasters is what we call the socialamplifications of crises and disasters. Pidgeon,Kasperson, and Slovic (2003) described a socialaugmentation process with respect to risk. Tothem, risk not only depends on the character ofthe dangerous agent itself but how it was seen inthe larger context in which it appeared. The ideathat there can be social amplification of risk restson the assumption that aspects relevant to haz-ards interact with processes of a psychological,social, institutional, and cultural nature in such amanner that they can increase or decrease per-ceptions of risk (Kasperson & Kasperson, 2005).It is important to note that the perceived riskcould be raised or be diminished depending onthe factors in the larger context, which makes itdifferent from the vulnerability paradigm which


tends to assume the factors involved will beprimarily negative ones.

We have taken this idea and extended it to thebehaviors that appear in disasters and crises.Extreme heat waves and massive blizzards arehardly new weather phenomena (Burt, 2004).There have recently been two heat waves, how-ever, that have new elements in them. In 2003, along lasting and very intensive heat wave bat-tered France. Nearly 15,000 persons died (andperhaps 22,000–35,000 in all of Europe). Par-ticularly noticeable was that the victims wereprimarily socially isolated older persons. Anothercharacteristic was that officials were very slow inaccepting the fact that there was a problem andso there was very little initial response (Lagadec,2004). There was a similar earlier happening1995 in Chicago not much noticed until reportedin a study seven years later (see Klinenberg,2002). It exhibited the same features, that is,older isolated victims, bureaucratic indifference,and mass media uncertainty.

At the other temperature extreme, in 1998,Canada experienced an accumulation of snowand ice that went considerably beyond the typi-cal. The ice storm heavily impacted electric andtransport systems, especially around Montreal.The critical infrastructures being affected createdchain reactions that reached into banks andrefineries. At least 66 municipalities declared astate of emergency. Such a very large geographicarea was involved that many police were baffledthat “there was no scene”, no “ground zero” thatcould be the focus of attention (Scanlon, 1998).There were also many emergent groups andinformal network linkages (Scanlon, 1999).

In some ways, this was similar to what hap-pened in August 2003, when the highly inter-connected eastern North American power gridstarted to fail when three transmission lines in thestate of Ohio came into contact with trees andshort circuited (Townsend & Moss, 2005). Thiscreated a cascade of power failures that resultedin blackouts in cities from New York to Torontoand eventually left around 50 million personswithout power, which, in turn, disrupted

everyday community and social routines (Ball-man, 2003). It took months of investigation toestablish the exact path of failure propagationthrough a huge, complex network. Telecommu-nication and electrical infrastructures entwined incomplex interconnected and network systemsspread over a large geographic area with multipleend users. Therefore, localized disruptions cancascade into large-scale failures (for more details,see Townsend & Moss, 2005).

Such power blackouts have occurred amongothers in Auckland, New Zealand in 1998(Newlove, Stern, & Svedin, 2002); in BuenosAires in 1999 (Ullberg, 2004); in Stockholm in2001 and 2002; in Siberian cities in 2001(Humphrey, 2003); in Moscow in 2005 (Arved-lund, 2005); in Brazil in 2009 (Brooks, 2009); inBangladesh in 2014 (Al-Mahmood, 2014), and inSri Lanka in 2016 (LBO, 2016). All of thesecases initially involved accidents or software andhardware failures in complex technical systemsthat generate severe consequences creating acrisis with major economic and often politicaleffects. These kinds of crises should have beenexpected. A National Research Council report(1989) forecast the almost certain probability ofthese kinds of risks in future network linkages.

Blackouts can also be deliberately createdeither for good or malevolent reasons havingnothing to with problems in network linkages.Employees of the now notorious Enron energycompany, in order to exploit Western energymarkets, indirectly but deliberately took off line aperfectly functioning Las Vegas power plant sothat rolling blackouts hit plant-dependent north-ern and central California with about a millionresidences and businesses losing power (Egan,2005). In the earliest days of electricity in NewYork City, the Mayor ordered the power cut offwhen poor maintenance of exposed and openwires resulted in a number of electrocutions ofcitizens and electrical workers (Jonnes, 2004).One should not think of blackouts as solely theresult of mechanical or physical failures creatingchain-like cascades.


4.8 Traditional Disasters and CrisesRemain Dominant

Most disasters are still traditional ones. Forexample, four major hurricanes hit the state ofFlorida in 2004. We saw very little in what wefound that required thinking of them in somemajor new ways, or even in planning for ormanaging them. The problems, individual ororganizational, that surfaced were the usual ones,and how to successfully handle them is fairlywell known. More important, emergent difficul-ties were actually somewhat better handled thanin the past, perhaps reflecting that officials mayhave had exposure to earlier studies and reports.Thus, the warnings issued and the evacuationsthat took place were better than in the past.Looting concerns were almost non-existent andless than ten percent indicated possible mentalhealth effects. The pre-impact organizationalmobilization and placement of resources beyondthe community level was also better. The effi-ciency and effectiveness of local emergencymanagement offices were markedly higher thanin the past.

Not everything was done well. Long knownproblematical aspects and failures to implementmeasures that research had suggested a long timeago were found. There were major difficulties ininterorganizational coordination. The recoveryperiod was plagued by the usual problems. Eventhe failures that showed up in pre-impact miti-gation efforts were known.

The majority of contemporary disasters in theUnited States are still rather similar to most of theearlier ones. What could be seen in the 2004hurricanes in Florida was rather similar to whatthe Disaster Research Center (DRC) had studiedthere in the 1960s and the 1970s. As the elec-tronic age goes beyond its birth and as othersocial trends continue, new elements may appearcreating new problems that will necessitate newplanning. If and when that happens, we may haverather new kinds of hurricane disasters, butmovement in that direction will be slow.

As the famous sociologist Herbert Blumerused to say in his class lectures a long time ago, itis sometimes useful to check whatever is

theoretically proposed against personal experi-ence. In 2005, an extensive snowstorm led to theclosing of almost all schools and governmentoffices in the state of Delaware. This wasaccompanied by the widespread cancellations ofreligious and sport events. There was across theboard disruption of air, road and train services.All of this resulted in major economic losses inthe millions of dollars. There were scatteredinterruptions of critical life systems. The gover-nor issued a state of emergency declaration andthe state as well as local emergency managementoffices fully mobilized. To be sure, what hap-pened did not fully rival what surfaced in theCanadian blizzard discussed earlier. But it wouldbe difficult to argue that it did not meet criteriaoften used by many to categorize disasters. Whathappened was not that different from what othersand we had experienced in the past. In short, itwas a traditional disaster.

Finally, at the same time we were thinkingabout the Florida hurricanes and the Delawaresnowstorm, we also observed other events thatmany would consider disasters or crises. Cer-tainly, a BP Texas plant explosion in 2005 wouldqualify. It involved the third largest refinery inthe country. More than a hundred were injuredand 15 persons died. In addition, there was majorphysical destruction of refinery equipment andnearby buildings were leveled. There was fullmobilization of local emergency managementpersonnel (Franks, 2005). At about the sametime, there were landslides in the state of Utahand California; a stampede with hundreds ofdeaths in a Bombay, India temple, train and planecrashes in different places around the world, aswell as large bus accidents; a dam rupture whichswept away five villages, bridges and roads inPakistan; recurrent coal mine accidents and col-lapses in China; recurrent false reports in Asiaabout tsunamis that greatly disrupted local rou-tines; sinking of ferries with many deaths, andlocalized riots and hostage takings. At least basedon press reports, it does not seem that there wasanything distinctively new about these occasions.They seem to greatly resemble many such priorhappenings.


Unless current social trends change veryquickly in hypothetical directions (e.g., markedchanges as a result of biotechnological advan-ces), for the foreseeable future there will continueto be many traditional local community disastersand crises (such as localized floods and torna-does, hostage takings or mass shootings,exploding tanker trucks or overturned trains,circumscribed landslides, disturbances if not riotsat local sport venues, large plant fires, suddendiscoveries of previously unknown very toxiclocal waste sites, most airplane crashes, stam-pedes and panic flights in buildings, etc.).

Mega-disasters and global crises will be rarein a numerical and relative sense, although theymay generate much mass media attention. Forexample, the terrorist attacks in European cities(Madrid in 2004; London in 2005; Paris in 2015;Brussels, Nice, Munich Berlin in 2016; Stock-holm and Manchester in 2017) were certainlymajor crises and symbolically very important,but numerically there are far more local trainwrecks and car collisions everyday in manycountries in the world. The more localized crisesand disasters will continue to be the mostnumerous, despite the rise of transboundary cri-ses and disasters.

4.9 Implications

What are some of the implications for planningand managing that result from taking the per-spective we have suggested about crises anddisasters? If our descriptions and analyses ofsuch happenings are valid, there would seem tobe the need for new kinds of planning andpreparation for the management of future crisesand disasters (Ansell et al., 2010).Non-traditional disasters and crises require somenon-conventional processes and social arrange-ments. They demand innovative thinking “out-side of the box” (Boin & Lagadec, 2000;Lagadec, 2005).

This does not mean that everything has to benew. As said earlier, all disasters and crises sharecertain common dimensions or elements. For

example, if early warning is possible at all,research has consistently shown that acceptablewarnings have to come from a legitimately rec-ognized source, have to be consistent, and haveto indicate that the threat or risk is fairly imme-diate. These principles certainly pertain to themanagement of transboundary disruptions.

Actually, if traditional risks and hazards andtheir occasional manifestations were all we nee-ded to be worried about, we would be in rathergood shape. As already said several times, fewthreats actually manifest themselves in disasters.For example, in the 14,600 plus tornadoesappearing in the United States between 1952 and1973, there were casualties in only 497 of them,and 26 of these occasions accounted for almosthalf of the fatalities (Noji, 2000). Similarly, itwas noted in 1993 that while about 1.3 millionpeople had been killed in earthquakes since1900, over 70% of them had died in only 12occurrences (Jones, Noji, Smith, & Wagner,1993, p. 19).

We can say that risks and hazards and theirrelatively rare manifestations in crises and disas-ters are being coped with much better than theyever were even just a half-century ago. Forexample, there has been a remarkable reduction incertain societies of fatalities and even propertydestruction in some natural disaster occasionsassociatedwith hurricanes, floods and earthquakes(see Scanlon, 2004 for data on North America). Inthe conflict area, the outcomes have been muchmore uneven, but even here, for example, therecurrence of world wars seems very unlikely.

But transboundary crises and disasters requiresome type of transboundary cooperation. Forexample, let us assume that a health risk isinvolved. If international cooperation is needed,who talks with whom about what? At what timeis action initiated? Who takes the lead in orga-nizing a response? What legal issues are involved(e.g., if health is the issue, can health authoritiesclose airports?)? There might be many expertsand much technical information around; if so,and they are not consistent, whose voice andideas should be followed? What should be givenpriority? How could a forced quarantine be


enforced? What of ethical issues? Who shouldget limited vaccines? What should the massmedia be told and by who and when?

At a more general level of planning andmanaging, we can briefly indicate, almost inoutline form, a half dozen principles that ought tobe taken into account by disaster planners andcrisis managers.

First, a clear connection should be madebetween local planning and transboundarymanaging processes. There usually is a lowcorrelation between planning and managing,even for traditional crises and disasters. But innewer kinds of disasters and crises, there arelikely to be far more contingencies. Planningprocesses need to be rethought and enhanced tohelp policymakers work across boundaries.

Second, the appearance of new emergentsocial phenomena (including groups and behav-iors) needs to be taken into account. There arealways new or emergent groups at times of majordisasters and crises, but in transboundary eventsthey appear at a much higher rate. Networks andnetwork links have to be particularly taken intoaccount.

Third, there is the need to be imaginative andcreative. The response to Hurricane Katrinasuggests how hard it can be to meet trans-boundary challenges. But improvisation can go along way. A good example is found in theimmediate aftermath of 9/11 in New York. Inspite the total loss of the New York City Office ofEmergency Management and its EOC facility, acompletely new EOC was established elsewhereand started to operate very effectively within72 h after the attack. There had been no planningfor such an event, yet around 750,000 personswere evacuated by water transportation fromlower Manhattan (Kendra & Wachtendorf, 2016;Kendra, Wachtendorf, & Quarantelli, 2003).

Fourth, exercises and simulations of disastersand crises must take into account transboundarycontingencies. Most such training and educa-tional efforts along such lines are designed to be

like scripts for plays. That is a very poor modelto use. Realistic contingencies, unknown to mostof the players in the scenarios, force the thinkingthrough of unconventional options. Even moreimportant, policymakers need to be explicitlytrained in the management of transboundarycrises and disasters.

Fifth, planning should be with citizens andtheir social groups, and not for them. There is nosuch thing as the “public” in the sense of somehomogenous entity (Blumer, 1948). There areonly individual citizens and the groups of whichthey are members. The perspective from thebottom up is crucial to getting things done. Thishas nothing to do with democratic ideologies; ithas instead to do with getting effective and effi-cient planning and managing of disasters andcrises. Related to this is that openness withinformation rather than secrecy is mandatory.This runs against the norms of most bureaucra-cies and other organizations. The more infor-mation the mass media and citizens have, thebetter they will be able to react and respond.However, all this is easier said than done.

Finally, there is a need to start thinking oflocal communities in ways different than theyhave been traditionally viewed. Up to now,communities have been seen as occupying somegeographical space and existing in somechronological time. Instead, we should visualizethe kinds of communities that exist today are incyberspace. These newer communities must bethought of as existing in social space and socialtime. Viewed this way, the newer kinds ofcommunities can be seen as very important inplanning for and managing disasters and crisesthat cut across national boundaries. To think thisway requires a moving away from the traditionalview of communities in the past. This will not beeasy given that the traditional community focusis strongly entrenched in most places around theworld (see United Nations, 2005). But “virtualreality communities” will be the social realities inthe future.


4.10 Looking at the Future

Assuming that what we have written has somevalidity, what new research should be undertakenin the future on the topic of future disasters andcrises? In previous pages, we suggested somefuture studies on specific topics that would beworthwhile doing. However, in this section wewant to outline research of a more general nature.

For one, practically everything we discussedought to be looked at in different cultures andsocieties. As mentioned earlier, there is a bias inour perspective that reflects our greater familiaritywith and awareness of examples from the West(and even more narrowly Western Europe, theUnited States and Canada). In particular, there is aneed to undertake research in developing ratherthan only developed countries. And that includesat least some of these studies being undertaken byresearchers and scholars from the very socialsystems that are being studied. The different cul-tural perspectives that would be brought to bearmight be very enlightening, and enable us to seethings that presently we do not see, being some-what a prisoner of our own culture.

Second, here and there in this chapter, wehave suggested that it is important to study theconditions that generate disasters and crises. Butthere has to be at least some understanding of thenature of X before there can be a serious turn toascertaining the conditions that generate X. Wehave taken this first step in this chapter. Futurework should focus more on the generating con-ditions. A general model would involve the fol-lowing ideas. The first is to look at social systems(societal, community and/or organizationalones), and to analyze how they have becomemore complex and tightly coupled. The laststatement would be treated as a workinghypothesis. If that turns out to be true, it couldthen be hypothesized that systems can breakdown in more ways than ever before. A sec-ondary research thrust would be to see if systemsalso have developed ways to deal with or copewith threatening breakdowns. As such, it mightbe argued that what ensues is an uneven balancebetween resiliency and vulnerability.

In studying contemporary trends, particularattention might be given to demographic ones. Itwould be difficult to find any country todaywhere the population composition is not chang-ing in some way. The increasing populationdensity in high risk areas seems particularlyimportant. Another value in doing research onthis topic is that much demographic data are of aquantitative nature.

We mentioned financial and economic col-lapses cutting across different systems. How canfinancial collapse conceivably be thought of ascomparable in any way to natural disasters andcrises involving conflict? One simple answer isthat for nearly a hundred years, one subfield ofsociology has categorized, for example, panicflight in theater fires and financial panics asgeneric subtypes within the field of collectivebehavior (Blumer, 1939; Smelser, 1963). Bothhappenings involve new, emergent behaviors ofa non-traditional nature. In this respect, scholarslong ago put both types of behavior into the samecategory.

Although disaster and crisis researchers havenot looked at financial collapses, maybe it is timethat they did so. These kinds of happenings seemto occur very quickly, are ambiguous as to theirconsequences, cut across political and sectorboundaries, involve a great deal of emergentbehavior and cannot be handled at the commu-nity level. In short, what has to be looked for aregenotypic characteristics not phenotypic ones(Perry, 2004). If whales, human beings, and batscan all be usefully categorized as mammals forscientific research purposes, maybe students ofdisasters should also pay less attention to phe-notypic features. If so, should other disruptivephenomena like AIDS also be approached asdisasters? Our overall point, is that new researchalong the lines indicated might lead researchersto seeing phenomena in ways different than theyhad previously seen.

Finally, we have said little at all about theresearch methodologies that might be necessaryto study transboundary ruptures. Up to now,disaster and crisis researchers have argued thatthe methods they use in their research are indis-tinguishable from those used throughout the


social sciences. The methods are simply appliedunder circumstances that are relatively unique(Stallings, 2002).

In general, we agree with that position. Buttwo questions can be raised. First, if social sci-entists venture into such areas as genetic engi-neering, cyberspace, robotics and complexinfectious diseases, do they need to haveknowledge of these phenomena to a degree thatthey presently do not have? This suggests theneed for actual interdisciplinary research. Socialscientists ought to expand their knowledge basebefore venturing to study certain disasters andcrises, especially the newer ones. There issomething here that needs attention. In the soci-ology of science there have already been studiesof how researchers from rather different disci-plines studying one research question, interactwith one another and what problems they have.Researchers in the disaster and crisis area shouldlook at these studies.

Our view is that the area of disasters andcrises is changing. This might seem to be a verypessimistic outlook. That is not the case. There isreason to think, as we tried to document earlier,that human societies in the future will be able tocope with whatever new risks and hazards comeinto being. To be sure, given hazards and risks,there are bound to be disasters and crises. A riskfree society has never existed and will neverexist. But while this general principle isundoubtedly true, it is not so with reference toany particular or specific case. In fact, the greatmajority of potential dangers never manifestthemselves eventually in disasters and crises.

Finally, we should note again that theapproach in this chapter has been a heuristic one.We have not pretended that we have absolute andconclusive research-based knowledge or under-standing about all of the issues we have dis-cussed. This is in line with Alexander (2005,p. 97) who wrote that scientific research is neverending in its quest for knowledge, rather thantrying to reach once-for-all final conclusions, andtherefore “none of us should presume to have allthe answers”.

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