Governing Disasters – The Challenges of Emergency Risk Regulation

Emergency crises have always tested our ability to organise and swiftly execute a coordinated response. Both natural and unnatural disasters pose new questions to which previous experience provides only limited answers. These challenges are arguably greater than ever, in a more globalised world confronted by a truly transnational hazard. This is the first volume that addresses the complexities of emergency risk regulations, i.e. regulatory action undertaken under the immediacy of a disaster in order to mitigate its impact. It does so from a multidisciplinary perspective, drawing upon research from economics, law, sociology and other fields, as well as moral philosophy and leading expertise in natural disasters. Whilst our knowledge base is wide-ranging, there is a common focus on the practical lessons of the ash cloud crisis as well as of the Fukushima disaster for emergency risk regulation more generally. Among many other insights Governing Disasters explains why in both instances it was that industry and regulators were largely unprepared for phenomena about which we were not scientifically ignorant. It concludes that the toolbox of risk regulation should not be expected to provide ready-made solutions but applied flexibly, creatively and with some humility