Within minutes of the March 2011 earthquake in Japan, news media provided unprecedented coverage of an unfolding natural catastrophe. Events such as this place natural disasters firmly in the public eye but only for a short time. It falls to the research community to learn the lessons offered by...

One way to reduce the risk from earthquakes is for individuals to undertake preparations for earthquakes at home. Common preparation measures include gathering together survival items, undertaking mitigation actions, developing a household emergency plan, gaining survival skills or participating...

This paper reports on a study investigating cross-cultural equivalence in predictors of earthquake preparedness. Data were collected from Napier (New Zealand) and Kyoto (Japan). These locations were selected because they face comparable levels of seismic risk but differ with respect to their...

In areas prone to natural hazards, a key goal of risk management is mitigating risk by encouraging people to adopt protective measures. Despite the efforts of civic emergency management agencies, the goal of ensuring the sustained adoption of these measures has proved elusive. This paper argues...

The devastating southeast Asian tsunami of December 26, 2004 has brought home the destructive consequences of coastal hazards in an absence of effective warning systems. Since the 1946 tsunami that destroyed much of Hilo, Hawai‘i, a network of pole mounted sirens has been used to provide an...