Disaster by Choice: How our actions turn natural hazards into catastrophes

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Japan’s 2011 earthquake and tsunami continue to provide many post-disaster mental health and wellbeing lessons to be implemented for prevention. Games can help change our psychology about disasters, creating confidence that we can and should prevent them. I am typing this review in the aftermath of property-damaging floods in the UK and life-taking wildfires in Australia, and during the Covid-19 pandemic. The Geological Society of London is the UK's national society for geoscience, providing support to over 12,000 members in the UK and overseas.

Disaster by Choice really brings the examples and recommendations down to our daily lives and practices to make them more impactful. The Geological Society offers grades of membership for every stage of your career, from student to retirement. We feel the need to fight natural forces, to reclaim what weassume is ours, and to protect ourselves from what we perceive to be wrath from outside our communities. We put ourselves in harm's way; we fail to take measures which we know would prevent disasters, no matter what the environment does. Science recounts a different story, however: disasters are not the consequence of natural causes; they are the consequence of human choices and decisions.An] engaging book filled with rich examples and details of specific historical events Kelmans succinct and generally lucid account of the state of knowledge within the field, will likely be useful to a wide range of readers. They arise from the political processes dictating where and what we build, and from social circumstances which create and perpetuate poverty and discrimination. As prospects for space travel and settlement expand, mental and physical health risks and disaster risks must be managed.

Disasters arise when we fail to build suitable housing capable of withstanding 400 kph winds, fail to shun places subject to lava flows or tsunamis, or do not create a culture of warning and safe shelter for all – including for those with disabilities. assume is ours, and to protect ourselves from what we perceive to be wrath from outside our communities. Two scientific papers describe the mental health and coping mechanisms of youth experiencing the disaster of a flood in Germany. In this provocative book, Ilan Kelman argues that the true disaster is not caused by natural phenomena, but by human choices which leave people unprepared and at terrible risk.We feel the need to fight natural forces, to reclaim what we assume is ours, and to protect ourselves from what we perceive to be wrath from outside our communities. In this wide-ranging, one-stop guide, James Temperton outlines the medical revolutions that are transforming healthcare. Sanne Blauw travels the world to unpick our relationship with numbers and demystify our misguided allegiance, from Florence Nightingale using statistics to petition for better conditions during the Crimean War to the manipulation of numbers by the American tobacco industry and the ambiguous figures pedalled during the EU referendum. In ‘Firmament’, atmospheric scientist and science communicator Simon Clark offers a rare and accessible tour of the ins and outs of the atmosphere and how we know what we know about it.