DISASTER RESEARCHsmall groups; the disaster recovery period is fraught
with problems at the household, organization, and
community levels; mitigation measures are given
little priority even in disaster-prone localities; and
social change is seldom an outcome of most
disasters.
Generalizations of a more limited nature also
seem to exist. There are social-system–structure-
specific behaviors. For example, there often is a
major delay in the response to catastrophic disas-
ters from centralized, compared to decentralized,
governmental systems. There also may be cultural-
ly specific differences. For example, reflecting cul-
tural values, individual volunteers in disasters very
rarely appear in some societies such as Japan
whereas they are typical in almost all American
disasters.
THE FUTUREThere is a dialectical process at work: There will be
more and worse disasters at the same time that
there will be more and better planning. Why more
and worse disasters? Risks and threats to human
beings and their societies are increasing. Tradi-
tional natural-disaster agents, such as earthquakes
and floods, will simply have more to impact as the
result of normal population growth and higher,
denser concentration of inhabitants in risk-prone
localities, such as floodplains or hurricane-vulner-
able shorelines that otherwise are attractive for
human occupancy. There is an escalating increase
in certain kinds of technological accidents and
mishaps in the chemical, nuclear, and hazardous-
waste areas that were almost unknown before
World War II. There are technological advances
that create risks and complexities to old threats
such as when fires are prevented in high-rise build-
ings by constructing them with highly toxic materi-
als, or when the removal of hazardous substances
from solid sewage waste generates products that
contain dangerous viruses and gases. New versions
of old threats are also appearing, such as the
increasing probability of urban rather than rural
droughts, or the potential large-scale collapse of
the infrastructure of older metropolitan area life-
line systems. Finally, there is the continual devel-
opment of newer kinds of risks ranging from the
biological threats that are inherent in genetic engi-
neering, to the crises that will be generated as the
world increasingly becomes dependent on com-
puters that are bound to fail somewhere at some
key point, with drastic consequences for social
systems. In addition, the newer threats are fre-
quently dangerous at places and times distant
from their initial source or origin as dramatized by
the Chernobyl nuclear radiation fallout in Europe-
an countries and smog pollution episodes such as
forest fires in Indonesia which had negative effects
in many Southeast Asian countries.On the other hand, there is increasing con-
cern and attention being paid to disaster planning
of all kind. The future augers well for more and
better planning. Citizens almost everywhere are
coming to expect that their governments will take
steps to protect them against disasters; this is often
actualized in planning for emergency prepared-
ness and response. Whereas two decades ago a
number of societies had no preimpact disaster
planning of any kind, this is no longer the case. A
symbolic manifestation of this trend was the proc-
lamation by the United Nations of the 1990s as
The Decade for Natural-Disaster Reduction. This
international attention accelerated efforts to pre-
vent, prepare for, respond to, and recover from
disasters. The effect was especially notable in the
increased disaster planning in developed countries.In developed societies, a focus on disaster
planning and crisis management had started earli-
er, partly as a result of sociological and related
research. By the 1980s, social scientists were in-
creasingly influencing policies, political agenda
settings, and operational matters regarding disas-
ters. This can be seen in a variety of ways. Social
scientists were represented on almost all national
committees set up for the U. N. Decade, and
contributed significantly to the reports prepared
to mark the midpoint of the decade. The Board on
Natural Disasters, established in 1992 in the U.S.
National Academy of Sciences, always has had
members from sociology and related disciplines.
Sociologists have had major roles in national-disas-
ter legislation in Greece and Italy. American social
science disaster researchers typically testify before
state and congressional committees considering
disaster-related laws and policies. Many sociologi-
cal disaster researchers provide both paid and
unpaid consultant services to international, na-
tional, and local public and private groups in-
volved in disaster-related activities. In places such