ABSTRACT
In the four years that have gone by since the first edition of this book was pub-lished in 2007, we have seen a remarkable series of disasters-major to cata-strophic in their impacts-not only in the United States but throughout the world. In the United States we experienced a record-setting man-made disaster, the BP oil spill (2010). Internationally, the floods in Pakistan (2010); the earthquakes in Haiti (2010), Chile (2010), and New Zealand (2010 and 2011); and, most recently, the earthquake and related disasters in Japan (2011) were quite extraordinary and, in many regards, overwhelming.
