ABSTRACT
In 2004, an earthquake followed by a tsunami struck Indonesia in one of the worse natural disasters in modern times. Disasters are best defined as interactions between socio-technological constructions and nature’s constructions that result in harmful consequences, with two types of initiating processes: naturogenic and anthropogenic. Human activities are now unleashing more intense cyclones, flooding, wildfires, invasive species, and so on, due to fossil-fueled global warming. Reliance on tightly coupled technologies like electrical grids can propagate vulnerability to extreme disturbances of nature far afield. Governance of rapid-onset disasters is typically multi-scale from the bottom up: local communities deal with small calamities; when their capacities are exceeded, regions and provinces take charge; when their capacity is surpassed, national governments act, especially financially; and when a particularly destructive catastrophe strikes poor countries lacking resilience, other nations aid.
