The Next Catastrophe : : Reducing Our Vulnerabilities to Natural, Industrial, and Terrorist Disasters / / Charles Perrow.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Princeton University Press eBook-Package Backlist 2000-2013
• VerfasserIn: Perrow, Charles,
• Place / Publishing House: Princeton, NJ : : Princeton University Press, , [2011]; ©2011
• Year of Publication: 2011
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (432 p.)

Charles Perrow is famous worldwide for his ideas about normal accidents, the notion that multiple and unexpected failures--catastrophes waiting to happen--are built into our society's complex systems. In The Next Catastrophe, he offers crucial insights into how to make us safer, proposing a bold new way of thinking about disaster preparedness. Perrow argues that rather than laying exclusive emphasis on protecting targets, we should reduce their size to minimize damage and diminish their attractiveness to terrorists. He focuses on three causes of disaster--natural, organizational, and deliberate--and shows that our best hope lies in the deconcentration of high-risk populations, corporate power, and critical infrastructures such as electric energy, computer systems, and the chemical and food industries. Perrow reveals how the threat of catastrophe is on the rise, whether from terrorism, natural disasters, or industrial accidents. Along the way, he gives us the first comprehensive history of FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security and examines why these agencies are so ill equipped to protect us. The Next Catastrophe is a penetrating reassessment of the very real dangers we face today and what we must do to confront them. Written in a highly accessible style by a renowned systems-behavior expert, this book is essential reading for the twenty-first century. The events of September 11 and Hurricane Katrina--and the devastating human toll they wrought--were only the beginning. When the next big disaster comes, will we be ready? In a new preface to the paperback edition, Perrow examines the recent (and ongoing) catastrophes of the financial crisis, the BP oil spill, and global warming.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface to the Paperback Edition. Continuing Catastrophe -- Acknowledgments -- Part One: Introduction and Natural Disasters -- 1. Shrink the Targets -- 2. "Natural" Disasters? -- Part Two: Can Government Help? -- 3. The Government Response The First FEMA -- 4. The Disaster after 9/11: The Department of Homeland Security and a New FEMA -- Part Three: The Disastrous Private Sector -- 5. Are Terrorists as Dangerous as Management? The Nuclear Plant Threat -- 6. Better Vulnerability through Chemistry -- 7. Disastrous Concentration in the National Power Grid -- 8. Concentration and Terror on the Internet -- Part Four: What Is to Be Done? -- 9. The Enduring Sources of Failure: Organizational, Executive, and Regulatory -- Appendix A: Three Types of Redundancy -- Appendix B: Networks of Small Firms -- Bibliography -- Index