The word disaster denotes a high magnitude low probability tragic event or mishappening caused either naturally or through human induced factors, suddenly or gradually, with or without any pre-warning resulting in colossal loss of life, injury to the people and damage to property. It completely disrupts normal life, all the activities come to a grinding halt and the people are left in a state of complete disarray, chaos and panic. It has far reaching social, economic and psychological implications.
With the passage of time the severity, impact and frequency of disasters have increased. Many new disasters that were earlier unheard of have evolved making, the earth risky as never before. The contemporary world and its inhabitants are becoming increasingly vulnerable to both man made and natural disasters. The growing severity and adverse impact of various disasters, natural as well as man made are a matter of great concern.
There is great need to have an effective mechanism of disaster management. Disaster management is a comprehensive holistic approach involving preparedness, mitigation and prevention aimed at reducing the impact of disaster, minimal loss of life and property and early restoration of normalcy in the affected area.
Disasters not only result in loss of lives and destruction of property, they severely hamper economic growth and development. Further coping with disasters is not alone the responsibility of the government it requires a total participation of the various state holder viz. academicians, scientific community, researchers, policy makers, administrators, corporate sector, N.G.O’s local people and international community, each having a definite role to play.
The present book contains research papers from contributors from different parts of India and abroad in the international conference on strategic management of energy, environment and disaster for sustainable development jointly organized by Faculty of Management Studies, Department of Geography, BHU and GSMI Michigan, USA held during 11-15 Jan 2010 at Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi. This book incorporates the aspects of occurrence of natural / anthropogenic disaster, mitigation/risk reduction/assessment, pre and post disaster management for sustainable development of the disaster prone area with special reference to India.
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