Understanding Disaster Risk

Pedro Pinto Santos is a geographer with a PhD in Territory, Risk and Public Policies from the Universities of Aveiro, Coimbra and Lisbon (Portugal). He holds a Master in Geosciences from the University of Coimbra and a degree in Physical Geography from the University of Lisbon. He is currently a researcher at the Centre for Geographical Studies of the Institute of Geography and Spatial Planning, University of Lisbon, and invited researcher at the Centre for Social Studies, University of Coimbra. Pedro participates and has participated in several projects in the fields of disaster risk reduction, particularly in the assessment of risk and its components - hazard, exposure and vulnerability, namely social vulnerability - and preparing emergency and risk management planning instruments. His current research focuses on the flood risk of coastal and riverine areas aiming to simulate, propose and achieve consensus regarding the flood risk management strategies to be adopted, considering current and future scenarios of territorial dynamics and climate change. Ksenia Chmutina is a Lecturer in Sustainable and Resilient Urbanism at Loughborough University's School of Architecture, Building, and Civil Engineering. Her main research interest is in synergies and tensions of resilience and sustainability in the built environment, including holistic approach to enhancing resilience to natural and human-induced threats, and a better understanding of the systemic implications of sustainability and resilience under the pressures of urbanisation and climate change. Her other research interests include transdisciplinary integration of pre-emptive hazard mitigation strategies into decision making process of construction stakeholders, and disaster risk management of cultural heritage. Ksenia uses her work to draw attention to the fact that disasters are not natural. Her research mainly comprises location-based case studies and systemic policy analysis; it brings together quantitative and qualitative research to generate transdiciplinary understanding in the areas of sustainability, resilience, and policy in the context of built environment, and employs various data analysis techniques. She has conducted her research in the UK, India, Indonesia, Japan, Nepal, the Caribbean, and across Europe. Jason von Meding is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Newcastle's School of Architecture and Built Environment. His recent research focuses on the social, political, economic and environmental injustice that causes people, across global societies but particularly in the developing world, to be marginalised and forced into greater risk of being impacted by disasters. Having accumulated a decade of research experience in the field of disaster science, he takes a critical approach to disaster scholarship and argues for an acceptance of disasters as social constructs rather than natural events. Emmanuel Raju is an Associate Professor of Disaster Risk Management at the Global Health Section at the University of Copenhagen and currently co-chairs the Copenhagen Centre for Disaster Research. He is also appointed as 'Extraordinary Associate Professor', at North-West University, South Africa since 2019. His experience spans across working in South Asia, Southern Africa, Europe- particularly the Nordics. Emmanuel is also a Co-Editor of Disaster Prevention and Management- a leading journal in the field of disaster studies.