Book on Post-Disaster Recovery Published

Focuses on status of elderly, disabled and post-earthquake Haiti

Rebuilding Sustainable Communities with Vulnerable Populations after the Cameras Have Gone, a product of the Center for Rebuilding Sustainable Communities after Disasters (CRSCAD) at University of Massachusetts Boston, was published today in the United Kingdom (UK).

The 513-page book was edited by Adenrele Awotona, director of CRSCAD. The center is housed at the John W. McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies and operates in collaboration with University College.

The book is comprised of a collection of selected papers that were presented at the two international conferences on post-disaster reconstruction that CRSCAD organized in 2010. The first focused on Haiti and the second on the elderly and disabled populations.

"This is an important volume because it is unique as the only collection of essays on the role and input of the elderly, the disabled and other vulnerable people before and after disasters," says Awotona. The contents, from people who have made profound contributions to this field from around the world—Brazil, Canada, China, India, Iran, Lebanon, Libya, Nigeria, Switzerland, and the United States of America—"examine diverse topics such as, Activities of a Voluntary, International, Inter-Professional, Inter-Sectoral Partnership on Emergency Management and Older Adults; and, Methods for Assessing and Developing Understanding of Resiliency in Communities." Awotona further notes that the book "offers a new holistic way of scrutinizing the challenges of post-earthquake rebuilding in Haiti."

"This book makes a very much-needed contribution to the analysis and procurement of resources needed when catastrophes occur," says William Frank Hill, professor of architecture (retired) in Surrey, UK, in notes on the book jacket. He adds, "Professor Awotona is an expert in the fields this book addresses, and has worked for many years with others in attempting to find permanent solutions in physical form as well as in social relationships, to lift the lot of the worst effected by natural disasters and poor governmental administration."