Chaos Organization and Disaster Management

Chaos Organization and Disaster Management demonstrates the divide between individual responses to disaster and the actual functioning of disaster management organizations. It exposes the flaws of disaster management agencies, analyzing disasters from the perspectives of agencies and potential victims. It appraises methods of measuring agency effectiveness, emphasizing the citizen vantage point and stakeholder evaluations. It outlines the bureaucratic constraints that impede the efficacy of government, and reveals the disconnect between organizational and victim perceptions. By highlighting a new empirically based understanding of disaster behavior, the book recommends shifting the focus of disaster management to a social process model that will save more lives.