• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 992 0

favored by environmental groups, cost manufacturers large sums of money? One important reason is that since World War II scientists in the biological and geological sciences as well as engineers had produced a compelling literature concerning the dangers of industrial waste and its links with groundwater contamination. Economists and other social scientists had demonstrated that the incentive structures for firms were dysfunctional for society and that reliance on state regulations would not work without national minimal standards. Congress passed the nation’s framework legislation for waste management in response not to a mass movement but to concerns expressed by scientists and engineers.

As all three of these cases demonstrate, policy responses to scientific findings are often slow, thus possibly accounting for the disdain that some scientists have toward policy makers. In certain instances, however, a response to findings has not taken decades. An example is the consensus among political scientists that touch-screen voting systems without a paper trail are a bad idea. Studies found that touch-screen-only systems were susceptible to sophisticated computer hackers and that, with no backup paper trail available, officials would be unable either to confirm or reject charges of irregularities.2 Most states initially ignored this research, which was published after the contested 2000 national election. By the end of the decade, however, most states, including California and Florida, had moved away from touch-screen, no-paper-trail systems.

RISK MANAGEMENT AND DISASTER RESEARCH

Before discussing the policy impacts of risk management and disaster research, we should make a few comments about these two disparate, though inherently related, research fields. Disaster research is a post-World War II phenomenon that was fostered in part in the United States by the Cold War and concerns about nuclear catastrophe. Research first began in geography and sociology at the University of Chicago, although the focus of this research differed dramatically across the two disciplines. Geographers, under the leadership of Gilbert White, focused on issues involving human adaptation to natural phenomena, particularly floods. Sociologists, under the leadership of the Disaster Research Center at Ohio State University and subsequently at the University of Delaware studied individual, organizational, and community responses during the pre-impact, trans-impact, and immediate post-impact periods of disasters. They focused upon things that blew up. These two camps never spoke, let alone collaborated. By the 1960s a modicum of research existed, although the accumulated body of rigorous social science research on hazards and disasters could be held on a few shelves of a modest bookcase.

The risk management field in the social science domain—separate from disaster research—emerged strongly in the 1970s. The field included psychologists who studied judgment and decision making as well as behavioral economists and numerous other social scientists interested in risk communications, perceptions, and management. The “risk management” people have different journals and go to different conferences than the “disaster” people. More than anyone else in the country, Howard Kunreuther has tried to bridge these two communities through his writings on mitigation and insurance, his leadership in the two research communities, and his analysis of multiple risks and disasters, including terrorism.

DISASTER RESEARCH AND PUBLIC POLICY ON MITIGATION AND RECOVERY

The disaster research field has changed in the past forty years. Almost all of the research undertaken can be categorized as involving one of the four phases of the “disaster cycle,” namely mitigation of, preparedness for, response to, and recovery from disasters. The field began with a narrow focus—emergency preparedness and response. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, research still tended to focus on emergency planning, public warnings, population protection, search and rescue, the delivery of emergency