Description: We are now in terms of world history in a time period of very rapid change. The social landscape and
features of the 21st Century will be noticeably different from that in which we have lived much of this
Century. The most important structures and activities of human life are drastically changing (Smelser
1991). Massive social changes are happening in the political, economic, familial, cultural, educational
and scientific areas. For example, there are basic alterations occurring in the role and status of
women along with the emergence of new family and household patterns, the growing diffusion and
expanding use of applied social science to many areas of life, the globalization of popular culture, and
the spread of at least nominal democratic patterns of government. These and the other changes will
markedly affect the number and kinds of future disasters and also the planning and managing of them
(Quarantelli 1996).
