Disaster Planning, Emergency Management, And Civil Protection: The Historical Development And Current Characteristics Of Organized Efforts To Prevent And To Respond To Disasters
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Date
1998
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Disaster Research Center
Abstract
Description
This article discusses how societies and their subdivisions (particularly at the community
level) organize themselves for protection against and response to disasters and related
collective crises of a peacetime nature. Complicating our presentation is that there is not
much agreement even on the label designating these social arrangements. While "civil
protection" is a term widely used in Europe, in many other countries around the world, the
organized efforts to cope with collective threats are called "emergency management" or
"disaster planning." There is a substantial but not complete overlap in referent among
these three terms. Also, we will specifically examine the relationship between the
phenomena called "civil protection" and "civil defense," the last being a term first applied
to nonmilitary preparations for civilian involvement in wartime situations.
Keywords
Disaster, Societies, civil protection, emergency management, disaster planning