Naim Kapucu is Professor of Public Policy and Administration in the School of Public Administration at the University of Central Florida, Orlando, USA. He has published widely in areas of public administration and emergency management, and has developed and taught emergency management and homeland security programmes at UCF.　

Arjen Boin is Professor of Public Institutions and Governance at the Institute of Political Science, Leiden University, The Netherlands. He has published widely on topics of crisis and disaster management. He is co-editor of　Public Administration and managing partner of Crisisplan BV.

Hazards, both natural and man-made, pose a major risk to vast swathes of the world's population. In the post 9/11 world, the scale, frequency, and intensity of these disasters and crises have dramatically increased, and the failures in public sector response have prompted a critical need to re-evaluate disaster management practices. This book ask what we have learned from past crises and offers ways to think about policy interventions, and the mechanisms of governance, in a way which can inform future responses to disaster. This book was originally published as a special issue of Public Management Review.

Introduction: Studying Disaster and Crisis Management 1. Time and Crisis 2. The Vulnerability of Public Spaces: Challenges for UK hospitals under the 'new' terrorist threat 3. The Core and Periphery of Emergency Management Networks: A multi-modal assessment of two evacuation-hosting networks from 2000 to 2009 4. Managing Disaster Networks in India: A study of structure and effectiveness 5. Managing the Impact of Disaster: Patterns of post-tsunami sheltering and duration of stay in South India 5. Solidarity as Political Strategy: Post-crisis reform following the French heatwave 6. Making Groceries: Leadership, free spaces and narratives of meaning in post-Katrina New Orleans 7. The Resilient Organization: A critical appraisal 8. Economic Considerations in Designing Emergency Management Institutions and Policies for Transboundary Disasters