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Reflections on the Turkish-Syrian Earthquakes of 6th February 2023: Building Collapse and its Consequences

Emergency Planning

How much simpler to attribute it all to anonymous forces within the ground! It was notable that, in many buildings that pancaked in Turkey and Syria, the collapses left almost no voids at all, thanks to the complete fragmentation of the entire structure. Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences 15: 931-945. Mosalam 2003.

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State of the Nation - a UK Perspective on Covid-19

Emergency Planning

Since the start of the crisis, I have constantly affirmed that the key to understanding the effects of this pandemic is the UK Government's failure to give adequate weight to emergency planning and management (Alexander 2020a, 2020b). Plans were made in the UK in 2006, 2008, 2011 and 2014. I have taught it every year since then.

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Disaster Risk Reduction is not a Paradigm

Emergency Planning

It lacks the spatial dimension of the 1960s work of the geographers Torsten Hägerstrand (1968) and his colleagues, but it has all the other components. Sadly, a follow-the-herd mentality all too easily develops among researchers. Natural Hazards 86: 969-988. In reality it was a fad. Forging a paradigm shift in disaster science.