Dealing with emergencies has become a major feature of modern life. Natural disasters, terrorism, riots, famines, pandemics, financial crises and military conflicts dominate media coverage and present governments and international organizations with daunting challenges. This series brings together essays and articles which represent the best of the recent and burgeoning research that seeks to analyse and understand the nature of emergencies and evaluate the moral, political and legal measures that are taken in response to often unexpected, large scale and global crises. Responsive risk management is frequently ineffective and often encroaches on core civil liberties, and measures taken to deal with the aftermath of catastrophic events, including those dealing with the more personal disasters that befall individuals in the course of their normal lives, are often defective. The destruction of the World Trade Centre graphically illustrates how dramatic events call into question the adequacy of normal ethical standards and legal provisions as guides to legitimate political responses and government strategies. This four volume series presents important research on a diversity of types of emergency and the advantages and disadvantages of characteristic methods of prevention, containment and recovery, and is an invaluable reference resource for libraries. The editors bring a distinctive expertise to the selection and presentation of essays and to the specially written introductions, which present an overview of leading research in the field. The series also provides an invaluable teaching resource for lecturers and enables students to study leading research articles side-by-side.