Introduction

The problem of disasters has gained considerable interest in the last decade. The 1990s was designated as the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction (IDNDR) by the United Nations General Assembly (resolution 42/169), and parallel national efforts were undertaken across the globe. Disaster losses nonetheless continued their rapid growth (Mileti, 1999; Red Cross, 2002). During this decade, a series of major natural and human-induced disasters struck large urban areas and plainly demonstrated the need to better understand, anticipate, and prepare for such calamities. For example, in the United States, record losses were caused by Hurricane Andrew which struck the Miami region in 1992, the Great Midwest Floods of 1993, and the 1994 Northridge earthquake in Los Angeles (NRC, 1999). By one estimate, the Northridge earthquake inflicted some $40 billion in damage (Eguchi et al., 1998). In Japan, the 1995 Great Hanshin earthquake struck directly beneath the modern industrialized urban area of Kobe. It killed more than 6,000 people and resulted in an estimated $100 billion in damages, or about 2 percent of Japan’s gross national product (Scawthorn et al., 1997). The 1999 Chi-Chi earthquake in Taiwan caused an estimated $8 billion in loss and, significantly, caused sizable spatial repercussions as semiconductor prices spiked worldwide (Chang, 2000). The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, in New York City killed close to 3,000 people and caused some $83 billion in direct and indirect loss to the city’s economy. Adjusting for insurance and federal government reimbursements, the net loss may have amounted to some $16 billion (NYC Partnership, 2001).