More than half of the world’s population now live in urban areas, many of them in low- and low-middle-income countries with limited ability to support urban growth. Urban areas are inherently fragile. Many cities are desperately overcrowded, with poor building construction, limited access, poor or absent waste disposal, limited or no access to clean water, irregular supplies of food, unreliable power supplies, inadequate emergency services, and problems with crime and violence. Healthcare is often poor or absent, with an increased risk of communicable disease outbreaks. Supply chains can easily be interrupted. Urban poverty and slums are proliferating with informal dwellings in areas vulnerable to natural disasters. The nature of urban areas can increase the impact of disasters, as was shown by the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Pandemics and epidemics have affected human populations throughout recorded history. Larger human communities make it possible for epidemics to occur, and also promote maintaining infections in endemic form. Regardless of the organisms involved and the nature of the illness caused, certain themes are common to all in terms of the impacts and outcomes of the outbreaks in health, social, and political terms, and the measures used in attempts to control these events. In some instances, these measures have exerted some beneficial effects by changing the rate of spread of outbreaks, although not necessarily the numbers affected. it is only recently, with the advent of vaccination, that it has it become possible to effectively reduce the impacts of pandemics. Given the frequency with which people are exposed to novel infections and the speed with which some organisms can mutate, the need for readiness to combat pandemics on a worldwide basis is paramount.

The editors create an agenda of themes for developing services and practitioners, and for research capable of responding to psychosocial aspects of emergencies, incidents, disasters, and disease outbreaks (EIDD) and their deleterious effects. Topics include the perspectives of scientists, practitioners, and the public, the historical importance of how current capabilities have developed, the critical theme of agreeing definitions, recognising the wellbeing, psychosocial, and mental health agendas that face survivors of EIDD in their recovery, the fallacies of basing planning on panic and the belief that survivors of subsequent EIDD fare better than first timers, and the importance of good communication within and between agencies and then with the public, and of teams and their leadership. It recognises the lessons from the social sciences, and the importance of social support, psychological safety, and our relationships in our recovery. This book strongly supports the notion that there is no health without mental health.

This chapter considers the components and organisation of civil protection. The first part of the chapter includes key definitions of terms. The second part defines and examines civil protection. The third part provides a critical review of the basis of emergency planning, and the fourth part looks at various aspects of emergency preparedness. Emergency planning is based on reference events from the past and, in the fifth part of the chapter, the key question of whether the past really is still an adequate guide to the future is addressed. The final part of the chapter looks at the growing field of risk and disaster science.

This chapter focuses on caring for people who have disabilities who are affected by emergencies and pandemics. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that about 1.3 billion people have some degree of disability. It highlights the wide spectrum of severity of disability that people display, and points out that how data are collected, combined with the lack of clear definition of the term disability, makes it hard to be precise about the numbers and proportions of people with serious intellectual or developmental disability compared with those with a range of physical disabilities, or with both. It concludes that the principle of equity demands that people who have disabilities need to have individual plans for their care. It proposes that emergency planning should take account of the needs of vulnerable people, including those people who have a disability, and that they have a role in planning for, preparing for, and responding to emergencies.