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This book provides a framework for the holistic understanding of our planet and environmental hazards. An ideal resource for general readers, it is profusely illustrated and will help in the development of disaster resilient communities.

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The book is expressly written for the young minds because they are our best hope for a safer tomorrow. The book is profusely illustrated, as it offers a joyride to the world of the whole range of hazards through simplified teaching-learning process, with less of teaching and more of learning. This is because most readers would love to learn without actually being taught. The book is designed to take advantage of distilled wisdom of centuries to inspire and enlighten the common man to turn them into prime movers of safer societies. Senior citizens, community leaders, self-trained disaster managers, social workers, media personnel, bureaucrats and those averse to the very thought of reading will also find the book useful as it is illustrative and inviting.

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Disaster Education-the Silver Bullet.- Disaster Terminology.- The world of Hazards and Disasters.- From Belief to the Basics of Disasters.- The New Awakening.- Prediction and Forecasting of Natural Disasters.- Lessons in Disaster Management.- Guide to Safety.- Annexure 1: Know about Some Major Disasters.- Annexure 2: References for Popular and Advanced reading.- They lived safely thereafter.

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Dr. R.K. Bhandari is a noted geohazards researcher, a teacher, and a practitioner. Early scientific work of the author was on landslides in the Indian Himalayas, mudslides of the Isle of Wight and the Isle of Sheppey in the United Kingdom, and on landslides in the Central Highlands of SriLanka. The great Malpa rock-avalanche-tragedy of 1998, the Orissa super cyclone of 1999, the Gujarat earthquake of 2001, and the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004 are some of the recent disastrous events on which he has lectured and written extensively. His major exposure to human-induced disaster came with the terrorist bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad in August 2003, and the consequent evacuation of his team from Baghdad. As the director of the UN-HABITAT programme in war-torn Iraq, he was responsible for post-disaster housing of internally displaced people under very difficult ground conditions at the most trying time in Iraq´s history.

The author is the recipient of numerous medals, awards and honors including the prestigious 2012 Varnes Medal of the International Consortium of Landslides; Distinguished Alumnus Award of the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay; Scholarship of the Royal Commission of the U.K. for the Exhibition of 1851, Bhasin Foundation Award for Science and Technology; Jaikrishna Prize; Kuekalmann Award of Indian Geotechnical Society; Disaster Prevention Award of Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee; and the Distinguished Engineer Award of the Institution of Engineers (India). He is a PhD in Soil Mechanics from the Imperial College of Science and Technology, London; a Fellow of Institution of Civil Engineers (London); and a Fellow of Indian National Academy of Engineering.

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