This book contains papers presented at the second International Conference on Disaster Management held in 2011 in Orlando, Florida following the success of the first meeting held at the Wessex Institute of Technology in the New Forest, UK. Florida is no stranger to the increasing number of natural disasters affecting millions of people around the world, having periodically suffered the ravages of hurricanes, with a recent disastrous sequence of four hurricanes delivering devastating blows to the State from both Gulf and Atlantic coasts in 2004. Most recently, Florida’s economy was seriously affected by the Deep Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in spite of its coastline being mostly spared from any major damages.

The 2011 Disaster Management Conference has attracted outstanding contributions from researchers throughout the world. The collected works, published in this book, reflect the excellent work of all contributing authors and the care taken by the Scientific Advisory Committee and other colleagues in reviewing the presentations.  Topics covered include: Disaster Analysis, Monitoring and Mitigation; Emergency Preparedness; Risk Mitigation; Surveillance and Early Warning Systems; Socio-Economic Issues.