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In the differing dynamics of the world today, terrorism has taken on many shapes, connotations, and meanings. The origin of the word terrorism can be traced to Immanuel Kant who used it to reflect a pessimistic view of man’s destiny, and to the English who used it to describe the Jacobins of France during the ReignofTerror. To date, there are roughly 109 different meanings used worldwide. Some definitions are broad enough to be applied to uniformed conflicts and some are specific enough to exclude some of the most obvious terrorists. Law enforcement organizations often include specific types of terrorism in their definitions and the type of actors who perpetuate them, while political or administrative organizations focus more on the effect and impact of the terrorist act. Unless there is a globally accepted definition of terrorism that clarifies and bounds the term, research and conversations regarding the characteristics and defining features of terrorism will lack consistency. In order to reach such a definition the perspective of both actors and victims of terrorist actions need to be considered. This paper will explore the different uses and definitions of terrorism, how these definitions have evolved to reflect events, and compare definitions across professions and countries. Finally, a draft definition that encompasses and reflects current ideologies is proposed.

Until now, Korea carried out disaster management under the perception that the central government or the local government bodies are totally responsible. However the capacity of the public disaster management did not live up to the expectations as the size of disasters become larger. Also, due to the increase in society size, diversity and increase in demand for disaster management service "society" is being perceived as the consumer and provider of the service. As the emphasis moves from and to [national security -> personal safety -> social safety], there is a need to measure the disaster prevention capacity of each region to find out whether the region is able to confront disasters, and come up with improvement plans to compensate for any insufficiencies or shortcomings. To analyze this issue, this research conducted interviews on disaster response readiness by [individual resident-residents cooperation-public/private collaboration] according to each prevention-reaction-restoration stage, as resident representatives (Head of Ri, Head of Tong) as subjects. Based on the interviews, surveys were conducted to deduct the necessary factors needed for the general residents to exhibit disaster prevention capabilities. The surveys consist of 6 factors - risk perception, evacuation inductively, individual evacuation response, disaster prevention system, lookout & precaution, information communication.

The last several years of the Atlantic Hurricane Season have been some of the busiest and most destructive in history. Although paling in human terms in comparison to the Asian Tsunami with its sobering loss of life, a series of Atlantic Hurricanes from 2004 – 2008 have generated some of the largest response and recovery efforts in U.S. history with damage estimates exceeding $100 billion. This paper will discuss two unique public-private partnerships, which operating as computer supported virtual organizations helped redefine state and federal response relating to post disaster construction and temporary housing issues in a disaster. In doing so, the paper will expand collaborative information technology (CIT). The term CIT is used to denote asynchronous technology that provides support for coordination and collaboration through computer supported communication. Although CIT, closely related Computer Mediated Communication (CMC), and Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) are usually associated with constructing or managing interorganizational communication, this paper will explore how web based technology bridged the information gap between government, the private sector, and victims left homeless by a series of catastrophic hurricanes.

Quick and effective assessment is a problem of theoretical and practical importance in emergency management. Lots of research and applications have been developed for risk assessment and loss assessment, but they are still inadequate for effective incident assessment. In this paper, we propose a new conception - “mitigability”, which enables emergency managers to evaluate the degree that an incident can be mitigated and then take measures timely and efficiently. We also develop the models of “mitigability” measurement in terms of postponed time and reduced loss depending on the characteristics of incidents.

There has been much effort to draw a technique for natural disaster management. At this point of time, it is the most important to integrate all of the existing techniques which is already developed in each field with associated natural disaster management. The prototype of natural disaster prediction system has been developed to provide basic and even essential information for disaster management and decision making in an appropriate moment. It also helps to give information on natural disaster which is suitable for each region because much broad and widespread information would not be enough to resolve the natural disaster event. The administration of disaster prevention is currently limited to recovery and response against the natural disaster events. However, the future disaster prevention has to focus on the preparation and mitigation before the event so that the on‐time, accurate forecast for the event should be necessary. The prototype of natural disaster prediction system which is suggested in this paper would be helpful for these purposes.

The present study updates the current movement of disaster volunteers in Japanese society since recent earthquakes, i.e., the 2007 Noto, the 2007 Chuetsu‐"Oki, and the 2008 Iwate‐#Miyagi. Disaster volunteers have played critical roles in disaster relief in Japanese society since the 1995 Kobe Earthquake and become an essential part of the society for more than a decade. The 2004 Niigata Chuetsu earthquake, a few months before we celebrated the 10th anniversary of Kobe, brought us a chance to examine our disaster relief system with disaster volunteers. It was true that some lessons from Kobe were applied to Chuetsu and that new issues (e.g., long‐"term volunteer activities for the revitalization of mountainous rural villages) were resolved by disaster volunteers. However, volunteers for disaster were so organized that they tended to lose a chance to face survivors. In other words, disaster volunteers are supposed to help survivors, but they participated in relief activities for survivors without actually seeing them under the pressure to the organized activity: The present study names it the power toward the social order. It was disaster volunteers themselves who realized this problem. At the relief of Noto earthquake in March, 2008, some student volunteers formed a group for footbath for survivors through which they directly touched individual survivors at shelters, while some volunteers supported by a few disaster non‐#profit organizations started to keep staying with local volunteers, who were also survivors, even without any specific purposes. These direct connections with survivors gave us hope for the future of disaster volunteers. The present study summarizes the recent trends of disaster volunteers in Japan and conceptualizes the frontier under the context of Japanese society.

This study aim is to investigate disaster management actual in field of public administration and establish object of disaster management study by surveying the trends of disaster management for development of disaster management. This study has examined the trends in researches on disaster management that have been done so far. First, their changes have been investigated by years and it was found out that the studies on disaster management accounted for 81.8% after the year of 2000. Second, case studies accounted for 47.7%, with respect to the method for research, which means researchers lay emphasis on case studies. Third, the studies that aim to suggest policy alternatives were found the highest with 79.5%, in regard of research objectives, and the studies on verification of theories with 13.6%, which means that more efforts need to be made on theorization and verification continuously to lay the groundwork for studying disaster management. Fourth, the studies have been examined by type of disaster and it was found out that since 2001, the studies on social disasters and comprehensive studies on social, man-made and natural disasters have increased by 27.3% and 50% respectively. Fifth, studies have been examined by administrative units and it was found out that the studies on central government, local government, private sector and NGO's disaster management accounted for the highest percentage with 50%. Lastly, the studies on preliminary strategies(mitigation & prepaedness) and post-strategies(response & recovery) accounted for the highest percentage, 56.8%, with respect to disaster management steps, and it was shown that studies are being made preponderantly on post-strategies.