Along with windstorms, floods are the most common and widespread of all natural disasters. Although they can often be predicted, they cause loss of life, damage and destruction, as many urban communities are located near coasts and rivers. In terms of victims, floods are responsible for more than half the deaths caused by natural catastrophes.

As flood events appear to be rapidly increasing world-wide, an advanced and universal approach to urban flooding and how to manage will help reduce flo...

This book covers the many renewables technologies implemented worldwide by harnessing sustainable resources, mitigating pollution and climate change, and providing cost effective services. It supports multi-disciplinary master's degrees in science and engineering, and specialist modules at undergraduate level.

In the 1980s the performance of Japan’s economy was an international success story, and led many economists to suggest that the 1990s would be a Japanese decade. Today, however, the dominant view is that Japan is inescapably on a downward slope. Rather than focusing on the evolution of the performance of Japanese capitalism, this book reflects on the changes that it has experienced over the past 30 years, and presents a comprehensive analysis of the great transformation of Japanese capitali...

Ideal for students and practitioners working in spatial planning, the Europeanization of planning agendas and regional policy in general Spatial Planning Systems and Practices in Europe develops a systematic methodological framework to analyze changes in planning systems throughout Europe. The main aim of the book is to delineate the coexistence of continuity and change and of convergence and divergence with regard to planning practices across Europe. Based on the work of experts on spatial p...

There is no escaping landscape: it's everywhere and part of everyone's life. Landscapes have received much less attention in aesthetics than those arts we can choose to ignore, such as painting or music - but they can tell us a lot about the ethical and aesthetic values of the societies that produce them. Drawing on examples from a wide range of landscapes from around the world and throughout history, Susan Herrington considers the ways landscapes can affect our emotions, our imaginations, an...

Brings innovative new strategic management models to the field of public management, to help public managers adapt their practices in an era of New Public Management reforms New chapter on open, co-operative and collaborative strategy-making, in line with the most innovative approaches to strategy An expanded list of mini-cases, a very popular feature of the first edition, as well as new chapter summaries to help reinforce learning Takes a comparative and international view for advanced level...

English is the dominant language of international business relations, and a good working knowledge of the language is essential for today's legal or business professional. This book provides a highly practical approach to the use of English in commercial legal contexts, and covers crucial law terminology and legal concepts. Written with the needs of both students and practitioners in mind, this book is particularly suitable for readers whose first language is not English but need to use Engli...

Innovation contributes to corporate competitiveness, economic performance and environmental sustainability. In the Internet era, innovation intelligence is transferred across borders and languages at an unprecedented rate, yet the ability to benefit from it seems to become more divergent among different corporations and countries. How much an organization can benefit from innovation largely depends on how well innovation is managed in it.

Thus, there is a discernible increase in interest in t...

This thoroughly updated fourth edition of Critical Theory Today offers an accessible introduction to contemporary critical theory, providing in-depth coverage of the most common approaches to literary analysis today, including: feminism; psychoanalysis; Marxism; reader-response theory; New Criticism; structuralism and semiotics; deconstruction; new historicism and cultural criticism; lesbian, gay, and queer theory; African American criticism; and postcolonial criticism and ecocriticism. This ...

How do we try to make the world a better place, when the challenges of poverty, disease, war, conflict, and climate change continue to impact millions of lives? Global Development: The Basics is a lively and engaging introduction to the shifting landscape of global development, right from its origins, to present-day problems, and on to what the future for global development might look like. Recognising global development as an economic, political, and social project, this book tackles a serie...