Disaster response and prepardness: invited editorial

Recent world events have increased public awareness about the need to prepare for disasters. While it is important to realise that catastrophic disasters have occurred hroughout time, the number of natural disasters and the total number of people affected globally has been increasing, particularly in the past 50 years. It is also worth noting that developing countries, often in the topics, are unfortunately over represented. Today, underlying causes of disasters include natural phenomena, technological catastrophes, terrorist incidents and sociopolitical crises referred to as complex humanitarian emergencies