Dull Disasters? How Planning Ahead Will Make a Difference, Daniel J. Clarke Stefan Dercon, 2016, Oxford University Press, New York, 139 pages, ISBN: 978‐0‐19‐878557‐6.

• Published date: 01 September 2020
• Date: 01 September 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/jori.12310

© 2020 The Journal of Risk and Insurance. Vol. 87, No. 3, 851–856 (2020).

DOI: 10.1111/jori.12310

BOOK REVIEW

Dull Disasters? How Planning Ahead Will Make a Difference,DanielJ.ClarkeStefanDercon,

2016, Oxford University Press, New York, 139 pages, ISBN: 978‐0‐19‐878557‐6.

Reviewer: Kevin Ahlgrim, Illinois State University; kahlgrim@ilstu.edu

To attract viewers, media is often criticized as being sensationalized, with rapidly

changing 24‐hour news cycles and wall‐to‐wall coverage of catastrophes, natural

disasters, and human suffering. Hence, the old adage, “if it bleeds, it leads.”On the

contrary, risk management success stories don't typically appear in the headlines

because when risks are properly managed, losses are less frequent, and if they do

occur, they are likely to be less severe—hardly the type of story to top the evening

news. This is the underlying context behind the title of the book Dull Disasters,by

Daniel J. Clarke and Stefan Dercon. Clarke and Dercon's aim is to “dull”disasters so

that the intensity of catastrophic events, in terms of both economic loss and human

impact, is significantly reduced.

THE CONTEXT OF THE BOOK

Dull Disasters? How planning ahead will make a difference provides a big picture view

of disaster recovery planning, by attempting to identify major components of a plan

and its key stakeholders. Each chapter provides some discussion on different

dimensions of the planning process and illustrations on how general principles

might be applied in practice. The book is too short to provide enough details to be

used as a blueprint for designing any specific disaster plan. Rather, it provides a big

picture perspective and describes the underlying principles that are likely to lead to

more efficient disaster response plans.

Specific applications of disaster planning considered in the book mostly focus

on humanitarian crises that stem from large‐scale, fast‐onset catastrophic events

such as earthquakes, hurricanes, and floods as well as “slow‐onset”disasters such

as droughts or pandemics. Conflict‐induced disasters, such as large refugee

populations, may gain some insight from dulling down natural disasters, but the

authors are skeptical about the level of success for these disasters primarily because

the timing of any response is more difficult to predict for these types of events.

The overall theme of the book is that major catastrophes often lead to significant

loss, such as direct property damage, destruction of public infrastructure, income

interruption, loss of lives, and general disruption. What provides some urgency to

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