Disasters: Core Concepts and Ethical Theories

This Open Access Book is the first to examine disasters from a multidisciplinary perspective. Justification of actions in the face of disasters requires recourse both to conceptual analysis and ethical traditions. Part 1 of the book contains chapters on how disasters are conceptualized in different academic disciplines relevant to disasters. Part 2 has chapters on how ethical issues that arise in relation to disasters can be addressed from a number of fundamental normative approaches in moral and political philosophy. This book sets the stage for more focused normative debates given that no one book can be completely comprehensive. Providing analysis of core concepts, and with real-world relevance, this book should be of interest to disaster scholars and researchers, those working in ethics and political philosophy, as well as policy makers, humanitarian actors and intergovernmental organizations..

Vilius Dranseika is a lecturer at the Institute of Philosophy, Vilnius University, Lithuania and a researcher at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities, Kaunas University of Technology, Lithuania. His main academic interests are Research Ethics, Moral Psychology, and Experimental Philosophy.

Bert Gordijn is Professor and Director of the Institute of Ethics at Dublin City University in Ireland. He has studied Philosophy and History in Utrecht, Strasbourg and Freiburg in Breisgau. Bert has been a Visiting Professor at Lancaster University (UK), Georgetown University (USA), the National University of Singapore, the Fondation Brocher (Switzerland), Yenepoya University (Mangalore, Karnataka, India) and the University of Otago (New Zealand). He has served on Advisory Panels and Expert Committees of the European Chemical Industry Council, the European Patent Organisation, the Irish Department of Health and UNESCO. Bert is Editor-in-Chief of two book series: "The International Library of Ethics, Law and Technology" and "Advances in Global Bioethics" as well as a peer reviewed journal: "Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy", all published by Springer. He is Secretary of the European Society for Philosophy of Medicine and Healthcare and President of the International Association of Education in Ethics.

Dónal P. O’Mathúna has degrees in pharmacy and bioethics. He is Associate Professor in ethics in the School of Nursing and Human Sciences at Dublin City University in Ireland and in the College of Nursing at The Ohio State University in the USA. He is widely published in bioethics and has led an EU-funded COST network examining the developing field of disaster bioethics. As Chair of this COST Action, he helped bring together scholars, humanitarian organisations, and international organisations to identify, examine and address ethical issues in disasters. He has published and presented widely on the ethical challenges in disasters faced by healthcare professionals and researchers. This work has led to funded research projects and his involvement in expert committees developing ethics guidelines for disasters, including those of the World Health Organization and other international organisations. He has a particular interest in research ethics in disasters, addressing vulnerability and dignity in disasters, and theological perspectives on disasters. He has a long-standing interest in research ethics and integrity, having been a member of several ethics committees and chaired Dublin City University’s research ethics committee for six years.