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This paper aims to highlight the roles of sudden change and social disruption in the disaster landscape that shapes the environment of tourism destinations when hazards intersect with human systems.

This paper draws on the social science literature on disasters and crises. To this end, this paper provides an overview of the role abrupt changes have in transforming the tourism and hospitality industries.

This paper serves as a call to seek bold solutions that bring about industry best practices while fostering local community stakeholders in a more integrated way to build a more resilient future.

The disaster landscape provides opportunities to advance new structures, norms, cultural beliefs and collaborations that can foster resilience. This paper highlights the need to integrate resilience in the form of disaster management, recovery and organizational continuity strategies in the post-COVID-19 hospitality and tourism industries.

The paper's primary goals are three‐fold: to explore how disaster tourism serves as a vehicle for self‐reflection in respect to how the disaster tour affects the tourist; to understand how cultures adapt to abrupt change; and to understand how the tourism industry can lead to the cultural and economic revitalization of devastated areas.

This paper draws on sociological theory, experience, and participant observation to complete an autoethnographic study of a “disaster tour” in and around the New Orleans, Louisiana, metropolitan area.

Conveying information via auto‐ethnographic disaster tourism helps readers develop an understanding of others by being immersed in the tour experience. Placing the researchers in the midst of the analysis presents a perspective of the cultural mix of New Orleans as place set apart, even among places in the south. Finally, this study highlights the importance of a rapidly rebounding tourism industry by “branding” New Orleans as a “Come back city.”

Because the research employs an auto‐ethnograpic approach, it may not be possible to duplicate the observations and findings, which are subject to the interpretations of the reader.

The contribution of this work to the literature is its highlighting of the flexibility of the tourism industry after a catastrophe and noting that tour guides frame the reconstruction process as “signs of hope” and “rebirth,” rather than a city in decline. Readers come to understand that the key to the revival of New Orleans is how disaster tourists understand the disaster as well as the recovery process.

This paper introduces a model of social repair to the language of disaster recovery that potentially provides a new way of conceptualizing reconstruction and recovery processes by drawing attention to the dismantling of structural inequities that inhibit post-disaster recovery.

The paper first engages with the current discourse of vulnerability reduction and resilience building as embedded within a distinct politics of post-disaster recovery. The concept of social repair is then explored as found within post-conflict and reconciliation literature. For application within the context of natural disasters, the concept of social repair is modified to have evaluative and effectiveness significance for disaster recovery. A short case example is presented from post-flood Pakistan to deepen our understanding of the potential application and usage of a social repair orientation to disaster recovery.

The paper recommends that the evaluative goals of post-disaster recovery projects should be framed in the language of social repair. This means that social relationships (broadly defined) must be restored and transformed as a result of any disaster recovery intervention, and relationship mapping exercises should be conducted with affected communities prior to planning recovery interventions.

Current discourses of disaster recovery are rooted within the conceptual framings of reducing vulnerabilities and building resilience. While both theoretical constructs have made important contributions to the disaster recovery enterprise, they have been unable to draw sufficient attention to pre-existing structural inequities. As disaster recovery and reconstruction projects influence the ways communities negotiate and manage future risk, it is important that interventions do not lead to worsened states of inequity.

The purpose of this paper is to organize the issues that arise during repair processes when the cultural heritage sites and the infrastructure of local residents are simultaneously damaged by disasters and to propose measures before disaster occurrence.

Issues to be considered regarding restoration processes are extracted based on details of damages and restoration work caused by disasters to the world heritage site “Sacred Sites and Pilgrimage Routes in the Kii Mountain Range” and the surrounding living facilities and hearings from government officials.

In order to develop a restoration method with little burden on cultural properties, it is important that related institutions collaborate before the occurrence of disasters and consider reconstruction methods with low environmental impact. The authors should increase the number of effective countermeasure options that prioritize harmony with nature and scenery preservation prior to disasters.

Little is known about the best practice of reconstruction work at the cultural heritage sites.

The damages and restoration works which are described in this paper serve as a precedent of recovery works from future disaster occurrence.

The damages and restoration works of Yokogaki-toge Pass, the issues extracted and the measures proposed which are presented in this paper would be helpful the people involved in cultural properties to think about better methods of restoration.

In the hearing investigation clarified that both the person in charge of cultural property and public facility management recognize importance learning from many effective countermeasure methods and previous cases to make a better recovery plan for future damage.

This conversation highlights the need to rethink how we approach disaster risk reduction in different South Asian contexts.

This paper is based on the webinar held as part of Asia Week at the University of Copenhagen which was organised by Asian Dynamics Initiative and Copenhagen Centre for Disaster Research on the September 12, 2023.

The prominent themes emerging from this conversation represents hybridity, self-rule and self-recovery. Along with this we suggest a fundamental turn to ensuring hope, solidarity and empathy is part of a post-colonial future.

The conversation contributes to the ongoing discussions on moving away from colonial practices in disaster risk reduction and disaster studies broadly.

This paper describes the educational experiences of children and youth (aged 3–20) with disabilities during school closures resulting from the 2017 Northern California wildfires. Students with disabilities are particularly vulnerable to the adverse impacts of disaster, yet the effects of school closures on these children remains understudied. This study identifies considerations for students with disabilities and their families post-disaster.

An inductive, qualitative approach was used for the study design, methodology and analysis. In-depth interviews were conducted with parents of 14 students with disabilities about their experiences during and following school closures. All of these children had missed between a week and over a month of school as a result of the wildfires. Thematic analysis was used to code data and identify four themes present across the data.

Our findings indicate that children and youth with disabilities experienced disruptions in school-based services; lost previously acquired skills; exhibited negative health and behavioral issues; had difficulties adapting to new, unfamiliar routines and were saddened by lost social connections. Additionally, findings pinpoint the importance of social connections while schools were closed, the benefits of resuming school which included access to responsive school staff, as well as challenges faced by children with disabilities and their families once schools reopened.

Families of children with disabilities, as illustrated in this study, often must transverse a different post-disaster landscape. Schools should assist them in navigating that landscape so students with disabilities can experience a more equitable return to education post-disaster.

The purpose of this paper is to address the knowledge gap in the field of dark tourism by understanding the phenomena of phoenix tourism, which focuses on the transformation and rebirth of places following death and disasters.

The paper builds on existing theoretical understanding of dark tourism and disaster recovery to explore destination image recovery within the tourism industry. It uses phoenix tourism as a lens to understand the social, cultural and economic context of post-disaster tourism destination recovery and rebranding in the aftermath of the Indian Ocean Tsunami and Hurricane Katrina.

A presentation of post-disaster strategies and recommendations are given with attention to the re-branding of images once associated with death and darkness to enhance a destination’s resilience.

For local policymakers, tourism leaders, researchers and community developers, this research describes strategies that facilitate rebranding dark tourism sites, such as areas of rebirth or “phoenix tourism”, to enhance destination recovery image and to promote a more disaster- and risk-resilient tourism industry.

This paper bridges the knowledge gap by defining and contributing to the theoretical understanding of phoenix tourism as it identifies the what, how and why elements of the phenomena of phoenix tourism. Furthermore, the authors propose how to overcome negative destination images to preserve, present or redefine an image of a tourist destination “overcoming”, and eventual “rebirth” serves to re-calibrate resilience of the tourism industry and regional redevelopment.

The purpose of this paper is to advance the understanding of “resilience” by disentangling the contentious interactions of various parameters that define and guide resilience trajectories, such as the physical infrastructure, socio-spatial inequalities, path dependencies, power relationships, competing discourses and human agency. This socio-political reconstruction of “resilience” is needed for two reasons: the concept of resilience becomes more responsive to the complex realities on the ground, and the discussion moves toward the promotion of more dynamic recovery governance models that can promote socially just allocated redundancy in housing actions, which could be seen as a key to incubating resilience.

This is a conceptual paper that mobilizes theories of urban political ecology, social innovation and housing with the aim to examine the tensions between various discourses that steer housing production during post-disaster recovery processes, and put a spotlight on the heterogeneity in the transformative capacity of the various actors, institutions and visions of housing systems that preexist or emerge in the post-disaster city. This heterogeneity of actors (i.e. growth coalitions, neighborhood associations and housing cooperatives) consequently leads the discussion toward the investigation of “new” roles of the state in formulating relevant disaster governance models and housing (re)construction systems.

The initial stress produced by a natural event is often extended because of long-term unmet housing needs. The repercussion of this prolonged stress is a loss of social progress partly due to the reiterated oppression of alternative housing production propositions. In this paper, the authors conclude that an asset-based community development approach to recovery can provide an antidote to the vicious cycles of social stress by opening up diverse housing options. This means that the recovery destiny is not predetermined according to pre-set ideas but is molded by the various bottom-up dynamics that democratically sketch the final socially desirable reconstruction outcome(s).

The contribution of this paper is twofold. By using theoretical insights from urban political ecology, housing studies and social innovation, the paper first builds up onto the current reconstruction of the notion of disaster resilience. Second, by identifying a heterogeneity of “social resilience cells”, the paper leads the discussion toward the investigation of the “new” role of the state in formulating relevant recovery governance models. In this respect, the paper builds a narrative of social justice in terms of the redistribution of resources and the cultivation of empowerment across the various housing providers who struggle for their right to the reconstruction experiment.

Can sustainability disclosures be a tool for executing image restoration strategies after corporate manslaughter? This is the question explored in this study of Costa Crociere's sustainability reports after the Concordia disaster.

Merging traditional textual content analysis with visual analysis and supported by machine learning tools, this is a predominantly qualitative study framed by legitimacy theory, image restoration theory and impression management.

Costa Crociere's voluntary sustainability reporting is strongly influenced by a mix of text and visual signals that distract readers' attention from the disaster. A “nothing really happened” communication strategy pervades the disclosures, with the only rational motivation being to change perceptions and erase memories of this tragic and avoidable event.

Although the analysis covered multiple sources of corporate information, media coverage was not one of them. A more in-depth exploration of sustainability reporting in the cruise industry, including evidence of similar cases, to test impression management theory would be a worthwhile avenue for future research.

While Costa Crociere technically followed the customary guidelines of disclosing human resource impacts, there was almost no acknowledgement of the people involved in the accident. Costa Concierevastly understated their responsibility for the accident, did not apologize, and conveyed very little remorse. The majority of disclosures centred on disaster recovery management.

The authors discuss why and how a company can overcome a legitimacy threat by completely freezing its voluntary sustainability reporting, and the authors show how a company can restore its image by minimizing specific aspects of an accident and shifting attention from the human victims to corporate operations. Incorporating image recognition driven by AI models and combining the results with narrative disclosures contributes an innovative and original analysis technique to the field of impression management. In addition, this research also contributes to our knowledge on the cruise industry – a sector currently under scrutiny for its ethical, social and environmental practices.

Cultural heritage, specifically built heritage – including monuments, urban ensembles, religious and palatial complexes – has emerged as a central focus of tensions and negotiations within the post-disaster recovery landscape in Nepal following the 2015 Gorkha Earthquake. This not only reflects a growing recognition of heritage within international disaster risk management frameworks, but also responds to the critical role played by heritage at national, regional and local levels. The paper aims to examine the entangled realities of “local” and “global” operating in ongoing reconstruction of built heritage in Bhaktapur, Nepal.

The paper is an account of reconstruction practices observed in Bhaktapur between 2018 and 2020. It is based on data collected by layering ethnographic methods with textual and historical analysis. In seeking to analyse manifestations of global and local, the author presents reflections from fieldwork carried over seven months in Bhaktapur and describes the micro-politics enacted out between researcher, heritage custodians, translators, intermediaries and participants.

Reconstruction of built heritage in Bhaktapur negotiates between developmentalist-paradigms of post-disaster recovery, heritage conservation discourses as well as religious and quotidian practices of care. It is simultaneously informed by global institutions and policy and local politics and aspirations that operate in constant tension and negotiation.

The current study responds to the call for reframing research agendas and practices set out in the Disaster Studies Manifesto by critically engaging with ideas of local and global. The study builds on the growing body of research linking heritage with disaster risk management.