Looking at the past decade, one cannot but wonder about the series of unprecedented large-scale catastrophes and crises that occurred in such a short period of time. Massive terrorist attacks; repeated floods of unprecedented magnitude; numerous earthquakes and tsunamis with countless fatalities; devastating hurricanes, typhoons and storms in highly populated...

The past 18 months have illustrated our fragility to large-scale natural disasters at both extremes of the economic spectrum.

On the one hand, there is Haiti: the poorest country in the Americas with a GDP per capita (nominal) of about $650. The total GDP of the country...

As recently as a decade ago, very few world leaders would have guessed that energy price volatility, unprecedented natural disasters or an historical financial crisis would be some of the biggest challenges in the foreseeable future. But one of the hallmarks of this new century will be more and more...

By Erwann Michel-Kerjan and Paul Slovic

Unless you have been living on a remote island with no phone, radio or Internet, for the past two months you know Pakistan is facing an up-hill battle. While floodwaters started to recede, still about one-fifth of the entire country is under water; 20...

Who should pay for the next major terrorist attack? In a world under budgetary pressure, where huge sums of private and public fiscal resources have been mobilized to cope with the financial crisis and a series of unprecedented natural and man-made disasters, governments and enterprises are not eager to assume...

Five years ago, the United States was reeling from the destruction caused by Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma, and by the four other hurricanes that made landfall the year before. These extreme events caused historical human and economic consequences. Developing America's resiliency to the new era of catastrophes we had...