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In the last decade access for disabled people to public buildings has become an important part of the political agenda. Yet, one of the main forms of discrimination which still persists against disabled people is an inaccessible built environment. In particular, statutory authorities have been slow to acknowledge the mobility and access needs of disabled people, and the legislative base to back up local authority policies remains largely ineffectual and weak. In this paper, the interrelationships between disability and the built environment are considered by focusing on the role of the UK land-use planning system in securing access provision for disabled people.

Although research has examined differences in people's responses to natural versus technologically caused disasters, research has not examined the differences in people's attitudes toward disasters in natural versus built environments. This study examined the effects of the type of environment and awareness of the problem on attitudes toward the cleanup of oil spills. The results showed that the type of environment did not affect ratings of the importance of the environmental problem or how it should be cleaned up. However, people were more concerned about the environmental and community impacts of the cleanup process in the built environment. Awareness of the problem was a more important factor than type of environment for understanding attitudes toward the oil spill cleanup. People who were more aware of the oil spills viewed the problems as more important and were more concerned that the environments be returned to their previous states.

This e-book draws on the wide range of expertise that built environment professionals can contribute towards increasing resilience to disasters. It compiles original papers which were prepared for a panel of the Building Education and Research Conference, held in Kandalama, Sri Lanka, between 11th and 15th February 2008. The papers address different stages of the disaster management lifecycle, from pre-disaster risk reduction, through to post-disaster response and relief, and finally, long term sustainable reconstruction