From the COVID-19 pandemic to deadly flash floods and wildfires, disasters seldom occur in a vacuum, and a group of Northeastern University researchers is hammering that point home in a new study.
“We’re in a new era of disasters and shocks, and the old terminology that we’ve been using until now doesn’t really capture the degree to which we’ve really shifted,” says Daniel Aldrich, a Northeastern professor, director of the university’s Resilience Studies Program and co-director at the Global Resilience Institute.
While it first emerged in the early 1970s, the concept of a “polycrisis” — a convergence of multiple, interconnected disasters — took on new meaning in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s war in Ukraine. The two crises led to soaring energy prices, deepened the cost-of-living crisis and caused widespread supply shortages.
Read more here
