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What is it about reality in the context of disasters that promises a socially constructed encounter? I would argue, and the essays that follow make clear, that the temporal and social geography of risk is shifting. Risk defines both the limits of preparation and the character of response to disaster. And yet risk itself is a shifting commodity whose boundaries are constantly rewritten as a result of the dynamic relationship among markets, society, and the natural environment. This relationship is perhaps best exemplified by the phenomena known as the Ahundred-year storm, psychological milestones that set human consideration of risk in a temporal landscape well beyond average human life expectancy. It is the perceived outsized improbability of hundred-year storm events that allows for large-scale infrastructure investments and human settlements in territories of risk. Many interesting questions arise, however, when the hundred-year storm begins to occur with greater frequency as a result of the combined effects of climate change and increased sea levels. The question then shifts to what happens when risk horizons are foreshortened. What is altered when society can no longer blame nature alone for disasters? How will preparations for disasters and responses to them change?
