Richard Sylves is professor of political science at the University of Delaware. He has served on a National Academy of Science, National Research Council panel, and he has done funded and unfunded research for FEMA. He served three years as an appointed member of the National Academy of Science Disaster Roundtable. His books include The Nuclear Oracles; Disaster Management in the United States and Canada: Politics, Policy, Administration, Study and Instruction of Emergency Management; Cities and Disaster: North American Studies in Emergency Management (with William Waugh); and Homeland Security and Emergency Management: A Public Budgeting Perspective.