The fourth International Conference on Disaster Management is being reconvened following the success of the previous three meetings, held at Wessex Institute in the New Forest in 2009, the University of Central Florida in Orlando, USA in 2011 and A Coruña, Spain in 2013.This series of conferences originated with the need for academia and practitioners to exchange knowledge and experience on the way to handle the increasing risk of natural and human-made disasters. Recent major earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, floods and other natural phenomena have resulted in huge losses in terms of human life and property destruction. A new range of human-made disasters have afflicted humanity in modern times; terrorist activities have been added to more classical disasters such as those due to the failure of industrial installations for instance.