DISASTER

A 'disaster' (from Middle French ''désastre'', from Old Italian ''disastro'', from the Greek pejorative prefix ''dis-'' bad + ''aster'' star) is the impact of a natural or man-made hazards that negatively affects society or environment. The word disaster's root is from astrology: this implies that when the stars are in a bad position a bad event will happen.
In contemporary academia, disasters are seen as the effect of hazards on vulnerable areas. Hazards that occur in areas with low vulnerability do not result in a disaster; as is the case in uninhabited regions. (Quarantelli 1998)

Contents

Classification

Natural Disasters

Man-made hazards

Disaster management

See also

References

External links

United States

Other

Classification

Wisner ''et al'' (2004) reflect a common opinion when they argue that all disasters can be seen as being man-made, their reasoning being that human actions before the strike of the hazard can prevent it developing into a disaster. All disasters are hence the result of human failure to introduce appropriate disaster management measures.
Hazards are routinely divided into natural or human-made, although complex disasters, where there is no single root cause, are more common in developing countries. A specific disaster may spawn a secondary disaster that increases the impact. A classic example is an earthquake that causes a tsunami, resulting in coastal flooding.

Natural Disasters

Main articles: Natural disaster

A 'natural disaster' is the consequence of when a potential natural hazard becomes a physical event (e.g. volcanic eruption, earthquake, landslide) and this interacts with human activities. Human vulnerability, caused by the lack of planning, lack of appropriate emergency management or the event being unexpected, leads to financial, structural, and human losses. The resulting loss depends on the capacity of the population to support or resist the disaster, their resilience. This understanding is concentrated in the formulation: "disasters occur when hazards meet vulnerability". A natural hazard will hence never result in a natural disaster in areas without vulnerability, e.g. strong earthquakes in uninhabited areas. The term natural has consequently been disputed because the events simply are not hazards or disasters without human involvement. The degree of potential loss can also depend on the nature of the hazard itself, ranging from a single lightning strike, which threatens a very small area, to impact events, which have the potential to end civilization.

Man-made hazards

Main articles: Man-made hazards

Disasters having an element of human intent, negligence, error or the ones involving the failure of a system are called man-made disasters. Man-made hazards are in turn categorised as technological or sociological. Technological hazards are results of failure of technology, such as engineering failures, transport accidents or environmental disasters. Sociological hazards have a strong human motive, such as crime, stampedes, riots and war.

Disaster management

Main articles: Emergency management, Business continuity planning

The probability of avoiding a disaster is greatly improved when those potentially affected by them implement mitigative action and develop emergency preparedness plans. The science of disaster management deals with this issue. Although the term disaster is subjective, it is often used in the developed world to refer to situations where local emergency management resources are inadequate to counteract the negative effects of the event (Quarantelli 1998). Business continuity planning focus on the particular application of disaster management in the commercial domain.

See also

★ Civil protection

★ Data recovery

★ Disaster film

★ Disaster convergence

★ Emergency

★ End of civilization

★ Risk

★
★ Existential risk

★ Hypothetical disaster

★ Sociology of disaster

★ Lists

★
★ List of disasters

★
★ List of natural disasters by death toll

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★ List of songs about disasters

References

★ Barton A.H. (1969). Communities in Disaster. A Sociological Analysis of Collective Stress Situations. SI: Ward Lock

★ Catastrophe and Culture: The Anthropology of Disaster. Susanna M. Hoffman and Anthony Oliver-Smith, Eds.. Santa Fe NM: School of American Research Press, 2002

★ Quarantelli E.L. (1998). Where We Have Been and Where We Might Go. In: Quarantelli E.L. (ed). What Is A Disaster? London: Routledge. pp146-159

★ Word Detective

★ G. Bankoff, G. Frerks, D. Hilhorst (eds.) (2003). Mapping Vulnerability: Disasters, Development and People. ISBN 1-85383-964-7.

★ B. Wisner, P. Blaikie, T. Cannon, and I. Davis (2004). At Risk - Natural hazards, people's vulnerability and disasters. Wiltshire: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-25216-4.

★ D. Alexander (2002). Principles of Emergency planning and Management. Harpended: Terra publishing. ISBN 1-903544-10-6.

External links

United States

★ Citizen Corps Guide

★ DisasterHelp.gov United States Egov reference

★ Ready.gov United States Ready Egov reference

★ The Disaster Center Internet source for disaster information

Other

★ EM-DAT database of human-made and natural disasters

★ HAVARIA Emergency and Disaster Information Service An up-to-the-minute world wide map showing current disasters.

★ Global Disaster Alert and Coordination System A United Nations and European Commission sponsored website for disaster information.