This document describes about hazard and disaster. Besides how hazard becomes a disaster and negatively affect in the society. Hazard is an incident which turns into a disaster in the long run.

1. How a Hazard Event May Turn into a Disaster in the
Society
Tarmin Akther

2. Definition of Hazard
The term hazard is defined as a threat that may cause to loss of life, injury, damage of assets,
socio-economic and environmental distraction. On the other hand, hazard event is the
occurrence of a hazard, which may affect socio-economic and environmental condition.
Therefore, hazard event is the situation when a phenomenon is occurred. Hazard can be
natural or manmade. Floods, earthquake, cyclone, tsunami, drought, wildfire, volcanic
eruption etc are example of natural hazard and road accident, plane crash, oil split in river etc
are example of human created hazard.
Meaning of Disaster
A hazard event becomes a disaster when it disrupts the normal ways of life of a society or
community. It involves widespread human, material, economical and environmental loss to
the society which exceeds the ability of the affected community to cope using its own
resources (Grant et al., 2015). The hazard like floods, earthquake, cyclone, tsunami, drought,
wildfire, volcanic eruption, road accident, plane crash, oil split in river etc. are termed as
disasters when they are occurred in a region and heavily affected or destructed the
inhabitation of society.
How a hazard event turn into a disaster in the society
A hazard is not itself a disaster, rather it only turn into a disaster when societal vulnerability
meets with hazard. There are different factors that play a role to determine if a specific hazard
becomes a disaster or not. Some factors are the degree and strength of hazard, exact
capacities of the affected population in relation to the hazard and specific vulnerabilities of
the affected population in relation to the hazard, (Wisner et al., 2004). There are some other
factors which are manmade and help to increase the intensity and extent of a hazard forces to
turn into a disaster; for example, deforestation, carbon emission, unplanned urbanization, etc.
In each system, there have some innate power or ability to cope with an adverse condition for
a short time which is called copping capacity. When a hazard arise in a system (society or
community), it tries to mitigate this situation through its own capacity. When the coping
capacity is completely exhausted but the system can’t move its normal way then disaster is
come and the system requires external help to recover. The following diagram is prepared
based on pressure and release (PAR) model which describe how hazard come into contact
with vulnerability and leads a disaster.
The PAR model describe a hazard solely does not turn into a disaster rather there have some
driving forces. Driving forces indicates different societal vulnerabilities which meet up with
hazard and simultaneously attract on society or community that ultimately lead a disaster.
Therefore, all disasters come from hazard but all hazard are not may turn into a disaster.
2

3. How a Hazard Becomes a Disaster PAR Model
Source: Wisner et al. (2008), p. 47.
3
Underlying Causes of
Vulnerabilities
Poverty (limited access to
power infrastructure
and resources)
Failing of political, social
and economic system
Unsafe Condition of
Population
Fragile physical environment
dangerous location
unsafe building
Fragile local economy
low level of income
low level of living standard
Public actions
lack of disaster preparedness
prevalence of epidemic
disease
Different Dynamic
Pressures
Local Scale
Lack of food security,
local institution,
education, training,
appropriate skill, local
investment, local market,
service sector, press
freedom and ethical
standard,
Macro-forces
Population expansion
Rapid urbanization
Environmental
degradation (over
exploitation of resources)
Disaster Vulnerability
Disaster
Hazard Events
Cyclone Earthquake Floods
Volcanic
eruption
Drought
Wildfire
Tsunami
River Erosion
Progression of Vulnerability

4. According to the PAR model disaster is equal to hazard multiplied by vulnerability of the
society.
Disaster = Hazard × Vulnerability
Where, vulnerability (V) is a function of adaptive capacity (AC), sensitivity (S) and exposure
(E).
V = f (AC, S, E)
Adaptive capacity refers to the adjustment ability after disaster. Coping capacity and
adaptive capacity may differ from duration of time. Adaptive capacity is long time process
than coping capacity. The relation between vulnerability and adaptive capacity is negative.
The system is more vulnerable is it has less adaptive capacity. Sensitivity implies the degree
of response of a system against adverse effect. The higher degree of sensitivity refers to
greater vulnerability. Exposure indicates the situation at risk or dangers. Exposure also
positively related with vulnerability.
Cyclone ‘Sidr’ and cyclone ‘Aila’ which attacked on the coastal region of Bangladesh in 2007
and 2009 respectively as example of hazard event those turn into disaster. Due to cyclone
Sidr and cyclone Aila the normal living pattern in that society was changed. The hazard event
was influenced more intensively because of root causes, dynamic pressure and unsafe
condition of population. The coastal region is characterized by high rate of poverty, weak
political, social and economical system, lack of local institutions and infrastructural
development, education and training facilities, local investment, local market etc. On the
other hand, this area is near to bay of bangal. For this reason, natural hazards directly affect
on this region.
Huge amount of damage was made in the period of cyclone Sidr and Aila was occurred.
Many people died. Many households are migrated. Many people lost their way of livelihood.
Soil intrusion in cultivable land was damaged crop and reduces soil productivity which has
long term effect. Destruction of road, infrastructure and communication system was
postponed economic growth.
How the climate change is correlated with disasters?
In the above diagram we see that how disaster is occurred through interaction of vulnerability
and hazard events. Now the thinking issue is that is there any relation between disaster and
climate change. Climate change refers to the change in average weather condition over the
time. Climate change often use synonym of global warming. The term global warming
describes a gradual increase in the average temperature of the Earth’s atmosphere and its
oceans.
In recent years, to describe about natural disaster often use the term climate change disaster.
Whereas, climate change disaster refers to a disaster that is intensified directly by climate
change. To avoid responsibility and accountability, sometimes a disaster could be termed as
being caused by climate change whereas it actually caused by mismanagement or lack of
poor governance (Grant et al., 2015). However, the scientific evidence indicates that due to
climate change sea surface temperature and sea-level is increased day by day that will be
intensified cyclone activity and heighten storm surges (Dasgupta, et al., 2014).
4

5. Due to several reasons the world’s temperature is increased. Rapid industrialization and
urbanization, rapid growth of population, deforestation etc are some causes of higher rate of
carbon emission that assume main culprit of global warming. In recent years, global leaders
increase emphasize on controlling emission of carbon. As global warming causes climate
change, that increases the frequency of abnormal behavior of nature, such as, drought, over
rainfall, cyclone, flood, tsunami etc.
Climate change may increase the intensity of hazard and that may turn into a disaster. We can
consider Bangladesh as an example of hazard-prone region which adversely affected by
climate change in future. To approximate cyclones and related storm surges due to changing
climate, consider to raise sea level by 27 cm, increase wind speed by 10% and landfall during
high tide to approximately by 2050. It is also predicted that due to rising sea level one-third
of Bangladesh will sink under sea water (Dasgupta, et al., 2014). Some studies peak the point
that the current saltwater intrusion in coastal region of Bangladesh is causing of sea level rise
or changing patterns of rainfall due to climate change (Grant et al., 2015). As a result, farmers
face danger of crop failure due to reduce of land productivity in different areas. Saltwater
intrusion also result shortage of drinking water, reduce employment opportunities, force to
migrate people in urban area and so on.
Therefore, climate change is one of the important factors to increase frequency and extent of
natural hazard and disaster. Not all natural hazard and disaster are result from climate change
but climate change increase the risk of vulnerability for the global people.
5

6. List of References
Dasgupta, S., Huq, M. Khan, Z.H., Ahmed, M.M.Z., Mukherjee, N., Khan, M.F. and Pandy,
K. (2014). Cyclone in a changing climate: the Case of Bangladesh, Climate and
Development, 6(2), pp. 96-110.
Grant, S., Tamason, C.C. and Jensen, P.K.M. (2015). Climatization: A Critical Perspective of
Farming Disasters as Climate Change Events, Climate Risk Management, 10, pp. 27-
34.
Wisner, B., Piers Blaikie, P., Cannon, T. and Davis, I. (2004). At Risk: Natural Hazards,
People’s Vulnerability and Disasters, 2nd
edition, Routledge Taylor and Francis Group,
London and New York.
6