2. Disaster
The term disaster origin to the French word “Desastre” which is a
combination of two words ‘des’ meaning bad and ‘aster’ meaning star.
The term refers to ‘Bad or Evil star’.
“A serious disruption in the functioning of the community or a society
causing wide spread material, economic, social or environmental losses
which exceed the ability of the affected society to cope using its own
resources”.
3. Disaster
Disaster is a result from the combination of hazard, vulnerability and
insufficient capacity or measures to reduce the potential chances of risk.
Disaster happens when a hazard impacts on the vulnerable population and
causes damage, casualties and disruption.
4. Disaster
Disaster occurs only when hazards and vulnerability meet. But it is also to
be noted that with greater capacity of the Individual, community and
environment to face these disasters, the impact of a hazard reduces.
Therefore, we need to understand the three major components namely
hazard, vulnerability and capacity.
6. Hazard
“A dangerous condition or event, that threat or have the potential for causing
injury to life or damage to property or the environment.”
The word ‘hazard’ owes its origin to the word ‘hasard’ in old French and ‘az-
zahr’ in Arabi
Hazards can be grouped into two broad categories namely Natural and
Manmade
7. Natural Hazards
Natural hazards are hazards which are caused because of natural phenomena
• Hazards with meteorological,
• Geological or even
• Biological origin.
Examples of natural hazards are:
Cyclones, Tsunamis, Earthquake and , Volcanic eruption which are
exclusively of natural origin
8. Man Made hazards
Manmade hazards are hazards which are due to human negligence.
Manmade hazards are associated with: Industries or Energy generation
facilities and include explosions, Leakage of toxic waste, Pollution, Dam
failure, Wars etc
9. Vulnerability
The extent to which a community, structure, services or geographic area is
likely to be damaged or disrupted by the impact of particular hazard, on
account of their nature, construction and proximity to hazardous terrains or a
disaster prone area.” Vulnerabilities can categorized :
• Physical
• Socio-economic vulnerability.
10. Physical Vulnerability
It includes notions of who and what may be damaged or destroyed by natural
hazard such as earthquakes or floods.
It is based on the physical condition of people and elements at risk, such as
buildings, infrastructure etc; and their proximity, location and nature of the
hazard. It also relates to the technical capability of building and structures to
resist the forces acting upon them during a hazard event.
11. Socio-economic Vulnerability
The degree to which a population is affected by a hazard will not merely lie
in the physical components of vulnerability but also on the socioeconomic
conditions.
Hazards are always prevalent, but the hazard becomes a disaster only when
there is greater vulnerability and less of capacity to cope with it.
24. Graph information
• It may be possible that earlier disasters were not recorded properly. Because of
increasing reach of media and technology more disasters are reported these days.
• However, it is noted that frequency of hydro-meterological disasters has increased
in the past few years which may be due to climate change. In the same period
number of occurrence of geological disaster remained almost constant. See next
slide.
25. Cont-----
• The graph clearly shows that occurrence of hydrometerological disaster
(Blue) is increasing whereas, other disasters have remain almost constant.
So, the reporting trend might have increased number of disasters in later
decades, there is significant increase in number of disasters also.
26. Cont---
• Assumption, that the development of communication system and media
reporting has increased the reported disaster but actually the number of disaster
event is same as before.
• Therefore, let's check the reported disaster after 1975 by the time the
communication system as developed.
• The increasing trend is observed in post 1975 era also
• This can indicate that only increased accuracy of reporting
• And is not the major reason for increased frequency of disasters
27. Cont----
• Although number of disaster events has increased in the last decades,
it’s interesting to note that number of people being killed due to
disasters is decreasing.
• This can be due to the fact that there is increasing awareness on safety of
people worldwide.
28. Cont---
• One of the reasons for increasing number of reported disasters is due to the
advancement in information and communication.
• Accordingly, number of affected people is also increasing.
• The reporting of disaster in earlier decades might only be done when there is
number of people dead but in recent decade all the events are being covered and
reported.
• There is increase in Disaster Risk Reduction effort
