Disaster

A disaster is an event that causes harm to people, things, economies, or the environment that the affected community or society cannot handle on its own. In theory, natural disasters are those caused by natural hazards, whereas human-made disasters are those caused by human hazards. However, in modern times, the divide between natural, human-made or human-accelerated disasters is more and more difficult to draw. In fact, all disasters can be seen as human-made, due to human failure to introduce appropriate emergency management measures.

Disasters caused by natural hazards are things like avalanches, floods, earthquakes, and wildfires. Further examples are cold waves and heat waves, droughts, cyclones, landslides, lightning, tsunamis, volcanic activity. Human-made disasters are about other hazards and actions or social processes. Examples are oil spills, criminal acts, social unrest, terrorist attacks, and power outages.

When disasters happen, developing countries often suffer the most. Over 95% of deaths from disasters occur in these countries, and they lose much more money compared to other countries. Losses due to natural hazards are 20 times greater (as a percentage of gross domestic product) in developing countries than in industrialized countries.

Definition and types

The UN defines a disaster as "a serious disruption of the functioning of a community or a society at any scale".^: 13 It results from hazards occurring in places where people are living under exposed or vulnerable conditions. Poor planning or development or a lack of preparation are human failures which make communities vulnerable to climate hazards.

Disasters are defined by their influence on people: if a hazard overwhelms or negatively affects a community, it is considered a disaster. Similarly, EM-DAT defines a disaster as “a situation or event that overwhelms local capacity, necessitating a request for external assistance at the national or international level; it is an unforeseen and often sudden event that causes great damage, destruction and human suffering.” EM-DAT researches and maintains a database of natural hazard-related disasters and their impacts. The effects of a disaster include all human, material, economic and environmental losses and impacts.^: 13

A distinction can be made between small-scale disasters and large-scale disasters. The former only affect local communities but require assistance beyond the affected community. The latter affect wider society and require national or international assistance.

Disasters are routinely divided into natural or human-made. However, in modern times, the divide between natural, man-made and man-accelerated disasters is quite difficult to draw. Some manufactured disasters have been wrongly ascribed to nature, such as smog and acid rain.

Complex disasters, where there is no single root cause, are more common in developing countries. A specific hazard may also spawn a secondary disaster that increases the impact. A classic example is an earthquake that causes a tsunami, resulting in coastal flooding, resulting in damage to a nuclear power plant (such as the Fukushima nuclear disaster). Such 'cascading' events are examined in research looking at how risks and impacts can amplify and spread, especially in the context of increasing climate risks.^{: 143–145}

Some researchers also differentiate between recurring events, such as seasonal flooding, and unpredictable one-off events. Recurring events are often linked with an estimate of the return period of a given hazard and its impacts. For example a 10-year flood.

Related to natural hazards

Disasters that have links to natural hazards are commonly called natural disasters although this term has been called a misnomer for a long time.

Unrelated to natural hazards

Human-made disasters are serious harmful events caused by human actions and social processes. Technological hazards also fall into this category because they result in human-instigated disasters. Human-made hazards are sometimes also called anthropogenic hazards.^: 18 Examples include criminality, social unrest, crowd crushes, fires, transport accidents, industrial accidents, power outages, oil spills, terrorist attacks, and nuclear explosions/nuclear radiation. Other types of induced disasters include the more cosmic scenarios of catastrophic climate change, nuclear war, and bioterrorism.

Climate change and environmental degradation have also been defined as socionatural hazards. These are hazards associated with a combination of natural and human factors. ^: 18 The line between natural, human-made or human-accelerated disasters is more and more difficult to draw. All disasters can be regarded as human-made, due to human failure to introduce appropriate emergency management measures.

Famines may be caused locally by drought, flood, fire, or pestilence, but in modern times there is plenty of food globally, and sustained localized shortages are generally due to government mismanagement, violent conflict, or an economic system that does not distribute food where needed.

Major disasters

Major disaster, as it is usually assessed on quantitative criteria of death and damage, was defined by Sheehan and Hewitt (1969), having to conform to the following criteria:

• At least 100 people dead,
• at least 100 people injured, or
• at least $1 million damage

This definition includes indirect losses of life caused after the initial onset of the disaster such as secondary effects of, e.g., cholera or dysentery. This definition is still commonly used but has the limitations of number of deaths, injuries, and damage (in $). UNDRO (1984) defined a disaster in a more qualitative fashion as:

an event, concentrated in time and space, in which a community undergoes severe danger and incurs such losses to its members and physical appurtenances that the social structure is disrupted and the fulfilment of all or some of the essential functions of the society is prevented.

As with other definitions of disaster, this definition not only encompasses the social aspect of disaster impact and stresses potentially caused but also focuses on losses, implying the need for emergency response as an aspect of the disaster. It does not, however, set out quantitative thresholds or scales for damage, death, or injury, respectively.

Impacts

The effects of a disaster include all human, material, economic and environmental losses and impacts.^: 13

The Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT) records statistics about disasters related to natural hazards. For 2023, EM-DAT recorded 399 disasters, which was higher than the 20-year average of 369.

Economic losses

Between 2016 and 2020 the total reported economic losses amounted to $293 billion. This figure is likely to be an underestimation. It is very challenging to measure the costs of disasters accurately, and many countries lack the resources and technical capacity to do so.^: 50 Over the 40 year period from 1980-2020 losses were estimated at $5.2 trillion.

Human impacts

In 2023, natural hazard-related disasters resulted in 86,473 fatalities and affected 93.1 million people. Whilst the number of deaths was much higher than the 20-year average of 64,148, the number affected was much lower than the 20-year average of 175.5 million.

According to a UN report, 91% of deaths from hazards from 1970 to 2019 occurred in developing countries. These countries already have higher vulnerability and lower resilience to these events, which exacerbates the effects of the hazards.

Effects of climate change

Hazards such as droughts, floods, and cyclones are naturally occurring phenomena. However, climate change has caused these hazards to become more unreliable, frequent and severe. They thus contribute to disaster risks. Countries contributing most to climate change are often at the lowest risk of feeling the consequences. As of 2019, countries with the highest vulnerability per capita release the lowest amount of emissions per capita, and yet still experience the most heightened droughts and extreme precipitation.

Prevention and response

Disaster risk reduction

Disaster response

Etymology

The word disaster is derived from Middle French désastre and that from Old Italian disastro, which in turn comes from the Ancient Greek pejorative prefix δυσ- (dus-) "bad" and ἀστήρ (aster), "star". The root of the word disaster ("bad star" in Greek) comes from an astrological sense of a calamity blamed on the position of planets.

See also

• Act of God
• Disaster recovery
• Emergency management
• List of accidents and disasters by death toll
• Lists of disasters

References

External links

• International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies – IFRC
• ReliefWeb of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs –ReliefWeb
• United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction – UNDRR
• EM-DAT International Disaster Database of the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters
• Global Disaster Alert and Coordination System – a joint initiative of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and the European Commission
• UN-SPIDER – UN-SPIDER, the United Nations Platform for Space-based Information for Disaster Management and Emergency Response], a project of the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA)

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