So, any natural phenomenon like earthquake or a man-made phenomenon like a radioactive explosion can be a source of hazard, but whether it would culminate into a disaster depends on two factors.
- Physical Exposure- reflecting the range of potentially damaging events and their statistical variability at a particular location.
- Human vulnerability- reflecting the breadth of social and economic tolerance to such hazardous event at the same site. The factors which influence vulnerability are
- Rapid urbanisation and migration: Rapid population growth, migration and poverty are related to the major phenomenon of rapid urbanization. The massive number of urban increasingly find fewer options for availability of safe and desirable places to build their houses. Here again, competition for scarce resources, an inevitable consequence of rapid urbanization, can lead to manmade disasters.
- Transitions in cultural practices: Transitions in cultural practices brings in insecurity and vulnerability. Also, conflicting cultural practices can lead to civil conflict and strife.
- Environmental degradation: Many disasters are either caused or exacerbated by environmental degradation. For example, deforestation leads to rapid runoff which contributes to flooding.
- Lack of awareness and information: Disasters can also occur when people who are vulnerable have not been educated on how to get out of harm’s way or take protective measures at the onset of a disaster.
- War and civil strife: War and civil strife are regarded as hazards or extreme events that produce disasters. War and civil strife often cause the displacement of the population. The causal factors of war and civil strife include competition for scarce resources, religious or ethnic intolerance, and ideological differences. Many of these are also byproducts of the preceding factors.
Therefore,
“It may be concluded that a disaster is a serious disruption of the functioning of a society, causing widespread human, material, or environmental losses, caused by hazards, which exceed the ability of affected society (community) to cope using only its own resources.”
Thus far we have seen what a disaster is. Now let us discuss about disaster management.
Fig.1: The figure shows how resources can culminate into disasters (Smith. K, 1996)