Disasters and Humanitarian Response Flashcards
Key concepts in module:
- disasters
- Post disaster humanitarian response including
- the cluster approach
- post-disaster needs assessment
Hazard:
A natural or human-made phenomenon that can potentially harm individuals, communities, their assets and/or the environment/ecological services they depend on.
Exposure:
The individuals, communities, their assets and/or the environment/ecological services they depend on that are potentially exposed to hazards - co-occur spatially.
Vulnerability:
The attributes of individuals, communitites, their assets and/or the environment/ecological services they depend on that determine the degree to which they are impacted by a hazard.
Risk
The likelihood of an event occurring multiplied by the consequences of its impact.
Disaster:
A sudden, unexpected and calamitous event that seriously disrupts the functioning of a community or society and causes human, material, and economic or environmental losses that exceed the community’s or society’s ability to cope using its own resources. Though often caused by nature, disasters can have human origins.
A systems approach to disasters:
Society consists of a set of complex nested human-generated systems (from individuals to nations to global organisation), all confined within the complex nested natural systems of planet Earth.
A disaster occurs when part of the human system is impacted by part of the natural system (or in technological disasters, impacted by another part of the human system). This only occurs when the behaviour of the natural system is unexpected - i.e. extreme.
Over time human systems expand and become more interconnected.
Eventually the human system becomes sufficiently large and intense that a sufficiently extreme and unexpected natural event can damage it severely, this is a disaster.
There is no such thing as a “natural disaster”. Disasters occur because the dynamics of human systems give rise to exposures vulnerable to hazards - human agency is key.
Disaster types:
geophysical, hydrological, meteorological, climatological, biological, extra-terrestrial
Examples of geophysical natural hazards
- earthquake
- mass movement (dry)
- volcanic activity
Examples of hydrological natural hazards
- flood
- landslide
- wave action
Examples of meteorological natural hazards
- storm
- extreme temperature
- fog
Examples of climatological natural hazards
- drought
- glacial lake outburst
- wildfire
Examples of biological natural hazards
- animal accident
- epidemic
- insect infestation
Examples of extra-terrestrial natural hazards
- impact
- space weather
Percentage of occurences of disasters by disaster types
Flood 43% - 3000
Storm 28% - 2000
Earthquake 8% - 550