User:HeliumPearl/sandbox

BULLSHIT\\

A hazard is a situation that poses a level of threat to life, health, property, or environment. Hazards can be dormant or potential, with only a theoretical risk of harm; however, once a hazard becomes "active", it can create an emergency. A hazardous situation that has come to pass is called an incident.A disaster is a sudden, 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 disaster is a serious disruption of the functioning of a community or a society involving widespread human, material, economic or environmental loss and impacts, which exceeds the ability of the affected community or society to cope using its own resourcesOne of the most difficult concepts in the literature is to arrive at a definition of a disaster. There have been many attempts to define disasters, but all run into the problem of either being too broad or too narrow. Having a definition of a disaster i s extremely important in epidemiology for identifying which events to include or exclude from your analysis. If events are identified with a common definition, then they can also be more easily compared. In general, most disaster events are defined by the need for external assistance. Perhaps, one reason for this observation is that the disaster relief agencies are often the only organizations with comprehensive and systematic data. There should be some caution applied to data defined in this circumstance. Notably, the decision on which situations require external assistance may differ by country or region. In some situations, it may be a political decision as well.

The Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) in Brussels, Belgium, uses the following definition. �A disaster is a situation or event which overwhelms local capa city, necessitating a request to a national or international level for external assistance.� CRED maintains a database of disaster events from 1900 to present. Much of their data is derived from relief groups, including the Red Cross/Red Crescent Agency.

Natural Hazards are events that are part of the dynamic processes of the Earth. However, when natural hazards adversely affect people then they become natural disasters.

Natural disasters are catastrophic events that are extreme and usually sudden. They not only can cause millions of dollars in damage, but they can also cause a lot of death and devastation. The number of reports of natural disaster has significantly increased over the last several years. It appears that the World has recently come under “attack” from several different types of natural disasters.

A hazard becomes a disaster when either there are no mitigating circumstances to prevent the disaster from happening or the mitigating circumstances fail. ex: Driving presents many hazards. We have traffic lights, stop signs, seat belts, etc., all of which aid us in preventing potential disasters.

Disaster risk is expressed as the likelihood of loss of life, injury or destruction and damage from a disaster in a given period of time. Disaster risk is widely recognized as the consequence of the interaction between a hazard and the characteristics that make people and places vulnerable and exposed.

Disasters are sometimes considered external shocks, but disaster risk results from the complex interaction between development processes that generate conditions of exposure, vulnerability and hazard (UNISDR, 2009a). Disaster risk is therefore considered as the combination of the severity and frequency of a hazard, the numbers of people and assets exposed to the hazard, and their vulnerability to damage (UNISDR, 2015a). Intensive risk is disaster risk associated with low-probability, high-impact events, whereas extensive risk is associated with high-probability, low-impact events.

There is no such thing as a natural disaster, but disasters often follow natural hazards. The losses and impacts that characterise disasters usually have much to do with the exposure and vulnerability of people and places as they do with the severity of the hazard event (UNISDR, 2013).

Disaster risk has many characteristics. In order to understand disaster risk, it is essential to understand that it is:

Forward looking the likelihood of loss of life, destruction and damage in a given period of time Dynamic: it can increase or decrease according to our ability to reduce vulnerability Invisible: it is comprised of not only the threat of high-impact events, but also the frequent, low-impact events that are often hidden Unevenly distributed around the earth: hazards affect different areas, but the pattern of disaster risk reflects the social construction of exposure and vulnerability in different countries Emergent and complex: many processes, including climate change and globalized economic development, are creating new, interconnected risks Disasters threaten development, just as development creates disaster risk. The key to understanding disaster risk is by recognizing that disasters are an indicator of development failures, meaning that disaster risk is a measure of the sustainability of development. Hazard, vulnerability and exposure are influenced by a number of risk drivers, including poverty and inequality, badly planned and managed urban and regional development, climate change and environmental degradation (UNISDR, 2009a, 2011, 2013 and 2015a).

Understanding disaster risk requires us to not only consider the hazard, our exposure and vulnerability but also society's capacity to protect itself from disasters. The ability of communities, societies and systems to resist, absorb, accommodate, recover from disasters, whilst at the same time improve wellbeing, is known as resilience.

Natural disasters can be categorized as "acute" or "slow" in their onset. They are predictable because they cluster in geographic areas. Natural hazards are unpreventable and, for the most part, uncontrollable. Even if quick recovery occurs, natural disasters can have longterm effects. Natural disasters with acute onsets include events such as earthquake, flood, hurricane or typhoon, tornado, fire, tsunami or storm surge, avalanche, volcanic eruption, extreme cold or blizzard, and heat wave. Natural hazards with a slow or gradual onset include drought, famine, desertification, deforestation, and pest infestation. The most important natural disasters and examples of their environmental effects are listed in Table 1.

Technological or manmade disasters include nuclear accidents, bombings, and bioterrorism. Increasingly, agencies involved in disasters and their management are concerned with the interactions between man and nature, which can be complex and can aggravate disasters.

The severity of damage caused by natural or technological disasters is affected by population density in disaster-prone areas, local building codes, community preparedness, and the use of public safety announcements and education on how to respond correctly at the first signs of danger. Recovery following a disaster varies according to the public's access to pertinent information (e.g., sources of government and private aid), pre-existing conditions that increase or reduce vulnerability (i.e., economic or biological factors), prior experience with stressful situations, and availability of sufficient savings and insurance.