Population growth and distribution, especially increased population density and urbanization, increases vulnerability to disasters. Nearly 80 percent of the U.S. population resides in urban areas, resulting in increasing population concentration in coastal communities and flood-prone areas.
Natural hazards such as flooding, earthquakes and hurricanes cannot be prevented. However, there are still opportunities to reduce damage from natural hazards.
In a disaster, you face the danger of death or physical injury. You may also lose your home, possessions, and community. Such stressors place you at risk for emotional and physical health problems. Stress reactions after a disaster look very much like the common reactions seen after any type of trauma.
Disaster is frequently described as a result of various condition except ________. insufficient capacity or measures to to cope with disasters. Q. It is a situation or occurrence with capacity to bring damages to lives, properties, and the environment.
Vulnerability and Capacity Assessment (VCA) uses various participatory tools to gauge people's exposure to and capacity to resist natural hazards. It is an integral part of disaster preparedness and contributes to the creation of community-based disaster preparedness programmes at the rural and urban grass-roots level.
Why does disaster risk matter? If current global patterns of increasing exposure, high levels of inequality, rapid urban development and environment degradation grow, then disaster risk may increase to dangerous levels (UNISDR, 2015b). Since 1980 1.6 billion people have been killed in disasters (UNISDR, 2015a).
Awareness, education, preparedness, and prediction and warning systems can reduce the disruptive impacts of a natural disaster on communities. Mitigation measures such as adoption of zoning, land-use practices, and building codes are needed, however, to prevent or reduce actual damage from hazards.
A hazard can be defined as a potentially damaging physical event, social and economic disruption or environmental degradation. Typical examples of hazards can be absence of rain (leading to drought) or the abundance thereof (leading to floods). Hazards can be the creation of man or the environment.
Disaster risk reduction (DRR) strategies are the cornerstone of formalised action for reducing natural hazard-related disaster risk and setting the strategic direction for a district, country or region to become more resilient to disasters.
The prevention/mitigation phase involves: establishing a vital records program, completing risk management processes, and developing a disaster prevention plan. The four primary phases are: Preparedness - First, prepare to protect yourself, others and items of great importance in the event an emergency/disaster occurs.
Disaster mitigation – Structural and non-structural measures undertaken to limit the adverse impact of natural hazards; for example, planting mangroves to reduce the risk posed by tidal surges or raising awareness of natural hazards through school-based education projects.
On the one hand, risk reduction deals with mitigating potential losses. For example, suppose this investor already owns oil stocks. There is political risk associated with the production of oil, and the stocks have a high level of unsystematic risk.
- What is Natural Hazard Risk? The risk from a natural hazard is determined by the combined understanding of three components:
- Hazard.
- Exposure.
- Vulnerability.
- Physical vulnerability.
- Social vulnerability.
- Economic loss.
- System vulnerability.
Advocate for DRRThe policy objective of anticipating and reducing risk is called disaster risk reduction (DRR). Although often used interchangeably with DRR, disaster risk management (DRM) can be thought of as the implementation of DRR, since it describes the actions that aim to achieve the objective of reducing risk.
Disaster preparedness refers to measures taken to prepare for and reduce the effects of disasters. That is, to predict and, where possible, prevent disasters, mitigate their impact on vulnerable populations, and respond to and effectively cope with their consequences.
Disaster Readiness and Risk Reduction. This course focuses on the application of scientific knowledge and the solution of practical problems in a physical environment. It is designed to bridge the gap between theoretical science and daily living.
Its objective is to encourage knowledge and experience sharing among communities, organizations and other disaster risk reduction (DRR) stakeholders for the benefit of all those vulnerable to natural disasters, especially floods.
Climate change and disaster risk reduction are closely linked. More extreme weather events in future are likely to increase the number and scale of disasters, while at the same time, the existing methods and tools of disaster risk reduction provide powerful capacities for adaptation to climate change.
The different types of vulnerabilityIn the table below four different types of vulnerability have been identified, Human-social, Physical, Economic and Environmental and their associated direct and indirect losses.
The three phases of a disaster program are disaster planning, disaster management and disaster recovery. Disaster plan development and improvements should include the corporate records manager as an equal partner with others on the development team.
What are the factors that make a community vulnerable?
- Initial well-being, strength and resilience (high mortality rates, malnutrition, disease)
- Weak infrastructure, such as buildings, sanitation, electricity supply, roads and transportation.
- Occupation in a risky area (insecure/ risk-prone sources of livelihood)
- Degradation of the environment and inability to protect it.
Disasters occur frequently and often place a substantial burden on affected populations. Those losses or impacts often exceed the community's or society's ability to control or cope with the disaster using its existing resources. Disasters are the product of a combination of hazards and vulnerability.
A threat is what we're trying to protect against. Vulnerability – Weaknesses or gaps in a security program that can be exploited by threats to gain unauthorized access to an asset. Risk – The potential for loss, damage or destruction of an asset as a result of a threat exploiting a vulnerability.
One measure of the strength of a community's response and recovery system is its attentiveness to its most vulnerable citizens–children, the frail elderly, the disabled, and the impoverished and disenfranchised. It is a cruel fact: disasters discriminate.
HVAs can be broken down into categories of incidents for the organization to evaluate: Technological, Man Made & Naturally occurring incidents/hazards. Technological Examples: IT Failure, HVAC failure, Electrical Failure, Supply Shortage , etc.
Vulnerability describes the characteristics and circumstances of a community, system or asset that make it susceptible to the damaging effects of a hazard. There are many aspects of vulnerability, arising from various physical, social, economic, and environmental factors.
Vulnerabilities are the gaps or weaknesses that undermine an organization's IT security efforts, e.g. a firewall flaw that lets hackers into a network. Risk refers to the calculated assessment of potential threats to an organization's security and vulnerabilities within its network and information systems.
