Hazard: a threat that has the potential to cause loss of life, injury, property damage, socio-economic disruption or environmental degradation. Hazard event: the occurrence of a hazard eg. an earthquake Disaster: a major hazard event that causes widespread disruption to a community or region, with significant demographic, economic and/or environmental losses, and which the affected community is unable to deal with adequately without outside help. Vulnerability: the geographical conditions that increases the susceptibility of a community to a hazard or to the impact of a hazard event. Risk: the probability of a hazard event causing harmful consequences (loss of life, injuries damage) Fatalism: the idea that hazards are unavoidable/acts of God Domination: hazards are predictable and that they can be better understood by scientific research. Adjustment/adaptation: altering your every day life for the hazard Prediction: monitoring the risk of the hazard Management: responding to the hazard. Socio-economic disruption: disruption to social lifestyle or economic aspects. Environmental degradation: the deterioration of the natural environment.

Nature of hazards

• Caused by earth processes.

• They can be caused by internal earth processes of tectonic activity, or by external processes of geomorphological origin involving mass movement.

• Caused by the occurrence, movement and distribution of surface and underground water.

• Processes operating in the atmosphere resulting in extreme weather or atmospheric conditions.

Why don’t we categorise by frequency or

magnitude?

A naturally occurring process or event which has the potential to cause loss

of life or property. Without people it is just a

natural event.

“The realisation of hazard, although there is

no universally agreed definition of the scale on which loss has to occur in

order to qualify as a disaster”(Smith 1996)

At what point would you consider an event to be a

disaster?

The UN

Why are some people more vulnerable to some hazards?

Hazard perception and economic and cultural determinants

People tend to respond to a hazard in ways that are consistent with their perception of the risk. There are three general approaches to hazard perception:

Adaption: this perspective takes the view that hazards are influenced by natural and human events and so we can change our lives to reduce the impacts.

Fatalism: An optimistic or accepting approach, where people may believe that hazards are part of life or „acts of God‟.

Domination: this perspective suggests that hazards are predictable and that they can be better understood by scientific research.

When a hazard event occurs, it disrupts economic and social life

often immediately and totally.

The Park model describes a

sequence of phases following such an event.

It refers to the strategies and

approaches taken to being ‘back to normal’ after a disaster. These methods span from immediate ‘relief’ to providing temporary housing to reconstructing after

the damage.

Each of these is more easily achieved in countries with higher

incomes.