Natural disaster
A
natural disaster is the consequence of the combination of a
natural hazard (a physical event e.g. volcanic eruption, earthquake, landslide) and human activities. Human vulnerability, caused by the lack of appropriate
emergency management, leads to financial, structural, and human losses. The resulting loss depend on the capacity of the population to support or resist the disaster, their resilience
[Bankoff, G. , G. Frerks, D. Hilhorst (eds.), 2003, Mapping Vulnerability: Disasters, Development and People, ISBN 1853839647 ]. This understanding is concentrated in the formulation: "disasters occur when hazards meet
vulnerability"
[Wisner, B., P. Blaikie, T. Cannon, and I. Davis, 2004, At Risk - Natural hazards, people's vulnerability and disasters, Wiltshire: Routledge, ISBN 0-415-25216-4]. A natural hazard will hence never result in a natural disaster in areas without vulnerability, e.g. strong earthquakes in uninhabited areas. The term
natural has consequently been disputed because the events simply are not hazards or disasters without human involvement
[Alexander, D., 2002, Principles of Emergency planning and Management, Harpended: Terra publishing, ISBN 1-903544-10-6 ].
A Natural Hazard is an event that has an effect on people resulting from the natural processes in the environment
;
Avalanche : An avalanche is a geophysical hazard involving a slide of a large snow (or rock) mass down a mountainside, caused when a buildup of snow is released down a slope, it is one of the major dangers faced in the mountains in winter. An avalanche is an example of a gravity current consisting of granular material. In an avalanche, lots of material or mixtures of different types of material fall or slide rapidly under the force of gravity. Avalanches are often classified by what they are made prolonged rainfall from a
storm, including
thunderstorms, rapid melting of large amounts of
snow, or
rivers which swell from excess precipitation upstream and cause widespread damage to areas downstream, or less frequently the bursting of man-made dams or
levees. A
river which floods particularly often is the
Huang He in
China, and a particularly damaging flood was the
Great Flood of 1931.
Earthquake : A disaster where two tectonic plates within the earths crust collide and cause cracks in that area, causing buildings to fall down.;
Hailstorm : A hailstorm is a natural disaster where a thunderstorm produces numerous
hailstones which damage the location in which they fall. Hailstorms can be especially devastating to
farm fields, ruining crops and damaging equipment. A particularly damaging hailstorm hit
Munich,
Germany on
August 31,
1986, felling thousands of trees and causing millions of dollars in
insurance claims.
Heat wave : A heat wave is a disaster characterized by heat which is considered extreme and unusual in the area in which it occurs. Heat waves are rare and require specific combinations of weather events to take place, and may include temperature inversions, katabatic winds, or other phenomena. The worst heat wave in recent history was the European Heat Wave of 2003.;
Hurricanes,
Tropical cyclones, and
Typhoons :
Hurricane,
tropical cyclone, and
typhoon are different names for the same phenomenon: a cyclonic
storm system that forms over the oceans. It is caused by evaporated
water that comes off of the
ocean and becomes a
storm. The
Coriolis Effect causes the storms to spin, and a hurricane is declared when this spinning mass of storms attains a wind speed greater than 74 mph.
Hurricane is used for these phenomena in the
Atlantic Ocean,
tropical cyclone in the
Indian,
typhoon in the eastern
Pacific. The deadliest hurricane ever was the
1970 Bhola cyclone; the deadliest Atlantic hurricane was the
Great Hurricane of 1780, which devastated
Martinique,
St. Eustatius and
Barbados. Another notable hurricane is
Hurricane Katrina, which devastated the
Gulf Coast of the United States in 2005.
Ice storm : An ice storm is a particular weather event in which precipitation falls as ice, due to atmosphere conditions;
Lahar : A Lahar is a type of natural disaster closely related to a
volcanic eruption, and involves a large amount of material, including mud,
rock, and
ash sliding down the side of the
volcano at a rapid pace. These flows can destroy entire towns in seconds and kill thousands of people. The
Tangiwai disaster is an excellent example, as is the one which killed an estimated 23,000 people in Armero,
Colombia, during the 1985 eruption of
Nevado del Ruiz.
Landslides and Mudslides : A landslide is a disaster closely related to an avalanche, but instead of occurring with snow, it occurs involving actual elements of the ground, including rocks, trees, parts of houses, and anything else which may happen to be swept up. Landslides can be caused by earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, or general instability in the surrounding land. Mudslides, or mud flows, are a special case of landslides, in which heavy rainfall causes loose soil on steep terrain to collapse and slide downwards (see also Lahar); these occur with some regularity in parts of California after periods of heavy rain.;
Sinkholes : A localized depression in the surface topography, usually caused by the collapse of a subterranean structure, such as a
cave. Although rare, large sinkholes that develop suddenly in populated areas can lead to the collapse of buildings and other structures.
Tornado : A tornado is a natural disaster resulting from a thunderstorm. Tornadoes are violent, rotating columns of air which can blow at speeds between 50 and 300 mph, and possibly higher. Tornadoes can occur one at a time, or can occur in large tornado outbreaks along squall lines or in other large areas of thunderstorm development.;
Tsunami : A tsunami is a giant
wave of
water which rolls into the shore of an area with a height of over 15 m (50 ft). It comes from
Japanese words "津波" meaning
harbor and
wave. Tsunami can be caused by undersea earthquakes as in the
2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake, or by landslides such as the one which occurred at
Lituya Bay,
Alaska. The tsunami generated by the
2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake currently ranks as the deadliest tsunami in recorded history. The highest Tsunami ever recorded was estimated to be 85m (278 ft.) high. It appeared on April 24th, 1771, off
Ishigaki Island,
Japan.
Ice age : An ice age is a geologic period, but could also be viewed in the light of a catastrophic natural disaster, since in an ice age, the climate all over the world would change and places which were once considered habitable would then be too cold to permanently inhabit. A side effect of an ice age could possibly be a famine, caused by a worldwide drought.;
Impact event : An impact event is a natural disaster in which an
extraterrestrial piece of rock or other material collides with the
Earth. The exact consequences of a direct Earth impact would vary greatly with size of the colliding object, although in cases of medium to large impacts short-term climate change and a general failure of
agriculture. An example would be the
Tunguska event.
Solar flare : A solar flare is a phenomenon where the sun suddenly releases a great amount of solar radiation, much more than normal. It is theorized that these releases of radiation could cause a widespread failure of communications technology across the globe. The exact implications of such a failure are unknown. Further studies are being carried out.;
Supervolcano : A supervolcano is an
eruption which is thousands of times more massive than a normal eruption. If a volcano expels at least 1000 cubic kilometers of material, it is declared a supervolcano. The last eruption of this magnitude occurred over 75,000 years ago at
Lake Toba. If such an eruption were to occur today, a wholesale general die-off of both animals and humans would occur, as well as a significant short-term climate change.
Megatsunami : Mega tsunami is a term used by the popular media to describe very large tsunamis. They are a highly local effect, either occurring on shores extremely close to the origin of a tsunami, or in deep, narrow inlets. The largest waves are caused by a very large landslide, such as a collapsing island, into a body of water. They can potentially reach 20 km inland in low-lying regions.;
Wildfire : A wildfire consists of a fire that burns out in the wild. This is generally caused by lightning and drought but also may be started by human negligence and arson. They can be a threat to those in rural areas and also wildlife.
In 2000, the
United Nations launched the
International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR) to address the underlying causes of vulnerability and to build disaster-resilient communities by promoting increased awareness of the importance of disaster reduction as an integral component of sustainable development, with the goal of reducing human, social, economic and environmental losses due to hazards of all kinds (UN/ISDR, 2000).
*
List of deadliest natural disasters*
Natural disasters by country*
Act of God*
Civil defense*
Disaster relief*
Emergency management*
Emergency shelter*
Environmental disaster*
List of disasters*
List of environmental disasters*
Weather disasters*
Chaos theory*
Disaster News*
EM-DAT International Disaster Database*
Natural Hazard Information from the Coastal Ocean Institute,
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution*
ProjectArcix: Global Disaster Information Portal, overviews, consequences, government and citizen responses, and case studies of multiple natural disasters
*
Global Disaster Alert and Coordination System European Commission and
United Nations website initiative.
*
Modeling Multi-Hazard Disaster Reduction Strategies with Computer-Aided Morphological Analysis From the
Swedish Morphological Society*
What the Development Programme of the United Nations (UN) does to reduce the human risks linked to Natural Disasters *
Pioneering Disaster Risk Index (DRI) Tool that provide key informations on all countries in the World, developed by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)
