Coursework Two – Concepts Of Hazard, Risk, And Vulnerability, And How They Strengthen Our Understanding And Management Of Disaster Risk.
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Disasters are multidimensional occurrences that disrupt many if not all aspects of normal human life, including environmental, social, economic, political, and biological systems (Bankoff 2004:10). To understand why disasters have such wide ranging affects and how we can effectively manage them, we must understand the concepts of hazard, risk and vulnerability.
Risk in regard to disaster is the likelihood or probability of harmful consequences happening; awareness of risk gives us the ability to define what could happen in the future, based on a range of possible outcomes. The ability to understand and assess risk depends on many factors including the amount and reliability of available information, and the perceived perception of risk (UN/ISDR 2004:36, Alexander 2000:10). Perception or awareness is very important in assessing risk as a whole, as it requires prior knowledge of hazard and vulnerability, the other major concepts of effective disaster management (UN/ISDR 2004:36). Alexander (2000:11) highlights that risk is an abstract concept that only comes into being when mobilised by external forces, in the case of disaster this is hazard.
The term vulnerability in the context of disaster was first used by engineers to considering the resilience of different forms of construction. In the socio-economic context vulnerability is a set of conditions which adversely affect peoples ability to prepare for, withstand and respond to a hazard (Nivaran 1998). Vulnerability is complicated because it is founded on so many constantly changing factors, and linked to the complex, dynamic and diverse workings of human society.
Vulnerability and risk are closely related with vulnerability being a reflection of physical, social, economic and environmental conditions present that increase susceptibility to hazards. Risk combines this with the probable size of the impact, the type and magnitude of the hazard (Alexander 2000).
Hazards are extreme events with a negative outcome that can be regarded as the catalyst to disaster, as it is the physical form of risk, principally where the human population is in a vulnerable situation. Hazards are dynamic with varying potential impacts and there is wealth of knowledge about their consequences, frequency, and magnitude (UN/ISDR 2004:34). Hazards are often divided into three broad categories – natural, technological, or sociological this can cause problems because hazards themselves cause secondary or collateral hazards, there is also many compound hazards that fit in more than one category. Hazards are unavoidable phenomena both naturally because of the volatile nature of the earth, and technological due to human error. Human error is a huge factor of why technology fails it can happen anywhere from the design and building to over estimating the system or even poor maintenance.
Hazard, risk and vulnerability when assessed in relation to one another form the basis for understanding the social, technical, physical, and environmental issues that combine to shape disasters in the modern world. The United Nations International Strategy for Disaster reduction (UNISDR) (2004) recognised that to make adequate and successful disaster polices that risk had to be assessed on vulnerability and hazard analysis.
Hazard, risk, and vulnerability are often written in set of pseudo-equations to show their relation to one another – Risk = Hazard x Vulnerability or Risk = Hazard + Vulnerability. There is an uncertainty though to whether vulnerability multiplies disaster or just adds to it (Nivaran 1998). Whatever the case may be it would be impossible to calculate risk without first understanding the effects of hazard and vulnerability.
Disaster happens when a hazard collides with a human vulnerability; since hazard is unavoidable the focus has to fall on reducing vulnerability or increasing resilience. Resilience is often seen as the positive form of vulnerability: it focuses on defences and resources people do have rather than what they dont. Looking at resilience rather than vulnerability could be seen as being more empowering to communities as its more encouraging and constructive than focusing totally on negatives. The distinction however between resilience, capacities and how they relate to vulnerability reflects greatly to what context it is used especially within politics (Handmer2003).
The UNISDR defines resilience as the capacity of society or community to resist or change in order to maintain an acceptable level of functional structure. Resilience isnt confined to just resisting disaster though, it is also the capacity to learn, adapt, and recover from disaster. With resilience defined there as sets of capacities the concepts could be seen as one in the same, with little to distinguish them from one another and more a matter of personal preference.
In order to become a resilient community the disaster risk has to be mitigated; made less severe, this can be through many different efforts a good example of how this is being carried out is in India. UN declaration of 1990-2000 as International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction started lots of different programs across the world. The Indian government used this framework and has taken several initiatives for strengthening disaster reduction strategies.
India is exposed to many natural hazards like floods, cyclones, droughts and earthquakes that are not rare or unusual phenomenon affecting a large part of the country. With vulnerability being high in large part of the country many natural hazards turn into disasters causing significant disruption of socio-economic life of communities leading to loss of life and property. The Bhuj earthquake on the 26 January 2001 in Gujarat, is just one example of the many natural hazards India faces. The