Lecture 1: Intro to hazard, disaster and risk concepts
Natural hazards and disasters: what’s the big deal?
• Disaster Convulsion
o ‘Hyperinflation of the word ‘disaster’ Stichting Slachtofferhulp (2010):
Is every tragic event a disaster? Is everyone a victim?
Are we exaggerating about disasters? or are we underestimating them? How about ‘
hidden disasters’ and ‘creeping catastrophes?’
What is (not) a disaster?
A hazard can only be considered a disaster if there is a sudden shock or an overwhelming of
the social system. It should be temporal with a short duration. A disaster has to have a
certain size/magnitude and duration and should be manageable (not too big or not too
small) and should affect a reasonable amount of people.
Examples
• Turkish Airline crash 2010 (9 dead, 80 wounded) was considered a disaster because
it causes a sudden shock to the aviation industry
• Exxon Valdez oil spill was not considered a disaster because there were no human
causalities (at present damages to ecosystems are not counted as disasters)
• Road fatalities are mostly not seen as disasters because they happen all the times
and does not cause overwhelming of the social system
• AIDS despite killing approximately 690,000 people and 32.7 million people dying
from AIDS-related illness since the start of the epidemic is not considered a disaster
because of its duration
The Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT) is a free and fully searchable database that
contains worldwide data on the occurrence and impact of over 20,000 natural and
technological disasters from 1900 to the present day.
EM-DAT Criteria
It defines and gathers records on a disaster if it falls into at least one of the following
categories:
• there have been ten or more fatalities,
• one hundred or more people have been affected,
• a state of emergency has been declared, or
• international assistance has been called for.
Course definition (based on key literature) A disaster is an extreme phenomenon; (but
many lives are always extreme) of great intensity and limited duration; (so not always)
occurring at a certain location; (so not everywhere) involving a complex interplay between
physical and human systems causing loss of lives and threats to public health, as well as
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,physical damage and disruption of livelihood systems and society; outstripping local
capacities and resources; requiring outside assistance to cope with.
Other definitions of Disaster (ignore for exams)
• Quarantelli: “relatively sudden • LA RED: “the set of adverse effects
occasions when… the routines of caused by social-natural and
collective social units are seriously natural phenomena on human life,
disrupted and when unplanned properties, and infrastructure (an
courses of action” must be “Event”) within a specific
undertaken to cope” geographic unit during a given
period of time”
Disaster as unmanageable situation
• Cf. in psychology: Stress = challenge vs. coping capacity (Lazarus)
• If a challenge badly outstrips coping capacity, we may say there is question of a
disaster
• So: reduce challenge and/or increase coping => Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR)
A natural hazard is anything that can cause or trigger a disaster when engaging a vulnerable
system.
Classification of Natural Hazards
• Hydro-meteorological hazards (droughts, /famines, extreme temperatures, floods,
forest fires, windstorms)
• Geo-Physical hazards (avalanches/landslides, earthquakes/tsunamis, volcanic
eruptions)
Overall trends in disasters
• Sharp increase in hydro-meteorological disasters
• Fewer fatalities, more affected people, and higher damage
• Mostly concentrated in developing countries
• Mostly affecting poor people
Disaster as ‘speech act’
• A disaster is what is successfully declared a disaster by an authoritative/influential
source
• There may be a political agenda in declaring or not declaring a disaster (or crisis)
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,NATURAL hazards?
• Human action has a major influence on the drivers of hazards e.g., land use on
erodible hillsides can precipitate mudslides.
• Human action influences exposure and vulnerability, e.g., Living on the edge of a
volcano or in a floodplain
Hazard and risk
• Hazard: anything that can cause harm e.g., Chemical, electricity, ladders)
• Risk: how great the chance that someone will be harmed by the hazard
Hazard, disaster, and vulnerability
Lecture 2: History of Disaster Studies
• Before people have seen disaster as a spiritual problem
• ‘Disastarology’ the idea that stars played a role in disasters and we cannot control
our disasters
• Ancient China’s ‘”Catastrophes are created by nature; Disaster alleviation is main
responsibility of the government represented by the emperor
• Machiavelli’s philosophy 50/50 : ´I hold it to be true that Fortune is the arbiter of one
-half of our actions, but that she still leaves us to direct the other half, or perhaps a
little less.´
• Portugal Earthquake 1755
• Enlightenment philosophy
o Volatire: Is it God’s will?
o Rousseau: we should go back to nature
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, • Kant: first scientific attempt at theory of seismology of Azores-Gibraltar fracture
Four (4) disaster Paradigms
1. Control/Engineering/Technofix Paradigm (Early 20st century)
Structures, warning systems, assumptions: hazards are external, we can control them
2. Behavioural Paradigm (1950s-1970s
Focus on the behaviours that eposes people to hazards. Helping people to move away from
harm's way via education
3. Vulnerability Paradigm (1980s-1990s)
We are all not equal in responding to disasters. Some have more choices than others - It’s
the political economy!
4. Complexity Paradigm (1990s – today)
• As climate change becomes serious
• Emergence; adaptive systems approach, Mutuality of social and natural
• Environmental vulnerability => Anthropocene?
• Convergence DRR & CCA: resilience, sustainability
• Systemic risks than single hazard risks
• The best we can do is ‘roll with the punches’ or ‘build the plane as we fly it’
Disaster Studies dominated by:
• 1930s Engineers and planners
• 1950s Sociologists and geographers, Human ecology
• 1980s Political ecologists, cultural anthropologists
• 2000s Climatologists?
4 Paradigms = 4 ways of conceptualizing risk:
Hazards approach to risk
R» H (=p) (1) (Hazard = bad luck)
Associated with the ‘control paradigm’ (technofix): Modernist dream of reducing risk to
zero
1. Control Paradigm or Technofix
• Enlightenment thinking modernist control mindset, no space for
uncertainty/fatalism
• Centralised management, often closely linked to the military (e.g. US Corps of
Engineers, DSI in Turkey)
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