Type of adverse event
Economic loss risk for six natural disasters: tropical cyclones , droughts , earthquakes , floods , landslides , and volcanoes .
A natural disaster is the very harmful impact on a society or community after a natural hazard event. Some examples of natural hazard events include avalanches , droughts , earthquakes , floods , heat waves , landslides , tropical cyclones , volcanic activity and wildfires .[ 1] Additional natural hazards include blizzards , dust storms , firestorms , hails , ice storms , sinkholes , thunderstorms , tornadoes and tsunamis .[ 1] A natural disaster can cause loss of life or damage property . It typically causes economic damage. How bad the damage is depends on how well people are prepared for disasters and how strong the buildings, roads, and other structures are.[ 2] Scholars have been saying that the term natural disaster is unsuitable and should be abandoned.[ 3] Instead, the simpler term disaster could be used. At the same time the type of hazard would be specificed.[ 4] [ 5] [ 6] A disaster happens when a natural or human-made hazard impacts a vulnerable community . It results from the combination of the hazard and the exposure of a vulnerable society.
Nowadays it is hard to distinguish between natural and human-made disasters.[ 3] [ 7] [ 8] The term natural disaster was already challenged in 1976.[ 6] Human choices in architecture,[ 9] fire risk,[ 10] [ 11] and resource management[ 12] can cause or worsen natural disasters. Climate change also affects how often disasters due to extreme weather hazards happen. These "climate hazards " are floods, heat waves, wildfires, tropical cyclones, and the like.[ 13]
Some things can make natural disasters worse. Examples are inadequate building norms, marginalization of people and poor choices on land use planning .[ 3] Many developing countries do not have proper disaster risk reduction systems.[ 14] This makes them more vulnerable to natural disasters than high income countries . An adverse event only becomes a disaster if it occurs in an area with a vulnerable population .[ 15] [ 16]
^ a b "Natural Hazards | National Risk Index" . hazards.fema.gov . FEMA . Retrieved 2022-06-08 .
^ G. Bankoff; G. Frerks; D. Hilhorst, eds. (2003). Mapping Vulnerability: Disasters, Development and People . Routledge . ISBN 1-85383-964-7 . [page needed ]
^ a b c "Why natural disasters aren't all that natural" . openDemocracy . 2020-11-26. Archived from the original on 2020-11-29. Retrieved 2020-12-29 .
^ Cite error: The named reference :4
was invoked but never defined (see the help page ).
^ Cannon, Terry. (1994). Vulnerability Analysis and The Explanation Of 'Natural' Disasters . Disasters, Development and Environment.
^ a b Cite error: The named reference :2
was invoked but never defined (see the help page ).
^ Gould, Kevin A.; Garcia, M. Magdalena; Remes, Jacob A.C. (1 December 2016). "Beyond 'natural-disasters-are-not-natural': the work of state and nature after the 2010 earthquake in Chile" . Journal of Political Ecology . 23 (1): 93. doi :10.2458/v23i1.20181 .
^ Smith, Neil (2006-06-11). "There's No Such Thing as a Natural Disaster" . Items . Archived from the original on 2021-01-22. Retrieved 2020-12-29 .
^ Coburn, Andrew W.; Spence, Robin JS; Pomonis, Antonios (1992). "Factors determining human casualty levels in earthquakes: mortality prediction in building collapse" (PDF) . Proceedings of the tenth world conference on earthquake engineering . Vol. 10. pp. 5989–5994. ISBN 978-90-5410-060-7 . Archived (PDF) from the original on 2020-11-12. Retrieved 2020-12-29 .
^ "Wildfire Causes and Evaluations (U.S. National Park Service)" . NPS.gov Homepage (U.S. National Park Service) . 2018-11-27. Archived from the original on 2021-01-01. Retrieved 2020-12-29 .
^ DeWeerdt, Sarah (2020-09-15). "Humans cause 96% of wildfires that threaten homes in the U.S." Anthropocene . Archived from the original on 2020-12-10. Retrieved 2020-12-29 .
^ Smil, Vaclav (18 December 1999). "China's great famine: 40 years later" . BMJ . 319 (7225): 1619–1621. doi :10.1136/bmj.319.7225.1619 . PMC 1127087 . PMID 10600969 .
^ McGuire, Bill (2012). Waking the Giant: How a changing climate triggers earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanoes . Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-959226-5 . Archived from the original on 2022-04-18. Retrieved 2020-12-29 . [page needed ]
^ Zorn, Matija (2018), Pelc, Stanko; Koderman, Miha (eds.), "Natural Disasters and Less Developed Countries" , Nature, Tourism and Ethnicity as Drivers of (De)Marginalization: Insights to Marginality from Perspective of Sustainability and Development , Perspectives on Geographical Marginality, vol. 3, Cham: Springer International Publishing, pp. 59–78, doi :10.1007/978-3-319-59002-8_4 , ISBN 978-3-319-59002-8 , retrieved 2022-06-08
^ D. Alexander (2002). Principles of Emergency planning and Management . Harpended: Terra publishing. ISBN 1-903544-10-6 .
^ B. Wisner; P. Blaikie; T. Cannon & I. Davis (2004). At Risk – Natural hazards, people's vulnerability and disasters . Wiltshire: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-25216-4 . [page needed ]