A disaster is a perceived tragedy Tragedy is a form of art based on human suffering that offers its audience pleasure. While most cultures have developed forms that provoke this paradoxical response, tragedy refers to a specific tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of Western civilization. That tradition has been, being either a natural calamity A natural hazard is a threat of a naturally occurring event that will have a negative effect on people or the environment. Many natural hazards are interrelated, e.g. earthquakes can cause tsunamis and drought can lead directly to famine. A concrete example of the division between a natural hazard and a natural disaster is that the 1906 San or man-made catastrophe Arson is the criminal intent of setting a fire with intent to cause damage. The definition of arson was originally limited to setting fire to buildings, but was later expanded to include other objects, such as bridges, vehicles, and private property. Arson is the greatest cause of fires in data repositories. Sometimes, human-induced fires can be. It is a hazard A hazard is a situation that poses a level of threat to life, health, property, or environment. Most hazards are dormant or potential, with only a theoretical risk of harm; however, once a hazard becomes "active", it can create an emergency situation. A hazard does not exist when it is happening. A hazardous situation that has come to which has come to fruition. A hazard, in turn, is a situation which poses a level of threat to life, health, property, or that may deleteriously affect society or an environment The biophysical environment is the symbiosis between the physical environment and the biological life forms within the environment, and includes all variables that comprise the Earth's biosphere. The biophysical environment can be divided into two categories: the natural environment and the built environment, with some overlap between the two.

In contemporary academia, disasters are seen as the consequence of inappropriately managed risk Risk is defined in ISO 31000 as the effect of uncertainty on objectives . Risk management can therefore be considered the identification, assessment, and prioritization of risks followed by coordinated and economical application of resources to minimize, monitor, and control the probability and/or impact of unfortunate events or to maximize the. These risks are the product of hazards and vulnerability. Hazards that strike in areas with low vulnerability are not considered a disaster, as is the case in uninhabited regions.^[1]

Developing countries suffer the greatest costs when a disaster hits – more than 95 percent of all deaths caused by disasters occur in developing countries, and losses due to natural disasters are 20 times greater (as a percentage of GDP The gross domestic product or gross domestic income (GDI) is a measure of a country's overall official economic output. It is the market value of all final goods and services officially made within the borders of a country in a year. It is often positively correlated with the standard of living, though its use as a stand-in for measuring the) in developing countries than in industrialized countries.^[2]

A disaster can be defined as any tragic event with great loss stemming from events such as earthquakes An earthquake is the result of a sudden release of energy in the Earth's crust that creates seismic waves. The seismicity or seismic activity of an area refers to the frequency, type and size of earthquakes experienced over a period of time. Earthquakes are measured with a seismometer; a device which also records is known as a seismograph. The, floods A flood is an overflow of an expanse of water that submerges land. The EU Floods directive defines a flood as a temporary covering by water of land not normally covered by water. In the sense of "flowing water", the word may also be applied to the inflow of the tide. Flooding may result from the volume of water within a body of water,, catastrophic accidents An accident is a specific, unexpected, unusual and unintended external action which occurs in a particular time and place, with no apparent and deliberate cause but with marked effects. It implies a generally negative outcome which may have been avoided or prevented had circumstances leading up to the accident been recognized, and acted upon,, fires Fire is the rapid oxidation of a material in the chemical process of combustion, releasing heat, light, and various reaction products. Slower oxidative processes like rusting or digestion are not included by this definition, or explosions An explosion is a rapid increase in volume and release of energy in an extreme manner, usually with the generation of high temperatures and the release of gases. An explosion creates a shock wave. If the shock wave is a supersonic detonation, then the source of the blast is called a "high explosive". Subsonic shock waves are created by.

Etymology

The word derives from Middle French French is a Romance language spoken as a first language by about 136 million people worldwide. Around 190 million people speak French as a second language, and an additional 200 million speak it as an acquired foreign language. French speaking communities are present in 57 countries and territories. Most native speakers of the language live in désastre and that from Old Italian Italian ( italiano , or lingua italiana) is a Romance language spoken as a native language by about 70 million people in Italy, San Marino and parts of Switzerland, Croatia, Slovenia and France. In addition, it is spoken by an additional 120 to 150 million people as a non-native language. Most native speakers are native bilinguals of both disastro, which in turn comes from the Greek Greek , an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, is the language of the Greeks. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. In its ancient form, it is the language of classical ancient Greek literature and the New Testament of pejorative Pejoratives are words or grammatical forms which denote a negative affect; that is, they express the contempt or distaste of the speaker. Sometimes a term may begin as a pejorative word and eventually be adopted in a non-pejorative sense. In historical linguistics, this phenomenon is known as melioration, or amelioration, or semantic change prefix δυσ-, (dus-) "bad"^[3] + ἀστήρ (aster), "star".^[4] The root of the word disaster ("bad star" in Greek) comes from an astrological Astrology is a group of systems, traditions, and beliefs which hold that the relative positions of celestial bodies and related details can provide information about personality, human affairs and other "earthly" matters. A practitioner of astrology is called an astrologer. Astrologers believe that the movements and positions of theme in which the ancients used to refer to the destruction or deconstruction of a star as a disaster.

Classification

For more than a century researchers have been studying disasters and for more than forty years disaster research Disaster research deals with conducting field and survey research on group, organizational and community preparation for, response to, and recovery from natural and technological disasters and other community-wide crises. The purpose behind this field of research is to attempt to advance and communicate knowledge on mitigation techniques and has been institutionalized through the Disaster Research Center. The studies reflect a common opinion when they argue that all disasters can be seen as being human-made, their reasoning being that human actions before the strike of the hazard can prevent it developing into a disaster. All disasters are hence the result of human failure to introduce appropriate disaster management Emergency management is the discipline of dealing with and avoiding risks. It is a discipline that involves preparing for disaster before it occurs, disaster response (e.g., emergency evacuation, quarantine, mass decontamination, etc.), and supporting, and rebuilding society after natural or human-made disasters have occurred. In general, any measures.^[5] Hazards are routinely divided into natural or human-made, although complex disasters, where there is no single root cause, are more common in developing countries Developing country is a term generally used to describe a nation with a low level of material well being. There is no single internationally-recognized definition of developed country, and the levels of development may vary widely within so-called developing countries, with some developing countries having high average standards of living. A specific disaster may spawn a secondary disaster that increases the impact. A classic example is an earthquake An earthquake is the result of a sudden release of energy in the Earth's crust that creates seismic waves. The seismicity or seismic activity of an area refers to the frequency, type and size of earthquakes experienced over a period of time. Earthquakes are measured with a seismometer; a device which also records is known as a seismograph. The that causes a tsunami A tsunami (Japanese: 津波 [tsɯnami], lit. 'harbor wave'; English pronunciation: /suːˈnɑːmi/ (t)soo-NAH-mee) or tidal wave is a series of water waves (called a tsunami wave train) caused by the displacement of a large volume of a body of water, usually an ocean, but can occur in large lakes. Tsunamis are a frequent occurrence in Japan;, resulting in coastal flooding A flood is an overflow of an expanse of water that submerges land. The EU Floods directive defines a flood as a temporary covering by water of land not normally covered by water. In the sense of "flowing water", the word may also be applied to the inflow of the tide. Flooding may result from the volume of water within a body of water,.

Natural disaster

A natural disaster is a consequence when a natural hazard A hazard is a situation that poses a level of threat to life, health, property, or environment. Most hazards are dormant or potential, with only a theoretical risk of harm; however, once a hazard becomes "active", it can create an emergency situation. A hazard does not exist when it is happening. A hazardous situation that has come to (e.g., volcanic eruption During a volcanic eruption, lava, tephra , and various gases are expelled from a volcanic vent or fissure or earthquake An earthquake is the result of a sudden release of energy in the Earth's crust that creates seismic waves. The seismicity or seismic activity of an area refers to the frequency, type and size of earthquakes experienced over a period of time. Earthquakes are measured with a seismometer; a device which also records is known as a seismograph. The) affects humans and/or the built environment. Human vulnerability Vulnerability is the susceptibility to physical or emotional injury or attack. It also means to have one's guard down, open to censure or criticism. Vulnerability refers to a person's state of being liable to succumb, as to manipulation, persuasion or temptation, caused by the lack of appropriate emergency management Emergency management is the discipline of dealing with and avoiding risks. It is a discipline that involves preparing for disaster before it occurs, disaster response (e.g., emergency evacuation, quarantine, mass decontamination, etc.), and supporting, and rebuilding society after natural or human-made disasters have occurred. In general, any, leads to financial, environmental, or human impact. The resulting loss depends on the capacity of the population to support or resist the disaster: their resilience. This understanding is concentrated in the formulation: "disasters occur when hazards meet vulnerability". A natural hazard will hence never result in a natural disaster in areas without vulnerability, e.g., strong earthquakes in uninhabited areas.

Man-made disaster

Man-made earthquakes are well documented even though less known by the general public.^[6][7]

Disaster management

With the tropical climate and unstable landforms, coupled with high population density, poverty, illiteracy and lack of adequate infrastructure, India Home to the ancient Indus Valley Civilisation and a region of historic trade routes and vast empires, the Indian subcontinent was identified with its commercial and cultural wealth for much of its long history. Four major religions, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism originated here, while Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam is one of the most vulnerable developing countries to suffer very often from various natural disasters, namely drought, flood, cyclone, earth quake, landslide, forest fire, hail storm, locust, volcanic eruption, etc. Which strike causing a devastating impact on human life, economy and environment. Though it is almost impossible to fully recoup the damage caused by the disasters, it is possible to (i) minimize the potential risks by developing early warning strategies (ii) prepare and implement developmental plans to provide resilience to such disasters (iii) mobilize resources including communication and telemedicinal services, and (iv) to help in rehabilitation and post-disaster reconstruction. Space technology plays a crucial role in efficient mitigation of disasters. While communication satellites help in disaster warning, relief mobilization and tele-medicinal support, earth observation satellites provide required database for pre-disaster preparedness programmes, disaster response, monitoring activities and post-disaster damage assessment, and reconstruction, and rehabilitation. The article describes the role of space technology in evolving a suitable strategy for disaster preparedness and operational framework for their monitoring, assessment and mitigation, identifies gap areas and recommends appropriate strategies for disaster mitigation vis-à-vis likely developments in space and ground segments.

Various disasters like earthquake, landslides, volcanic eruptions, flood and cyclones are natural hazards that kill thousands of people and destroy billions of dollars of habitat and property each year. The rapid growth of the world's population and its increased concentration often in hazardous environment has escalated both the frequency and severity of natural disasters. With the tropical climate and unstable land forms, coupled with deforestation, unplanned growth proliferation non-engineered constructions which make the disaster-prone areas mere vulnerable, tardy communication, poor or no budgetary allocation for disaster prevention, developing countries suffer more or less chronically by natural disasters. Asia Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.6% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 4 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population. During the 20th century Asia's population nearly quadrupled tops the list of casualties due to natural disaster.

Among various natural hazards, earthquakes, landslides, floods and cyclones are the major disasters adversely affecting very large areas and population in the Indian sub-continent. These natural disasters are of (i) geophysical origin such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, land slides and (ii) climatic origin such as drought, flood, cyclone, locust, forest fire. Though it may not be possible to control nature and to stop the development of natural phenomena but the efforts could be made to avoid disasters and alleviate their effects on human lives, infrastructure and property. Rising frequency, amplitude and number of natural disasters and attendant problem coupled with loss of human lives prompted the General Assembly of the United Nations The United Nations General Assembly is one of the five principal organs of the United Nations and the only one in which all member nations have equal representation. Its powers are to oversee the budget of the United Nations, appoint the non-permanent members to the Security Council, receive reports from other parts of the United Nations and make to proclaim 1990s as the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction Its basic objective was to decrease the loss of life, property destruction and social and economic disruption caused by natural disasters, such as earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, landslides, volcanic eruptions, droughts, locust infestations, and other disasters of natural origin (IDNDR) through a resolution 44/236 of December 22, 1989 to focus on all issues related to natural disaster reduction. In spite of IDNDR, there had been a string of major disaster throughout the decade. Nevertheless, by establishing the rich disaster management related traditions and by spreading public awareness the IDNDR provided required stimulus for disaster reduction. It is almost impossible to prevent the occurrence of natural disasters and their damages.

However, it is possible to reduce the impact of disasters by adopting suitable disaster mitigation strategies. The disaster mitigation works mainly address the following:

• minimise the potential risks by developing disaster early warning strategies
• prepare and implement developmental plans to provide resilience to such disasters,
• mobilise resources including communication and tele-medicinal services
• to help in rehabilitation and post-disaster reduction.

Disaster management on the other hand involves

• pre-disaster planning, preparedness, monitoring including relief management capability
• prediction and early warning
• damage assessment and relief management.

Disaster reduction is a systematic work which involves with different regions, different professions and different scientific fields, and has become an important measure for human, society and nature sustainable development.

Management

The local communities at the time of disaster or before the disaster make groups for helping the people from suffering during the disaster. These groups include, First Aid group, Health group, Food and Welfare group etc. They all are well trained by some local community members. All the groups are sent for helping any other local community that is suffering from a disaster. They also migrate the people from the area affected from disaster to some other safe regions. They are given shelter and every possible facilities by those local management communities. Today, Government is also making effort to provide good facilities during the disaster. In India, in the rural areas, the community(group of families) are choosing a leader and developing their Disaster management skills to protect themselves and other local communities as well.

See also

• Business continuity Business continuity is the activity performed by an organization to ensure that critical business functions will be available to customers, suppliers, regulators, and other entities that must have access to those functions. These activities include many daily chores such as project management, system backups, change control, and help desk
• Civil protection Civil defense, civil defence or civil protection is an effort to prepare non-combatants for military attack. It uses the principles of emergency operations: prevention, mitigation, preparation, response, or emergency evacuation, and recovery. Programmes of this sort were initially discussed at least as early as the 1920s but only became widespread
• Crisis A crisis (from the Greek κρίσις) is any unstable and dangerous social situation regarding economic, military, personal, political, or societal affairs, especially one involving an impending abrupt change. More loosely, it is a term meaning 'a testing time' or 'emergency event'
• Disaster convergence Disaster convergence is the phenomenon of individuals or groups moving towards a disaster stricken area. Convergers have many reasons for heading towards a disaster area. Kendra and Wachtendorf identified seven distinct categories of convergers. These categories are mourners, the anxious, returners, the curious, the helpers, the exploiters, and
• Emergency An emergency is a situation that poses an immediate risk to health, life, property or environment. Most emergencies require urgent intervention to prevent a worsening of the situation, although in some situations, mitigation may not be possible and agencies may only be able to offer palliative care for the aftermath
• Emergency management Emergency management is the discipline of dealing with and avoiding risks. It is a discipline that involves preparing for disaster before it occurs, disaster response (e.g., emergency evacuation, quarantine, mass decontamination, etc.), and supporting, and rebuilding society after natural or human-made disasters have occurred. In general, any
• Human extinction Human extinction is the hypothetical end of the human species. Various scenarios have been discussed in science, popular culture, and religion . The breadth of this article is on existential risks
• List of disasters
• Maritime disasters The sinking of RMS Titanic in 1912 is probably the most famous shipwreck. The wartime sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff during World War II, with an estimated loss of about 9,300 people in 1945 remains the greatest maritime disaster ever. In peacetime, the loss of the Doña Paz with an estimated 4,386 lost is the largest non-military loss recorded
• Risk governance
• Risk management Risk is defined in ISO 31000 as the effect of uncertainty on objectives . Risk management can therefore be considered the identification, assessment, and prioritization of risks followed by coordinated and economical application of resources to minimize, monitor, and control the probability and/or impact of unfortunate events or to maximize the
• Risks to civilization, humans and planet Earth Risks to civilization, humans, and planet Earth are existential risks that could threaten humankind as a whole, have adverse consequences for the course of human civilization, or even cause the end of planet Earth. The concept is expressed in various phrases such as "End of the World", "Doomsday", "Ragnarök", "
• Sociology of disaster Sociology of disaster is a special branch of sociology. The research is predominantly done in the United States, but also in Germany and Italy as well. Theoretically it includes not only local disasters, but catastrophies on a grand scale. One of the prominent researchers in this area is Robert A. Stallings
• Survivalism Survivalism is a movement of individuals or groups who are actively preparing for future possible disruptions in local, regional, national, or international social or political order. Survivalists often prepare for this anticipated disruption by having emergency medical training, stockpiling food and water, preparing for self-defense and self-
• Mechanical_resonance#Resonance_disaster

Notes

1. ^ Quarantelli E.L. (1998). Where We Have Been and Where We Might Go. In: Quarantelli E.L. (ed). What Is A Disaster? London: Routledge. pp146-159
2. ^ "World Bank:Disaster Risk Management". http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/TOPICS/EXTURBANDEVELOPMENT/EXTDISMGMT/0,,menuPK:341021~pagePK:149018~piPK:149093~theSitePK:341015,00.html.
3. ^ "Dus, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, "A Greek-English Lexicon", at Perseus". http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0057%3Aentry%3D%2328613.
4. ^ "Aster, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, "A Greek-English Lexicon", at Perseus". http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0057%3Aentry%3D%2316528.
5. ^ B. Wisner, P. Blaikie, T. Cannon, and I. Davis (2004). At Risk - Natural hazards, people's vulnerability and disasters. Wiltshire: Routledge, ISBN 0-415-25216-4
6. ^ Dan Oancea: Man-Made Earthquakes
7. ^ Dan Oancea: Man-Made Earthquakes

References

• Barton A.H. (1969). Communities in Disaster. A Sociological Analysis of Collective Stress Situations. SI: Ward Lock
• Catastrophe and Culture: The Anthropology of Disaster. Susanna M. Hoffman and Anthony Oliver-Smith, Eds.. Santa Fe NM: School of American Research Press, 2002
• G. Bankoff, G. Frerks, D. Hilhorst (eds.) (2003). Mapping Vulnerability: Disasters, Development and People. ISBN 1-85383-964-7.
• D. Alexander (2002). Principles of Emergency planning and Management. Harpended: Terra publishing. ISBN 1-903544-10-6.

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