Disaster Readiness and Risk Reduction Quiz

Disaster Readiness and Risk Reduction

• Disaster is a sudden, calamitous occurrence causing great harm, injury, destruction, and devastation to life and property. Disrupts normal life, causing physical and emotional distress.
• Disaster is a serious disruption of a community or society involving widespread human, material, economic, or environmental losses and impacts. Exceeds the community or society's ability to cope using its own resources.
• Disaster risk is often a combination of hazard exposure and insufficient capacity to cope with the negative consequences.

What is Disaster and Disaster Risk?

• Philippines is situated in the Ring of Fire, making it prone to natural disasters.
• Plate tectonics and the Pacific Ring of Fire increase the risk of natural disasters in the Philippines.

Disaster

• A sudden and calamitous occurrence that causes extensive damage to life and property, disrupting normal life and causing distress.

Classification of Disasters

• Natural Disasters: Events like earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, hurricanes, and floods.
• Man-Made Disasters: Events caused by human activity including industrial accidents, terrorism, and war. Subcategories:
  • Technological/Industrial: Accidents releasing hazardous materials or causing infrastructure damage.
  • Terrorism/Violence: Intentional acts to harm people or property.
  • Complex Humanitarian Emergencies: Large-scale crises resulting in significant displacement and suffering.

Risk and Disaster Risk

• Risk is the combination of probability of an event and its negative consequences.
• Disaster risk is the potential (not actual) disaster losses in lives, health, livelihoods, assets, and services in a community or society over a specified future time period. (It is the product of hazard, vulnerability, and the capacity to cope)

Elements of Disaster Risk

• Exposure: Elements at risk from a natural or man-made hazard event (e.g., people, infrastructure).
• Hazard: Potentially dangerous physical occurrence or human activity causing loss of life, injury, or damage to property or the environment.
• Vulnerability: Condition determined by factors that make a community susceptible to hazard impacts (e.g., economic status, physical location).
• Capacity: Combination of strengths, attributes, and resources available to achieve agreed-upon goals; reducing the level of vulnerability.

Disaster Risk Equation

• Disaster Risk = Hazard × Vulnerability ÷ Capacity

Risk Factors

• Processes or conditions (Often development-related) that influence disaster risk by increasing exposure and vulnerability, or reducing capacity.
• Examples: Severity of exposure, gender/family, age, economic status, climate change, environmental degradation, etc

Factors Underlying Disaster Risk

• Climate Change
• Environmental Degradation
• Globalized Economic Development
• Poverty and Inequality
• Poorly Planned and Managed Urban Development
• Weak Governance

Effects of Disasters on One's Life

• Displaced Populations
• Health Risks (mental health conditions like PTSD)
• Food Scarcity
• Emotional Aftershocks

Ways to Plan Ahead of a Disaster

• Check for hazards at home.
• Identify safe places indoors and outdoors.
• Educate family members about disaster preparedness.
• Stockpile disaster kits/supplies.
• Develop an emergency communication plan.
• Help your community get ready.
• Practice the Disaster Preparedness Cycle.

Disaster Preparedness Cycle (Circular Diagram)

• The cycle involves planning, training, organizing provisions and equipment, practicing the plan (drilling), evaluating and improving the plan to handle future disasters.

Disaster Perspectives

• Physical: Focuses on infrastructure damage, injuries, and environmental impacts.
• Psychological: Addresses mental health conditions like PTSD and emotional distress after a disaster.
• Socio-cultural: Considers how disasters affect social relationships, cultural values, and individual roles.
• Economic: Evaluates the financial losses resulting from disasters (loss of livelihoods, jobs, property).
• Political: Explores the connection between disaster responses, humanitarian aid distribution, and political factors/influences.
• Biological: Addresses the effects of disease outbreaks and their spread (epidemics/pandemics) in the context of vulnerability.

Vulnerability

• A state of being at risk determined by characteristics/circumstances of a community, system or resource that make it susceptible to hazard effects. It is also hazard & situation-specific, affecting ability to predict, cope with, resist and recover from natural or human-induced threats. Increasing vulnerability means a population is at greater risk of suffering from natural dangers.

Vulnerability in Disasters

• Physical Vulnerability: Population density, settlement location, building materials.

• Social Vulnerability: Societal interactions, cultural values, and institutional capacity affect how hazards affect a community.

• Economic Vulnerability: A community’s economic status, including poverty, affecting responses to hazards.

• Environmental Vulnerability: Natural resource depletion and environmental damage can increase community risk.

• Factors Affecting Community Vulnerability:

• Population Density - Community capacity-efficiency to reduce disaster risk

Hazard

• A harmful condition, substance, human behavior, or situation that can lead to loss of life, injury, property damage or disruption to economic or social well-being. A risk that is imminent.

Exposure

• Presence of elements at risk from a hazard event (e.g., people, buildings, resources) facing potential damage or loss.

Risk

Implies probable adverse effects, resulting from social and environmental interactions, physical danger, and vulnerability levels.

Disaster Mitigation

Proactive measures to eliminate or reduce the impacts of hazards before a disaster occurs. This reduces disaster risk.

Categories of Hazards:

• Natural Hazards: Those that arise from natural environmental processes (e.g., earthquakes, floods, volcanoes).
• Quasi-Natural Hazards: Hazards resulting from interactions between natural processes and human activity (e.g., pollution).
• Man-Made Hazards: Hazards caused directly by human activities (e.g., industrial accidents, terrorism).

Hazard Signs and Symbols

• Identifying and appreciating the importance of precautionary measures in specific hazard areas.
• Observing and understanding symbols for various hazards, including those that are technological and natural.

Impacts of Hazards

• Physical Impact: Injuries (bone fractures, wounds, bruises); destruction and loss of infrastructure (buildings, roads, bridges, etc); widespread destruction of housing and buildings.
• Psychological Impact: Grief, psychological illness, marital conflict, depression, chronic anxiety.
• Socio-cultural Impact: Displacement, loss of cultural identity, forced adoption of new cultures, ethnic conflicts.
• Economic Impact: Loss of jobs due to displacement, loss of harvest, livestock, farms, fish cages, etc; loss of money and other valuables.
• Environmental Impact: Loss of forests due to fires, loss of fresh water due to salination, disturbances to biodiversity, loss of natural rivers.
• Biological Impact: Epidemics, chronic and permanent illness from biological agents, proliferation of viral diseases.

Hazard Identification and Risk Assessment

• Identify Hazards: Observation, material safety data sheets, hazard and risk surveys, discussion groups, and safety audits.
• Assess Risks: Determining the probability and severity of impacts (using a matrix of probability and impact).
• Make Changes: Removing hazards, implementing engineering modifications (e.g., installing exhausts, safety barriers), modifying procedures, etc.
• Check Changes: Continuously monitoring changes to ensure effectiveness.