Disaster

and the Academy of Turku after the Great Fire of Turku, by Gustaf Wilhelm Finnberg (1827) The United Nations defines a disaster as "a serious disruption of the functioning of a community or a society at any scale". Disasters result from hazards occurring in areas where people live under exposed or vulnerable conditions. Human factors such as inadequate planning, poor development practices, and lack of preparedness can increase community vulnerability to climate hazards. Disasters are defined as events that have significant adverse effects on people. When a hazard overwhelms the capacity of a community to respond or causes widespread injury or damage, it is classified as a disaster. The international disaster database EM-DAT defines a disaster as “a situation or event that overwhelms local capacity, necessitating a request for external assistance at the national or international level; it is an unforeseen and often sudden event that causes great damage, destruction, and human suffering.” The effects of a disaster encompass human, material, economic, and environmental losses and effects. "an event, concentrated in time and space, in which a community undergoes severe danger and incurs such losses to its members and physical appurtenances that the social structure is disrupted and the fulfilment of all or some of the essential functions of the society is prevented." Like other definitions, this looks beyond the social aspects of the disaster impacts. It also focuses on losses. This raises the need for emergency response as an aspect of the disaster. It does not set out quantitative thresholds or scales for damage, death, or injury. A study in 1969 defined major disasters as conforming to the following criteria, based on the amount of deaths or damage: at least 100 people dead, at least 100 people injured, or at least $1 million damage. This definition includes indirect losses of life caused after the initial onset of the disaster. These could be the effects of diseases such as cholera or dysentery arising from the disaster. This definition is still commonly used. However, it is limited to the number of deaths, injuries, and damage in money terms. == Types ==

The scale of a disaster matters. Small-scale disasters only affect local communities but need help beyond the affected community. Large-scale disasters affect wider society and need national or international help. Related to natural hazards Disasters with links to natural hazards are commonly called natural disasters. However experts have questioned this term for a long time. Unrelated to natural hazards es and terrorist attacks are examples of man-made disasters: they kill and injure people, destroy and damage property, and cause pollution. The pictured example is the September 11 attacks in 2001 at the World Trade Center in New York City. Human-made disasters are serious harmful events caused by human actions and social processes. Technological hazards also fall into this category. That is because they result in human-instigated disasters. Human-made hazards are sometimes called anthropogenic hazards. Catastrophic climate change, nuclear war, and bioterrorism also fall into this category. Climate change and environmental degradation are sometimes called socio-natural hazards. These are hazards involving a combination of both natural and human factors. Famines may be caused locally by drought, flood, fire or pestilence. Long-lasting local shortages, especially during the modern era, are generally due to government mismanagement, violent conflict, or an economic system that does not distribute food where needed. Others Complex disasters, where there is no single root cause, are more common in developing countries. A specific hazard may also spawn a secondary disaster that increases the impact. A classic example is an earthquake that causes a tsunami. This results in coastal flooding, damaging a nuclear power plant on the coast. The Fukushima nuclear disaster is a case in point. Experts examine these cascading events to see how risks and impacts can amplify and spread. This is particularly important given the increase in climate risks. Some researchers distinguish between recurring events like seasonal flooding and unpredictable one-off events. Recurring events often carry an estimate of how often they occur. Experts call this the return period. == Effects ==

The effects of a disaster include all human, material, economic and environmental losses and impacts. Hygiene and disease transmission Damage to essential infrastructure, including water supply systems, sanitation networks, and energy services, can lead to secondary public health risks. Contaminated drinking water, nonfunctional sewage systems, and reduced waste management increase the likelihood of infectious disease outbreaks. Prolonged power outages may also compromise food safety, medication storage, and the safe operation of healthcare facilities. Food insecurity Disasters frequently disrupt food production and distribution systems. While supply chains may be temporarily interrupted, damage to agricultural land, livestock, or food processing facilities can create longer-term food shortages. These disruptions may contribute to rising food prices, disproportionately affecting low-income and vulnerable populations. Disasters have inflicted an estimated USD 3.26 trillion in agricultural losses between 1991–2023, averaging at USD 99 billion per year. Disaster losses in agriculture totalled USD 3.26 trillion over 33 years from 1991 to 2023, with nearly USD 2.9 trillion attributed to climate-related disasters, including floods, droughts and heatwaves. Losses in the 1990s averaged USD 64 billion annually; gradual increased throughout the 2000s reaching USD 67 billion per year; and a severe escalation from 2010 onwards with losses at USD 144 billion annually. Disasters can also disrupt access to nutritious foods, potentially forcing households to adopt quantity-over-quality approaches that emphasize staple foods over nutritious options, such as fruits and vegetables, which provide essential micronutrients. This dietary shift may occur not only due to reduced production or availability of nutritious foods but also because of increased prices, disrupted market access or reduced household income following disasters that affect purchasing power for higher-value nutritious foods. Mental health effects Experiencing a disaster can have significant psychological consequences. In the short term, affected populations may experience shock, fear, and grief. Over time, the loss of housing, livelihoods, and social support networks can contribute to mental health conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, and anxiety. Long-term impacts may also include increased rates of substance misuse. Damage to healthcare systems Disasters can severely impair healthcare infrastructure through physical destruction, power failures, or shortages of medical supplies. Hospitals and clinics may be unable to operate at full capacity, while damage to equipment and medication losses further limit care delivery. Population displacement following disasters can also result in healthcare workforce shortages, and in some cases, reduced incentives or resources for rebuilding health facilities. Over the 40-year period from 1980 to 2020 losses were estimated at $5.2 trillion. Human impacts In 2023, natural hazard-related disasters resulted in 86,473 fatalities and affected 93.1 million people. These countries already have higher vulnerability and lower resilience to these events, which exacerbates the effects of the hazards. Effects of climate change Hazards such as droughts, floods, and cyclones are naturally occurring phenomena. However, climate change has caused these hazards to become more unreliable, frequent and severe. They thus contribute to disaster risks. Countries contributing most to climate change are often at the lowest risk of feeling the consequences. As of 2019, countries with the highest vulnerability per capita release the lowest amount of emissions per capita, and yet still experience the most heightened droughts and extreme precipitation. These perspectives inform contemporary approaches to disaster risk reduction (DRR), which focus on reducing vulnerability and exposure alongside hazard monitoring. Cultural framings in disaster risk reduction Cultural approaches in DRR examine how beliefs, social norms, values, and routines influence risk perception, preparedness, warning response, and recovery. Culture is treated as dynamic: people interpret hazards through shared meanings and practices that evolve with experience and institutional context. Preparedness necessarily entails selection: authorities decide which risks to prioritize, which capacities to fund, and how to distribute roles across levels of government and sectors. These choices shape coordination and public expectations of response capability. From this perspective, there are no purely “natural” disasters: hazard interacts with socially produced vulnerability and capacity, which are distributed along lines such as class, race, gender, age, disability, and legal status. Critical work also attends to questions of representation and voice: whose experiences are documented, which forms of knowledge inform planning, and how media or cultural narratives frame causes and consequences.It further examines the politics of aid and recovery eligibility rules, documentation requirements, and the spatial distribution of assistance and how these practices can reproduce or mitigate pre-existing inequalities. ==Prevention and response==

Disaster risk reduction Disaster response == Etymology ==

The word disaster is derived from Middle French ' which comes from Old Italian '. This in turn comes from the Ancient Greek pejorative prefix - (-) "bad" and (''''), "star". ==See also==