DISASTER READINESS AND RISK REDUCTION

6 Perspectives of Disaster

1. Physical perspective – can cause damage to physical elements such as buildings, infrastructures, including
people and their properties.
2. Psychological perspective – can cause serious mental health consequences for victims. These consequences
take the form of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and a variety of other disorders and symptoms which have been
less investigated.
3. Socio-cultural perspective – mediated by a range of factors including social conditions and cultural settings
in most places that are less exposed by information and ideas coming from outside- the world outside their
own cultural setting.
4. Economic perspective –causes a perturbation to the functioning of the economic system, with a significant
negative impact on assets, production factors, output, employment, or consumption.
5. Biological perspective –the devastating effects caused by an enormous spread of a certain kind of living
organism – that may the spread a disease, virus, or an epidemic.
6. Environmental perspective – disasters are not random and do not occur in accident
they are the convergence of hazards and vulnerable conditions.

4 Types of Vulnerability

1. Physical Vulnerability - the potential for physical impact on the physical environment – which can be
expressed as elements-at-risk (EaR).
2. Economic vulnerability - the potential impacts of hazards on economic assets and processes. (Secondary
effects such as increased poverty and job loss) Vulnerability of different economic sectors.

3. Social vulnerability - the potential impacts of events on groups such as the poor, single parent
households, pregnant or lactating women, the handicapped, children, and elderly; consider public awareness of
risk, ability of groups to self-cope with catastrophes, and status of institutional structures designed to help
them cope.
4. Environmental vulnerability - the potential impacts of events on the environment (flora, fauna, ecosystems,
biodiversity).