HAZARD AND

DISASTER
CLASSIFICATIO
N
DM101
SAMEER MALHOTRA
Major Categories

■ Natural Hazards
■ Anthropogenic Non-Intentional
■ Anthropogenic Intentional
Earth Hazardous to your health?

■ 516 active volcanoes, eruption every 15 days (average)

■ 2,000 tremors daily
■ 2 significant earthquakes daily, severe damage 15-20 times
annually
■ 1,800 thunderstorms at any given time
Still hazardous?

■ Lightning strikes 100 times per second

■ Late summer, an average of 5 hurricanes developing
■ 4 tornadoes per day or 600-1000 annually
■ 11 blizzards annually in the United States
Categories of Natural Hazards

■ Atmospheric (Meteorological)
■ Geological (Earth)
■ Hydrological (Water)
■ Extraterrestrial
■ Biological
Atmospheric-Sourced Processes

■ Tropical cyclones ■ Snowstorms

■ Thunderstorms ■ Blizzards
■ Tornadoes ■ Cold waves
■ Lightning ■ Heat waves
■ Hailstorms ■ Avalanches
■ Windstorms ■ Fog
■ Ice storms ■ Frost
Geological-Sourced Processes

■ Earthquakes
■ Volcanoes
■ Tsunami
■ Landslides
■ Subsidence
■ Mudflows
■ Sinkholes
Volcanos
Volcanoes
If volcanoes are so awesome and
dangerous, why people
continue to live so close to volcanoes
in the forbidden zone?
■ In spite of these dangerous volcanic phenomena, more than
40,000 people are still living in the so called forbidden zone. It
is undoubtedly the fertility of the ground that they are reluctant
to leave this danger area, although the government has offered
them better (safer) places to stay on other islands in Indonesia
(Ismangun 1978)
Earthquakes
Damage Potential
Difference Between Magnitude
and Intensity of an Earthquake
A hotel in Gandhi Nagar collapsed during the Gujarat earthquake of 26 January
2001.
This was entirely avoidable had the building design been faithful to the design
codes for seismic zone V of the seismic zonation map of India
View of a building in Gandhidham, Gujarat which collapsed like a deck of cards
during the earthquake of 26 January 2001.
This type of building collapse is typical of building failures due to the loss of
support between the floors
Global Annual Count of
Earthquakes
Earthquake Classification
■ Plutonic Earthquakes
Plutonic earthquakes occur at great depths. They owe their origin to abrupt volume
changes caused by phase transformation of some rocks because of very high
pressures and temperatures deep inside the Earth
■ Interplate and Intraplate Earthquakes
Interplate earthquakes occur along the boundaries of tectonic plates. Most earthquakes of
the world fall in this category.
Intraplate earthquakes, however, occur within the plate itself, away from the tectonic
plate boundaries.
The Latur earthquake of 1993 in India is an example of intraplate earthquake that
surprised many seismologists across the globe.
■ Cluster Earthquakes
Moderate to large earthquakes sometimes occur in clusters.
■ Swarm Earthquakes
Swarm earthquakes are a large number of small and medium earthquakes
without any outstanding main earthquake event. They are generally shallow
earthquakes caused due to localized stresses in a highly heterogeneous
medium.
■ Micro Earthquakes
Micro earthquakes or micro tremors have been defined as earthquake shocks
having magnitudes ranging between 1 to 3. These are normally shallow
depth events with focal depths of around 10 km
Tsunami

■ Tsunami is a Japanese term made of two words, tsu + name. The

word tsu means harbor and the word name means a wave.
Literally translated, tsunami means a sea wave or a harbor wave.
What Causes a Tsunami?
Tsunami waves are usually missed out in the open deep
sea because of their low wave heights and large wave
lengths. Do you know who were the first to demonstrate
that even then tsunami waves in open deep sea can be
detected and how?

■ The research team of National Oceanic and Atmospheric

Administration (NOAA), USA, is credited to be the first to
connect the roughness of the sea surface texture with tsunami
waves by reading the changes in the sea surface texture in the
open sea through Satellite borne radars.
Landslides
Morphology of a typical
landslide depicting the
three of its essential
elements namely

a) subsidence at the
head of the slide,

b) heave at the toe of the

slide

c) distortion of the
landslide mass.
Major Types of Landslides
Hydrological-Sourced Processes

■ Floods
■ Droughts
■ Wildfires
 Floods and Flood Disasters
■ means inundation of lands by water
■ In the context of disasters, it is appropriate to regard flood as a
hydrogeological hazard
■ In nature, flooding per se is not always harmful. In fact, it is the way
nature transports soil from the mountains to create fertile plains for
agriculture
■ However, a flood hazard becomes a flood disaster when the flooding is so
severe that it begins to kill people, drive them out of their homes, destroy
property, ruin crops, dislocate communication systems, waterlog roads,
erode mountain slopes, create landslides.
■ bridges get destroyed, embankments and retaining walls fail, sewerage
systems get dislocated, and ground water gets polluted.
■ Take for example the floods of July 2010 in Pakistan. Because of these floods, one-fifth of the land
area of Pakistan got submerged and about 9.2 million people were affected of which nearly 5.2
million needed humanitarian assistance.
 Causes of Disastrous Flooding

■ cyclonic winds, storm surges, bursting of river banks, invasion

by tsunami waves, excessive rainfall, and poor land management
■ Factors such as deforestation, human manipulation of
watersheds, abnormally high rainfall, rapid snow melts, bursting
of glacial lakes and of landslide dams, choking of natural
drainage channels, and poorly managed water systems are all
responsible for flooding
■ Rapid and often unplanned spurt of human settlements in the
flood-prone areas is yet another major cause of flood disasters
Vulnerability to Flooding
■ Vulnerability is particularly high when cyclonic floods and tsunamis invade
coastal areas and when cloud bursts swell rivers which breach their banks.

The above advertisement board speaks of ‘colors of life’. Hundreds of victims of

2005 Chennai floods were forced to leave their homes with nowhere to go right under
the shadow of the board
The advertisement boards were changed even before the fortnight of the flooding
nightmare could end. The speed with which the business world is able to recover
and move ahead should be the envy of disaster response and management teams
The above photographs were taken by the author on the 5 December 2005 soon after
flooding and on the 20 December 2005 when the people began to return to their homes
 Types of Floods
■ Flash floods
The time period ranging from a few minutes to less than 6 h is
generally regarded as sudden although in many cases, from
disaster safety point of view, shorter flooding time may pose a
huge challenge to the emergency response
cloud bursts, severe thunderstorms, tropical cyclones, and bursting
of landslide dams. Glacial lake outburst floods also fall in this
category.
short time slot between sounding of a flood alert and the arrival of the flood
River floods

■ the result of sustained rainfall over large areas or of melting of snow

which cause rivers to swell
■ Unlike flash floods they are slow to buildup thereby making disaster
response relatively less challenging.
■ Where a river abruptly changes its course because of the rise of river
bed level, the flooding may come as a big surprise to the affected
people.
Coastal floods

■ often associated with tropical cyclones and tsunamis.

Windinduced storm surges and high tides aggravate flooding.
Coastal river system too needs watching.
Man-Made Floods

■ Man-made floods are often the consequence of mindless urbanization

■ people began to cut trees, clear slopes, encroach flood plains, and fill-
up natural water bodies to reclaim land for construction
■ the freely draining areas got transformed into very poorly drained land
masses
People living in the foothills face
flooding which may be sudden
or slow depending on the
catchments characteristics such
as its shape and drainage pattern

In the two pictures,

flooding is seen faster in the first
case involving a lobate
catchment.

The flooding is slower in the

second case because in an
elongate-shaped catchment,
water has to flow through
longish stream lengths giving
more time for early warning and
flood response
Question
■ Name a simple way we protect the river
banks, coastlines and water bodies from attack
of water waves?
Pictures from Maldives which offer a good example of
coastal protection by tetrapods
 Drought
■ it is regarded as a natural disaster in slow motion and is chiefly
attributed to prolonged periods of water deficiency in a region
with telling impact on people, animal life, biodiversity, and
economy.
■ Different countries have their own definitions of drought. In
Bali, a sustained period of only 6 days without rain is seen as a
drought.
■ In Egypt, the year river Nile does not flood is taken as the year
of drought regardless of the amount of rainfall.
 Water Scarcity and Drought
■ Water scarcity should not be mistaken as drought. In affluent areas, for
example, if enough water is not available to water the lawns or fill the
swimming pools then such water scarcity should not mean drought.
■ Water scarcity only means that in any given situation, water supply
happens to be less than water demand.
■ Drought means a severe water deficiency due to factors such as delayed
monsoon, failure of rainfall, long dry spells, and large rainfall variability
across the region with the potential to lead to a humanitarian crisis
driving population out of the region.
Degree of Severity of Drought
■ The degree of severity of a drought depends on a complex mix of
factors such as intensity, duration, and spread or spatial coverage
■ its intensity does keep changing with time history of rainfall deficiency
vis-a-vis the normal rainfall, forcing new normal
■ Durations of droughts display a wide range of variability, from situation
to situation.
■ Droughts in the Horn of Africa and the Sahel are examples of
protracted droughts which have played havoc with the lives of millions
of people to the point of a great humanitarian crisis.
Question

■ Deaths due to drought are both due to starvation and

conflict. Which is the bigger enemy?
Answer
■ Deaths caused by drought are both due to starvation and conflict, and
conflict often turns out to be a bigger enemy.
■ The World Food Programme reports that in 2009, violence forced
350,000 people from their homes in southern Sudan, where seasonal
rains were meager.
Fire Disasters
 Forest Fires
■ Forest fires are also known as wild fires, bush fires, and brush fires.
■ Reports of forest fires from the USA, Canada, South Africa, and
Australia are common
■ This is because moisture in atmosphere support growth of trees and dry
and hot spells of weather create conditions that fuel the fire.
■ Forest fires are both natural and man-made.
Question

■ Which is more deadly—smoke or fire?

Smoke is the real Killer

That’s why it’s so important to have
smoke detector with a working battery
Extraterrestrial Processes

■ Meteorites
■ Asteroids
Biological Processes

■ Diseases
■ Epidemics
■ Pandemics
■ Overpopulation
■ Famine
 Epidemic
■ An epidemic is defined as the occurrence of an illness or health-related
event that is unusually large or unexpected.
■ Epidemics are commonly caused by a disease of infectious or parasitic
origin
■ Infectious diseases such as cholera, meningococcal meningitis, typhoid,
viral hemorrhagic fever pose considerable threats to a community.
■ The term epidemic can be applied to any pronounced rise in the occurrence
of a disease and is not restricted to sudden outbreaks
Classification/
Characteristics
based on International Federation of Red
■ Avian Flu Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC).
■ Cholera
■ Dengue Fever
■ Ebola and Marburg
■ Malaria
■ Measles
■ Meningococcal
Meningitis
■ Yellow Fever
■ HIV/AIDS
■ Tuberculosis
Epidemic vs. Pandemic

■ A simple way to know the difference between an epidemic and a

pandemic is to remember the “P” in pandemic, which means a
pandemic has a passport.

■ A pandemic is an epidemic that travels.

Pandemic

■ an outbreak of a disease that occurs over a wide geographic area

(such as multiple countries or continents) and typically affects a
significant proportion of the population : a pandemic outbreak
of a disease
 . Definition of the phases of
Pandemic
■ Phase 1 no viruses circulating among animals have been reported to cause
infections in humans.
■ In Phase 2, an animal influenza virus circulating among domesticated or
wild animals is known to have caused infection in humans, and is
therefore considered a potential pandemic threat.
■ In Phase 3, an animal or human-animal influenza reassortant virus has
caused sporadic cases or small clusters of disease in people, but has not
resulted in human-to-human transmission sufficient to sustain community-
level outbreaks.
■ Phase 4 is characterized by verified human-to-human
transmission of an animal or human-animal influenza reassortant
virus able to cause “community-level outbreaks”.
■ Any country that suspects or has verified such an event should
urgently consult with WHO so that the situation can be jointly
assessed and a decision made by the affected country if
implementation of a rapid pandemic containment operation is
warranted.
■ Phase 4 indicates a significant increase in risk of a pandemic but
does not necessarily mean that a pandemic is a forgone
conclusion.
■ Phase 5 is characterized by human-to-human spread of the virus
■ While most countries will not be affected at this stage, the
declaration of Phase 5 is a strong signal that a pandemic is
imminent and that the time to finalize the organization,
communication, and implementation of the planned mitigation
measures is short. into at least two countries in one WHO
region.
■ Phase 6, the pandemic phase, is characterized by community
level outbreaks in at least one other country in a different WHO
region in addition to the criteria defined in Phase 5. Designation
of this phase will indicate that a global pandemic is under way.

■ During the post-peak period, pandemic disease levels in most

countries with adequate surveillance will have dropped below
peak observed levels.
■ The post-peak period signifies that pandemic activity appears to
be decreasing; however, it is uncertain if additional waves will
occur and countries will need to be prepared for a second wave.
■ In the post-pandemic period, influenza disease activity will
have returned to levels normally seen for seasonal influenza. It is
expected that the pandemic virus will behave as a seasonal
influenza A virus.
■ At this stage, it is important to maintain surveillance and update
pandemic preparedness and response plans accordingly. An
intensive phase of recovery and evaluation may be required.
Anthropogenic Non-
Intentional
■ Technological
■ Hazardous Materials
■ Environmental
■ Industrial
■ Mining
■ Nuclear
■ Transportation
■ Structural
Technological

■ Acts of People
■ Technological systems that fail because of complexities and
human fallibility (accidents)
Hazardous Materials

■ Can classify in different categories

Environmental

■ Can classify in different categories

Industrial

■ Factories
■ Refineries
Mining

■ Coal
■ Safety Standards
Nuclear

■ Power plants
■ Industrial use
■ Medical use
Transportation

■ Aviation
■ Highways
■ Railroads
■ Maritime
Structural

■ Fires
■ Collapse
Anthropogenic Intentional
Hazards
■ Mass Shootings
■ Civil Disobedience
■ Terrorism
■ Weapons of Mass Destruction
Mass Shootings

■ School shootings
■ Workplace violence
■ Hate crimes
Civil Disobedience

■ Labor riots
■ Race riots
■ Political riots
Terrorism

■ State/State Sponsored
■ International Non-state
■ Domestic
Weapons of Mass Destruction

■ Explosives
■ Chemical
■ Biological
■ Nuclear/Radiological