DISASTER MANAGEMENT

COURSE CODE: DM101

COURSE COORDINATOR: SAMEER MALHOTRA
COURSE INFO

• Course Code DM101

• Course Name Disaster Management
• Lecture / Tutorial (Per week) 2-0-0 Course Credits 2
• Course Coordinator Name Sameer Malhotra
 SCOPE OF THE COURSE

• The goal Disaster Management course is to introduce students about the

vocabulary and core components of emergency management.
• The course will increase the understanding of students about classification,
causes & impacts of disasters, principles of Disaster Management, hazard
profile of India, disaster risk management in India, inter-relationship between
disasters and development, as well as global trends in disasters & adaptation.
COURSE LEARNING OUTCOMES (CLO):

• CLO1: Understand the classification, causes and impacts of disasters including basic concepts and
• definitions of terminologies.
• CLO2: Describe the principles of disaster management, various parts of disaster cycle and
community
• based approaches of disaster risk reduction.
• CLO3: Classify the hazard and vulnerability profile of India, enlistment of Acts and policies related
with disaster management along with the role of institutions and also analyze the inter-relationship
between disasters and developmental projects and their vulnerabilities.
IDENTIFYING THE RISKS
DISASTERS

• By simply watching the evening news or reading a newspaper, we quickly

find that disasters of various types happen to individuals, companies, and
countries on virtually a daily basis throughout the world.
• No matter what type of disaster befalls the individual, organization or
country, the results are typically the same, i.e., substantial loss of life,
money, assets, and productivity.
• Today’s risks of disasters have evolved substantially to include areas far beyond the
natural disasters of the past.
• Disasters now encompass areas such as cyberterrorism, product tampering,
biological threats, and ecological terrorism which were virtually unheard of a few
short years ago.
• the prevention and proactive measures taken are substantially different.
• Today’s safety professional is faced with a myriad of new and different reactions
and issues ranging from control of the media to shareholder reaction, which were
not given consideration in the disaster preparedness programs of the past.
The world is changing, technology is changing, risks are increasing and evolving. The
safety profession must adapt in order to prevent potential disasters from happening where
possible, minimize the risks where prevention is not possible, and appropriately react
to keep the damages to a minimum.
HAZARDS AND DISASTERS

• Natural hazards are severe and extreme weather and climate events that
occur naturally in all parts of the world, although some regions are more
vulnerable to certain hazards than others
• Natural hazards become natural disasters when people's lives and
livelihoods are destroyed.
 DEFINITIONS

• A disaster is a serious disruption of the functioning of a community or a society involving

widespread human, material, economic or environmental loss and impacts, which exceeds the
ability of the affected community or society to cope using its own resources.
• Disaster management is the creation of plans through which communities reduce vulnerability to
hazards and cope with disasters
• Disaster management does not avert or eliminate the threats; instead, it focuses on creating plans
to decrease the effect of disasters
• Disasters can be natural or human made
 TYPES OF DISASTERS

• 1. Water and Climate Related Disasters -- Floods and Drainage Management, Cyclones, Tornadoes and Hurricanes,
Hailstorm, Cloud Burst, Heat Wave and Cold Wave, Snow Avalanches, Droughts, Sea Erosion and Thunder and
Lightning
• 2. Geologically related disasters - Landslides and Mudflows, Earthquakes, Dam Failures/ Dam Bursts and Mine Fires
• 3. Chemical , Industrial & Nuclear related disasters -- Chemical and industrial and nuclear disasters have been
included.
• 4. Accident related disasters -- Forest Fires, Urban Fires, Mines Flooding Oil Spill, Major Building Collapse, Serial
Bomb Blasts, Festival related disasters, Electrical disasters and Fires, Air, Road and Rail Accidents, Boat Capsizing
and Village Fire have been included in this sub-group by HPC
• 5. Biologically related disasters -- Epidemics, Pest Attacks, Cattle epidemics and Food poisoning.
 RISK

• Risk : The probability of harmful consequences, or expected losses resulting from the
interactions between hazards and vulnerable conditions e.g. deaths, injuries, property,
livelihoods, economic activity disrupted or environmental damages.
• The initial step in any disaster preparedness endeavor is to identify the potential risks,
assess their viability, evaluate the probability of risks occurring, and appraise the potential
damage.
• Potential risks will vary from operation to operation, facility to facility, and location to
location.
 WHAT ARE THE POTENTIAL RISKS?

Is the operation or facility located near any natural risks? Examples include the following:
• Facility located on an earthquake fault

• Facility located near a volcano

• Facility located in a hurricane zone
• Facility located in a heavy snow area
• Facility located on or near a river
• Facility located near a forest fire area
WHAT ARE THE POTENTIAL RISKS? ….

Is the operation or facility located near other operations or facilities possessing potential risks that
could be transferred? Examples include the following:
• Facility located next to a petrochemical refinery

• Facility located near a high explosives manufacturing facility

• Facility located near a military air field
• Facility located near a nuclear facility
 WHAT IS THE PROBABILITY OF THIS RISK
HAPPENING?
• Upon completion of the listing of all potential risks, assess each potential risk as to the
probability of an incident or event occurring at the facility. The probability can be assessed
utilizing a numerical formula or other assessment methodology; however, there is always a
certain amount of subjective assessment which is included in the measurement.
• For example, if the facility is located in a desert, there is minimal potential of flooding at the
facility.
• Conversely, if the facility is located on the slopes of a dormant volcano, it has a higher
probability of volcanic activity than the facility located in the desert.
 IS THE POTENTIAL RISK SUBSTANTIAL?

An assessment identifies which potential risks are greatest and which

potential risks are substantially lower in terms of dollar losses,
potential of injury or death, and other potential losses.
If the risk is substantial, such as the potential of a fire in a paper
facility, then appropriate resources can be expended to develop
appropriate safeguards and the risk of loss can be shifted through
insurance.
 IS THE POTENTIAL RISK SUBSTANTIAL?...

However, where the potential risk is identified as being low, then an assessment must be
made of the time, resources, and manpower necessary to minimize this potential risk.

For example, the potential of a fire in the wooden hay storage buildings located one mile
from the main facility is substantially high.

However, the potential loss in terms of life, property, and structure is substantially low.

Should the professional include the hay storage structures within the emergency and
disaster planning?
IS THE POTENTIAL RISK SUBSTANTIAL? …

Should insurance be purchased to cover the risk of loss of the hay

facility?

Can the organization risk losing the hay facility to fire without a
detrimental effect on the operation or profitability of the organization?

Is this a risk that the organization can assume without expending

resources?
 IF THIS RISK BECOMES AN EVENT, WHAT ARE THE
POTENTIAL DAMAGES IN TERMS OF LIFE,
PROPERTY, AND OTHER DAMAGES?

safety professionals should analyze and estimate the potential damages to life, property,
productivity, and efficacy in monetary terms.

Although this type of analysis will not be exact, it can provide your management team with
an estimate through which to base their decision-making as to the funds and manpower
provided to the prevention efforts as well as acquisition of insurance or other protections.

This type of analysis often requires worst-case scenario assessments with various what if
assessments.
 FOR EXAMPLE, THE WORST-CASE SCENARIO FOR THE
FACILITY LOCATED ON THE SLOPES OF A VOLCANO
• How much would this type of disaster cost the company?
• How much money is an employee killed on the job determined to be worth in the specific state? How
much is the facility worth?
• How much is the equipment in the facility worth?
• How much production would be lost while a new facility is located or the product line is shifted to
another company operation?
• What are the efficacy losses to the company?
• What losses are covered by insurance?
• What losses would not be covered by insurance?
• How would the company function with the loss of several key management team members?
 RISK ASSESSMENT

• Risk Assessment : The process of determining the nature and extent of risk by analyzing
potential hazards and evaluating existing condition of vulnerability and capacity
• The estimation of risk posed by a hazard: Risk assessment consists of the following
steps:
• Hazard Assessment
• Vulnerability Assessment
• Capacity Assessment
 VULNERABILITY

• Vulnerability defined as the diminished capacity of an individual or group to anticipate, cope with, resist
and recover from the impact of a natural or man-made hazard. The concept is relative and dynamic
• Vulnerability is the human dimension of disasters and is the result of the range of economic, social,
cultural, institutional, political and psychological factors that shape people's lives and the environment that
they live in
• Vulnerability is one of the defining components of disaster risk
• RISK = HAZARD X EXPOSURE X VULNERABILITY
TYPES OF VULNERABILITY

• Physical / Environmental
• Economic
• Social
• Attitudinal
 PHYSICAL VULNERABILITY

The physical vulnerability of an area also depends on its geographic proximity to the source and origin of
the disasters e.g. if an area lies near the coast lines, fault lines, unstable hills etc. it makes the area more
vulnerable to disasters as compared to an area that is far away from the origin of the disaster.

Physical vulnerability includes the difficulty in access to water resources, means of communications,
hospitals, police stations, fire brigades, roads, bridges and exits of a building or/an area, in case of
disasters.

Furthermore, the lack of proper planning and implementation in construction of residential and
commercial buildings results in buildings that are weaker and vulnerable in earthquakes, floods,
landslides and other hazards.
ECONOMIC VULNERABILITY

Economic vulnerability of a community can be assessed by determining how

varied its sources of income are, the ease of access and control over means of
production (e.g. farmland, livestock, irrigation, capital etc.), adequacy of
economic fall back mechanisms and the availability of natural resources in
the area.
SOCIAL VULNERABILITY

A socially vulnerable community has weak family structures, lack of

leadership for decision making and conflict resolution, unequal participation
in decision making, weak or no community organizations, and the one in
which people are discriminated on racial, ethnic, linguistic or religious basis.

Other social factors such as culture, tradition, religion,local norms and values,
economic standard, and political accountability also play a vital role
determining the social vulnerability of a community
 ATTITUDINAL VULNERABILITY

A community which has negative attitude towards change and lacks initiative in life
resultantly become more and more dependent on external support.

They cannot act independently. Their sources of livelihood do not have variety, lacks
entrepreneurship and do not possess the concept of collectivism.

This brings about disunity and individualism in the society.

Thus, they become victims of conflicts, hopelessness and pessimism which reduces their
capacity of coping with a disaster.
 RESILIENCE

Capacity of a community to resist, absorb, adjust to and recover from the negative impacts
of a disaster in a timely and efficient manner

The capacity of a system, community or society potentially exposed to hazards to adapt, by

resisting or changing in order to reach and maintain an acceptable level of functioning and
structure - learnings from earlier disasters

The strengthening of coping capacities usually builds resilience to withstand the effects of
natural and human-induced hazards
CORE ELEMENTS OF DISASTER RESILIENCE

Context: Whose resilience is being built – such as a social group,

socio-economic or political system, environmental context or institution.

Disturbance: What shocks (sudden events like conflict or disasters)

and/or stresses (long-term trends like resource degradation,
urbanization, or climate change) the group aims to be resilient to.
CORE ELEMENTS OF DISASTER RESILIENCE

Capacity to respond: The ability of a system or process to deal with a shock or stress
depends on exposure (the magnitude of the shock or stress), sensitivity (the degree to
which a system will be affected by, or will respond to, a given shock or stress), and
adaptive capacity (how well it can adjust to a disturbance or moderate damage, take
advantage of opportunities and cope with the consequences of a transformation).
Reaction: A range of responses are possible, including: bounce back better, where
capacities are enhanced, exposures are reduced, and the system is more able to deal with
future shocks and stresses; bounce back, where pre-existing conditions prevail; or
recover, but worse than before, meaning capacities are reduced. In the worst-case
scenario, the system collapses, leading to a catastrophic reduction in capacity to cope with
the future.
RESILIENCE…

• Disaster resilience has been described as both an outcome and a process

• Practices focused on outcome have tended to adopt top-down reactive approaches which
can favour the status quo and take attention away from inequalities resulting from
insecurity and disaster
• As a process, building disaster resilience involves supporting the capacity of individuals,
communities and states to adapt through assets and resources relevant to their context
• For some, this implies enhancing peoples’ rights and addressing socio-economic, gender
and environmental inequalities that exacerbate vulnerability
 ADAPTATION & MITIGATION

Adaptation : refers to changes in natural and human systems to reduce risks

to the lives and livelihoods of people

Adaptation actions can reduce many unavoidable impacts in the near term,
although they cannot reduce them to zero

Mitigation : Structural and non-structural measures taken to reduce the

adverse effects of a disaster, if it occurs e.g. construction of retaining walls,
widening of water channels, building codes, early warning systems,
 ADAPTATION & MITIGATION...

Mitigation refers to the actions taken to reduce the severity of a disaster, while
Adaptation refers to the responsive adjustment to an environmental condition

Failure to mitigate will eventually lead to failure of adaptation because the

magnitude of the impacts is predicted to become too large to manage even with
considerable investment

Adaptation and mitigation are not alternative strategies but complementary ones
that need to be pursued together
INDIA : NATURAL DISASTERS

Cyclones, floods, earthquakes, droughts and floods are

major threats

About 60 percent of the landmass is prone to earthquakes

of various intensities, over 40 million hectares is prone to
floods and 68 percent of the area is susceptible to drought
INDIA : MAJOR DISASTERS

Bhopal gas tragedy 1984

Cyclones (AP)& Orissa

Earthquake in Uttarkashi in 1990, Latur 1993 Gujarat 2001, Sikkim 2011

Tsunami 2004

Train accidents; Bomb blasts

DISASTER RESILIENCE ON THE INTERNATIONAL
AGENDA

Resilience has had a long multi-disciplinary history.

Since its origins in the 19th century study of materials, resilience has been used in
psychology (from the 1940s), ecology (from the 1970s), social sciences (from the
1990s), development aid (starting with DFID’s 1999 sustainable livelihoods
perspective) and, in the last decade, economics and the study of organisations
 CONNECTION TO DISASTER RISK MANAGEMENT

Disaster resilience is closely embedded in the longer international history of disaster risk management (DRM),
notably disaster risk reduction (DRR)

There is wide agreement in the literature that DRM is central to strategies and interventions to build disaster
resilience: tools and lessons from risk reduction, prevention, preparedness, mitigation, response and recovery are
deemed critical to address hazards, exposure, vulnerability and capacities, and thus to build resilience.

At the same time, authors on disaster resilience largely agree that approaches and tools for disaster resilience are
broader than the field of DRM: disaster resilience draws from, and brings together, knowledge and practices from
fields such as climate change adaptation, poverty reduction, state-building and conflict resolution.
HYOGO FRAMEWORK FOR ACTION 2005–2015

The connection between DRM and disaster resilience is epitomised by the Hyogo
Framework for Action 2005–2015: Building the Resilience of Nations and
Communities, adopted by the UN World Conference on Disaster Reduction

Acknowledging the severity of the threat from disasters and the deficiencies of the
existing international response, in 2005 the UN’s Hyogo Framework called for
international actors and national governments to invest in disaster resilience

It advocated the incorporation of DRR, poverty reduction, climate change adaptation,

good governance and sustainable development into a single framework for building
resilience.
 PRIORITIES OF THE HYOGO FRAMEWORK FOR ACTION 2005-2015:
BUILDING THE RESILIENCE OF NATIONS AND COMMUNITIES

Prioritising disaster risk reduction by providing high-profile leadership, establishing relevant

policies and programmes, and allocating resources to implement them

Identifying, assessing and monitoring disaster risks and improving early warning systems

Creating awareness at all levels of society about risk and providing information about how to
reduce it

Reducing social, economic and environmental vulnerabilities and those related to land use
through improved development planning and post-disaster reconstruction by all sectors

Strengthening disaster preparedness for effective response at all levels

 MAJOR DISASTERS

• Kashmir Floods. Year: 2014 - 500 dead

• Uttarakhand Flash Floods. Year 2013- 5000 dead
• The Indian Ocean Tsunami. Year: 2004. .
• Gujarat Earthquake. Year 2001. .
• Coringa Cyclone. Year: 1839 - 3.2 lakhs people died
• Calcutta Cyclone. Year: 1737- 3 lakhs people died
• The Bengal Famine 1770 & 1943 - > one crore people dead
• Super Cyclone struck the Orissa Coast on 29th October 1999, killing nearly 10,000 people and affecting
over 15 million people across 12 districts of Orissa.
LATUR EARTHQUAKE

• Latur Earthquake -- 1993 Areas affected: Districts of Latur and Osmanabad Death toll:
20,000 plus
EARTHQUAKE, BHUJ

• In 2001, Earthquake with magnitude of 6.9 on the Richter Scale in Bhuj area of Gujarat
State. In this disaster, nearly 20,000 people died, over 1,55,000 were injured, and 6 lakhs
people were rendered homeless.
 LEH - CLOUDBURST

• August 5, 2010 Leh and its neighbouring villages saw devastation

of a cloudburst that engulfed several lives and rendered many
injured, homeless and missing
• The cold desert was ravaged by a vast river of rock and mud
ripping apart houses and razing shops and structures to the ground
• The destructive floods lasted less than two hours but caused large
scale havoc
 CYCLONE -- HUDHUD

• Extremely Severe Cyclonic Storm

Hudhud was a strong tropical cyclone
that caused extensive damage and loss
of life in eastern India and Nepal during
October 2014
• Hudhud caused extensive damage to the
A blown away bridge near Visakhapatnam
city of Visakhapatnam and the
neighbouring districts of Vizianagaram
and Srikakulam of Andhra Pradesh.
 TSUNAMI

• Indian Ocean Tsunami of 26th December 2004

• This disaster struck the country in more than seven
states
• The disaster was the world's deadliest tsunami, with
over 230,000 people killed and half a million injured
by the waves that battered the low-lying coast
CHAMOLI DISASTER UTTARAKHAND FLOODS

• The flash flood on February 7 in Chamoli district, Uttarakhand, that claimed at least 72
lives and caused at least 200 to be missing or dead was due to large mass of snow, ice and
rock avalanche along with a hanging mass of rock crashing into the Raunthi Garh valley
floor
COVID-19 INDIA

• The COVID-19 pandemic in India has caused an unprecedented level of devastation,

leaving no sector, no aspect of our lives untouched by its deadly consequences. During
the second wave beginning in March 2021, India went through unimaginable levels of
collective misery and grief, effects of which will be seen through generations.
(nidm.gov.in)
DISASTER MANAGEMENT

• In 1994 shift in the strategy for disaster mitigation

• Stressed that disaster prevention, mitigation, preparedness and relief are four elements for
DM
INDIA : DISASTER MANAGEMENT ACT 2005

• Tsunami of 2004 trigger for DM Act

• Disaster Management Act 2005
• National Disaster Management Authority established under the Chairmanship of the
Prime Minister
• The Act also provide for establishment of State Disaster Management Authorities and
District Disaster Management Authorities.