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Rapidly increasing disaster risks
demand innovative, evolutionary
disaster management technologies
Ray Shirkhodai and Joseph Bean, Pacific Disaster Center
T
here is nowhere to hide. Natural and human-induced
disasters happen everywhere. One day’s sweet-scented
breeze can be the next day’s tropical cyclone wreaking
havoc in paradise. That happened in Hawaii when Hurricane
Iniki devastated the island of Kauai on 11 September 1992.
Disasters on the rise
It is no longer shocking to discover that meteorological natural disas-
ters are happening more frequently and increasing in severity. As
populations grow and move, hazards such as severe storms, flooding
and drought, high winds, landslides, wildfires and other weather-
related events are causing untold suffering to communities. Modern
industrialized nations are not exempt. Canada suffered its longest
and most severe droughts ever between 1984 and 2002. Similarly, one
of the six strongest hurricanes ever recorded, Hurricane Katrina, hit
the United States Gulf Coast on 29 August 2005, taking more than
1,800 lives and doing an estimated USD81.2 billion in damage.
Scientists around the globe are attempting to understand why
hazardous weather is becoming more severe. That effort must begin
with demonstrating that the increases in frequency and severity are
genuine. Massachusetts Institute of Technology Professor of
Meteorology Kerry Emanuel, writing in
Nature: International Weekly
Journal of Science
, briefed readers on “an index of the potential
destructiveness of hurricanes based on the total dissipation of power,
integrated over the lifetime of the cyclone, and show[ing] that this
index has increased markedly since the mid-1970s. This trend is due
to both longer storm lifetimes and greater storm intensities.”
Over recent decades, there has also been a marked increase in the
damage caused by geophysical hazards – volcanic eruptions, earth-
quakes and resulting tsunamis. This is not because such events are
becoming more frequent. Any apparent increase in the number of
geophysical events, as well as the sharp rise in related damage esti-
mates, can be accounted for by the fact that there are more people
and communities in more at-risk places. So, a higher number of
events are reported in detail, more lives are lost and more human-
constructed environments affected or destroyed.
Human-induced disasters, from terror-related events to oil spills,
from industrial accidents to acts of sabotage and the effects of
deferred maintenance, are also becoming increasingly common and
affecting more people.
Numbers alone cannot tell the story, but they help us picture the
scale of the problem that disaster managers face: in 2006, disasters
killed 23,000 and cost more than USD$34.5 billion.
Lives are at risk everywhere every day. Tragic as that is,
communities, countries and international regions suffer
much more than the loss of citizens. When a cyclone,
for example, kills dozens or hundreds, it often displaces
and dispossesses hundreds of thousands, even millions;
and wipes out or seriously damages economic gains,
infrastructure development, social order and political
stability. While a disaster-affected community searches
for the missing and mourns the dead it must service,
supply and resettle the affected survivors, and find ways
to reintegrate and re-employ them. Meanwhile, produc-
tion is commonly at a standstill, followed by a protracted
period of interrelated social, political and economic
disorder and recovery.
Responding on behalf of billions
The disaster-response capacity of communities, nations
and regions is not merely keeping pace with disasters. In
terms of preventing loss of life, disaster management prac-
tices are gaining ground. Lives are being saved, although
larger populations in at-risk areas reduce the effect of that
good news when other loss statistics are examined.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of
Humanitarian Affairs (UN OCHA)’s IRIN News,
reviewing the impact and costs of disaster in 2005 said:
“While the number of lives lost has declined in the past
20 years – 800,000 people died from natural disasters
in the 1990s, compared with 2 million in the 1970s –
the number of people affected has risen. Over the past
decade, the total affected by natural disasters has
tripled to 2 billion. According to the UN Bureau for
Crisis Prevention and Recovery, some 75 per cent of
the world’s population lives in areas that have been
affected at least once by either an earthquake, a tropi-
cal cyclone, flooding or drought between 1980 and
2000.”
The IRIN authors add: “Disasters are closely linked
to poverty; they can wipe out decades of development in
a matter of hours.” Poor communities, regions and
nations are heavily affected by disasters. Not only do
they have fewer resources to assist with recovery, their
infrastructure, homes and other constructions are more
often and more completely destroyed, and the livelihood