Are disasters made or are they natural?
Disasters are not natural, they are a result of our action or inaction
As described by groups including Disasters Avoided, the NoNaturalDisasters campaign and UNDRR, we should not refer disasters such as floods, wildfires, storms, earthquakes, extreme heat and drought "natural disasters". They are simply disasters. Some hazards that cause disasters arise from nature's forces, others are human-made. Disasters arise from the choices we make to live and build in harm’s way, or when people are forced to live in hazardous areas.
No disaster should be a shock or “black swan” to us because we generally know the hazards and threats we face - we have surely had enough experience of them by now. While not all hazards are fully predictable, we can predict and redress vulnerabilities including exposures when we collectively choose to focus on them and act in an appropriate way that values life, and we can measure quantifiable outcomes that show economic benefits as well as human and environmental ones.
As the Disaster Avoided case studies show, when the right actions are taken we can avoid disasters.
Good things happen when committed people and organisations collaborate to prevent a disaster from happening, sometimes in surprising and unexpected ways. In addition, we can document the outcomes of avoiding disasters, such as economic, human, and environmental benefits, to encourage others to do the same.
An interview with Terry Gibson
In this interview, Terry talks about his research and about his book, Disaster Makers, which focuses on how disasters are made, and what we can do to learn lessons properly and stop them from happening...
Diagnostics can support action to reduce disaster risk
A diagnostic for a city or town can, and should, include a review of the threats it faces, and the vulnerability and exposure people face to them. We can then decide what to do about them, with discussions about our risk appetite and tolerance, knowing that the risk of shocks and stresses that can occur can change over time, in part depending on actions we take, or not, to address them.
The Urban 2.0 website section on diagnostics tools provides examples that can support this type of activity.
Good land management and urban planning can reduce disaster risk
Good risk-informed land management and urban planning includes ensuring there are rules and regulations in place to deal with the threats, the vulnerability and the exposure people face to disaster risk.
You can read an interview about this topic, which outlines how this issue is being addressed in one country...
The Global Alliance for Urban Crises
The Global Alliance for Urban Crises is a multi-disciplinary community of practice working to prevent, prepare for and effectively respond to humanitarian crises in urban settings.
The Urban Humanitarian Response Portal is a solution which exists to share knowledge globally on urban humanitarian crises, with a library of reports, lessons learnt, policies, tools and methodologies relevant to responding to crises in urban environments.
What we can do to be resilient
Systems thinking to achieve resilient urban places
Policy at local and federal / national levels has an important role to play in linking to municipal authorities. Citizens of urban areas must receive clear communications from their governments and local authorities about the risks faced, and those in high-risk areas in particular must be prepared to quickly respond when required.
Good urban master planning and land management helps us tackle threats posed by hazards. Land and water catchment use, where and how we build, our water infrastructure and other actions play a large part in our resilience against known hazards.
Understanding and agreeing our appetite and tolerance for risk is a key tool that we can use to ensure we have good land management, urban development and built environment practices in place, including where we can build and how we need to build. Risk appetite and tolerance is a widely used risk management technique, in both the public and the private sector. Discussions to agree tolerance levels and thresholds (or risk capacity) can be challenging, but they are important to hold - and to involve everyone in - to ensure there is an agreed understanding about what should be done to manage risk to an acceptable level.
The use of proactive-orientated data and modelling from the public and private sector and effective early warning systems can help authorities and the people they serve to know where they stand against agreed risk tolerances, and when necessary to act early and save their livelihoods from events and situations that can cause harm.
Practical technology solutions help to reduce the risk of disasters – and some are very simple. Good, tested siren alert systems can be crucial to warn people of incoming threats. A good SMS / text / app alerts system that is well maintained and tested with the public can be crucial in informing and warning people about different threats, and they can save lives. Ensuring public trust in such systems, including robust testing, is important - the use of systems that house personal data requires careful management of data privacy.
There are opportunities to learn from success stories around the world to continually improve and to be as proactive as possible.
