Retracing Realistic Disaster Scenarios from Archival Sources: A Key Tool for Disaster Risk Reduction

Abstract

Disaster scenarios are constructed by integrating natural hazard phenomena and social science sources of information. We profiled 51 natural hazard events of nineteenth century Kashmir that provide insights into the impacts of varying degree of severity that spread through the socioeconomic and political systems, influenced adaptation, and increased the consequences of the resulting disasters. The root cause of these disasters was embedded in the social, natural, and political economic systems of their time, where vulnerabilities overlapped and interacted periodically with successive colonial regimes and acted as tipping points. The combined effect of successive colonial regimes, inept administration, rigid political economy, and natural hazards made the situation go from bad to worse and reduced Kashmir to the depths of distress and subjugation. Over the arc of the nineteenth century, a series of disasters led the Kashmiri population to learn how to live with disasters and minimize risk, bringing about the evolution of social and environmental knowledge. Understanding the natural hazard vulnerability of the Kashmir Valley through archival narratives can help in scenario building to translate findings into formats that reduce related risk now as it did then. The resulting information can be useful for regional design, planning, and policy responses to promote disaster risk reduction.