Spatio-temporal aspects and dimensions in integrated disaster risk management

Abstract

The concept of risk has been introduced in disaster management since experiences from past years suggested that elements at risk and vulnerability should be increasingly considered within the framework of hazard and disaster management in order to reduce losses (e.g. Commission of the European Communities 2007; International Standards Organisation 2009). A disaster is defined as a ‘serious disruption of the functioning of a community or a society involving widespread human, material, economic or environmental losses and impacts, which exceeds the ability of the affected community or society to cope using its own resources’ (UNISDR 2009). The term disaster is thus not used until severe impacts on social systems, including human beings (loss of life) and associated assets (destruction of property), are caused (e.g. Johnson et al. 2006). This view was already promoted in the early stages of the last century (e.g. Queen and Mann 1925; Carr 1932) and is still seen as the key aspect in currently commonly accepted definitions such as the one cited above, which additionally highlights the event-specific exceeded coping capacity of the affected social system. The latter—for example, also identified as criterion in the EM-DAT terminology (CRED 2013)—in fact adds the domain of (social) vulnerability to the disaster concept, as it describes the disaster-specific characteristics of a system in terms of its limited ‘ability to face and manage adverse conditions [...] using available skills and resources’ (UNISDR 2009).