Disaster Types and Impacts

Data collection on disasters has improved markedly in recent years and several authoritative sources are listed in the resources section below. The International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR) was launched in 2000 as a framework to coordinate actions to address disaster risks at the local, national, regional, and international levels. The Hyogo Framework for Action 2005–2015 (HFA), endorsed by 168 United Nations (UN) member states at the World Conference on Disaster Reduction in Kobe, Hyogo, Japan, in 2005, urges all countries to make major efforts to reduce their disaster risk by 2015.

In 2009,  the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction Secretariat (UNISDR) published the 2009 Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction, the first biennial global assessment of disaster risk reduction, prepared in context of the implementation of the ISDR. The report, entitled Risk and Poverty in a Changing Climate: Invest Today for a Safer Tomorrow, urges a radical shift in development practices, and a major new emphasis on resilience and disaster planning. The report’s authors express the concern that response mechanisms after the event are never enough.^[1]

This chapter summarizes a number of points from the Global Assessment Report, as well as data from the ISDR’s Disaster Statistics, 1991–2005 and from the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) 2008 Annual Disaster Statistical Review.^[2] (See Box for a description of CRED.)

Disasters are the convergence of hazards with vulnerabilities. As such, an increase in physical, social, economic, or environmental vulnerability can mean an increase in the frequency of disasters.

The complete EM-DAT divides disasters into 2 categories (natural and technological), and further divides the natural disaster category into 5 subcategories, which in turn cover 12 disaster types and more than 30 subtypes. The principal categories and subcategories are shown below.

Natural Disaster Categories, Types, and Subtypes

		Hydrometeorological
Biological	Geophysical	Hydrological	Meteorological
Epidemic Viral infectious disease Bacterial infectious disease Parasitic infectious disease Fungal infectious disease Prion infectious disease Insect infestation Animal stampede	Earthquake Volcano Mass movement (dry) Rockfall Landslide Avalanche Subsidence	Flood General flood Storm surge/coastal flood Mass movement (wet) Rockfall Landslide Avalanche Subsidence	Storm Tropical cyclone Extra-tropical cyclone Local storm
			Climatological
			Extreme temperature Heat wave Cold wave Extreme winter condition Drought/wildfire Forest fire Land fire

Source: UCL,“EM-DAT: The OFDA/CRED International Disaster Database,”  http://www.emdat.be.

 

Disasters are frequently classified according to their frequency and their impact, as measured by number of victims and economic damage. The following tables show disaster data for 2008 and averages for the 2000–2007 time period.

 

Natural Disasters: Frequency by Region

No. of natural disasters	Africa	Americas	Asia	Europe	Oceania	Global
Climatological
2008	10	4	9	9	0	32
2000-07 (Average)	9	14	13	19	2	57
Geophysical
2008	3	8	18	2	1	32
2000-07 (Average)	3	7	22	3	2	37
Hydrological
2008	48	39	73	9	9	178
Avg. 2000-07	42	39	82	28	5	196
Meteorological
2008	10	44	43	13	2	112
Avg. 2000-07	9	34	42	15	7	107
Total
2008	71	95	143	33	12	354
Avg. 2000-07	63	94	160	65	16	397
No. of victims (in millions)	Africa	Americas	Asia	Europe	Oceania	Global
Climatological
2008	14.5	0.1	91.1	0.0	0.0	105.6
Avg. 2000-07	9.6	1.1	68.4	0.3	0.0	79.5
Geophysical
2008	0.0	0.1	47.6	0.0	0.0	47.8
Avg. 2000-07	0.1	0.4	3.6	0.0	0.0	4.2
Hydrological
2008	1.0	15.9	27.7	0.2	0.1	44.9
Avg. 2000-07	2.5	1.3	101.7	0.4	0.0	105.9
Meteorological
2008	0.8	3.7	11.4	0.0	0.0	15.9
Avg. 2000-07	0.4	2.8	38.0	0.4	0.0	41.7
Total
2008	16.2	19.9	177.8	0.3	0.1	214.3
Avg. 2000-07	12.6	5.6	211.8	1.1	0.1	231.2
Damages (billions of 2008 US$)	Africa	Americas	Asia	Europe	Oceania	Global
Climatological
2008	0.4	2.0	21.9	0.0	0.0	24.4
Avg. 2000-07	0.0	2.4	1.1	3.5	0.4	7.4
Geophysical
2008	0.0	0.0	85.8	0.0	0.0	85.8
Avg. 2000-07	0.8	1.0	9.5	0.3	0.0	11.6
Hydrological
2008	0.3	12.1	3.7	1.3	2.1	19.5
Avg. 2000-07	0.4	1.9	9.7	7.7	0.3	19.9
Meteorological
2008	0.1	50.0	6.8	3.4	0.5	60.7
Avg. 2000-07	0.1	38.6	10.7	3.0	0.3	52.6
Total
2008	0.9	64.0	118.2	4.7	2.5	190.3
Avg. 2000-07	1.3	43.8	31.0	14.5	1.0	91.6

Source: UCL, “EM-DAT: The OFDA/CRED International Disaster Database,” http://www.emdat.be. [Original tables contain rounding errors.]

Disaster victims in CRED data include both those killed and those otherwise affected. Using a different set of data to separate only those killed provides another striking indicator of the impact of disasters in recent years.

Disaster Fatalities by Type of Disaster and Level of Development, 1991–2005

Country type	Hydrometeorological			Geophysical			Biological	Total
	Flood	Windstorm	Drought*	Slide	Earthquake & tsunami	Volcano	Epidemic
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development member country	2,150	5,430	47,516	426	5,910	44	442	61,918
Central and Eastern Europe and Commonwealth of Independent States	2,635	512	3,109	1,176	2,412	-	568	10,412
Developing countries	97,061	65,258	12,599	9,369	397,303	900	47,616	630,106
Least developed countries	20,127	149,517	3,320	1,739	9,247	201	70,588	254,739
Countries not classified	99	767	57	23	2,277	-	104	3,327
Total	122,072	221,484	66,601	12,733	417,149	1,145	119,318	960,502

Source: ISDR Disaster Statistics, http://www.unisdr.org.     *Drought-related disaster category includes extreme temperatures.

The following table shows that disasters affect people—as well as regions—unequally.

Average Number of People Affected by Continent and Disaster Origin, 1991–2005
(per million inhabitants)

	Hydrometerological	Geological	Biological
Africa	22,803	81	951
Americas	5,186	374	149
Asia	56,486	794	63
Europe	2,404	46	17
Oceania	39,817	585	16

Source: “ISDR Disaster Statistics,” http://www.unisdr.org.

 

Understanding Intensive versus Extensive Disaster Risks

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The 2009 Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction points out the distinction between intensive and extensive disaster risks. Intensive risks are those that produce high mortality disaster events. The report notes that between January 1975 and October 2008, 0.26 percent of the 8,866 disaster events recorded accounted for 78.2 percent of the mortality. These included the 1983 drought in Ethiopia; the 1976 earthquake in Tanshan, China; and, more recently, the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004 and Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar in 2008.

At the same time, losses from low-intensity, but more extensive disaster events continue to affect housing, local infrastructure, and large numbers of people. The report states that “99.3% of local loss reports in 12 Asian and Latin American countries that were sampled accounted for only 16% of the mortality but 51% of housing damage. These losses caused by ‘extensive risk’ are pervasive in both space and time…”

ISDR states that the drivers of both types of risk are similar: locally specific increases in exposure, vulnerability, and hazard due to broader urbanization, economic and territorial development, and ecosystem decline, exacerbated by poor urban governance and the vulnerability of rural livelihoods.

Poverty and Exposure to Risk

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The correlation between poverty and risk is becoming clearer as disaster data collection and analysis improves. Empirical evidence from all regions of the world shows that disasters produce measureable declines in income, consumption, and human development indicators, and that these effects are disproportionally concentrated in poor households and communities. The effects of disasters are especially pronounced in some of the indicators of human development most important to poverty reduction: productivity, health, and education.

Poor households have a limited capacity to buffer themselves against disaster losses, whether the risks are intensive or extensive. They may also have limited social protection, depending largely on whatever public measures are available during disaster recovery.

This discussion points out the importance of investment in measures to prevent and reduce disaster risk. By the time a disaster strikes, it may seem too late to interrupt the negative feedback loop between poverty and disaster risk. But this is not the case; there are numerous opportunities for users of this handbook to contribute to the effort of reducing poverty by addressing risk factors in reconstruction. These include:

• Ensuring that financial assistance for housing and community reconstruction reaches the poor
• Insisting that investments are made in disaster risk reduction in the reconstruction of housing, infrastructure, and other community assets
• Involving local professionals (builders, architects, engineers) in training and post-disaster planning oriented toward risk reduction
• Making permanent improvements in instruments such as planning guidelines, building codes, and housing designs that will continue to be used after reconstruction
• During reconstruction, encouraging government, academic institutions, the private sector, and civil society to think proactively about measures they can take to reduce future community exposure to hazards
• Working with government to establish social protection mechanisms that help different social groups prepare for and recover from disasters
  

The following figure attempts to capture some of the interactions of poverty and disaster risk.

The Disaster Risk-Poverty Nexus

Source: ISDR, 2009, Risk and Poverty in a Changing Climate: Invest Today for a Safer Tomorrow, Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction, (Geneva: United Nations), http://www.preventionweb.net/gar09.

A Note on the Interpretation of Disaster Data

Over the last 30 years, the development of telecommunications and the media and increased international cooperation have played a critical role in the number of disasters that are reported internationally. In addition, increases in humanitarian funds have encouraged reporting of more disasters, especially smaller events.

CRED has concluded that the increase in the number of disasters until about 1995 is explained partly by better reporting of disasters in general, partly due to active data collection efforts by CRED, and partly due to real increases in both the frequency and the impact of certain types of disasters. They estimate that the data in the most recent decade present the least bias and reflect a real change in numbers. This is especially true for floods and cyclones.

CRED has warned users of its data that although climate change could affect the severity, frequency, and spatial distribution of hydrometeorological events, users need to be cautious when interpreting disaster data and take into account the inherent complexity of climate and weather related processes—and remain objective scientific observers. The figure below shows trends in frequency and impact of disasters over the 1989–2008 time frame.

Trends in Occurrence of Disasters and Number of Victims, 1989–2008

Source: EM-DAT, UCL: Brussels, http://www.emdat.be.

 

Resources

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Center for Hazards and Risk Research (CHRR). “Hotspots.” http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/chrr/research/hotspots/.

Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Diseases (CRED). Université Catholique de Louvain, Ecole de Santé Publique,. http://www.cred.be/.

ISDR. 2009. Risk and Poverty in a Changing Climate: Invest Today for a Safer Tomorrow. Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction. Geneva: United Nations. http://www.preventionweb.net/gar09.

Rodriguez, Jose, et al. 2009. Annual Disaster Statistical Review 2008: The numbers and trends. Brussels: CRED. http://www.emdat.be/Documents/Publications/ADSR_2008.pdf.

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[1]. UNISDR, 2009, Risk and Poverty in a Changing Climate: Invest Today for a Safer Tomorrow. 2009 Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction, (Geneva: United Nations), http://www.preventionweb.net/gar09.

[2]. Jose Rodriguez et al., 2009, Annual Disaster Statistical Review 2008: The numbers and trends, (Brussels: CRED), http://www.emdat.be/Documents/Publications/ADSR_2008.pdf.

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Disaster Risk Management in Reconstruction

Disaster risk is the potential losses, in lives, health status, livelihoods, assets, and services that could occur in a particular community over some specified future time period due to disasters. Disaster risk is created by a complex interaction of factors, both natural and human-generated, that expose people and the environment to hazards. The following types of interventions are used to manage disaster risk: (1) policy and planning measures, (2) physical preventive measures, (3) physical coping and adaptive measures, and (4) capacity building at the community level.

Policy makers and reconstruction project task managers will probably never conduct a risk analysis, but they may have to evaluate a mitigation plan for a neighborhood or infrastructure system or make a relocation decision. The commitment to reducing disaster risk must drive such decisions.

Specific DRM actions that can be taken are discussed throughout this handbook as they apply to the chapter topics. This chapter gives users of the handbook a working understanding of what disaster risk analysis entails and of how both short- and long-term mitigation measures are used to reduce disaster risk in reconstruction. It focuses on the basic principles, policies, and instruments of DRM, and on their application in a reconstruction program. Because of its post-disaster focus, this chapter principally addresses interventions 1 and 3, above.

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Disaster Timeline

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• Whether and where to relocate households (Chapter 5, To Relocate or Not to Relocate)
• The housing technology, construction procedures, and norms to be used in construction, retrofitting, and reconstruction (Chapter 6, Reconstruction Approaches, and Chapter 10, Housing Design and Construction Technology)
• How to restore infrastructure services, including site selection and mitigation measures in both new construction and retrofitting (Chapter 7, Land Use and Physical Planning, and Chapter 8, Infrastructure and Services Delivery).
  

When making these decisions, it is important to look for opportunities to promote both short- and long-term DRM measures.

In the immediate term, there is an opportunity to analyze risk and use the outputs of the analysis to identify cost-effective risk mitigation measures to implement in the reconstruction program. In an area of habitual flooding, for example, housing may be reconstructed in-situ on stilts.

At the same time, the disaster may create an opportunity—while the public’s consciousness of disaster risk is heightened—to identify and begin to implement longer-term DRM measures. Longer-term mitigation includes strengthening DRM institutions and other measures that have a more systematic and far-reaching impact but require time to plan and implement. For example, after a flood, a commitment might be made to begin planning an early warning system to ensure evacuations under certain flooding conditions that includes rainwater monitoring and radio announcements, even though it could take time to fully implement.

Hazard mitigation is any action taken to reduce or eliminate the risks from natural hazards. Once the risk analysis has been carried out, the information can be used to define and implement hazard mitigation activities and projects. To do this, the mitigation options must be identified, and the costs and benefits of each option evaluated. Based on that analysis, implementation decisions can be made.

Various mitigation measures may be considered when planning housing and infrastructure reconstruction, but the most feasible will be short-term measures that minimize the destructive and disruptive effects of disasters on the built environment. Longer-term measures should also be initiated. These are discussed in the next section.

The principal mitigation measures are:

• locational mitigation, in which damage or loss is reduced by avoiding the physical impacts of an event;
• structural mitigation, in which damage is resisted through bracing of buildings or construction of a levee;
• operational mitigation, in which damage or loss is minimized by interventions such as emergency planning, tsunami warning, or other temporary measures; and
• risk sharing, in which the cost of the damage is shared.^[3]

The case study on Pupuan, Indonesia, below, shows how the full range of mitigation options should be considered, even those that are political difficult.

Rehabilitate and retrofit housing. Rehabilitation deals with structural and nonstructural modification of buildings and infrastructure facilities. Since new zoning laws and updated design and construction codes usually can’t be applied retroactively, it is important that, to reduce the impact of disasters, the safety and structural integrity of existing buildings and infrastructure facilities is improved during the rehabilitation process.

Train builders in DRM. The training program should provide an understanding of how the hazards may affect the household and community and of recommended mitigation strategies for the specific affected region. Chapter 16, Training Requirement in Reconstruction, describes some of the specific content in the training programs for the builders.

Mitigate the existing site. The location or structure of a building can greatly increase its vulnerability. Mitigation measures should address the specific causes of a building’s or infrastructure’s vulnerability. For example, it is illogical to invest in expensive reinforcement of a structure resting on unstable soil. Removal, relocation, or elevation of in-place structures in highly hazardous areas, especially those built before building codes were established, is frequently the only option. A community must prioritize options based on the importance of a structure and its relative vulnerability. For instance, a venerated historic religious building with a high potential loss may take priority over other buildings and infrastructure.

Select or change the site. DRM considerations should be applied in site selection for new infrastructure. Reconstruction should not occur in areas frequently affected by hazards, although it may be impossible to avoid if housing settlement has already taken place and services are needed and where nonvulnerable alternatives are scarce. Where site selection cannot be used to avoid risk, other mitigation measures are applied.

Mitigate the existing site. It is often difficult to relocate infrastructure to a site that does not experience hazards. For example, a road may have to cross a river or stream and therefore enter a floodplain. In this example, mitigation might consist of designing a bridge with a proper elevation and span based on an analysis of the floodplain. Using information from the risk analysis, the design of the bridge is fine-tuned to the hazards and vulnerabilities at the site (e.g., soft soils, liquefaction potential, etc.). A community must prioritize options based on the importance of the facility and its relative vulnerability. For instance, a water system with a high potential loss may take priority over other infrastructure. The case study on Bamako, Mali, below, explains how solid waste management and storm water management were used to reduce flooding in an urban area.

Redesign or reengineer the infrastructure. Design and engineering improvements are used to retrofit in-place infrastructure. Because construction techniques and technologies are constantly improving, one should research the most recent recommended practices when considering engineering improvements for infrastructure.

Use protection and control measures (applies to both housing and infrastructure). Protective and control measures focus on protecting structures by erecting protective barriers (e.g., dams and reservoirs, levees, discharge canals, floodwalls and sea-walls, retaining walls, safe rooms or shelters, and protective vegetation belts) and deflecting the destructive forces from vulnerable communities, structures, and people. Some of these measures may be appropriate to implement during reconstruction; others may be longer-term investments that require time to plan, finance, and implement. The requirements for these measures should be incorporated into the land use planning framework, based on a rigorous assessment of risks. See Chapter 7, Land Use and Physical Planning, for a discussion of the role of planning in risk mitigation, and the case study on the use of a coastal protection zone as a mitigation strategy in Sri Lanka, below.

STAPLEE. One methodology that considers a comprehensive set of criteria is referred to as “STAPLEE.” This methodology examines the Social, Technical, Administrative, Political, Legal, Economic, and Environmental opportunities and constraints of implementing a particular mitigation measure. To use this methodology and other similar methodologies, the mitigation project is evaluated and scored for each criterion. It may also be necessary to weight the criteria to reflect their relative importance. This scoring could be in the form of a number or a “yes/no” decision. STAPLEE helps determine whether the project is feasible and can be used to compare several mitigation options to each other.

Cost-Benefit Analysis. Another way to evaluate a mitigation project is to use a cost-benefit analysis (also known as a benefit-cost analysis) to determine cost effectiveness. The cost-benefit analysis is used to assess for which alternatives, if any, the benefits outweigh the costs. The steps in a cost-benefit analysis are, for each project:

1. Conduct a hazard risk assessment and compute the AAL before mitigation.
2. Conduct a hazard risk assessment and compute the AAL after mitigation.
3. Determine the present value of the benefit using the difference between the AALs, the project lifespan, and a discount factor for the time value of the benefits.
4. Estimate the cost to implement the mitigation measure and discount those costs as well.

Divide the present value of the benefit of the mitigation project by the present value of the cost to mitigate.

The project with the highest cost-benefit ratio produced by this analysis is the preferred mitigation option. 

Although institutional weaknesses differ from country to country, there are some shared concerns that will affect the promotion of DRM principles in reconstruction. The table below provides examples of institutional DRM issues and potential solutions. These issues should be viewed as entry points where work with DRM agencies can begin.

In most cases, regulatory measures should be considered before other measures because they provide the framework for mitigation decision making, organizing, and financing. Regulatory measures are the legal and other regulatory instruments that governments use to prevent, reduce, or prepare for the losses associated with hazard events. Examples include:

• legislation that organizes and distributes responsibilities to protect a community from hazards;
• insurance regulations that reduce or transfer the financial and social impact of hazards;
• new and/or updated design and construction codes, and land use and zoning regulations (land use planning is detailed in Chapter 6, Reconstruction Approaches); and
• regulations that provide incentives for implementing mitigation measures.

In post-disaster situations where regulatory measures do not exist, reconstruction and rehabilitation (at a minimum) should reflect the experience and standard practices and guidelines used internationally for similar disasters. For housing, such standards are readily available and can be adapted to the local conditions and environment in an emergency. See Chapter 10, Housing Design and Construction Technology, for more detail on housing standards.

Community-based hazard mitigation planning. Creating disaster-resistant communities requires community involvement. The figure at right shows the steps in a participatory hazard mitigation planning process. It is similar to the steps described for reconstruction; however, the planning process allows for more participation and longer-term thinking about priorities and options.

Stakeholder workshops conducted during reconstruction can be opportunities for local officials and the community to begin developing the outlines of the longer-term hazard mitigation strategy and planning process. The communications program related to the disaster is a valuable tool for two-way communication between the public and government about DRM. For more information on the use of community involvement in planning and reconstruction, see Chapter 12, Community Organization and Participation.

In January 1999, a landslide in the village of Pupuan, Bali, killed 38 people. Local residents said the cause of the disaster was a combination of high rainfall, significant slope modifications for rice agriculture, housing construction in high-risk areas, lack of infrastructure, and removal of forest cover. The DRR strategies that had been implemented included structural approaches (e.g., levee construction, hillside terracing, hazard-resistant housing) and nonstructural approaches (e.g., strengthening communications networks, human settlement rezoning, strengthened cooperation between nongovernmental organizations [NGOs] and government agencies). However, resource management actions were not pursued (e.g., abandoning hillside rice agriculture and reforesting slopes). Land use and population pressures, in addition to a 1,000-year-old tradition of terraced rice growing, led to strong local resistance to changing the resource use practices that might have avoided the landslide.

Source: Brent Doberstein, 2006, “Human Dimensions of Natural Hazards: Adaptive Management of Debris Flows in Pupuan, Bali and Jimani, Dominican Republic,” University of Waterloo, Canada, http://www2.bren.ucsb.edu/~idgec/papers/Brent_Doberstein.doc.

Disaster-Related Data Sharing and Coordination Central American Probabilistic Risk Assessment Platform

Central America is vulnerable to a wide variety of natural hazards that present a challenge to the region’s sustainable social and economic development. In response, the region has taken a proactive stance on risk prevention and mitigation. The CAPRA platform represents an opportunity to strengthen and consolidate methodologies for hazard risk evaluations supporting this stance and existing initiatives. Led by the Center for Coordination for the Prevention of Natural Disasters in Central America (Centro de Coordinación para la Prevención de los Desastres Naturales en América Central [CEPREDENAC]), in collaboration with Central American governments, the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the World Bank, CAPRA provides tools to communicate and support decisions related to disaster risk at local, national, and regional levels in Central America. It uses a GIS platform and probabilistic risk assessment to support decisions in such sectors as emergency management, land use planning, public investment, and financial markets. Current CAPRA applications use data for (1) the creation and visualization of hazard and risk maps, (2) cost-benefit analysis tools for risk mitigation investments, and (3) the development of financial risk transfer strategies. Future applications by CAPRA partners may include real-time damage estimates, land use planning scenarios, and climate change studies.

Sources: CAPRA, http://www.ecapra.org/en; and CEPREDENAC, http://www.sica.int/cepredenac/.  

1999 Floods, Bamako, Mali

Flash flooding throughout Bamako, Mali, in August 1999, caused death, destruction, and significant economic losses for several thousand families. The United States Agency for International Development Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA), in collaboration with Action Contre la Faim, an international NGO that works to provide safe water, analyzed the causes of the flooding and launched a 4-year, US$525,000 mitigation project in the city’s most flood-affected district. One of the primary causes of flooding in Bamako, as in many cities, was the disposal of solid waste in waterways, which reduced the storm water capacity of waterways. The project, which aimed to reduce flooding risks by improving storm water management and solid waste management, was part of a larger effort to help local governments improve services, including flood mitigation, which was one of the most critical. Watershed management techniques included improving storm water retention, removing debris from the drainage system, and expanding solid waste management using local collection teams. The project generated livelihood opportunities for unemployed youth, and quickly became self-sustaining, with fees more than offsetting costs. As a consequence, Bamako has not since had a similar flood disaster. The project had other unanticipated impacts, including the reduction in the incidence of water- and mosquito-borne illnesses by 33 percent to 40 percent in the project area.

In a similar project in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, in 1998, OFDA calculated that the program, rather than having a cost, produced a projected net savings of US$426 per household, the equivalent of more than 50 percent of annual household income. The Ministry of Health of the Democratic Republic of Congo showed that the project, which included a public health education component, reduced the incidence of cholera in the community by more than 90 percent.

This model of reducing risk by improving local public services, which shows how risk reduction can contribute to broader development goals, can easily be replicated in other cities with similar challenges.

Source: Charles A. Setchell, 2008, “Multi-Sector Disaster Risk Reduction as a Sustainable Development Template: The Bamako Flood Hazard Mitigation Project,” Monday Developments (April 2008), http://www.usaid.gov/our_work/humanitarian_assistance/disaster_assistance/sectors/files/Multi_Sector_Disaster_Risk_Reduction.pdf.

In the housing damage assessment conducted in Sri Lanka in February 2005, after the Indian Ocean tsunami, it was estimated that nearly 98,500 housing units had been damaged. The government of Sri Lanka (GOSL) announced the use of a coastal buffer zone as a disaster prevention mechanism. Based on the buffer zone policy, government initially estimated 55,525 housing units could be reconstructed in-situ through the homeowner-driven cash grant program financed by the World Bank and other donors, but that all other households would need to be relocated elsewhere. The buffer zone decision was based more on the need for government to provide an immediate response than on well-researched technical considerations and public consultation, and applying the decision to a densely populated coastal belt had profound implications on the environment, on livelihoods, and on the economy.

Almost immediately, the prohibition of reconstruction in the buffer zone set off a wave of land clearing for housing schemes in the hinterland (some in environmentally sensitive areas). No environmental assessment methodology or environmental management practices were enforced for site selection and construction. As a result, crucial environmental planning practices were ignored. Subsequently, due to many problems with implementation, the GOSL withdrew the buffer zone policy and reverted to the coastal protection zone (CPZ) setbacks stipulated in the Coastal Zone Management Plan already established by the Coast Conservation Department using scientific investigation.

Reverting to the CPZ was positive. It reduced the coastal population that needed to be relocated; the number of owner-driven in-situ grants was revised upward to 78,500 housing units. However, combined with poor communications with the public regarding the change, it also had negative consequences, delaying reconstruction by six months for many families who thought they would have to relocate. It also had a differential economic impact on families in the CPZ: they were offered a donor-built house irrespective of prior land ownership status when it was thought they would have to relocate, whereas families outside the CPZ were eligible for the cash grant, and only if they could document land ownership. Additionally, some poor families inside the buffer zone reportedly sold their land cheaply thinking they could not reconstruct in-situ. If this were widespread, it might have caused a redistribution of wealth in the coastal areas, although there is no documented evidence that this occurred.

Sources: World Bank, 2005, “Sri Lanka Post-Tsunami Recovery Program Preliminary Damage and Needs Assessment,” http://go.worldbank.org/BSJBQ6RHI0;  and World Bank, 2009, “Tsunami Emergency Recovery Program, Implementation Completion and Results Report,” Report No. ICR00001105.  

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Resources

FEMA. 2004. Communication Strategy Toolkit. Washington, DC: FEMA. http://www.fema.gov/library/viewRecord.do?id=1774.

FEMA. 2004. Primer for Design Professionals: Communicating with Owners and Managers of New Buildings on Earthquake Risk (FEMA 389). Washington, DC: FEMA. http://www.fema.gov/library/viewRecord.do?id=1431.

FEMA. 2001. Telling the Tale of Disaster Resistance: A Guide to Capturing and Communicating the Story. Denver: FEMA Region VIII.

FEMA. 2004. Using HAZUS-MH for Risk Assessment: How-To Guide (FEMA 433). Washington, DC: FEMA. http://www.fema.gov/library/viewRecord.do?id=1985.

United States Agency for International Development Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance. “Preparedness and Mitigation Programs.” http://www.usaid.gov/our_work/humanitarian_assistance/disaster_assistance/publications/prep_mit/index.html.

United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR). “Library on Disaster Risk Reduction.” http://www.unisdr.org/eng/library/lib-index.htm.

World Bank, Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery, http://gfdrr.org.

World Bank, “Disaster Risk Management,” http://go.worldbank.org/BCQUXRXOW0.

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Matrix of Disaster Project Features

MATRIX: Global Post-Disaster Housing Reconstruction Comparative Analysis

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Glossary

A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q-R, S, T, U-W, X, Y, Z

Accountability: The state of being accountable; liability to be called on to render an account. Adaptation: The adjustment in natural or human systems in response to actual or expected climatic or other stimuli or their effects, which moderates harm or exploits beneficial opportunities.

Adobe: Compressed earth, normally in the form of bricks or blocks.

Agency-driven reconstruction in relocated site (ADRRS): An agency-led approach in which an agency contracts the construction of houses on a new site, generally with little or no involvement with the community or homeowners.

Agency-driven reconstruction in situ (ADRIS): An agency-led reconstruction approach in which damaged houses are rebuilt, generally by a construction company, in pre-disaster locations.

All-hazards risk analysis: A determination of the nature and extent of risk developed by analyzing all potential hazards and evaluating existing conditions of vulnerability that could pose a potential threat or harm to people, property, livelihoods, and the environment on which they depend.

Apartment owner-occupant: The transitional reconstruction option in which the occupant owns his or her apartment, formally or informally.

Apartment tenant: The transitional reconstruction option in which the occupant rents the apartment, formally or informally.

Assessment: The survey of a real or potential disaster to estimate the actual or expected damages and to make recommendations for prevention, preparedness, response, and reconstruction.

Assistance scheme: A method for providing assistance to households after a disaster, allowing them to rebuild and to reestablish their way of life, which may include cash transfers, vouchers, and/or in-kind contributions.

Audit: An official examination and verification of accounts and records to analyze the legality and regularity of project expenditures and income, in accordance with laws, regulations, and contracts, such as loan contracts and accounting rules. May also analyze efficiency and effectiveness of use of funds.

Baseline data: The initial information collected during an assessment, including facts, numbers, and descriptions that permit comparison with the situation that existed before and measurement of the impact of the project implemented.

Basic needs: The items that people need to survive. This can include safe access to essential goods and services such as food, water, shelter, clothing, health care, sanitation, and education.

Biological disaster: Disaster event caused by the exposure of living organisms to germs and toxic substances.

Bribery: Offering an inducement for a person to act dishonestly in relation to a business opportunity.

Build Back Better: Approach to reconstruction that aims to reduce vulnerability and improve living conditions, while also promoting a more effective reconstruction process.

Building code: A set of ordinances or regulations and associated standards intended to control aspects of the design, construction, materials, alteration, and occupancy of structures necessary to ensure human safety and welfare, including resistance to collapse, damage, and fire.

Building inspection: Inspections necessary to establish whether a damaged structure poses an immediate threat to life, public health, or safety, usually accompanied by a process of tagging.

Bunga houses: Structures built with compressed stabilized earth blocks.

Capacity: The combination of all physical, institutional, social, and/or economic strengths, attributes, and resources available within a community, society, or organization that can be used to achieve agreed-upon goals. Also includes collective attributes such as leadership and management.

Cash approach (CA): Unconditional financial assistance for housing reconstruction without technical support.

Cash transfers: Direct payments or vouchers to provide resources to affected populations to carry out housing reconstruction, in exchange for work on infrastructure projects, or for other purposes.

Catastrophe: A situation in which all or most people living in a community are affected along with the basic supply centers, making self-help impossible.


Civil society organization (CSO): National and local nongovernmental and not-for-profit organizations that express the interests and values of their members and/or others based on ethical, cultural, political, scientific, religious, or philanthropic considerations.

Climate change: Meteorological changes attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alter the composition of the global atmosphere or to natural climate variability.

Climatological disaster: Disaster event caused by long-lived/meso- to macro-scale processes (in the spectrum from intraseasonal to multi-decadal climate variability).

Collusion: Cooperation between two or more parties to defraud or deceive a third party, usually with an anti-competitive purpose.

Community: A group of households that identify themselves in some way as having a common interest, bond, values, resources, or needs as well as physical space. A social group of any size whose members reside in a specific locality, share government, and often have a common cultural and historical heritage.

Community participation: A process whereby stakeholders can influence development by contributing to project design, influencing public choices, and holding public institutions accountable for the goods and services they provide; the engagement of affected populations in the project cycle (assessment, design, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation).

Community-based organizations (CBOs): Organizations whose principal concerns are the welfare and development of a particular community. CBOs may not represent all the households in a particular area.

Community-driven reconstruction (CDR): Approach to reconstruction that entails varying degrees of organized community involvement in the project cycle, generally complemented by the assistance of an agency that provides construction materials, financial assistance, and/or training.

Complaint mechanisms: Mechanisms that allow corruption to be reported by social actors, including public employees, ideally in a confidential manner.

Complex disasters: Multidimensional events of long duration often spawned by human-generated events, such as war and civil strife.

Conditional cash transfer: Cash given on the condition that the recipient does something (for example, rebuild a house, attend school, plant seeds, provide labor, or establish or reestablish a livelihood).

Conservation: Actions taken to secure the survival or preservation of buildings, cultural artifacts, natural resources, energy, or any other thing of acknowledged value to society.

Construction guidelines or standards: A document prepared by a recognized standard-setting organization that prescribes methods and materials for the safe use and consistent performance of specific technologies; sometimes developed by consensus of users.

Construction technology: The choice of building materials and the technique and means used to erect or repair a house.

Contingency planning: A management process that identifies and analyses potential events or situations that might threaten the society or the environment and establishes arrangements in advance to enable timely, effective, and appropriate responses to and recovery from any such events and situations.

Coping capacity: The manner in which people and organizations use existing resources to achieve various beneficial ends during unusual, abnormal, and adverse conditions of a disaster phenomenon or process.

Corruption: The misuse of an entrusted position for private gain by employing bribery, extortion, fraud, deception, collusion, and money-laundering, including gains accruing to a person’s family members, political party, or institutions in which the person has an interest.

Critical services: Services required to be maintained in the event of a disaster include power, water, sewer and wastewater, communications, education, emergency medical care, and fire protection/emergency services.

Cultural asset: Building, structure, landscape, object, or artifact that help establish a society’s social roots and history.

Cultural heritage: Movable or immovable objects, sites, structures, groups of structures, and natural features and landscapes that have archaeological, paleontological, historical, architectural, religious, aesthetic, or other cultural significance. May include historic buildings, historic areas and towns, archaeological sites, and the contents.

Cultural significance: The perceived value of an asset as a result of its continuity of presence and worth to society.

Demolition: Destruction of damaged structures to (1) eliminate an immediate threat to lives, public health, safety, and improved public or private property or (2) ensure the economic recovery of the affected community to the benefit of the overall community.

Detailed assessment: An in-depth assessment of disaster impact, often of a single location or a single sector, such as housing or environment. (See “rapid assessment.”)

Disaster: A situation or event which overwhelms local capacity, necessitating a request to a national or international level for external assistance; an unforeseen and often sudden event that causes great damage, destruction and human suffering.



Disaster debris: Waste items such as trees, woody debris, sand, mud, silt, gravel, building components and contents, wreckage, vehicles, and personal property that remain after a disaster.

Disaster response: Process to address the immediate conditions that threaten the lives, economy, and welfare of a community.

Disaster risk: The magnitude of potential disaster losses (in lives, health status, livelihoods, assets and services) in a particular community or group over some time period arising from its exposure to possible hazard events and its vulnerabilities to these hazards.

Disaster risk management: The systematic process of using administrative directives, organizations, and operational skills and capacities to implement strategies, policies, and coping capacities of society and communities to lessen the adverse impacts of hazards and the possibility of disaster.

Disaster risk reduction: The practice of reducing disaster risks through systematic analysis and management of the causal factors of disasters, including reduced exposure to hazards, lessened vulnerability of people and property, wise management of land and the environment, and improved preparedness.

Early-warning system: The set of capacities needed to provide timely and meaningful information to enable individuals, communities, and organizations threatened by hazards to prepare and to act appropriately and in sufficient time to reduce loss of life, injury, livelihoods, damage to property and damage to the environment.

Earthquake: A sudden motion or trembling caused by a release of strain accumulated within or along the edge of earth's tectonic plates.

Economic security: Conditions that allow a household or community to meet its essential economic needs in a sustainable way without resorting to strategies which are damaging to livelihoods, security, and dignity.

Emergency management: The organization and management of resources and responsibilities for addressing all aspects of emergencies, in particular, preparedness, response, and initial recovery.

Emergency services: The set of specialized agencies that have responsibility to serve and protect people and property in emergency situations.

Empowerment: Authority given to an institution or organization (or individual) to determine policy and make decisions. Inclusion of people who are ordinarily outside of the decision making process.

Enabling environment: The rules and regulations, both national and local, which provide a supportive environment for a specific activity, such as community participation or DRM, to take place.

Environmental degradation: The reduction of the capacity of the environment to meet social and ecological objectives and needs.

Environmental impact assessment: The process by which the environmental consequences of a proposed project or program are evaluated, undertaken as an integral part of planning and decision-making processes with a view to limiting or reducing the adverse impacts of the project or program.

Equity: The quality of being impartial and "fair" in the distribution of development benefits and costs and the provision of access to opportunities for all.

Erosion: The washing away of soil and rocks along streams and hillsides on public and private property Erosion may cause a threat to health, safety, and the environment.

Exposure: The experience of coming into contact with an environmental condition or social influence that has a harmful or beneficial effect.

Extortion: Threatening another with adverse consequences unless demands, usually for payment, are met.

Floodplain: Any land area, including a watercourse, susceptible to partial or complete inundation by water from any source. Floodplain maps show inundation limits for floods of selected recurrence intervals and are used for zoning, insurance, and other regulatory purposes regarding heath and safety.

Framework data: The seven themes of geospatial data that are used by most geographic information system (GIS) applications (geodetic control, orthoimagery, elevation and bathymetry, transportation, hydrography, cadastral, and governmental units). These data include an encoding of the geographic extent of the features and a minimal number of attributes needed to identify and describe the features.

Fraud: Deceiving another person in order to gain some financial or other advantage.

Geological hazard: Geological process or phenomenon that may cause loss of life, injury, and other health impacts, property damage, loss of livelihoods and services, social and economic disruption, or environmental degradation.

Geophysical disasters: Seismic events (such as earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, landslides) related to the motion of the earth’s tectonic plates.

Geo-referenced (or geo-spacial) information: Data, photos, or videos referenced geographically (for or by a GIS) relating to earth’s physical features and attributes such as latitude, longitude, or locality/jurisdiction. Can be used to assess damage, map hazards, identify natural and materials resources and critical infrastructure at risk, plan restoration, monitor progress, and evaluate results on maps using a GIS.

GLIDE (GLobal IDEntifier): A system of unique disaster identifying numbers which when referenced in data sets will save time; create a common reference point for relating Bank projects to diverse and scattered sources of data; and eliminate confusion.

Hazard mapping: The process of establishing geographically where and to what extent particular hazards are likely to pose a threat to people, property, or the environment.

Hazardous materials (HAZMAT): Any substance or material that, when involved in an accident and released in sufficient quantities, poses a risk to people’s health, safety, and/or property. Includes explosives, radioactive materials, flammable liquids or solids, combustible liquids or solids, poisons, oxidizers, toxins, and corrosive materials.

Heritage: The combined creation and products of nature and of man that make up the living environment in time and space, including monuments, archeological sites, and movable heritage collections, historic urban areas, vernacular heritage, cultural landscapes (tangible heritage, which include natural and cultural sites), and living dimensions of heritage and all aspects of the physical and spiritual relationship between human societies and their environment (intangible heritage).

Historic preservation: A professional endeavor that seeks to preserve, conserve and protect buildings, objects, landscapes or other artifacts of historic significance.

Host families: A transitional settlement option sheltering the displaced population within the households of local families or on land or in properties owned by them.

House design: The form, dimensions, natural lighting, ventilation, and spatial organization of dwellings.

House owner-occupant: Tenure option where the occupant owns the house and land or is in part-ownership, such as when repaying a mortgage or loan. Ownership may be formal or informal.

House tenant: Tenure option where the house and land are rented by the occupant, formally or informally.

Household: Members of the same family unit sharing common income and expenditure sources. This definition may vary from context to context.

Housing: The immediate physical environment, both within and outside of buildings, in which families and households live and which serves as shelter.

Housing standard: Level of quality of a dwelling generally linked with the social level of the residents (including size, location, architecture, cost, workmanship quality).

Housing-sector assessment: An assessment to collect information such as demographic data, housing types, housing tenure situations, settlement patterns before and after the disaster, government interventions in the housing sector, infrastructure access, construction capacity, and market capacity to provide materials and labor for reconstruction.

Hydraulics: A branch of science or engineering that addresses fluids (specially water) in motion, water’s action in rivers and channels, and works for raising water.

Hydrological disaster: Disaster event caused by deviations in the normal water cycle and/or overflow of bodies of water caused by wind set-up.

Hydrology: The scientific study of the waters of the earth, especially with relation to the effects of precipitation and evaporation on water in streams, lakes, and on or below the land surface.

Hydrometeorological disasters: The result from weather-related events, such as tropical water-related occurrences (hurricanes, typhoons, cyclones), windstorms, winter storms, tornadoes, and floods.

Hydrometeorological hazard: Process or phenomenon of atmospheric, hydrological or oceanographic nature that may cause loss of life, injury, and other health impacts, property damage, loss of livelihoods, and services, social and economic disruption, or environmental degradation.

Hyogo Framework for Action: The agreed framework of actions to reduce disaster risks from 2005–2015 established by more than 190 countries following the World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction held in Kobe, Hyogo Japan, January 2005.

Inflation: An increase in the supply of currency or credit relative to the availability of goods and services, resulting in higher prices and a decrease in the purchasing power of money.

Information and communications technologies (ICT): The collective technology used to create, store, exchange, analyze, and process information in all its forms integrated with the procedures and resources to collect, process, and communicate data.

Infrastructure: Systems and networks by which public services are delivered, including: water supply and sanitation; energy and other utility networks; and transportation networks for all modes of travel, including roads and other access lines.

Integrity pact: An agreement between government and bidders for public contracts that neither side will pay, offer, demand, or accept bribes nor collude with competitors in obtaining or carrying out the contract.

Internally displaced persons: Persons or groups of persons who have been forced or obliged to flee or to leave their homes or places of habitual residence—in particular as a result of or in order to avoid the effects of armed conflict, situations of generalized violence, violations of human rights, or natural or human-made disasters—and who have not crossed an internationally recognized state border.

Interoperability: The capability of different ICT applications to exchange data via common exchange, file formats, and protocols. In the broadest sense, interoperability takes into account the social, political, language, and organizational factors that impact system performance.

Land use planning: The process undertaken by public authorities to identify, evaluate, and decide on different options for the use of land areas, including consideration of (1) long-term economic, social, and environmental objectives; (2) the implications for different communities and interest groups; and (3) the subsequent formulation and promulgation of plans that describe the permitted or acceptable uses. (See “physical planning.”)

Landslide: Downward movement of a slope and materials under the force of gravity.

Lifelines: Public facilities and systems that provide basic life support services such as water, energy, sanitation, communications, and transportation.

Liquefaction: The phenomenon that occurs when ground shaking causes loose soils to lose strength and act like viscous fluid, which, in turn, causes two types of ground failure: lateral spread and loss of bearing strength.

Livelihoods: The ways in which people earn access to the resources they need, individually and communally, such as food, water, clothing, and shelter.

Logical framework (logframe): A conceptual tool used to define project, program, or policy objectives, and expected causal links in the results chain, including inputs, processes, outputs, outcomes, and impact. It identifies potential risks as well as performance indicators at each stage in the chain.

Loss assessment: Analyzes the changes in economic flows that occur after a disaster and over time, valued at current prices.

Market analysis: Research undertaken to understand how a market functions, how a crisis has affected it, and the need for and most appropriate form of support. Research can include information on supply and demand of goods and services, price changes, and income/salary data.

Metadata: Information about data, such as content, source, vintage, accuracy, condition, projection, responsible party, contact phone number, method of collection, and other characteristics or descriptions.

Meteorological disaster: Disaster event caused by short-lived/small to meso-scale atmospheric processes (in the spectrum from minutes to days).

Microfinance: A broad range of small-scale financial services (such as deposits, loans, payment services, money transfers, and insurance) to poor and low-income households and their microenterprises.

Mitigation: The lessening or limitation of the adverse impacts of hazards and related disasters.

Money-laundering: Moving cash or assets obtained by criminal activity from one location to another in order to conceal the source.

Monitoring: The ongoing task of collecting and reviewing program-related information that pertain to the program’s goals, objectives, and activities.

Morphology: The size, form and structure of an object (such as a house).

Natural hazard: Natural process or phenomenon that may cause loss of life, injury and other health impacts, property damage, loss of livelihoods and services, social and economic disruption, or environmental degradation.

Needs assessment: A process for estimating (usually based on a damage assessment) the financial, technical, and human resources needed to implement the agreed-upon programs of recovery, reconstruction, and risk management. It evaluates and “nets out” resources available to respond to the disaster.

Nongovernmental organization (NGO): A nonprofit, voluntary, service-oriented, and/or development-oriented organization, operated either for the benefit of its members or of other members, such as an agency. Also, civil society organization (CSO).

Nonstructural measures: Any measure not involving physical construction that uses knowledge, practice or agreement, to reduce risks and impacts, in particular through policies and laws, public awareness raising, training and education. (See “structural measures.”)

Open source: Nonproprietary software code and applications developed by a community of interested developers and made freely available (without a license) for use and further development. For example, Linux and many Google applications.

Open standards: Standards for ITC made available to the general public and are developed (or approved) and maintained via a collaborative and consensus-driven process. Open standards facilitate interoperability and data exchange among different products or services and are intended for widespread adoption.

Operating energy: The energy consumed by a building for heating, cooling, lightening and ventilating.

Owner-driven reconstruction (ODR): A reconstruction approach in which the homeowner undertakes rebuilding with or without external financial, material and technical assistance.

Physical planning: A design exercise based on a land use plan used to propose the optimal infrastructure for public services, transport, economic activities, recreation, and environmental protection for a settlement or area. A physical plan can have both rural and urban components, although the latter usually predominates. (See “land use planning.”)

Post-disaster needs assessment (PDNA): Usually a rapid, multi-sectoral assessment that measures the impact of disasters on the society, economy, and environment of the disaster-affected area.

Preparedness: The knowledge and capacities developed by governments, professional response and recovery organizations, communities, and individuals to effectively anticipate, respond to, and recover from the impacts of likely, imminent or current hazard events or conditions.

Prevention: Activities to provide outright avoidance of the adverse impact of hazards and means to minimize related environmental, technological and biological disasters; in the context of public awareness and education related to disaster risk reduction, changing attitudes and behavior to promote a “culture of prevention.”

Probability: A statistical measure of the likelihood that a hazard event will occur.

Project cycle (also “project life cycle”): The sequence of activities that make up a project and how they relate to one other, generally: identification, preparation, appraisal, presentation and financing, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation.

Quantitative data: Numerical information, such as numbers of intended recipients, payments disbursed, cash transferred, or days worked broken down by gender, age, and other variables.

Rapid assessment: An assessment that provides immediate information on needs, possible intervention types, and resource requirements. May be conducted as a multi-sectoral assessment or in a single sector or location. (See “detailed assessment.”)

Reconstruction: The restoration and improvement, where possible, of facilities, livelihoods, and living conditions of disaster-affected communities, including efforts to reduce disaster risk factors. Focused primarily on the construction or replacement of damaged physical structures, and the restoration of local services and infrastructure.

Recovery: Decisions and actions taken after a disaster to restore or improve the pre-disaster living conditions of the affected communities while encouraging and facilitating necessary adjustments to reduce disaster risk. Focused not only on physical reconstruction, but also on the revitalization of the economy, and the restoration of social and cultural life.

Recurrence interval: The time between hazard events of similar size in a given location based on the probability that the given event will be equaled or exceeded in any given year.

Regulatory measures: Legal and other regulatory instruments established by government to prevent, reduce, or prepare for losses, such as those associated with hazard events, such as land use regulations in high-risk zones.

Relief: The provision of assistance or intervention immediately after a disaster to meet the life preservation and basic subsistence needs of those people affected.

Relocation: A process whereby a community’s housing, assets, and public infrastructure are rebuilt in another location.

Remittances: Payments sent from migrant workers to family members in the country of origin.

Remote sensing: A field of study where the goal is to infer the properties of the earth’s surface or the atmosphere itself without being in direct contact with them. Post-disaster remote sensing includes imagery of the disaster area captured from aircraft and satellites to study changes to the landscape or structures.

Repair: Restoration to working order following decay, damage, or partial destruction.

Repair cost: The cost associated with the replacement or restoration of damaged components. It does not include upgrades of other components triggered by codes and standards, design associated with upgrades, demolition of the entire facility, site work, or applicable project management costs.

Replacement cost: The cost for all work necessary to provide a new facility of the same size or design capacity and function as the damaged facility in accordance with all current applicable codes and standards.

Resettlement (involuntary resettlement): Direct economic and social losses resulting from displacement caused by land taking or restriction of access to land, together with the consequent compensatory and remedial measures. Generally related to infrastructure projects or changes in land use for public purposes. Relocation is one mitigation measure considered in carrying out resettlement.

Residual risk: The risk that remains in unmanaged form, even when effective disaster risk reduction measures are in place, and for which emergency response and recovery capacities must be maintained.

Resilience: The ability of a system, community, or society potentially exposed to hazards to resist, absorb, adapt to, and recover from the stresses of a hazard event, including the preservation and restoration of its essential basic structures and functions.

Response: The provision of emergency services and public assistance during or immediately after a disaster to save lives, reduce health impacts, ensure public safety, and meet the basic subsistence needs of the affected people.

Results framework: A tool for identifying and measuring objectives at the sector, country or regional level, usually laid out in diagrammatic form. It uses an objective tree to link high-level objectives through a hierarchy to program-level outcomes (and ultimately individual activities) and sets out a means by which achievement at all levels can be measured.

Retrofitting: Reinforcement or upgrading of existing structures to become more resistant and resilient to the forces of hazards.

Return period: The estimated likelihood of a disaster reoccurring in an area; a series of probable events.

Rights-based assessment: Evaluates whether people’s basic rights are being met. The basis is generally considered to be the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Risk: The probability that a particular level of loss will be sustained by a given series of elements as a result of a given level of hazard. Elements under threat can include populations, communities, the built environment, the natural environment, economic activities, and services.

Risk analysis: A determination of the nature and extent of risk by analyzing potential hazards and evaluating existing conditions of vulnerability that could pose a potential threat or harm to people, property, livelihoods, and the environment on which they depend.

Risk assessment: A methodology to determine the nature and extent of risk by analyzing potential hazards and evaluating existing conditions of vulnerability that together could potentially harm exposed people, property, services, livelihoods, and the environment on which they depend.

Risk atlas: A series of maps showing community damages and losses as well as hazard areas for a series of probable events; a separate map is generated for each return period event. (See “return periods.”)

Risk management: The systematic approach and practice of managing uncertainty and potential losses through a process of risk assessment and analysis and the development and implementation of strategies and specific actions to control, reduce, and transfer risks.

Risk transfer: The process of formally or informally shifting the financial consequences of particular risks from one party to another whereby one party (a household, community, enterprise, or state authority) will obtain post-disaster resources from another party in exchange for ongoing or compensatory social or financial benefits.

Secondary hazard: A threat whose potential would be realized as the result of a triggering event that itself constitutes an emergency (for example, dam failure can be a secondary hazard associated with earthquakes).

Shelter: A habitable covered living space, providing a secure, healthy living environment with privacy and dignity for the groups, families, and individuals residing within it.

Social protection: Public measures to provide income security to the population. Use of social risk management to reduce the economic vulnerability of households and to help smooth consumption patterns.

Social safety net: Generally refers to non-contributory transfers (in cash or in kind), targeted at both populations at risk of economic destitution and the permanently poor, designed to keep their income above a specified minimum level.

Squatter: A person occupying a housing unit or land without legal title to it.

Stakeholders: All those agencies and individuals who have a direct or indirect interest in a humanitarian intervention or development project, or who can affect or are affected by the implementation and outcome of it. 

Storm surge: Rise in the water surface above normal water level on the open coast due to the action of wind stress and atmospheric pressure on the water surface.

Structural measures: Any physical construction to reduce or avoid possible impacts of hazards, or application of engineering techniques to achieve hazard-resistance and resilience in structures or systems. (See “nonstructural measures.”)

Sustainable development: Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

Transitional reconstruction: The processes by which populations affected but not displaced by conflict or natural disasters achieve durable solutions to their settlement and shelter needs.

Transitional settlement: the processes by which populations affected and displaced by conflict or natural disasters achieve settlement and shelter throughout the period of their displacement, prior to beginning transitional reconstruction.

Transitional shelter: Shelter that provides a habitable covered living space and a secure, healthy living environment with privacy and dignity for those within it during the period between a conflict or natural disaster and the achievement of a durable shelter solution.

User-driven reconstruction: Similar to owner-driven reconstruction, the approach in which the occupant of the property may not be the owner in a formal sense but may still possess sufficient property rights or sense of ownership to be willing to take on the reconstruction responsibility. 

Vernacular architecture: The dwellings and other buildings that reflect people’s environmental contexts and available resources, customarily owner- or community-built, utilizing traditional technologies. Vernacular architecture reflects the specific needs, values, economies, and ways of life of the culture that produces them. They may be adapted or developed over time as needs and circumstances change.

Vulnerability: The relative lack of capacity of a community or ability of an asset to resist damage and loss from a hazard.
The conditions determined by physical, social, economic, political, and environmental factors or processes that increase the susceptibility of a community to the impact of hazards.

Vulnerable groups: Groups or members of groups particularly exposed to the impact of hazards, such displaced people, women, the elderly, the disabled, orphans, and any group subject to discrimination.

Warning systems: Mechanisms used to persuade and enable people and organizations to take actions to increase safety and reduce the impacts of a hazard.

Watershed: An area of land from which all of the water under it or on it drains to the same place, which may be a river, lake, reservoir, estuary, wetland, sea or ocean.

Index