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7CHAPTERDISASTER RISK: CONDITIONS,TRENDS AND IMPACTSDisasters in urban areas are experienced when life supportsystems fail in the face of pressure from external stress,resulting in loss of life, damage to property and the underminingof livelihoods. However, they are not natural eventsor ‘acts of God’, but products of failed development. For themajority of people at risk, loss to disaster is determined moreby processes and experiences of urban development andgovernance than by the physical processes that shape naturalor human-made hazards.This chapter presents an overview of global trends inthe incidence and impacts on cities of disasters associatedwith natural and human-made hazards. In this context,natural hazards include earthquakes, hurricanes, tsunamis,tornadoes, landslides, floods, volcanic eruptions andwindstorms, while human-made hazards encompass explosionsand chemical releases. However, the conceptualdistinction between disasters associated with natural andhuman-made hazards is increasingly becoming blurred, asmany human actions and practices, such as the constructionof human settlements in flood-prone areas or on the slopesof active volcanoes, exacerbate human-made hazards. Whilethe focus here is primarily on large-scale disasters that registerdirect impacts at the community level and above, thecharacteristics of small-scale disasters whose impacts arelargely felt at the individual or household levels arereviewed.Epidemic diseases and environmental health are notdiscussed herewith, nor are acts of war. This is becausewhile these forms of stress impact upon the built environment,human health and political systems, the balance ofimpact is different in each case. It is natural and humanmadehazards that most frequently threaten urbansustainability through damage to buildings and critical infrastructure.The focus on natural and human-made disastersalso responds to global trends in increasing numbers of suchevents, in people affected and made homeless by disaster,and in the economic impacts of disaster, especially on thepoor and marginalized.An overview of the relationships between urbanizationand disaster risk, human vulnerability and loss (oroutcome) is presented below, once key disaster terms aredefined. This is followed by a detailed discussion of thedistribution of disaster loss associated with natural andhuman-made hazards worldwide and across cities. Theeconomic and social outcomes, or impacts, of disasters,including the disproportionate impacts on the poor andmarginalized, the aged, the very young and women, are thenreviewed. Subsequently, factors generating urban disasterrisk and contributing to human vulnerability, includingmodification of the urban environment, planning andconstruction techniques, urban finance and poverty, areexamined. Finally, a regional comparison illustrates variationin conditions, trends and impacts of urban disaster riskglobally.DISASTER TERMINOLOGYIn addition to the terms introduced in Chapters 1 and 2,terminology specific to disaster risk is first presented here toidentify what a disaster is and its component parts, and thento identify elements of disaster risk management (see Box7.1). It is important not to confuse the definition of termshere with meanings attributed to these terms in sister disciplines.For example, in the international developmentcommunity, ‘vulnerability’ is commonly used in reference toeconomic poverty, whereas here vulnerability refers toexposure and susceptibility to harm from natural or humanmadehazards, also referred to as ‘risky events’ in theconceptual framework presented in Chapter 2.A disaster is understood here to be the outcome of avulnerable individual or society being hit by a human-madeor natural hazard. The vulnerability of an individual orsociety is reduced through short-term coping and longertermadaptation that adjust human actions to minimize riskimpacts or outcomes.Disaster management is seen as best undertakenthrough a disaster risk reduction approach. Here, disasterrisk is addressed at a number of stages. Before hazards occur,underlying physical and technological processes can becontained through mitigation. Unfortunately, in mostsocieties, mitigation is not sufficient and residual hazardremains. Reducing risk from residual hazard requirespreparedness, including education, risk assessment and earlywarning and evacuation planning. Disaster response takesplace in the first hours and days after a disaster and