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Disaster risk: Conditions, trends and impacts169Rio de Janeiro might be considered a small event by urbanauthorities; but the same event in the much smaller city ofCastries, Saint Lucia, may well be considered of nationalsignificance. Table 7.1 outlines those characteristics that canbe used more objectively to identify similarities and differencesbetween small and large disasters.Human vulnerability also plays a large role in determiningthe scale of disaster. Small hazard events can beturned into large disasters where high vulnerability meansmany people are at risk, emergency response is inadequateand critical infrastructure is fragile. Where vulnerability islow, emergency services are adequate and critical infrastructureis resilient, large disasters can be avoided even fromlarge hazards.Successive disasters can reduce the resilience ofpeople or households to subsequent shocks and stresses.Small disasters can pave the way for large events by erodingpeople’s assets and the integrity of critical infrastructure,progressively lowering society’s thresholds of resilience. 2Large events that damage critical infrastructure or urbaneconomies will similarly undermine the capacity of individualsor emergency services to resist eveneveryday hazards, potentially making small disasters morefrequent.Everyday hazards may be hard to avoid for those atrisk and, indeed, become an intrinsic part of livelihood andsurvival strategies. In this way, everyday hazards and smalldisaster losses can mistakenly become accepted as anexpected part of life. In turn, this can have the perverseeffect of lowering the willingness of individuals at risk ordevelopment agencies to invest in risk reduction, 3 thuscreating a vicious circle where poverty and marginalizationcoincide with disaster risk.Everyday hazards and small disasters differ from largedisasters in that they are often seen as a problem of technologicalefficiency and infrastructure management – in otherwords, as problems of development. This has two consequences.First, everyday hazards tend to be managed byspecialists from diverse fields, including engineering,medicine, land-use planning and chemistry, makingintegrated risk reduction more difficult. Secondly, socialdimensions are easily overlooked by technological professionsand planning agencies that dominate these areas ofwork.Episodic hazards and large disasters pose an evengreater challenge to sustainable urbanization. This isbecause they are too often seen not as problems of development,but as problems for development. Predominantstrategies for dealing with risk and loss from large disastersfocus on emergency response and reconstruction – not inaddressing underlying failures in development that lead tohuman vulnerability. The risk reduction approach taken bythis Global Report calls for small and large disasters to beseen as problems of development, requiring changes indevelopment paths as well as in disaster response and reconstructionto build resilient human settlements.Small disastersURBANIZATION ANDDISASTER RISKLarge disastersScale of risk Individuals and small groups Communities, city regions, cities, globalSystems at risk Individual health and livelihoods, Social stability, critical infrastructure, urbansubcomponents of critical infrastructure, economies, ecosystem serviceslocal economic or ecological systemsExamples of associated Localized hazard events such as tidal Widespread hazard events such as a severetrigger hazard flooding or irresponsible driving earthquake or major release of toxic chemicalsFrequency of hazard event High (‘every day’) Low (‘episodic’)Strategic importance to Aggregate loss high Huge loss from individual eventsdevelopment planningData sources Emergency services, local news media National and international emergency reliefagencies and news mediaDominant actors in Family, neighbours, emergency services Family, neighbours, emergency services, militaryresponseor civil defence, national and internationalhumanitarian actorsThe last decade has seen an unprecedented number of disasterevents unfold worldwide. The global incidence andimpacts of disasters from 1996 onwards illustrates extensivedamage both in terms of mortality and economic losses (seeTable 7.2). 4 Transport accidents 5 and floods were the mostfrequently reported disasters. Impacts were highest fornatural disasters, with earthquakes and tsunamis being thedeadliest. Floods and windstorms accounted for the greatestnumber of disaster events and also affected the greatestnumber of people. Windstorms were most costly comparedto other disaster types. Even with a time span of ten years,comparing the frequency and impacts of disaster types canbe problematic. Large infrequent events, such as the IndianOcean Tsunami, or individual flood or earthquake events candistort aggregate measurements of impacts associated witheach hazard and disaster type. Far longer time spans wouldbe needed to capture infrequent disaster types. However,longer time spans would subject disaster impact data to theeffects of changing underlying human developmentcontexts, including urbanization.In the new urban millennium, natural and humanmadedisasters are likely to have their greatest impact incities where half of humanity is expected to reside. Theworld will become predominantly urban, with the totalurban population expected to reach 5 billion by 2030, whilerural populations will begin to contract from 2015 onwards. 6The location of major urban centres in coastal areas exposedto hydro-meteorological hazards and in geologically activezones is an additional risk factor. The concentration ofTable 7.1Small and large disastersIn the new urbanmillennium, naturaland human-madedisasters are likelyto have their greatestimpact incities…Table 7.2Global extent andimpacts of disasters byhazard type (total1996–2005)Source: EM-DAT, CREDdatabase, University ofLouvain, Belgium, www.emdat.netNumber of Mortality People Economic damageevents affected (US$ millions, 2005 prices)Avalanches/landslides 191 7864 1801 1382Earthquakes, tsunamis 297 391,610 41,562 113,181Extreme temperatures 168 60,249 5703 16,197Floods 1310 90,237 1,292,989 208,434Volcanic eruptions 50 262 940 59Windstorms 917 62,410 326,252 319,208Industrial accidents 505 13,962 1372 13,879Miscellaneous accidents 461 15,757 400 2541Transport accidents 2035 69,636 89 960