Participatory Disaster Management

Types of Disasters

Disaster Mitigation

Disasters have the potential to interrupt essential services, such as the provision of health care, electricity, water, sewage or garbage removal, transportation and communications. The interruption can seriously affect the health and social and economic networks of local communities and countries. Disasters have a major and long-lasting impact on people, long after the immediate effect has been mitigated. Poorly planned relief activities can have a significant negative impact on the disaster victims in terms of exclusion, appropriateness of materials with reference to needs and timeliness of the support. Disasters contribute in entrenching poverty in already impoverished countries. In the absence of risk transfer mechanisms and social protection, it is usually the poor and the underprivileged who are the worst affected. It is understood that development cannot be sustainable unless disaster mitigation is built into the development process. Investments in disaster mitigation are more cost-effective than expenditure on relief and rehabilitation. Actions on disaster prevention and mitigation contribute to lasting improvement in the creation of safety standards and are essential for sustainable development.

Disaster Response

Disaster response in the form of early warning, evacuation, search and rescue, relief and rehabilitation is a component of disaster management. These are response-related actions in a post-disaster situation. Prevention, mitigation and preparedness are part of development interventions which help achieve vulnerability reduction and build capacity for effective response.

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