Experts emphasize the importance of disaster risk management, noting that through activities such as preparedness, prevention, and mitigation, the adverse effects of disasters can be avoided and reduced. Experts also state that with disaster risk management, considering social, economic, and political factors, risk analysis, determination of damage levels, and minimization of potential damage can be achieved through measures to be taken.
Disaster risk management aims to avoid and mitigate the adverse effects of potential disasters…
Lecturer Tuğçe Yılmaz Karan, Head of the Environmental Health - Emergency and Disaster Management Department at Uskudar University Vocational School of Health Services, made evaluations regarding disaster risks.
Disaster disrupts normal life
Emergency and Disaster Management Specialist Tuğçe Yılmaz Karan defined disaster as “The result created by natural, technological, or human-caused hazards that cause physical, economic, and social losses to a degree that a community or a part of a community is unable to cope with its own means and resources, thereby stopping or disrupting normal life and human activities.”
Disasters arise from natural factors or human causes
Tuğçe Yılmaz Karan noted that people living in different parts of the world today face different types of disasters, stating, “These types of disasters negatively affect people, causing loss of life and property. Disaster types arise from natural factors and human-induced, or anthropogenic, factors. The most significant characteristic of disasters is that they affect the functional capabilities of societies, and unfortunately, societies are unable to overcome them on their own.”
Disaster risk management is applied before a disaster, disaster crisis management afterwards
Tuğçe Yılmaz Karan stated that while some disasters are unpredictable, others develop very rapidly and can be characterized as very dangerous. She said, “Activities to counter the negative effects of disasters are carried out in specific stages. These activities can be performed before and after disasters and are carried out within the disaster management system. Activities prior to the occurrence of disasters are referred to as disaster risk management, while efforts after disasters occur are called disaster crisis management. Disaster risk management aims to avoid and reduce the adverse effects of disasters through activities such as preparedness, prevention, and mitigation.”
Disaster risk management aims to identify threats and develop strategies
Tuğçe Yılmaz Karan stated that disaster risk management involves identifying threats arising from hazards, understanding human vulnerability, and developing strategies for future risk reduction, adding:
“Due to factors such as urbanization, rapid alteration of nature, and rapid population growth, multiple disaster hazards can be observed in a single region. The co-occurrence of hazards makes it difficult to predict the outcomes of disasters. In fact, in addition to the multiple occurrence of hazards, the vulnerability characteristics of people also change the scale of disasters. Vulnerability can be defined as all characteristics that expose any community or assets to disaster hazards. These characteristics undergo temporal and spatial changes.”
Multiple risk situations may arise
Tuğçe Yılmaz Karan noted that disaster risk is the probability of loss that may arise depending on the occurrence of a disaster hazard in the future and the situation of causing harm to people and their environment, stating, “With technological developments, technological disasters can now be observed alongside natural disasters, and one disaster can trigger another. This situation leads to the emergence of multiple risk scenarios. In the late 1980s, the international community generally accepted the approach of developing systematic methods to better carry out pre-disaster activities, and this understanding led to the emergence of the holistic disaster management concept by ensuring that due importance was given to pre-disaster activities.”
What is the disaster risk management approach?
Emergency and Disaster Management Specialist Tuğçe Yılmaz Karan, also addressing the disaster risk method, stated, “In this period where the risk reduction component has come to the fore in disaster management, the ‘disaster risk management’ approach has been adopted to implement policies and strategies aimed at reducing the adverse effects of disasters, improve the coping capacities of individuals, communities, and institutions with disasters, and develop institutional, administrative, and financial measures.”
Identifying risks is important
Tuğçe Yılmaz Karan noted that disaster risk management is “the process of analyzing risk, determining an acceptable level of damage due to a prospective event, and deciding on measures to be taken to minimize potential damage, considering social, economic, and political factors.” She added, “In the disaster risk management process, risk is defined as potential harms or expected losses such as loss of life and property, injury, cessation of economic activities, and environmental damage that may arise as a result of the interaction of natural and human-induced hazards with vulnerability conditions.”
As coping capacity increases, risk decreases
Tuğçe Yılmaz Karan stated that risk is generally related to people's inability to cope with a particular situation, adding, “Risk encompasses exposure/vulnerability to hazards, unexpected or undesirable outcomes, and conditions contributing to the occurrence of the hazard. Furthermore, risk is a consequence of the likelihood of an event occurring and is the expected loss due to vulnerability. The impacts of hazards at the same level differ across communities with varying levels of vulnerability and different coping capacities. Since coping capacity, which includes all available means and resources that can be used to endure the adverse consequences of disasters, is lower in less developed and developing societies, these societies are at greater risk and less resilient to hazards compared to developed societies.