1. Climate Smart Community Disaster Management Module
Unit 3. Recapping the relationship between hazard, disaster, vulnerability and risk
These four terms are closely related and are sometimes confused with each other.

2. What is a hazard?
A hazard is a potentially damaging physical event or human activity .
Climate change is a long-term hazard that can increase or decrease the risk and impact of other hazards.
A hazard presents the potential for harm. It is the threat of a potentially damaging physical event, phenomenon or human activity that may cause the loss of life or injury, property damage, social and economic disruption or environmental degradation.
A hazard can be geological, such as an earthquake or sink hole; it can be hydrological, such as a flood or tsunami, or it can be climatic/metrological, such as a hurricane, drought or even climate change. Climate change is a long-term hazard that can increase or decrease the risk of other hazards.

3. What is a disaster?
A hazard becomes a disaster when it negatively affects people, seriously disrupts the functioning of the community or country and exceeds the affected area’s ability to cope using its own resources.
©Grenada after Hurricane Ivan, CDEMA
A hazard becomes a disaster when it affects people and badly affects the functioning of the community. A disaster is the serious disruption of the functioning of a community or a society causing widespread human, infrastructural, economic or environmental losses that are greater than the ability of the affected community or society to cope using its own resources.
If a Category 4 hurricane were to travel over open water and never hit land, or if it were to strike an unpopulated island, it would be considered a natural hazard, but if that same storm or hurricane were to make landfall on populated area and cause great destruction to life and property, it would be considered a disaster.

4. What is vulnerability?
The characteristics and circumstances of a community that make it susceptible to the damaging effects of a hazard.
Vulnerabilities can be physical, social, economic, or environmental.
Vulnerability varies significantly within a community and over time.
Haitian deforestation
©NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
Vulnerability is the characteristics and circumstances of a community, system or asset that make it susceptible to the damaging effects of a hazard. There are many aspects of vulnerability, arising from various physical, social, economic, and environmental factors.
Examples may include poor design and construction of buildings, inadequate protection of assets, lack of public information and awareness, limited official recognition of risks and preparedness measures, and disregard for wise environmental management.
Vulnerability varies significantly within a community and over time.
Low lying Bahamian beach ©connoisseurtravel.co.uk

5. What is a risk?
The combination of the probability of an event (how likely is it to happen) and its negative consequences (how it will affect people and the environment ).
Give an example relevant to the country or community in which the training is being delivered.
For example, a hurricane is fairly unlikely to happen in Trinidad but if it did, the consequences would be very serious because nobody is prepared.
In Jamaica, the probability of a hurricane is much higher but the consequences may be less because people are used to boarding up their houses, and have roofs that are designed to withstand hurricanes.

6. Addressing natural hazards
Natural hazards will occur, but by reducing risk and vulnerability, we minimise the impacts, and in so doing , avoid a disaster.
A hurricane-proofed house that withstood the impacts of Hurricane Ivan
© DAC-ART
Natural hazards will occur, but by reducing risk and vulnerability, we minimise the impacts, and in so doing, avoid a disaster.