How can we categorize, analyze, and visualize disasters?
Scholars have conventionally categorized disasters into two types: human-made and natural. However, the boundaries between the two have blurred in modern disasters. Namely, a disaster may take place because of both natural and human causes. Whereas one cause may dominate the other, one cause cannot explain disasters without the other. For example, drought might be overwhelmingly natural, but the global warming that human beings have intensified is the underlying driving force of the drought. Should this drought be categorized as natural or human-made? Likewise, an ancient war that took a large number of casualties appear to be purely human-made, but it was the infectious diseases that killed most of the soldiers. Yet, it is impossible to separate war with infectious diseases as they may have become disasters independently but forged a stronger disaster together.
Voices
“A disaster is often an unexpected event that has an undesirable outcome.”
Anonymous Contributor
“[A disaster is] an event or condition that causes hysteria, damage, and death on a large or small scale.”
Anonymous Contributor
“[A disaster is] a tragic unexpected event that causes a major change in someone’s life”
Noelani Noël