JAWAHARLAL NEHRU TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY HYDERABAD B.Tech IV Year DISASTER MANAGEMENT Previous Question Paper (September - 2020 - R16)

• Disaster Risk Management (DRM) Approach: This approach focuses on reducing the potential for loss by identifying, assessing, and mitigating risks before a disaster occurs. It emphasizes proactive measures such as land-use planning, building codes, and early warning systems.
• Sustainable Development Approach: This perspective integrates disaster risk reduction into long-term development planning. It recognizes that disasters are often a result of unsustainable development practices and aims to build resilience into infrastructure and economic systems to prevent future disasters from reversing development gains.
• Community-Based Disaster Risk Management (CBDRM): This approach empowers local communities to take the lead in their own disaster management. It leverages local knowledge, social capital, and community participation to identify hazards, assess vulnerabilities, and implement locally appropriate mitigation and preparedness strategies.
• Integrated Disaster Management Approach: This holistic approach coordinates efforts across various sectors (health, infrastructure, environment, education) and levels of government (local, state, national, international). It ensures that all stakeholders work in synergy to address the multi-dimensional nature of disasters.
• Rights-Based Approach: This framework treats disaster management as a matter of human rights. It ensures that the needs of the most vulnerable and marginalized populations are prioritized during all phases of the disaster cycle, emphasizing accountability, transparency, and non-discrimination in relief and recovery efforts.

The relationship between hazard, vulnerability, and disaster is fundamental to understanding risk, often expressed by the conceptual equation: Risk = (Hazard × Vulnerability) / Capacity.

• Hazard: A dangerous phenomenon, substance, human activity, or condition that may cause loss of life, injury, or other health impacts, property damage, loss of livelihoods and services, social and economic disruption, or environmental damage. Hazards are the external threats (e.g., floods, earthquakes).
• Vulnerability: The characteristics and circumstances of a community, system, or asset that make it susceptible to the damaging effects of a hazard. It is determined by physical, social, economic, and environmental factors.
• Disaster: A serious disruption of the functioning of a community or a society involving widespread human, material, economic, or environmental losses and impacts, which exceeds the ability of the affected community or society to cope using its own resources.

In essence, a hazard only becomes a disaster when it interacts with a vulnerable population that lacks the capacity to withstand or recover from the impact. If a hazard occurs in an area with no people or infrastructure (zero vulnerability), it remains a natural phenomenon rather than a disaster. Therefore, disaster management aims to reduce vulnerability and enhance coping capacity to minimize the impact of inevitable hazards.