Q2Disaster Management
Question
2 marks
Differentiate between a natural hazard and a disaster.
Answer
A natural hazard is a physical phenomenon (like a magnitude 8.0 earthquake in an unpopulated desert), whereas a disaster is the catastrophic intersection of a hazard with a highly vulnerable human population.
Mathematically: . If a massive tsunami hits an entirely uninhabited island, it remains strictly a natural hazard because the physical loss of human life and economic infrastructure is exactly zero.