COMMON TERMINOLOGIES
Disaster Management: The body of policy and administrative decisions and
operational activities which pertain to the various stages of a disaster at all levels.
Risk: The expected losses (lives lost, persons injured, damage to property and
disruption of economic activity) due to a particular hazard. Risk is the product of
hazard and vulnerability.
Vulnerability: Degree of loss (for example, from 0 percent to 100 percent) resulting
from a potentially damaging phenomenon. The following terms are key to
understanding slow onset disasters and their impact on populations.
Disaster Population: Usually associated with crisis-induced mass migration in which
large numbers of people are forced to leave their homes to seek alternative means of
survival. Such mass movements normally result from the effects of conflict, severe
food shortages or collapse of economic support systems.
Disaster risk: The potential disaster losses, in lives, health status, livelihoods, assets
and services, which could occur to a particular community or a society over some
specified future time period.
Disaster risk management: The systematic process of using administrative
directives, organizations, and operational skills and capacities to implement strategies,
policies and improved coping capacities in order to lessen the adverse impacts of
hazards and the possibility of disaster.
Disaster risk reduction: The concept and practice of reducing disaster risks through
systematic efforts, to analyze and manage the causal factors of disasters, including
through reduced exposure to hazards, lessened vulnerability of people and property,
wise management of land and the environment, and improved preparedness for
adverse events.
Early warning system: The set of capacities needed to generate and disseminate
timely and meaningful warning information to enable individuals, communities and
organizations threatened by a hazard to prepare and to act appropriately and in
sufficient time to reduce the possibility of harm or loss.