General information on impact of natural disasters?

Question

i am doing my final project for my degree, in it will be talking about natrual disasters.. if anybody can help me in doing that, i'll be very thankful..

Answer 1

A natural disaster is the consequence of a natural hazard (e.g. volcanic eruption, earthquake, or landslide) which affects human activities. Human vulnerability, exacerbated by the lack of planning or lack of appropriate emergency management, leads to financial, environmental or human losses. The resulting loss depends on the capacity of the population to support or resist the disaster, their resilience. This understanding is concentrated in the formulation: "disasters occur when hazards meet vulnerability". A natural hazard will hence never result in a natural disaster in areas without vulnerability, e.g. strong earthquakes in uninhabited areas. The term natural has consequently been disputed because the events simply are not hazards or disasters without human involvement.

The impact of natural disasters is widely recognized and reported. It is estimated that, on average, natural disasters claim 1,000 lives and cause damage exceeding one billion dollars each week (Red Cross, 2002). And while early warning systems and other preventative measures appear to have had a positive impact on prevention of loss of life – from nearly 2 million dead during the 1970s to fewer than 800,000 during the past decade – those injured and left homeless and hungry have tripled. Moreover, direct economic losses have multiplied by a factor of five during this time (Red Cross, 2002).

The Asia Pacific region, home to 53% of the world’s population and 20% of its land area, experiences a disproportionate share of loss of life and impact to socio-economic processes. According to a recent United Nations’ report, nearly 70% of all lives lost due to natural disasters occurred within the Asia Pacific region (U.N. Living with Risk, 2002).

It has been recognized that the disaster management community must move from a response orientation to the proactive management of risk, including the ability to better assess hazards and the vulnerability of people and resources to these hazards. For example, a strong consensus was formed by international experts at a recent U.N. workshop that future efforts should “focus on prevention and mitigation via early warning systems” to most effectively use limited resources (U.N. Findings and Recommendations, 2002). Additionally, it is widely understood that hazards must be assessed in the context of the potential impacts they pose on the people and their societies.

Answer 2

Here are some great sources for that.. Even medical issues.