More And Worse Disasters In The Future
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Date
1991
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Publisher
Disaster Research Center
Abstract
The United States and the World is faced with more and worse disasters in the future compared with the present and the past. There will be both a quantatively and qualitatively worsening. There are five conditions which are responsible for this trend.
1) Old kinds of natural disaster agents will simply have more to hit and along some lines more vulnerable populations to impact;
2) There are new and increasing kinds of technological accidents and mishaps that can result in disasters and catastrophes which were almost nonexistent prior to World War II; they will particularly occur in developing countries;
3) There are technological advances that add complexity to old threats (e.g., fire prevention measures in high rise buildings that retard fires but that are highly toxic);
4) There are new versions of past dangers (e.g.., urban rather than rural droughts stemming from lifeline infrastructure collapses);
5) There are new risks appearing that have not been traditionally thought of as in the province of emergency management (e.g., disasters in computer systems or biotechnological catastrophes).
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Keywords
Disasters, worse disasters