Geography 2152F/G Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Malnutrition, Nuclear Meltdown, Epicenter
26 Jan 2017
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Maintaining databases on disaster events can be difficult. Why: disasters can co-occur (hurricanes cause floods, earthquakes cause, mortality can be difficult to count (famine, epidemics, a general lack of census taking (in developing countries) not, examples (*indicates disaster): Some people may consider certain events to be disasters while other people may: eastern canada 1998 ice storm, walkerton tainted water, canada/u. s. 14-hour power blackout: love canal toxic waste spill, three mile island nuclear meltdown. Therefore, a specific definition of a disaster has been developed. What events officially qualify as a (cid:494)disaster(cid:495): a threshold has been developed by the centre for research on the. Epidemiology of disasters (cred): 10 or more deaths per event. Or: 100 or more persons affected (injured, homeless, etc. ) Exceptions to the cred threshold: for droughts or famines, at least 2000 persons affected, for technological disasters, 5 or more deaths per event. Statistical data is reported in absolute terms (number of casualties, billions of dollars in damage, etc. )
