3 Fig. 1
– Flood mortality risk Chart Worldwide.
India being a peninsular country and surrounded by Arabian Sea, Indian Ocean and Bay of Bengal is quite prone to flood. As per GIS major flood prone areas of India cover almost 12.5% area of country. India faced one of the worst Flood of the Century with 300+ deaths and infrastructure damage over Rs.
80,000 crores. Every time disaster hits, we as humans do everything in our power to suppress it, provide aid and rehabilitate. But even the most advanced prevention system and methods fails. Fig. 2
–
Flood Zone Map, India Fig. 3 – Living with Forces of Nature.
4 The only way out is to fold how humans grow and work together and towards living with the forces of nature collectively. Since ancient times, people have chosen to settle down in flood-prone areas because of various advantages, despite the risks. Proximity to water took care of people’s irrigation needs, transport and navigation needs, drinking-water needs etc. Today,
with growing population, there is great pressure on water sources and the number of people living in their proximity is increasing, as are flood risks.
Disaster is Defined as a serious disruption of the functioning of a community or a society involving widespread human, material, economic or environmental losses and impacts, which exceeds the ability of the affected community or society to cope using its own resources. (# 3 Ref UNISDR, 2009)3. Additionally, it states that a disaster is often described as a result of the combination of three factors
1) Physical exposure,
2)
Vulnerability and 3) The capacity to cope with the situation.
The vulnerability of a system has many aspects, including poor design and construction of buildings, lack of information and awareness and disregard for environmental management. A disaster cannot exist independently from human systems (# 4 Ref Oliver-Smith et al., 2016)4. A storm which hits an uninhabited island can never turn into a disaster, as no population is in the path of the hazard. Only if there is an exposed population which can
suffer damage from the hazard, there can be a disaster. Thus, vulnerability and exposure shape disaster risk, which manifests itself into a disaster, in case of a hazard.
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