Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to explore the nature of water-related disasters, look at the trends in water-related disasters, categorize water-related disasters in several dimensions, provide insights on the impacts of such disasters and discuss the predictability of disasters. Disasters may be succinctly defined as natural or human events, usually unexpected, that result in significant impacts in terms of a variety of metrics. Metrics for evaluating the impacts of disasters include economic damage, environmental damage, fatalities, reconstruction cost, aesthetic damage, disruption of normal activities, destruction of irreplaceable objects, and long-term or permanent loss of species. Disasters may be categorized in terms of causes (natural events, human induced, or a combination). Water-related disasters may be further categorized as floods, storms, waves, slides, droughts, epidemics, contamination and climate change. The temporal and spatial scale of water-related disasters vary by many orders of magnitude ranging from seconds to centuries and from a few square kilometers to the entire earth.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Adhikari Y, Yoshitani J (2009). Global trends in water-related disasters: An insight for policymakers. International Centre for Water Hazard and Risk Management (ICHARM) and UNESCO. Insight paper from United Nations World Water Assessment Programme Third World Water Development
Brinkley D (2007). The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast. New York: Harper Perennial
Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (2011). http://www.emdat.be/. Accessed October, 2011
Gleick P H (1996). Water resources. In: Schneider S H, ed. Encyclopedia of Climate and Weather. New York: Oxford University Press, Vol. 2, 817–823
Grayman W M (2009). Characterization of Water Resources and Environmental Disasters. In: Proceeding of EWRI-ASCE World Water & Envir. Resources Congress
IPCC (2007). Climate Change 2007: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Parry M L, Canziani O F, Palutikof J P, van der Linden P J, Hanson C E, eds. Contribution ofWorking Group II to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Johnson G P, Holmes R R Jr, Waite L A (2004). The great flood of 1993 on the Upper Mississippi River—10 years later. USGS Fact Sheet 2004–3024. http://il.water.usgs.gov/pubs/fs2004-3024.pdf. Accessed October, 2011
Junger S (1997). The Perfect Storm. New York: W. W. Norton & Company
Larson E (1999). Isaac’s Storm: A man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History. New York: Crown Publishers
Leatherman S P, Zhang K, Xiao C (2007). Lake Okeechobee, Florida: The next hurricane disaster? Water Resources Impact, AWRA, 9(6): 5–7
Matalas N C (1998). Note on the assumption of hydrologic stationarity. Water Resources Update, UCOWR, Issue No. 112
Perry R W, Quarantelli E L (2005). What is a Disaster? New Answers to Old Questions. Philadelphia PA: Xlibris Corporation
Quarantelli E L (1998). What is a Disaster? A Dozen Perspectives on the Question. London: Routledge, Taylor and Francis
Rodríguez H, Quarantelli E L, Dynes R R (2007). Handbook of Disaster Research. Berlin: Springer
Stoltman J P, Lidstone J, de Chano L M (2004). International Perspectives on Natural Disasters: Occurrence, Mitigation, and Consequences. London: Kluwer Academic Publishers
UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (2011). UN-ISDR: Terminology on disaster risk reduction. Updated 2009. http://www.unisdr.org/we/inform/terminology. Accessed October, 2011
United Nations (2011). http://magic.un.org.mx/www2/desastres-capacitacion/wbi/GLOSSARY.doc, Accessed October, 2011
USGS (2007). The uniform California earthquake rupture forecast, Version 2 (UCERF 2). USGS Open File Report2007-1437. http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2007/1437/
World Bank (2010). Natural Hazards, Unnatural Disasters: The Economics of Effective Prevention
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Grayman, W.M. Water-related disasters: A review and commentary. Front. Earth Sci. 5, 371–377 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11707-011-0205-y
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11707-011-0205-y