Disaster Management Cycle

Last decade has been a decade (2000-2019) of some of the major disaster occurrences. Majority of these disasters were climate based. Between 2000-2019 there were 7348 major recorded disaster events worldwide as compared to 4212 between 1980-1999 These disasters claimed 12mn lives and affected more than 4.03 billion people (2000 – 2019). Asia suffered the highest number of disaster events due to size of the continents, its physiography and high density of population. In terms of affected countries globally, India with 321 events was third highest in terms of economic losses and loss of lives [1]. Widespread occurrences of disasters and heavy destruction in terms of loss of life and property and damage to ecosystems has highlighted the issue of understanding and managing the disasters effectively whether they are natural or caused by human neglect and interventions. Disaster management and overall development of a region should go simultaneously, in fact, development should include disaster management processes. Occurrence of disasters disrupt the process of development by causing damage to the developmental efforts which have taken long time to achieve. It often pushes the countries back by several decades. Thus, efficient management of disasters before their occurrence, rather than responding to them after the occurrence has, in recent times, received increased attention both within India and abroad.