Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Moreover, the increased number of new hazardous substances and materials and
the opportunities for human error inherent their use has determined an escalation
of technological accidents. All this factors and the more and more unstable bound-
aries between natural disasters and man-made disasters has necessarily imposed
growing efforts for harmonization policies at a national and an international level to
ensure collective security, public health and environmental protection.
8.1 Introduction
There is not a universal de
nition of technological hazards and accidents. Even
though some studies emphasize the complexity of the issue of individual responsi-
bility in technological disasters, literature has commonly accepted a distinction
between natural hazards (acts of god) and man-made (acts of man) hazards.
According to some classi
cations natural hazards are threats determined by uncon-
trollable events, while man-made hazards are threats determined by arti
cial (tech-
“
nological) factors. Natural hazards can be de
those elements of the physical
environment, harmful to man and caused by forces extraneous to him
ned as
.
1
The term
“
natural hazards
”
refers to all atmospheric, hydrologic, geologic (especially seismic
and volcanic), and wild
”
re phenomena, while the term
“
man-made hazards
”
refers to
“
phenomena caused by human action, inaction, negligence or error. These
phenomena are also de
arti
cial
”
ned as technological hazards when determined by a tech-
nology (i.e. industrial, engineering, transportation) and as sociological hazards when
they have a direct human motivation (i.e. crime, riots, con
icts).
As threat and potential danger, hazards are strictly connected to concepts of risk,
disaster and catastrophe. The term risk (from the ancient Italian risicare) indicates
the possibility of suffering a harmful event or loss or danger. While a risk involves
uncertainty, a disaster (from the Italian disastro, literally
“
unfavorable to one
'
s
stars
) is an unexpected natural or man-made event with harmful but temporary
consequences. Disasters can be de
”
ned as the result of an extreme event that
signi
a tragic situations
over which persons, groups, or communities have no control-situations which are
imposed by an outside force too great to resist
cantly disrupts the workings of a community. A disaster is
“
. This kind of events may have as a
consequence deaths, material destructions and severe economic damages but can
also determine situations of collective stress in a community and bring to the test
the level of vulnerability of a society.
2
Some interpretations consider a disaster a
consequence of peculiar social conditions, some others, consider man-made
disasters mainly as socio-technical problems, as the product of a failure of foresight
and a combination of technical, social and even institutional and administrative
”
1
Smith and Petley (
1990
).
2
Fritz (
1961
), Quarantelli (
1966
) and Dynes (
1970
).
