Impact of Extensive Disasters

Extensive risk is defined by the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR) as ‘The widespread risk associated with the exposure of dispersed populations to repeated or persistent hazard conditions of low or moderate intensity, often of a highly localized nature, which can lead to debilitating cumulative disaster impacts’. UNISDR further describes extensive risk in the 2009 Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction as causing frequently occurring low-intensity losses, particularly emphasising the large number of people affected and damage to infrastructure. Extensive disasters do not generate major mortality or destruction of economic assets, but expose vulnerable people to low and moderate intensity hazard.

Examples of types of extensive disasters are given in the literature as floods, landslides, storms, fires and so on – these are often weather-related. This report collates available literature discussing the impacts of extensive risk and extensive disasters, in the form of a summary and annotated bibliography.