What are Cascading Disasters?

Abstract

Cascades have emerged as a new paradigm in disaster studies. The high level of dependency of modern populations on critical infrastructure and networks allows the impact of disasters to propagate through socio- economic systems. Where vulnerabilities overlap and interact, escalationpoints are created which can create secondary effects with greater impact than the primary event. This article explains how complexity can be categorised and analysed in order to find those weak points in society that enable cascading impacts to develop. Scenarios can be used to identify critical dependencies and guide measures designed to increase resilience.Experience suggests that many potential impacts of cascading disasters remain uninvestigated, which provides ample scope for escalation of impacts into complex forms of crisis.

Addressing social and institutional vulnerabilities in the context of flood risk mitigation

“…For the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), defining what makes a system vulnerable is particularly key for disaster risk reduction (DRR) approaches based on the assumption that hazards only become disasters if they occur in vulnerable contexts (IPCC, 2014). This is corroborated by other authors that consider the vulnerability as a series of categories in physical and structural, environmental, social, psychological, and institutional contexts (Alexander & Pescaroli, 2019) that, when combined with exposed elements, will determine whether the event will translate into a disaster (Hazarika et al, 2018; Sharma & Ravindranath, 2019).…”

A Preliminary Evaluation of the Public Risk Perception Related to the COVID-19 Health Emergency in Italy

“…In the last decades, many countries have been implemented policies to cut public spending. As a consequence, despite the United Nations have stressed the necessity to strengthen health resilience [18], the investment in public health systems have decreased [19,20], increasing vulnerability and exacerbating the negative effects of this pandemic [21].…”

Responding to the climate crisis – taking action on the IPCC 6th Assessment Report

“…It was emphasised that compound and cascading hazards after natural events are often not reported and under-addressed, despite their ability to produce further catastrophic hazards that propagate through socio-economic systems (e.g. Alexander and Pescaroli, 2019).…”