So, hazard that may cause some kind of impact on human life and property does not only define the disaster, it also matter that how many people when they are exposed to that hazard. But that is not only enough, it also depends on what and what types of people, what are their characteristics, what are their features, who are exposed to that disaster, so to define disaster so, the question is why is so? We consider this is a vulnerability, that vulnerability is one of the critical conditions to define that the degree of disasters.

Now, we define vulnerability as the condition, that determined by physical, social, economic and environmental factors or process which increase the susceptibility of a community to the impact of hazard.

So, which places are more vulnerable to a hazard; which geographical region, socio-economic class etc., who are the vulnerable people like which kind of households or individuals are and what should be done like, what kind of capacity or adaptation, capacity building or adaptation measures, preventive measures we can take.

So, these also define that what extent people are at risk, so as I said that, there are different conditions that define the vulnerability. We have the social vulnerability like, coping ability, resistance or resilience or we could have some social empowerment like, age, gender, ethnicity, household type as I said that younger people are when a society is comprising only by elder people, the society is considered to be more vulnerable than when there are younger people also.

And females are compared to be more vulnerable because they have many less socio-economic opportunities, political opportunities, so than the male counterpart, so they are considered to be more vulnerable in a male-dominated society. It is also depends on what kind of ethnicity these are exposed to disasters when a mainstream ethnic community or majority of ethnic community they are exposed; they are less vulnerable than a minority community or minority ethnic races.

So, we have this model of disaster, defining disaster vulnerability, we will talk this one later on. But this is just for as a reference; we can have also physical factors of disaster vulnerability. Like, the land use and this mainly came from land use and engineering architectural perspective to define the physical vulnerability of disaster and also like the which locations the building are there, what are their conditions so, these all defined the buildings of vulnerability.

So, hazard, exposure and vulnerability these 3 components are important to understand disaster risk. We will later on also discuss about disaster vulnerability in a more broader perspective. But, here is the definition of disaster that is hazard, exposure and vulnerability; that is defining the disaster.

And it is a formal definition given by United Nations, ISDR as disaster is a function of the risk process, it results from the combination of hazards, condition of vulnerability and insufficient capacity or measures to reduce the potential negative consequence of risk. So, a disaster is a serious disruption of the functioning of community or a society causing widespread human, material, economic, environmental losses which exceed the ability of the affected communities or society to cope using its own resources.