Catastrophe, Definition of

In the disasters literature there is controversy about whether the term catastrophe can be differentiated from disaster or whether they are synonyms. The word catastrophe, which first appeared in the English language in the 1500s, comes from the ancient Greek word katastrophe, meaning “overturning” or “sudden turn,” and its Latin derivative catastropha. It denotes a moment of sudden cataclysm, in which things change inexorably. Setting aside exaggeration and hyperbole, a catastrophe can be considered to be an unusually large disaster.

In functional terms, a catastrophe can be differentiated from a disaster in the needs and responses it generates (see Table 1). It is likely to overwhelm the capacity to respond of the local area that it affects. It may also overwhelm regional capacity and demand a national or international response. For example, the Haiti earthquake of January 12, 2010, killed at least 230,000 people and, because Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere and was quite unable to cope, it elicited a response from 129 nations. Catastrophic disasters almost always result in an international appeal for aid and assistance. Commonly, about 70 nations may respond by sending cash, relief goods, or personnel. The exceptional impact, suffering, and international response involved in the Haiti earthquake surely qualifies it to be regarded as a catastrophe, hence a disaster of exceptional magnitude and impact.

There have been numerous attempts to quantify the thresholds at which events become disasters. For instance, the EM-DAT database of the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters at the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium defines disaster as involving 10 or more deaths and 100 or more people affected, and requiring a declaration of a state of emergency or a call for international assistance. Although it is sometimes necessary to come up with a means of differentiating or classifying such events, disasters are sufficiently complex events to defy efforts to constrain them to specific thresholds, and that is even truer of catastrophic disasters. In other words, such events are in some way exceptional, but what defines “exceptional” is open to many different interpretations.

The advent of the 3rd millennium gave rise to some ill-conceived predictions of global catastrophe, but it did redress the balance after two centuries in which the doctrine of uniformitarianism had the upper hand over catastrophism. The latter advocates large, violent events as the source of global changes, while the former theory argues for gentle, continuous processes as the main source of developments. In reality, both the physical and the social evolution of the world are functions of both catastrophic and continuous processes and are complex enough for it to be very difficult to discern which of these is the more important. Moreover, catastrophic events, such as major volcanic eruptions, that can have a significant impact on global climate or social processes are very rare and hence cannot adequately be evaluated statistically.

Nonetheless, events have occurred that show how the interlinking of phenomena can increase the potential for catastrophe. The Great Eastern Japan (or Tohoku) Earthquake and Tsunami of March 11, 2011, involved a magnitude 9.0 [Page 100]earthquake, a maximum wave height of almost 39 meters, and widespread contamination by radioisotopes emitted from the damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant. This was obviously an exceptional event and, with 19,500 deaths, well within the bounds of catastrophe. But both natural events and human-induced catastrophe (particularly that which involves nuclear fission) could cause significantly worse events, perhaps orders of magnitude larger. Moreover, very high death tolls are forecast for future earthquakes in cities such as Istanbul and Tehran, again diagnostic of the potential for catastrophe.

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