Sources of Disaster Risk

Disaster risks can come from many sources, and they can be identified in a number of ways. You may be interested in understanding risk from an institutional, local, national, sectoral or global perspective.

Arguably, everyone benefits from having an awareness of all of these, if they are to be prepared and to contribute to Disaster Risk Reduction properly.

For example, you could:

• Identify disaster risks in relation to the ‘5 Ps’ of the

Sustainable Development Goals: People, Planet,

Prosperity, Peace and Partnerships.

• Use the 17 Sustainable Development Goals themselves to identify potential disaster risks in your contexts – institutional, local, national, sectoral and global.

• Use a PESTLE analysis to identify disaster risk in terms of Political, Economic, Social, Technological,

Legal or Environmental considerations.

• Use the Global Risks that form the basis of the annual

Global Risks Report (discussed on the following pages), and consider how they will impact on your work.

• Work with a group of stakeholders to develop your own approach to identifying disaster risks.

Whichever approach you use, you should also ask yourself how you (your work, your organization, your sector) are contributing to disaster risk: who or what are you putting at risk as a result of your activities?