Hazard

A hazard is something that is potentially dangerous or harmful. It is often the root cause of an unwanted outcome. Hazards may be categorized as natural or as adversarial/human-caused.

• Natural hazards are caused by natural events that pose a threat to lives, property, and other assets. Examples include hurricanes, earthquakes, and tornadoes.
• Adversarial or human-caused hazards include technological hazards (caused by the tools, machines, and substances used in everyday life) and intentional acts (caused by people attacking or damaging what is valuable in a society). Examples include hazardous materials releases, major computer system failures (e.g., 911 system), terrorist attacks, and riots.

Vulnerability

Vulnerability is a description of how exposed or susceptible an asset is to damage. Vulnerability depends on an asset’s construction, contents, the economic value of its functions or services, and replacement/repair costs.

The vulnerability of one element of the community is often related to the vulnerability of another, and a hazard may cause indirect damages in addition to the damages that are caused by the direct impact. For example, many businesses depend on uninterrupted electrical power – if an electric substation is flooded, it will affect not only the substation itself, but a number of businesses as well. A refrigerated warehouse may lose its entire inventory and suffer severe economic losses as a result of the power failure. Often, indirect effects can be much more widespread and damaging than direct ones.

Risk

Risk is the possibility of loss or injury. More specifically, it is an estimated impact that a hazard would have on people, services, facilities, and structures in a community. It is the likelihood of a hazard event resulting in an adverse condition that causes injury or damage.

Risk is often expressed in relative terms such as a high, moderate, or low likelihood of sustaining damage above a particular threshold due to a specific type of hazard event. It also can be expressed in terms of potential monetary losses associated with the intensity of the hazard.

Individual Assistance (IA)

Individual Assistance (IA) is funding or direct assistance to individuals, families and businesses in an area whose property has been damaged or destroyed and whose losses are not covered by insurance. It is meant to help with critical expenses that cannot be covered in other ways. This assistance is not intended to restore damaged property to its condition before the disaster. Whenever feasible, efforts should be made to rebuild in a way that makes the community more disaster resistant, through mitigation activities.

While some housing assistance funds are available through FEMA’s Individuals and Households Program, most disaster assistance from the Federal government is in the form of loans administered by the Small Business Administration (SBA).

Public Assistance (PA)

Public Assistance (PA) is reimbursement and emergency assistance provided to State, Tribal, and local governments and certain types of private non-profit (PNP) entities from the Federal government.

Through the PA Program, FEMA provides supplemental Federal disaster grant assistance for debris removal, emergency protective measures, and the repair, replacement, or restoration of disaster-damaged, publicly owned facilities and the facilities of certain PNP organizations.