Terminological issues in the field of disaster management: an overview

Abstract

Terminologies can be considered as the key driving force of any field of studies or development programs. Significant number of terminology is in use in the field of disaster management at present. The field of disaster management attracts the interest of all strata of the society due to many reasons. Parallel to this trend, new terminologies are being produced rapidly while definition for existing terms changing at alarming rate. This situation is obvious across all over the world. Disasters cannot be managed without strong cooperation and clear understanding among different parties. The shifting the central meaning of terms and accumulating large number of new terminologies will tend to create various types of communicating issues. This would result to be unsuccessful the efforts made to reduce the impacts of disasters. In order to secure the unity among all stakeholders and strength the collective effort in reducing the impacts of disasters, use of terminologies with universally accepted unique meaning is important. The broad objective of this paper is to trace the different meanings exist for one term and identify the issues pertaining to definitions of selected terms. Literature survey and the interviews with key stakeholders is the main data collecting method of this study. Interest of maintaining the differences among countries and scientists has become a key factor to develop issues pertaining to terminologies related to field of disaster management.