Characterization of Water Resources and Environmental Disasters

When you think about water resources and environmental disasters, some of the recent events that come to mind include Hurricane Katrina, the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and the Exxon Valdez oil spill. However, other than concluding that "I know a disaster when I see one", what can we do to better characterize and rank disasters? Some potential criteria include: economic damage, environmental damage, fatalities, reconstruction cost, aesthetic damage, disruption of normal activities, destruction of irreplaceable objects, and long-term or permanent loss of species. This paper explores past water resources/environmental disasters and provides a rough comparison of their impacts in terms of a range of criteria. It also provides a taxonomy of disasters in terms of causes (natural events, human induced), predictability and potential impacts.