What defines a serious disruption of a community's functioning due to hazardous events?

A disaster is defined as a serious disruption of a community's functioning due to hazardous events, which can be man-made or naturally occurring. Disasters typically overwhelm the local capacity to respond and can involve significant damage to infrastructure, significant health impacts, and disruption of essential services.

While "natural disaster" refers specifically to events like earthquakes, floods, and hurricanes, and "health disaster" focuses more on health-related crises, such as epidemics or bioterrorism, these terms are subsets of the broader concept of a disaster. A pandemic, on the other hand, is a widespread outbreak of disease but does not encompass the full range of hazardous events that can impact a community's functioning. Therefore, the most comprehensive definition that captures the serious nature of such disruptions across all contexts is the term disaster itself.