In the field of disaster management, the terms disaster and hazard are closely related but conceptually distinct, and understanding the difference between them is essential for effective planning, mitigation, and response. A hazard refers to a potentially damaging physical event, phenomenon, or human activity that may cause loss of life, injury, property damage, environmental degradation, or social and economic disruption. A disaster, on the other hand, is the serious disruption of the functioning of a community or society when a hazard actually impacts vulnerable conditions and overwhelms local capacity to cope using its own resources. A hazard is essentially a source of potential harm. It may be natural, such as earthquakes, floods, cyclones, droughts, landslides, volcanic eruptions, or epidemics, or human-induced, such as industrial accidents, chemical spills, nuclear radiation, fires, dam failures, and acts of terrorism. Hazards exist independently of human presence and may remain dormant or inactive for long periods. For example, a fault line beneath the earth’s surface is a seismic hazard, but it does not cause damage unless an earthquake occurs and affects people and infrastructure. Thus, a hazard represents a threat or risk, not an actual event of destruction. A disaster occurs only when a hazard interacts with exposure, vulnerability, and insufficient capacity to respond. It is the realized outcome of a hazard that results