LONDON, KENTUCKY - MAY 17: Tony McFall looks over the debris from the home of his father and step-mother, who lost their lives during the tornado in the neighborhood of Sunshine Hills on May 17, 2025, in London, Kentucky. (Photo by Michael Swensen/Getty Images)

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May is a critical month for risky weather. It sits squarely within peak severe weather season for the United States. It also precedes the start of the Atlantic hurricane season and summer hot season. Over the next several months, the U.S. is constantly on guard for risks associated with tornadoes, hail, gust winds, lightning, flooding and extreme heat. Many outcomes associated with these events are often called “natural disasters.” Here’s why that is probably not the best way to frame them.

Before I dive into the discussion, I want to lay out what weather or climate risk looks like from a disaster perspective. Disaster risk from a tornadic storm or hurricane is generally associated with exposure to the hazard, the level of sensitivity to its outcomes and some measure of the ability to adapt or recover from it. This mix of risk, vulnerability and resiliency is framed in multiple ways within the academic literature and ivory tower. I speak that language as a scientist and professor, but let’s put it in more common terms.

A tornado may plow through a region. Everyone in its path is exposed to the hazard, but there will be some communities that have greater sensitivity because of socioeconomic factors, types of homes they live in and so forth. Additionally, everyone exposed to the storm might experience damage or injuries, but certain socioeconomic groups have better home insurance, ability to evacuate or access to adequate health services. They have greater capacity to bounce back from the disaster.

Arissa Shepherd is a graduating senior at the University of Georgia. During her speech at the UGA Sustainability Certificate graduate ceremonies this weekend, the sociology major made a point that strongly resonated with me. Sustainability and disasters must consider more than just technical aspects of the problem. The human element is central to the discussion also, argued Shepherd. That’s a vital perspective as she completes graduate work in nonprofit management-leadership and pursues law school. It also sets up why the term “natural disaster” is flawed.

“The truth is, there is no such thing as a natural disaster,” wrote the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction. “A natural hazard, such as a hurricane, earthquake, or flood, only becomes a disaster when it impacts a community that is not adequately protected, and whose population is vulnerable as a result of poverty, exclusion or socially-disadvantage.”

I am guilty. Many of us have likely called such events natural disasters at some point, but the point made is worth consideration. Hear me out. Yes, natural hazards occur. However, they often become disasters because we built a chemical plant in a coastal region that experiences hurricanes or constructed a facility in a flood zone.

“Human actions such as deforestation, urbanization and inadequate infrastructure worsen the impacts of events like floods, earthquakes and storms,” said the UNDRR. Oftentimes human actions or decisions worsen the "disaster.

When coupled with socioeconomic vulnerability and varying degrees of resiliency, natural hazards become disasters. Additionally, the human footprint is all over the Earthscape. Humans like coastal views and access to the natural amenities. Yet, the threat of hurricanes or sea level rise is always there. Tornadoes occur in greater numbers within the U.S. because of its unique geography and placement relative to Canada, the Rockies and the Gulf. Tornadoes are not intelligent. They are naturally occuring storms. We just happen to live and work within their formation zones. Wildfires increasingly become disasters as human activity in the wildland-urban interface expands.

Colleagues Walker Ashley and Stephen Strader advanced the term “expanding bull’s eye effect" over a decade ago. The EBEE is defined as, “‘Targets’—i.e., humans and their possessions—of geophysical hazards are enlarging as populations grow and spread," according to the Northern Illinois University website. “It is not solely the population magnitude that is important in creating disaster potential, it is how the population and built environment are distributed across the landscape that defines how the fundamental components of risk and vulnerability are realized in a disaster.”

The effects of Hurricane Helene are still being felt in the southeastern U.S. two years later. In the days after the storm, several of us in UGA’s Institute for Resilient Infrastructure Systems wrote an opinion editorial in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. We argued that just as human footprints amplify disasters, human resiliency and adaptation can lessen the blow. It requires advanced rather than reactive planning, thinking beyond outdated benchmark events of the past, baked-in resiliency strategies, acceptance of the realities of global change and measures that reflect realities of how humans have encroached into spaces vulnerable to natural hazards.

It will also require a fundamental reconsideration of some realities that Shepherd spoke about in her graduation ceremony remarks. Many communities live in flood zones or are disproportionately exposed to urban heat because of past policies such as redlining, zoning and “cheap” land that reflected the societal landscape at the time.

"We are building incredible toolkits we can use to try and change the world," said Shepherd. “But a tool is only as good as the hands that hold it," she continued. "That is where sociology enters the conversation.”

What exactly does she mean? “You can conceptualize the perfect drought resistant crop, but if you don’t understand the dynamics of the farmers and the local farming town who will be expected to use it, that technology will never leave the lab,” she said.

Her point is powerful and inspired this article. Human activities are squarely embedded in the outcomes of natural hazard exposure and how the disaster impact grows. Each of us lives within the context of risk from natural disasters, so there is no blame game being played. Instead, my goal is to encourage stakeholders, policymakers and the public to consider how we can save more lives and property before the next hazard.

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