Tennakoon, Kishani PriyangiSerrao-Neumann, SilviaCretney, Raven2024-10-302024-10-302024Tennakoon, K. P., Serrao-Neumann, S., & Cretney, R. (2024). Identifying and classifying broader scale of disaster impacts to better inform disaster management policies and practice. Natural Hazards. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-024-06707-w0921-030Xhttps://hdl.handle.net/10289/17002Disasters are often assessed by factors such as their magnitude, severity and impact on affected communities. Typically, disaster management policies are largely informed by learnings from large-scale disasters. Many studies, however, have shown that cumulative smaller scale disaster impacts have similar outcomes comparable to larger scale disasters. This indirectly contributes to a lack of consistency in and paucity of data related to both smaller-scale disasters and their associated cumulative impacts. This paper argues that greater attention needs to be paid to collecting disaster impact data on a range of disaster-scale events along with their cumulative impacts to better inform disaster management policies and practice. The paper aims to test the hypothesis that a better understanding of a wide range of disaster scale types and their impacts on communities, including small-scale disasters, enables the development of more just, consistent and equitable disaster management policies and practice. Analysing economic costs, evacuation and rainfall data from past flood events that affected Aotearoa-New Zealand over the last three decades, the paper found discrepancies and lack of coherence in disaster data collection and reporting, along with a predominant reliance on rainfall intensity data for disaster risk reduction and planning. The findings also confirmed the importance of identifying economic damages for a range of disaster scales, including those from small-scale disasters. This highlights the need for developing a spectrum to better classify and identify disaster impacts based on various spatial and temporal contexts. The paper concludes by affirming that such database would provide much needed evidence for developing a methodology that enables the identification of the level of disaster impacts; thereby guiding the implementation of more just, consistent and equitable disaster management policies and practice.enAttribution 4.0 International. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Journal Article10.1007/s11069-024-06707-w1573-084037 Earth Sciences3709 Physical Geography and Environmental Geoscience3709 Physical geography and environmental geoscience11 Sustainable Cities and Communities